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Admittedly she’s not the most socially adept, but she’s not exactly inept either. At least not enough to say anything funny about the blinding yellow gloves on his hands.
Sure they were a little bit of an eyesore, dramatic in the way she knew Stephen preferred, but they were hiding his faded albeit grizzly scars.
They were hiding them, and that’s what keeps her mouth shut.
Arguably there could be a million other reasons he needed to wear gloves:
To keep his skins natural oils off of some delicate artifact or tome, cleaning since they did look an awful lot like the latex gloves used in Swiffer commercials, or he was simply handling something or other that could do him harm.
But America knew deep in her heart it wasn’t any of those things.
Knew by his busied haste as he teleports wildly around instead of walking, not letting anyone get a clear glance of him as he hyper focused on something or other, he was having a bad day.
One where his hands shook harder than they did others, and his brain needed to be drowned out by stimulation.
“Stephen,” America calls out, seeing in her peripheral him stop his endless venture, still fiddling with fixing a book on the shelf before him, but the incline of his head tells her that he’s listening.
She didn’t have anything to say really, couldn’t find anything either now that she had his attention.
So instead she lets her feet carry herself over to him, taking him off guard enough that his arm automatically lifts as she encroaches on his space and grapples onto him.
Burying her face against his shoulder and squeezing his skinny waist. Immediately his arms wrap back around her, his gloved hand warm on the back of her head.
She knows he thinks the hug is for her, that it was her seeking comfort and closeness but his lack of hesitation proves it’s entirely for him even if he doesn’t realize it.
Clothed fingers lightly massage her scalp as his body gently rocks them in place, soothing her fake woes and his very real ones.
It’s not a good day and his hands shake against her skin, and America can feel the starts of a nervous tremor in her own hand as she pushes the heel of her palm into the notches of his spine.
Slowly but surely his cheek falls to the crown of her head, some of his weight inching down on her.
America feels as his chest rumbles in a hum, practically purring. The man falling into comfort in the same way gravity binds the earth.
The supernatural being doesn’t question the gloves aloud, she attributes them to him in the same way she assumes others akin her jacket to herself, and hopes by the end of the day she may actually feel the true warmth of his hands again.
“You okay?” He asks in the same way he did those few months ago during the most terrifying time of her life, and she nods.
The gloves are on again, and she is not the only one to notice. Their enemy seems to understand his reason for wearing them as well.
Technically the man isn’t actually an enemy. The soldier, agent, whoever he was with stripes across his uniform was sent for some reason to help even though he didn't have anything to offer in the way of the Mystic Arts.
America doesn’t like him. She doesn’t like the arrogance dripping from him because it’s not like Stephen’s smugness.
Mainly because this soldier, superserum or not, is not controlled or contained with his abilities and emotions, without a care for who he hurts or what he breaks, while also being terribly inconsistent.
He can’t back himself up, he is overly assured with caution to the wind without a plan of back up that’s not gawking in stupor or lashing out.
More often than not he’s wrong and he makes it everyone else’s problem and fault.
Stephen and John had been sniping back and forth for hours now, the air undeniably tense.
It’s hard enough for America to bear Stephen’s anger - even when it‘s not directed at herself, John Walker isn’t making it any easier.
Something Stephen had noticed, toning down his disdain in light of her weighed down shoulders and rapidly beating heart.
In all honesty, the fear is so consuming for the time being she doesn’t even realize the pure unadulterated hatred in her heart growing for U.S Agent until her mentor calms down.
Leaving enough room for the bastard to speak, “I don’t know what’s more of an eyesore, the gloves or the fucked up scarring that’s-“
He doesn’t finish his sentence, he doesn’t finish because America doesn’t let him.
Fist flying without thought but with an astounding amount of reason.
Their insults so far hadn’t been terribly personal, and when they teetered sure she hadn’t liked it but Stephen had handled the situation with snarled retorts of his own that certainly put the man to shame enough to lead him to such a cruel response.
A cruel response that had America swinging because no one, no one , gets to insult Stephen, not his hands, or the gloves with her around.
No one.
