'May day! May day!
The ship is slowly sinking.
They think I'm crazy...
but they don't know the feeling.
They're all around me, circling like vultures.
They want to break me...
and wash away my colors.'
Starset-My Demons
"You want ranch?" Clark asked as he cracked open the refrigerator to take a gander at his generous supply of condiments.
"Sure," Steve answered, shouldering the entrance to the kitchen.
Clark's apartment, a single, technically had no spare room. His futon functioned as a second bed. A Yankees poster clothed the far wall, along with several framed newspaper clippings involving the incident in New York, the coming of General Zod, and other articles that had spring boarded Lois Lane to fame.
Noticing the chicken breasts had started popping precariously in their skillet, coated with vegetable oil and sending sprits of the stuff into the backboard, Rogers breezed to the stove to turn the burner down a notch. He didn't flinch when a final pop kicked a spray of oil onto his wrist. But the warm, firm body behind him certainly rendered him rigid.
"You okay?" Clark asked, his arm reaching around Steve to gently take hold of his arm and turn it belly up, the blue of his veins stark against his pale skin.
"Yeah. Fine," Rogers replied militantly.
Steve watched Clark adjust his grasp and smooth his thumb against the slick, glistening surface of his oil splashed wrist. Soothing. Tender. Clark's other hand sat beside Steve's hip on the edge of the newly polished black stove. He stood a few small measures taller than Steve, which had taken some getting used to. Thor was the same. Seemed like all folks born off-world were naturally built bigger.
"I know you don't want to talk about today," said Clark, his low voice tender with the affection Steve still couldn't stomach. "You don't have to. Just glad you came."
Rogers swallowed thickly, a strange sort of heat creeping up his spine as he became more aware of the proximity of Clark's body. The scent of his cologne and printer ink. The light hint of Summer Shandy on his breath. The pleasant, worn roughness of his hands that touched with gentleness that belied his strength.
They hadn't yet.
Hadn't…
"I don't want that," growled a heavily graveled voice into Steve's ear.
Having been adjusting the level of heat on the stovetop, Steve paused. "You said you were hungry," he said, strong brows knitting together. A pan of soup sat on the burner, waiting.
"Not for that." He stepped forward, roughly introducing Steve's hips to the ledge of the stovetop. His metal arm took a handful of Steve's backside.
"Buck, cut it out," Rogers muttered with what humor he could scrounge up flavoring his voice, fear like a parasite burrowing into his gut.
He pushed again, his coarse crotch grinding against the seam of his jeans, and ducked his head to find the side of Steve's neck. His teeth scrapped against his skin. Meanwhile, his flesh hand—rough and vicelike—closed around Steve's and pressed it to the adjoining wall.
Steve shuddered, but not entirely unpleasantly. He found himself tilting his head to expose more of his neck. Rarely did he feel small or threatened anymore. But this… seemed somehow off kilter. The fear grew, buried beneath other conflicting emotions. Living with Bucky since his homecoming had been like rooming with a jungle cat. Rogers tiptoed around things. Avoided all triggers. Embraced every new quirk, lethal and benign. Handled him with care. Loved him unconditionally. And in his right mind, James Barnes loved Steve like the ocean loved the shore. Sweetly at times, brutally in others. But truly, and permanently.
Yet… this felt… different.
Surfacing from the fugue due to the fear festering throughout his innards, Steve scrapped together the strength to speak.
"Bucky. Stop."
Pure, sinister Russian answered him. Gibberish. Ugly, guttural gibberish.
Steve's eyes snapped open. Ignoring the sting of James' teeth, he tore away, wrenching himself free from the cage the man, the stranger, had formed. Unable to focus on anything but the foreign lashing of Bucky's tongue like lacquered leather, he fled his own body in an attempt to evade the villain. From somewhere far away, he watched it.
He watched it all.
"Bucky," Steve choked, despising his failing vocal chords and staggering backward as the man advanced.
Barnes' eyes were wrong. Distant. Dark. Bottomless. Hungry.
Before Steve could utter another word, the man who wasn't Bucky had his metal hand around his throat and shoved him down onto the kitchen table, sending dishes and silverware shattering to the floor, several of the shards biting into Steve's back. Like the jaws of a rapid dog, the sensation roused him.
/Fight, soldier. Fight it. Fight this. Don't you dare lie down and let this happen. Don't you dare!/
Rogers scrambled to find footing, seizing the man's metal wrist to pry it away from his neck. But it squeezed. The gears weaving the intricate contraption together whirled and whizzed as they calibrated to resist him, adding impossible pressured to keep him compromised. Gasping for air, Steve looked into the unfamiliar face. His free hand tore—slammed—shoved—ripped at the broad, muscle bound body that had forced its way between his thighs.
The naked horror on his own face confused him. He tasted nothing as he watched—dissociated, clouded in fog, gray as an Arctic autumn, and flowered in frost—sailing still farther away, the violent scene adorning the horizon an ageless portrait of deepest betrayal. But the self he left behind choked on two metal fingers and the blood cut from his lips by his teeth.
