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The stranger—Anthony Carbonell but call me Tony, please—is a collection of brandy-colored eyes that glint like firelight, clever hands with tidy nails and blue collar calluses, and a mouth with edges distractingly familiar but shoots off in a way that’s unlike anything else Steve’s ever heard before. At twenty-four, Steve is a coat-hanger frame riddled with ailments and draped in hand-me-downs, a pair of knobby knees that get pins on the hike up to his fifth-floor walk-up, and a type of mouthy that only attracts a bully’s fist. Steve could have stood a haircut two weeks ago. So he can’t fathom what Tony sees, has no idea why he would bother looking at Steve twice, but he had. In the sparse O’Grady’s—its usual crowd long thinned out by the war—Tony had found Steve tucked away in his preferred dimly lit corner, staring out at a silent street that had more tin cans traveling it than pedestrians and keeping a warm, unspilled beer in a slow rotation between his fingers.
Steve doesn’t entirely buy Tony’s fish story: that he’s got a Cousin Vinny on the frontlines who used to work with Bucky at the Navy Yard a few years back and that all three of them had a night out drinking hot buttered rum the winter Steve was conveniently laid up with bronchitis. Steve doesn’t buy that Tony had his wallet picked because Steve caught the glint of a nice, heavy watch in Tony’s jacket pocket when he slid into the booth across from him. Tony had even almost palmed it before seemingly remembering himself and checking the clock above the bar instead.
However, he believes Tony when he says it’s his last night of leave because he kisses like a man who’s been to war and is heading back. At least, Steve thinks so. Or maybe Tony just kisses well, kisses normal, and knows what he’s about because he’s done it more than Steve’s sad handful of times. Which has to be pathetically evident with how Steve fumbled with his keys and over the threshold, the way his nose squashed against Tony’s again and again before he finally got the angle right. Now, Tony’s got him pressed against the door with a grip on his hips and a kiss so thorough and deep, Steve feels it in his toes.
He pulls away on a sigh and searches Tony’s face, still waiting for it to blur into the shapeless mirage of a dream. Steve doesn’t know if he fears that more or the possibility of Tony socking him in the jaw, finally letting him in on a cruel joke. “This isn’t just because I’m letting you stay at my place, is it? Some sort of thank you?”
“Is that the going rate of a trade-off around here?” Loosening Steve’s tie, Tony favors him with a grin that wouldn’t look misplaced on an ad to sell bonds, the kind of handsome that would be paired up with the likes of Rita Hayworth. With laugh lines that sweep up to silver-tinged temples, he’s the most beautiful person Steve’s ever seen close-up. Deft fingers unbutton Steve’s collar and more. “Does the old lady we passed on the first floor pay you back with sweets of her own whenever you loan her a cup of sugar?”
“I just feel blindsided.” Steve pauses Tony’s hands with his own and finally admits, at a loss, “I don’t understand your interest.”
Tony holds his eyes straight-on and his words bear the weight of experience. “My interest is that half of the world is on fire and time isn’t something I have much of anymore. My interest is that I’ve wanted you since the moment I first saw you, second chances don’t come around often, and I won’t forgive myself if I don’t do something about it.” He finishes carefully, like it’s vital that Steve understand. “I mean, we don’t have to do anything you don’t want to. That should be clear. I only want what you’re willing to give. Christ, I’d be thrilled just sitting here with you. Honest.”
Steve’s breath catches and his nerves start leaping like lizards. He can feel sweat at the base of his spine; anxiety takes possession of his fingers because suddenly things are moving awfully fast but Tony quickly steals them back. He turns Steve’s trembling hands palm up and places one kiss each to their love lines. Steve would hardly know better but he’s sure that the gesture isn’t commonplace in the narrative of a one night stand. It’s unspeakably sweet, and Steve finds himself caring less and less about what brought Tony here. It’s just. Well.
“You should know that I’ve never done this before, is all,” Steve says, not particularly proud but not embarrassed either. He keeps his chin up, doesn’t flinch away from it. “Any of this. I’ve never had anyone up here, never had anyone touch me the way that you’re touching me. Tony, I don’t know--look, whatever you’re expecting, I can’t see myself being anything but short of it.”