The super soldier’s jaw breaks, a resounding crack in the air cutting off the startled, aghast, shouts of everyone in the room.
As no one had expected her to swing, least of all Stephen, and especially not as hard as she did with an unwavering amount of her concentrated power.
The room had shook, skin had torn both on her knuckles and his jaw as the bone hung only from a stretched piece of skin on the left side of his face.
America had nearly knocked the whole thing off, and the pain in her hand is nothing compared to her own surprise at that fact.
At first there is horror for the carnage she caused, but the stunned look in Stephen’s eyes only brings back just what John had done to deserve it and any true guilt is evaporated if only for the moment.
The former Sorcerer Supreme reaches out, his large hand reaching around her wrist.
Not tightly or even all too firmly, guiding her so close to him that they’re chest to chest and the Cloak Of Levitation is moving off to his side to try to encase her.
He still holds her hand, guiding it up to check her fist. Noting scraped and bloodied skin, quickly swelling and bruising, leading him to immediately vanish her rings.
They're at the hospital before she can blink. Walker is not with them, something America is ultimately relieved about.
Ultimately unsure if she could handle the commotion of the doctors fretting over his now deformed face.
Things are a blur from there as she ingrained that thought.
But America manages to answer the nurse when she asks her to rate her pain, picking the fifth face on the chart of the ten, her shock keeping her relatively calm.
Stephen is terse the entire time, leg tapping as they sat in the waiting room, her broken hand held in his gloved fingers on his lap.
She does and doesn’t wish he’d say something.
Does she deserve to get told off for assaulting and maiming someone? Yeah, that would be fair and reasonable.
It was to come surely. Maybe not until her hand was in a cast, and maybe not even until they were actually home.
Christine appears when it’s her turn to go back to see a doctor. America doesn’t know if the woman was called to deal with Stephen every time he entered the hospital or if she just went out of her way to do so, either option was likely.
Tentatively the woman gets her settled for the arduous task of X-Rays, situating her hand in painful positions to get the proper pictures, and giving her a questioning look at Stephen’s odd disposition.
America merely shrugs noncommittally in response, not wanting to admit to the kind woman to her what felt like a justified crime.
“Any idea what color cast you want? We have a lot, we even have a wrap that glows in the dark.”
Cotton coats her frail skin, and offhandedly America wonders how they’ll sew together her split knuckles with her hand in a cast.
“Yellow.”
“Now we have two different types-“
“The darker yellow please,” America hums, staring heavily at her lap as Christine gets to work and Stephen makes a chiding sound at her prior manners and curt tone.
The first sound he’s made since she attacked U.S Agent in his defense.
Christine throws a glance at him, it is entirely reprimanding. America is only briefly able to make out his surprised recoil to the look through her peripheral.
Clearly the woman felt the tension and took her side over his.
The same yellow as his gloves binds her broken bone, hardening as the wrap dried out. Only then does she notice Christine had done the cast first to make sure it wouldn’t overlap with her other injuries.
“You didn’t have to do that,” Stephen finally says, breaking the silence as if he couldn’t hold it in any longer.
What?
Of course she did.
“No one gets to say that to you,” America mutters with more bite than she thought she had left.
“You can’t punch someone because they insulted me,” Stephen urges, sounding ever the exhausted parent, “I had it handled.”
Christine’s brows shoot up at that. She’d known already what had caused the injuries, could tell pretty easily really, it’s nothing she hasn’t seen a thousand times but the reasoning was something different entirely.
“I don’t care if you had it handled, he shouldn’t have said that to you,” America admits moodily, trying not to gesture with her hands especially as Christine began dabbing at her wounds to prepare for her sutures.
“Kid it’s not the first time-”
“And how fucked up is that? He was just trying to hurt you-” America shouts, completely pulling away from a stranded looking Christine, who thankfully hadn’t brought the needle to her skin.
Her cursing brings him forth in the slightest from where he’d been leant against the small private room’s wall, rounding on her.
“That doesn’t mean-”
“Oh so you can stand up for me and I can’t stand up for you? Stephen you cast a spell on that vendor that was pure three weeks of him punching himself all because he was upset I stole from him!”
