Chapter Text
The kiss had been a goodbye.
That's what Sharon told herself as she drove away from the Berlin airport. She'd torpedoed her career, burned her bridges, and done the right thing, even when it was hard. She didn't have any regrets, not really. At least, she hadn't until Steve had kissed her. It had not felt like a promise or gratitude or anything else she had expected. It had felt like goodbye, and a little bittersweet. The end of something she hadn't gotten a chance to start.
Footage of the airport fight ran on the news for days. Captain America was a fugitive, and everyone loved a fall from grace. It didn't help that Tony Stark hadn't made any sort of announcement. That alone told her whatever had gone down had been bad. She'd known Tony most of her life and there was nothing he liked better than making sure everyone knew his opinion on something. Silence was ominous.
She packed up her Vienna apartment, cried a little in the privacy of her bedroom, and tried to make a plan for the rest of her life.
Then she got a text message from an unknown number. Know anything about breaking into a prison?
Steve was painfully professional when she saw him again. Eyes on the prize. Full Cap Mode. And this was her line to cross there was no coming back from. She'd been fired but hadn't been charged with anything—though she supposed she could have been—and would have been able to live a normal life doing some different kind of job. Not if she did this.
He was standing on the bridge over the Rubicon, holding out his hand.
If asked - and oh boy, did her mother ask - she couldn't say why she went. She was too level headed and practical for it to have been his big blue eyes, though she was also honest enough to admit they were a factor. She supposed, if she had to put a word to it, it boiled down to being disillusioned. First SHIELD, then the utter foul up with Zemo and Barnes. It was hard for her to put her faith in another faceless agency. To trust that the system, in some form or another, had the world's best interests at heart. She was left with only her own instincts, and to a lesser degree, Steve's.
So she took his hand, planted her feet, and demanded everyone else move.
The situation inside the RAFT proved her as right as anything would have. They had Wanda Maximoff in a straight jacket and the kind of shock collar it would be illegal to put on a dog. Steve crushed it in his bare hands.
They ended up—her, Steve, Sam, Wanda, Clint, Natasha and Scott Lang—in a compound in the northern Andes on the border between Columbia and Venezuela. They'd stolen it, quite literally, from a drug cartel. If the world had really understood the extent of Wanda's powers, she'd have been tossed in the RAFT long before the Accords.
They laid low for a while. Eventually, a "mysterious benefactor" contacted Nat with house arrest deals for Clint and Scott. Sharon would have loved to have been a fly on the wall for those meetings. They went, because they had families and kids they missed. It was a little emptier without them, and Sharon missed Scott's jokes and Clint's dry observations.
Venezuela wasn't the kind of place that lacked for opportunities for vigilante work. Sharon and Nat, spies to their cores, thought popping their heads up, even a little, was a terrible idea. Steve and Sam couldn't sit still that long.
It worked out in the end. The cartels were afraid of them, and that made the local governments fans. And that meant protection.
It was still the most idle she'd ever been in her adult life.
Sharon loved taking pictures, and her camera was one of the few things she took with her on the lam. Documenting the locals and the jungle was something to do, anyway.
"Do you need better equipment?" Steve asked, loitering in the doorway of the little office she'd set up. When she looked up he gestured at her laptop. "That's a tiny screen to do photo editing on."
She glanced back at the computer. "It's smaller than I'm used to," she admitted. "But I couldn't really smuggle my big screen into my go bag."
"I'm going to Bogota to get some supplies, I can see what I can find."
"If you can't find a screen a few extra memory cards would make me almost as happy."
He came further into the room and sat down. "I need a little advice."
"No, a baseball cap is not a sufficient disguise."
Steve chuckled. "Nat suggested I grow a beard."
She was going to ignore the rather teenage squeal she wanted to make and managed a sedate nod. "I agree. Best way for a guy to change his face."
He sighed. "Wanda came to talk to me. She has, unbeknownst to us, been keeping in touch with Vision. She asked me if she could see him."
Now Sharon turned to look at him. "Do you think it's a trap?"
"No. She said he's always known where we were, and could find us anywhere in the world. Which is. . . uncomfortable. But it leads me to believe this is aboveboard."
That was a little unsettling. She considered it a moment. "Wanda's probably the strongest among us, but also the one Ross would most like to get his hands on. I'd want her to check in regularly and they have to find somewhere they won't be seen."
"I know he can make himself blend in." He paused. "And strong enough to help protect her if something should happen."
"I know Wanda's been. . . at loose ends here. I don't think it's fair to keep her here, if she wants to go out and see him. She knows she has somewhere safe to return to if she needs us."
"Yeah." He stared off into the distance a moment, then sighed. "Thanks, Sharon."
"Anytime." She reached out and touched his knee lightly. "You okay?"
He reached out, his fingers touching hers just as gently. "I don't know." It was an honest answer. No facade. All Steve and no Cap.
It broke her heart a little. He clearly felt he had to keep it together for everyone else. Meanwhile, he was dealing with all the same stuff. "You want to go for a walk with me?"
He went to tell Wanda she could make her plans, and then they went for a stroll around the edges of the compound. The night air was humid and full of the sounds of the jungle. "I want people to be able to be happy, if they can."
"It's going to be hard," she told him. "This is such a culture shock, for everyone. It'll take us all time to figure out how to find happiness."
Steve looked up at the stars. "It feels really fucking hard."
"I know." She stood next to him, watching the same stars. They were in the southern hemisphere, so the constellations were different. "But not impossible."
"You having any luck?"
She shrugged a little. "I like the photography."
He hesitated. "I used to draw."
