The first time, we fumble like true amateurs.
I don't know what to do with a casted wrist, he tries to keep his metal arm away from me. But we are driven into the act with urgency that pulses in our veins as our bodies press together and we try to take in as much of each other as we can. Our height difference doesn't mean much when we are like this but I scrape my toes along his shins before wrapping my legs around him and he rolls me with an easy push and swing from his limbs. I get lost in his mouth and hang on to him when it moves us and we both are spent too quickly. We're messy, hot and ragged in the tangle of sheets but he rests his head on my chest and I thread my fingers in his hair again, pushing it off his face and memorizing the way his breath feels on my hot skin.
When I wake up from another nightmare I don't have to go far to find him, he lies next to me on the bed, his flesh arm draped over my middle and I move myself further into the cave created by his draped arm. I don't tremble as much, and place my head against his chest to listen to the steady beat of his heart and hope that it will slow mine down. I plant tiny kisses on the scarred skin near his metal arm, trace the line where it meets his person with the tip of my finger, and wonder at the neural wiring that connects man to machine. My lips follow the path of my finger until I am at his collar bone and move to his jaw, his mouth again, and he takes my face in both his hands, placing his palms on my jaw and hooking his thumbs at the mandibular joint to hold me close.
He explores the geometry of my limbs, crooks of elbows and backs of knees and the way they bend and create angles under his ministrations. We fall into each other's eyes and swim in the pools of want that are overflowing behind them. Time stops, races, does a million things but we are unaware as we get lost in the sensation of knowing each other.
Dawn again, and I am sitting upright against the backboard, wrapped in a sheet and watching the sunrise. A clear day, my last full day, and I sink back down into the bed to wrap myself in my lover again. He draws me in and I fall back asleep to the cadence of our heartbeats.
…..
"I almost got married once," I say. I'm tracing the lines on his palm and he's watching the way sunlight plays through my hair that drapes over my shoulder. The digital recorder is sitting on my bedside table. He pulled it out when we woke up mid-morning, and we've been alternating between talking and exploring each other ever since.
"I was with a man, Paolo, an Italian in all the right ways," I smile at the memory of the tall, dark, classically beautiful man whose attraction to me had been somewhat baffling but still exciting.
"We were together at UC Davis, he studied art and literature, those kinds of things, while I was committed to premed. We met in one those core classes that they make everyone take and he came up to me one day after class and introduced himself. He said that he'd had a dream the night before that he and I were having a fight about whose turn it was to take out the garbage. It was the best line I'd ever heard and we became inseparable."
"What happened?" James asks between tracing lines along my shoulder with his lips.
"I got into medical school and he wanted to go back home. He asked me to go with him, to marry him, but I'd have given up everything I'd ever wanted to do with my life. I couldn't do that."
"And now you're here," he says and looks at me with something like sadness like he's sorry for this mess.
"Yes," I say and lean into him again. "I am here."
…..
"Your parents," he says hesitantly, my head close to his on the pillow.
"They died last year," I say, that wound can still be ripped open if I am not careful. "Killed last year by a drunk driver."
He turns and kisses my forehead, keeping his lips against the spot on my skin that burns from the contact.
"I'm the last of the line," I continue. "When I'm gone there will be no one left to remember my family. I don't want to give up my life because I will be leaving everything that I've ever known and no one will have any space for me in theirs. I will fade away and so will everyone who's been before me. We will cease to exist. That's why I'm so afraid of being forgotten."
"That's not going to be a problem," he reassures me. He trails kisses down my neck, his hands leading the way and the play of metal and flesh excites my brain and I play close attention to what his mouth is doing. I am pliable and vulnerable in his hands and he is exposed and gentle in mine. We are more alike in these hours than we had previously thought. Dead parents, forgotten friends, discovering one another and a potential future that is probably going to be ripped out from under us come morning.
But as he trails lower and lower, skimming the tips of his fingers on the inside of my thigh and my breath catches in my throat, I don't think of any other place that I want to be.
When the day is ending, and we are sitting across from each other at the tiny 'dining table' that is wedged into a corner of the room sharing a small meal, I wear his t-shirt and he wears little more than those low slinging scrub pants, I tell him that I am afraid for the morning to come.
"I don't think there's any way out," I admit.
"If you were to stay," he says slowly, pushing around the corner of his sandwich, "there's no guarantee that you would be safe. You'd probably have to stay in the Tower and hardly leave. Do you want that kind of life?"
I hadn't considered that aspect of it, but he's right.
"There's no guarantee I'll be safe wherever they send me," I counter. "If HYDRA wants to find me then they'll probably be able to find me. And to be honest I'd rather they do it if I am near you instead of far away."
He gives me that smirk and reaches across the table to take my hand.
"I don't have anything to give you. Whatever life this is is uncertain at best, but I want to build life with you in this place, or wherever we end up. I don't care. And I will protect you no matter what. No matter where we are. I promise."
We don't say it, but it's between us that we could love each other some day. The seeds of it are planted and together we could rebuild a life out of the ashes of our old ones. I squeeze his hand and when we go to bed that night we hold on to each other like we are sinking ourselves into the foundations that will stabilize the uncertainty of our future together. All that's left for us to do come the morning is to the fight for it.