“That spell didn’t knock his jaw off his face or out your status as a supernatural being. It also didn’t break your hand.”
“He insulted you!” America shouted, turning her head away from him. Unable to even look him in the face, truly unable to understand why he couldn’t comprehend she had to do something.
“Me, he insulted me, meaning it was my job to handle it America. You didn’t have to-”
“I didn’t? I care about you tonto! How was I supposed to just let him make fun of you like that?”
The entirety of his body tenses, jaw turning painfully to the side as he ingrains her fierce defensiveness of his well-being all because of her affection for him. It stalls him, breaks his resolve and stops his disputes:
“Just don’t do it again.”
It’s those words that tell her she’s won, that something in him gave in to her protection. Finally able to see that she loved him enough to fight for his honor, because America did love him; he was as close to a father as she would ever have and there’s no question as to if he’d have done the same in her honor.
She doesn’t promise him she won’t do it again, America doesn’t have to. He knows, she knows, hell Christine probably knows she would do it a thousand times more as America finally lets her stitch up her hand.
“All set, head on up to the nurse’s desk and they’ll sign you out, okay?”
America nodded, although she didn’t need to. The words were more meant for Stephen than anything, who surely already knew as he was already moving towards the door, an arm out and reaching for her.
The girl follows, letting him plant his gloved hand on her shoulder as she exhaustively leant into his side as they slowly made their way to check themselves out, inspecting her cast along the way.
“We have sharpies at home, normally people sign them,” he notes under his breath as he procures his wallet and goes through the motions with the receptionist.
“I should have Rintrah sign it first, he seems like someone who signs his name big,” America laughs, softly with little breath as she leans into his warmth and imagines the minotaurs scrawl over the yellow.
“A real John Hancock,” He laughs, using his free hand to portal them home, uncaring of all the hospital residents watching the portal with awe as he ushers them through.
“I’m going to be honest, I don’t know who that is Stephen,” America informs, knowing it was either some pop culture reference or history she wasn’t privy to.
“We’re going to have to work on your U.S history,” he tells her instead, noting it in his head like a mental checkmark.
America sighs.
If she’s entirely honest she didn’t know the Sanctum had a housekeeper. But evidently they did, and they’d misplaced the yellow gloves Stephen wore on particularly awful days.
The Cloak of Levitation searched high while America searched low, both desperate to find the small clothed comfort it was obvious Stephen needed at the moment.
Without them he was irritable, flighty, sullen and brooding. Nothing America hadn’t dealt with before, but the insecurity in his eyes hurt.
Enough that she placates him with coffee, tea, and sweets as she scours around trying to not make it known what she or the Cloak of Levitation was doing.
After several tiresome hours of pushing books into his lap to keep him occupied, America finds the gloves in the most precarious of places. Set atop the glass case that had once housed the Cloak of Levitation.
She can’t reach so calling Levi to fetch them fills the cloth with cheer, pleased to be of assistance and also grateful for the sudden appearance of the gloves. America lets the Cloak of Levitation take the glory of giving them to him as she tries to fish the cobwebs out of her hair one handed.
America perks up in the slightest as he immerses himself in some new spell or something or other - she wasn’t entirely sure, the challenge completely breaking the bad mood that had plagued his day.
He doesn’t look as he snaps off the yellow gloves, eyes transfixed on the open tome before him before he hands over the gloves to her offhandedly with a simple request:
“Put these away please?”
America smiles and scurries to do so.
With her cast she can’t put the gloves on both hands, but with her good hand the glove slips right on. Obviously too big for her smaller digits, going nearly up to her elbow whereas on Stephen it only went half way up his forearm.
They're cold, the linen inside soft but only as soft as a brushing of furniture on your skin.
Then again she supposed they weren't there to provide warmth and the fabric probably didn’t brush on his sensitive scars in a way that was grating or overwhelming.
The gloves did exactly what they needed to, she respected that. Slipping it off easily, America carefully folds the pieces and tucks them away in the drawer of his nightstand.
He had gloves and she had a jacket. The pieces of fabric did them well, and although she supposed her relationship with the gloves were something closer to love-hate she still loved them and she loved her father.