Tony inches in, looping Steve’s arms around his neck. His lips graze Steve’s ear and the brush of his peculiar beard causes him to shiver. Confidently, Tony whispers, “You’ll be amazing.”
“That’s impossible.”
“Take it from me because I’ve certainly been around long enough to learn. There’s no such thing.”
Steve entertains the thought that he may be right. There’s a 1A classification sitting on Steve’s bureau in his bedroom, and soon enough, Tony will be in there too. And he’s been so sick in his life, sick of many things, he’d like to no longer be sick of not having sex.
A reckless impulse runs through him and Steve pulls away again, but this time he’s the one to steal a kiss, the one to take initiative. He goes in with his eyes open, only closing them when Tony’s lips give underneath his and and part with a soft exhale that Steve swallows gladly. He delights in how hot the kiss becomes, Tony’s so warm, and Steve is in a hurry for all of him. Feeling himself grow hard in his thin, tweed trousers, he moves his hands down Tony’s shoulders and bunches the lapels of his jacket, tows him across the living room and into the bedroom.
Apparently, Steve’s lust-addled brain is unable to manage much beyond that. Preoccupied with latching his mouth to the underside of Tony’s jaw, he forgets the count of steps to the bed’s frame and the mattress takes out the back of his legs, its springs whining under the abrupt ambush. Books, art supplies, and knick-knacks that still have to be put away in boxes poke into his back and with a frustrated grunt, Steve twists up and reaches behind himself to shove them to the floor.
The whole thing makes Tony laugh, and it’s a sound that Steve immediately decides he likes. Passing a hand through his bangs and moving them to the side, he smiles back in kind, sheepish and what he hopes is endearing. “How’s this for a first impression?”
“I’ve seen worse. Much worse,” Tony says generously, like he means it, and knows better than to mind Steve’s self-deprecation. He says it like there’s nothing that Steve could do to frighten him away. It’s a wonderful thought. “You’re doing fine. But we can slow it down if you’d like.”
Steve thinks on it, stretching the night out like good taffy and savoring it, but he’s waited so long and every moment feels ephemeral, ready to be snatched away if he even breathes too hard. In the place of an answer that he’d only screw up, he skins off his shirts, whips his belt from the loop of his pants. He’s shuffling out of them when he catches Tony pull his undershirt over his head, sees the shiny-pink ridge that streaks down the middle of his chest.
Before he’s aware of what he’s doing, Steve hovers his hand just over it. He looks up for permission, looking for any inkling of a ‘no.’ “Can I?”
“Some things don’t ever change.” There isn’t a word for the gaze Tony rolls over him; it’s bigger than fascination and softer than fondness. Steve doesn’t understand what he means, but Tony nods so Steve follows through, his fingers walking the scar gently and wishing he could thumb through the story rooted beneath it.
“What happened to you?”
“I, um, used to have a bum heart.”
“And you can fight with it now?” A blooming wonder invades Steve’s voice. He lets himself feel hopeful.
Here, Tony is hesitant. Not until he’s brushed his thumb along the hinge of Steve’s jaw and leaned in with a kiss, does he say, “Well, it’s significantly better than it was but I’m primarily used in the scientific division anyway so, you know, I just create toys that go boom.” His hands explode open and, again, there’s that familiarity that’s evading Steve. He demures, “Try to ensure that our guys are protected. It’s not that much.”
“That’s probably the most important thing, actually. I can see it, though. I can see you in a laboratory so clearly, elbow-deep in a plane’s engine or something like that.” And because Steve can’t stop yammering, “You’re so smart and you’ve got good hands. Talented hands.”
“You flatter me, but they’ve hardly done anything yet.”
“Then do your worst, hotshot.”