Again, the man looking down on him spoke in fluent spurts of Russian, his lip curling into a snide, wicked sort of smile that reminded Steve of an apex predator. Those eyes flashed—nuclear blasts in what should have been serene pastures. His attention trailed down Steve's body, assessing him in an overtly lewd fashion. Language barrier notwithstanding, there could be no doubt what he was determined to reap from Rogers.
One last rope, thin as spidersilk, tethered Steve's consciousness to his living body.
They had made love before. Steve had lost his virginity to Barnes on Christmas Eve, during their time in Europe on the front lines. And they had been intimate several times since his homecoming. James, the tender and tempered James Steven loved, had overhanging psychological issues when it came to intercourse on account of his conditioning in the core of HYDRA. He refused to be dominated. He wanted control during intimacy above anything else. Unlike his former self, he became openly aggressive when things got hot between them, as though afraid the opportunity would be forcibly snatched from him. So, Steve stepped into the submissive role without question. It would be a process, he knew, to coax Buck into a state of trust so concrete that he would be comfortable with Steve loving him that way.
/Don't do this,/ his drifting mind pleaded. /It's me. Your punk. Don't do this!/
But this couldn't be more different, he knew.
This wasn't the furious kissing, wandering hands, and eventual collision with the mattress. This was, "I'm going to fuck you, or I'm going to kill you. Hell. I'll kill you, then fuck you. It's your choice. And either one would be just as pleasurable to me."
This was justice—a debauching he deserved, coming like a tidal wave from the mouth of Hell itself.
/I'm sorry Buck. I'm sorry I didn't come for you. I'm so sorry I didn't look for you after. Didn't save you./
The man who was not Bucky curled his hand into the last defense of denim and ripped through Steve's jeans.
And the spidersilk thread snapped.
"Steve?"
An echo on the water. A dream of the dreariness. The short, sad song of a pebble as it sank.
"STEVE!"
Rogers snapped to, alert and prepared to spring into action. Battle ready. Taught. Trained. True. He saw blue, the pure and glistening blue of Clark's eyes shining toward him. Gentle, tentative pressure on his face. Chest to chest with Clark. Back-pockets against the oven.
"Where did you go just now?"
Blinking, Steve took inventory of his surroundings. Clark's kitchen, confused. He hadn't gone anywhere. Had he?
Kal stared, cross-stitched seams shredding. He had taken his lips to Steve's neck, nestled in the pine smell of his soap. His aftershave. His shampoo. The underlying scent that was simply him, like a mountain spring. He had threaded his fingers into Steve's grasp. Slowly spun him. Kissed him.
Kissed… someone.
The kiss, Kal would never deny, had lit him with want, holding none of Steve's modesty, reservations, or hesitance. Undoctored desire had burned there, smoldering on the surface. It always did. But dipping deeper, a feather's touch farther to seek genuine emotion, he found a cold, stiff deadness. Non-existence. Only a steady heartbeat… and automated motions.
A flavor he had tasted before.
Kal watched Steve, lost as a child woken from deep sleep, assess his location… and the two enormous dents his iron grip had put into the decorative lip rimming the stove.
Kal would never forget the morning he awoke, sheets disheveled and completely nude, alone… eight months ago. After an unsettling moment searching the room, he found Steve asleep on the futon in the den. Clothed in only his jeans, Steve lay on his stomach, chiseled back exposed to the dawn's light, his face nestled in his brawny arms. Kal had smiled, warmed by the sight, figuring Steve had been too warm to stay in bed. Mid-summer, monsoons behind them, it made sense. Kal was a hotbox. He typically woke up sweating.
They had been dating for four months. Serious for two of them. And this had been the first time they had taken their relationship to the next level.
Kal slipped into fresh boxers, made breakfast, and reflected on their night together, quirking subtle smiles here and there, his innermost core smoldering at certain explicitly savory memories; licked at with flames of desire.
He heard Steve stir, groan, and rise from the creaking futon. He heard him stretch—his back and shoulders pop.
"Mornin'," Rogers greeted, massaging the kinks out of his beautifully defined neck. "Sorry I passed out early. You didn't have to do to all this trouble."
"Early?" Kal had echoed. They had been up making love until well after three. With a grin, Kal scrapped bacon and eggs into a cereal bowl. "You've gotta be joking."
Eyes and lips lighting with the smile Kal had come to love, Steve took a breath and broke Kal's heart. "Oh. So eleven is late for you?"
Kal froze in mid-scoop. Eleven. Eleven had been when Kal had kissed Steve into his bedroom. In a fugue of nausea, he finished serving.
"Maybe it was being up since 4:30AM yesterday," Steve posed, smile turning a gorgeous sort of sheepish.
Kal knew he volunteered at the police station on Fridays. They would call him in anywhere between 2AM and midnight.
"Dinner was fantastic. No one cooks like you. I wish I hadn't missed the end of that movie though. Mind telling me what happened?"
Gutted, Kal put the empty, salt stained skillet into the sink and switched on the tap so the hiss would drown out the crackling in his voice.
"It's okay," he answered, floundering in disbelief. "We'll watch it again. I love Terminator."
Oh, gods. Steve… didn't remember.
"Okay," agreed Rogers, boyish smile accompanied by a nod. "Thanks."