With the grace of tornadoes, they shed their remaining garments, and Steve almost wishes that he could take back the whole not going slow agreement, wishes he had more than only a glimpse of Tony’s pretty cock, wishes he had a better study of Tony’s lean and compact musculature to commit to memory. However, he can’t be too remorseful when the distance between them shrinks so sensationally as Tony fits himself between Steve’s legs, rocks into the cradle of them and the unmistakable hard line of his erection touches Steve’s, hot, heavy, and considerable. It startles a moan out of Steve, to be wanted, and it’s the best thing that he’s ever felt in his life until Tony’s hand wraps around the length of him. It’s an earth-shattering revelation and relief to finally have someone else’s hand on him, fisting a new pattern on his cock.
As Tony’s grip tightens, so do Steve’s lungs, like he’s handling them one and the same. The symptoms of fever reveal themselves in a sequence that Steve recognizes, harsh breaths lighting up his lungs within sweat-pebbled skin. His backbone squirms like it wants to curl in on itself but it’s worth it to pant out Tony’s name, shunt his hips in counterpoint to the brand-bright pulls on his leaking cock. Steve had no idea that a fever could feel good.
Kiss-muffled at Steve’s cheek and pawing at Steve’s heaving side, Tony asks, “You still with me?”
“Yes, yes,” Steve moans in happy exertion, grinding up and desperate to press himself against every part of Tony, desperate to come. “Please don’t stop. I--I can take it, I swear. I won’t break.”
“I know you won’t,” Tony says before removing his hand. He quickly soothes Steve’s whimper and noise of astonishment with his mouth, slipping at first, slick and wet, but coming back all breath and tongue. His hands rove to Steve’s jaw, thumbs tracing over Steve’s temples, his ears and down to where their lips meet. The kiss wanes into something soft and asking. Meeting Steve’s eye, Tony draws back and murmurs, “I want to suck you off.”
And Steve prides himself on not losing it then and there. Over the thick and rich desire that assembles his sternum and down to his narrow waist, Tony sucks patches of Steve’s skin from pale to plum. When Steve’s legs fall away, Tony skirts the coarse hair at Steve’s groin with his fingers, buries his nose there, and Steve aches from his navel to his balls.
“Oh God, Tony,” Steve groans, bunching the bedsheets at his sides with fingers that may as well be frictionless.
“I’ve got you,” Tony promises, loitering at the inside of his thigh with sucking kisses. He steadies Steve’s cock, a touch Steve’s missed so sorely after only knowing a short while, and licks a wet strip from base to head before taking Steve deep in his throat with one smooth move.
Taut like a vice, Tony’s cheeks hollow around Steve’s cock and, God, just the sound of that, his mouth--it’s instantly too much. Steve bites his cry into the flesh of his lower lip and comes before he even knows to warn Tony, greedily chasing with a thrust up and tangling his hand in Tony’s hair because he can’t stand not to.
“Dammit,” Steve starts, woozy beats later, when Tony slinks back up to him. Steve gropes him, clumsily touches down his arms and his wrists in apology, unable to meet his gaze but wanting to stay connected because his hands feel wrong without Tony under them. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to do that.”
“Eyes front, Steve. There’s nothing to say sorry for. I love it,” Tony says, wiping his reddened mouth. And hearing that four letter word in the context of his bedroom, despite every intention and indication of a one-off, steeps Steve’s spine in shivers. “I love seeing that, the look you get when you come. And I think you needed it, yeah?”
“It just. I didn’t know.” Steve sighs, feeling his face go dopey and lopsided. His pulse thunks hard in his veins. “It felt really good.”
Close-up, Tony glows with sweat. And Steve is constantly taken with how beautiful he is, how he fills space with his charm and smile. It almost feels claustrophobic, the knowledge of how completely out of Steve’s league Tony is. As though, he knows that Steve is going nowhere good, Tony nudges Steve’s forehead with his own, eyes soft. Their heads ducked together, Tony’s voice drops in, “You’re horrible for my ego. How offensive would it be for me to tell you I want to carry you around in my pocket?”
“An eleven on a scale of one to ten.”
“I’ll keep it to myself. How about if I kiss you? I can’t think of anything better than kissing you again.”
Jiminy, Steve will never be as suave as all that but he laps at his lips and remarks, “I’ll be miffed if you don’t.”
“Can’t have you miffed, then.” Tony laughs softly, a skip against Steve’s mouth. Not enough for a real kiss but enough for Steve to feel the shape of Tony’s smile and, personally, Steve can think of few things that rank higher than that. What follows can’t truly be called a kiss either, more a scuff of lip-on-lip, paced and deliberate.
For a while, Steve’s satisfied with that but then Tony’s body is pressing into his front in all of the right places. They’re groin to groin, caught in a steady grind, and an ache comes back between his legs to match Tony’s. Steve shamelessly plies the taste of himself from Tony’s mouth with an impatient tongue and soon he’s keening, working his hips harder and hitching out, “I--I want you, Tony. Please, you gotta--” He curses under his breath, unable to finish and grab hold of one thought in the many running over each other. He wishes he had the time to catch them all.
“What do you want?” Tony noses them into a kiss, brushing his knuckles over Steve’s skin. The suggestive tilt of his pelvis traces precome between them, sticky trails. “What do you want me to do?”
“Anything. I’ll take anything,” Steve says because so far everything has dulled the details of what he believed would always just be fantasy--holding another man close, his weight and smell undeniably real, having a man watch him the way Tony is now, like Steve’s something precious and desired. He doesn’t know what to ask for and says as much.
Leaning away and sitting back on his haunches, Tony reads him. In the moment, the air between them is so wrought with electricity, Steve half-expects that they could reach out and shock their fingers, Tony asks, “Do you trust me?”
In spite of more reasons to say no than yes, Steve gathers Tony in a kiss and whispers, “I wouldn’t have come this far with you otherwise.”
Steve gives himself over to Tony who gets him onto his hands and knees. Calling him beautiful and incredible, Tony whispers honeyed things down the length of Steve’s back and, akin to forget-me-nots, places kisses where the words leave off. Tony travels from the line of Steve’s shoulders to the taper of his waist, and he doesn’t stop. Tony uses his hands to hold up the bends of Steve’s hips and cinch him closer, to palm the swell of his ass.
“Tony,” Steve moans, his skin a uniform for his trembling and seemingly meant to burn under Tony’s attention. A finger drags along the crease of his ass, dipping in to stroke over soft skin hidden there before he’s spread open and bared with thumbs.
“Look at you. You are just the sweetest sight.” Tony says, like he’s trapped between ruin and awe, an exact echo of Steve. Then his breath is a ghost heat over the sensitive pucker, his beard rasping against Steve’s ass.
Jerking involuntarily, shocked, shy and uncertain, Steve let out shakily, “Oh. Tony, you shouldn’t. I’m not--I didn’t.” The thought of Tony’s mouth there--Steve couldn’t have prepared for this, clean or not. But not is decidedly embarrassing.
“C’mere. It’s okay. It’s good. You’re gorgeous. Christ, you’re gorgeous everywhere,” Tony murmurs and in the next heartbeat, his tongue soothes over the Steve’s sensitive rim in a gentle coax, moaning shamelessly.
“What? What are you doing?” Steve asks in wonder, barely. Tony responds with another swipe, spreading Steve even wider and licking a delicate swirl bookended by God’s name and a curse.
Steve buries his face into his pillow, indents a loud and reverent fuck there in response to the hot and wet pressure that circles his hole, teasing with lazy flutters. It escalates to strong and flat laps, Tony laving thoroughly as Steve bucks back in tiny thrusts. Steve’s exposed hole clenches closed and open under the relentless flicks of tongue. And it feels amazing, the hot and wet feel of Tony inside of him, licking and fucking like he wants to carve out territory and mark Steve as his. The hell of it is that Steve so badly wants to be.
Steve loses time and absently recognizes its passage by the sweat and tears he blinks out of his half-lidded eyes; his hair curtains his vision, his gooseflesh covered forearms wobble, and his cock throbs. Indecent noises fill the bedroom, the point of Tony’s tongue fucking into him wetly and then the lewd, sharp sound of sucking intervening, and it buzzes Steve’s blood. Pockets of air punch out of him alongside Tony’s name, needy, strangled in his attempts to stay quiet.
“Let me hear it, Steve,” Tony urges after a long stripe. He uses his teeth to bite at the meet of Steve’s ass and thigh. “Tell me it feels good.”
“Thin walls,” Steve gasps, rattled by the flash of delicious pain-pleasure. “I’d rather not get arrested before basic, if it’s all the same to you.”
“Basic? Maybe I should go easy on you.”
“Don’t you dare.”
Warm like a furnace, Tony laughs and wraps his arms around Steve’s middle, hands under his armpits; he tucks a number of kisses between Steve’s neck and ear. “I need lube. Do you keep oil around or something like that?”
Steve’s spine bows into Tony’s hold to try and get upright. He lightly taps at him. However, his scrawny form doesn’t get Tony to budge much so he suggests, “Let me up.”
“I can get it. Just don’t start rubbing off, peaches,” Tony warns, dallying a touch along the slash of Steve’s hipbone, hinting lower. “Is it in the nightstand?”
“Yeah,” Steve says, and Tony heaves off him to fish around in the drawer. It leaves Steve cold in a myriad of ways that he doesn’t want to look too hard at. Hearing the lid pop off his small pot of vaseline, he turns this head, cheek resting on the fold of his arms to admire Tony. Steve wants to memorize how the lines of him move as he greases his purpled cock that curves slightly to the left. “That gonna work okay? I use it to oil my baseball mitt.”
“I’ll go out on a limb here and guess that’s not a dirty metaphor.”
“Not too often, no. My, um, spunk tends to work well enough. I leak a lot.”
A deep groan erupts from Tony and the bed creaks when he gets back on and hurries behind Steve once more, molding to him with ease. He leans over Steve’s shoulder to kiss him hard and deep, and Steve can’t taste anything but the want that coats his mouth. Tony starts, “That image,” he reaches around and briefly tightens his hand on Steve’s cock that’s welling messily at the slit, has been smearing the bedsheets, “this is so, so much better, baby.”
Steve’s cock jumps in Tony’s hand at the endearment and despite his reservations about the thin walls, Steve sobs on a high note, letting it out feels as inevitable as letting oxygen in.
“You like that.” Tony says knowingly, twisting his hand.
“God, yes, so much,” Steve admits, trembling and nodding. He can’t bother to care what sort of man that makes him. Just, “Please say it again.”
“Sure. I’ll take good care of you, baby. Make it amazing for you,” Tony promises, his tone and the following kiss rough and sweet. With a quick, parting squeeze to Steve’s cock, Tony fluidly rolls them onto their sides and spoons close. Intimately, knees tuck behind his. “There we go. Can you keep your legs together for me? Nice and tight?”
Swallowing around anticipation that threatens to choke him, Steve does as asked. Blood-hot, slick with vaseline and precome, Tony rocks into the cleft of Steve’s thighs, just under his balls and passing against his cock. Hips rolling in a deep grind, he fucks in and draws out slowly.
“Steve, baby,” Tony breathes, lush mouth open on Steve’s skin. Reverently, “You feel so--oh fuck. I love the way you feel. That’s it, yeah? You want it just like this?”
“Yeah,” Steve says. He means to convey more but it’s cut off by a whimper that sharpens into a cry when Tony’s hand slide to his front and tease his nipples, pulling and pinching. Tony starts fucking him in earnest and Steve pushes into the fast and filling rhythm that Tony gives him. Incredibly, it’s even better, the two of them moving together. Steve isn’t going to make it, isn’t up to the task. The familiar firebrand of an orgasm is coiled in his belly, draws up his balls. He clutches around Tony’s cock and rides back, seeking. “I’m too close. Touch me. I need you to touch me.”
With the hand that isn’t splaying heat near Steve’s sternum, Tony pulls him off. His fist isn’t loose enough for Steve to shove into; he can’t do anything but take it, the punishing strokes that work him syncing up to the ones coming from behind.
“You’re going to come for me.” A bite grazes his shoulder and sends a spike through him, vibrates every nerve ending that he has. Humid and fevered, Tony says, “You’re almost there, baby. You can do it. Let yourself go. Come for me. Now, baby, just come.”
Steve seizes up, stunned, and spills into Tony’s fist. He bites back a wordless shout, a secret behind his teeth, while his hips stutter beyond anything he can control.
Barely there through the aftershocks, he threads his fingers through Tony’s--slick and warm--and squeezes with oversensitized thighs, signals for him to keep going. Tony ruts in short thrusts between his legs and makes noises that sound agonized. He sounds lost in the wings of Steve’s shoulder blades when he comes on a hoarse sob.
“Steve, Steve, Steve,” he’s saying, and Steve can feel his face crumple because there’s the hard luck he’s had all his life and then there’s this. He blinks against the sting that betrays his eyes and is forced to dry off spent tears in his bedsheets when Tony pulls out, giving him an opening. He’s then tugged out of the mess they’ve made, Tony huffing and dramatizing a put-upon sigh.
Steve turns in his arms and traces Tony’s scar again. Quietly, he wonders, “Can we stay like this? My heating is on the fritz and you run hot.”
“Huh. That so? My circulation tends to leave most wanting.”
“It’s a lot better than mine.”
“Uncle Sam is lucky to have us serving.”
His response has Steve thinking. He gazes up at Tony. “You weren’t surprised. When I said I was heading to basic.”
Something flickers around Tony’s mouth before it’s replaced by an easy grin. But Steve can’t decipher it, can’t read Tony as well as Tony’s been reading him all evening. Shrugging he says, “Why would I be surprised that the guy brave enough to kiss me in his living room is also brave enough to head off to war? Nevermind that we need all the help we can get.”
“Some would call that bravery stupidity. Both parts.” He cleaves closer, pets down Tony’s stomach, and toys with the navel that sticks out. There’s not an inch of Tony’s body that he doesn’t like. In another life, Steve believes he could even love him. “What’s it is like over there?”
“It’s hell. Almost every day is terrible and you’re essentially just surviving second to second.” Tony pauses thoughtfully. Clearing his throat, he combs through Steve’s damp bangs and continues, “It’s like drowning, you know. Trying to live underwater. It’s hard to breathe and everything is fighting against you. Every direction you look seems endless, not much solid ground to walk on.”
“Do you ever get to come up for air?”
“Where do you think I am now?”
It’s so openingly honest, and raw affection climbs up Steve’s ribs. It savagely mugs his heart. Steve has to kiss him, take advantage of every moment that he can. Like he can make up for lost time--the time they won’t get to see--with the press of lips and indulgent hands.
They go again once more; it’s languid and hushed. Steve drifts into sleep with his head tucked under Tony’s chin before he knows it. Later in the twilight, when he feels Tony jostle next to him and leave his side with a quiet kiss to his forehead—See you soon, baby—he’s still in a half-doze. But he sobers up painfully at the bleary sight of Tony getting dressed. Too soon, Tony looks just like he had the minute he walked into Steve’s life. Even with knowing they had nowhere to go but here, logic fails to console Steve as he fakes sleep, shutting his eyes.
Steve waits for the click of his bedroom door but minutes pass and nothing. He lifts open his eyes once more to see Tony tapping at a wristwatch impatiently. Stolen from the pages of Wonder Stories, the watch emits a tall, wide light and casts Tony in an unnatural blue hue.
Stranger than fiction, the light’s fragments shape into a man’s silhouette. He greets Tony with bright relief. “Stark!”
“Keep your voice down,” Tony whispers fiercely. “Get me out of here.”
“Working on it, pal. I’ve got your coordinates. Give me a second.”
“Where’s Steve?”
“Your husband’s pretty pissed at me for marooning you in 1942 Brooklyn but I told him I work better without having death glares shot my way and sent him to get a snack.”
“Poor you. Just beam me up, Scott.”
“Aw, you do like me! Counting down with five, four, three, two…”
The light winks out and takes Tony with it.
fin