Looking over at him, she said carefully, "I bet they have art supplies in Bogota."
That got her a little bit of a smile. "Couldn't hurt to look."
He came back from Bogota with a large monitor, memory cards, a photo printer and paper, and a trunk full of art supplies, including an easel. That man didn't do anything halfway. He set up a studio across the hall from her office, and his jaw darkened with scruff as he began to grow a beard.
Despite several weeks cooped up in the same building, they hadn't spoken about that kiss. Sharon didn't actually know how to start that conversation without sounding fourteen. But she was honest enough to admit the growing scruff kind of made her want to. Or possibly skip the conversation and go right to peeling him out of his tee shirt.
She was usually pretty good with men. Or at least good at being direct with them. But this was Steve and they were sort of stuck in close quarters. There was a lot of ways for it to go wrong. A lot of signals she could be misreading. And a lot of awkward to deal with if it didn't work.
These perfectly reasonable concerns did not stop her from laying out by the pool in a skimpy bikini and hope he noticed.
He noticed. She could see he noticed. He noticed all the skimpy clothing that manifested as the weather got hotter and hotter. His notice was noticed by others. Sam wasn't even remotely subtle about his teasing. It just. . . hung in there in the air.
A heatwave rolled in, and overwhelmed their janky air conditioner. They closed vents and blocked off most of the house so they could at least have cool bedrooms to sleep in. Her office was too far away for the air, so she moved what she needed to work in her room. She assumed Steve had done the same, but one evening she went to retrieve more paper—she and Steve were filling the blank walls with art and pictures—when she heard noise in his studio.
Inside she found him painting. Shirtless.
That. . . that just wasn't fair.
She knocked on the open door, leaning a shoulder on the jamb. "Hey. Can't sleep?"
"Bad dreams." He put the brush between his teeth to look at his canvas. Dark blue paint dripped off the end onto his peck. It was impossible not to watch the droplet slide downwards.
Closing her hand into a fist to resist wiping it off for him, she stepped further into the room. "Want to talk?"
Steve dipped the brush and painted another stroke, but his eyes returned to hers. "What are you doing up?"
"Couldn't sleep," she admitted with a smile. "I've been doing some photo editing to try to tire my eyes out." She went to stand next to him. "What are you working on?"
Steve had gone completely still, and she understood why he'd seemed a little. . .off while talking to her. Because she was looking at his painting, and her own face was looking back at her.
"Oh," she said softly. Her face felt hot and she knew it had nothing to do with the sticky heat of the heat wave.
He cleared his throat. "It's not. . . I mean. . . when I can't sleep it helps to draw whatever I was dreaming--" He broke off and closed his eyes. "I'm just going to stop talking."
If he was painting her in the middle of the night, she was giving herself permission to touch him. Reaching out, she trailed her fingers over the back of his hand, tracing the corded lines of tendon. "You said you were having bad dreams."
He watched her touch him, but didn't move. "I dream you age and die and I don't."
"Oh, Steve." Her fingers bumped lightly over his knuckles and she hooked her finger around his. Swallowing, she stepped closer, almost touching him. "I haven't wanted to say anything," she whispered, catching his gaze. "But there's a little grey in your beard."
He bent his head, and the air heated even more. Enough to make her dizzy. His smile was very. .geniune. "It's a start." Then he dropped the paintbrush and cupped her face in his hands as he kissed her.
It was very, very different from the one at the airport. There was no regret or goodbye in this. Just heat and need and shuddering arousal. His hands left her face to move over the rest of her. There was nothing careful or cautious about that, either, because they were on her ass and pulling her tighter against him.
She groaned into his mouth, burying her fingers in his hair. Her other hand roamed his bare back, raking lightly with her nails. He backed her up to the table he kept in there, and lifted her right up onto it.
The kiss, somehow, got more intense. His hands were now under her tank top, raking it up above her breasts. She lifted her arms and the kiss broke for a fraction of a second while he tugged the shirt off and tossed it somewhere. Then his hands were back on her skin, cupping and shaping her breasts. One rough thumb circled her nipple and she thought she might come right then. There was paint on his hands, and blue streaked across her breast. She could see it on her thigh, too. It felt arousing and intimate. He met her eyes as he reached for the waistband of her shorts. Asking permission. In answer she braced her hands on the table and lifted her hips to he could get them down.
He pulled her to the edge of the table and then pressed his hands against the inside of her knees to spread them apart. Crouching down to kiss the inside of her thigh, he murmured, "Don't worry, I won't get the paint anywhere it shouldn't be."
"I trust you," she assured him. Though she was currently wondering if Bogata had a sex shop that sold that edible paint.
He pushed her legs wider, and then she felt his tongue slide over her clit. She looked down to watch him and couldn't look away. Traces of blue on her thighs, her skin shiny with sweat, the grip of his hands on her legs and his head between them. He dove into it, licking, sucking, stroking. It was like a scene out of her own private erotic thoughts, a fantasy come to life.
He was singleminded in his pleasuring of her, as he was in everything else. It wasn't long before the heat building inside her became too much. Her head tipped back and she gasped for air, teetering on the edge. Mindlessly, she dug her fingers in his hair, holding him to her as she finally toppled over, her orgasm crashing through her.
It stretched out because he didn't stop, winding the end of it back upwards. She couldn't take it anymore, and at the some moment needed it desperately. Hoping he'd understand, she yanked at his hair until he stood. She reached for his shorts and he hitched up her legs and then he was inside her. Hands under her thighs, he lifted her and moved her so he could get a better angle.
A little whimper spilled from her as his shifted drove him deeper inside. He drew out and drove back in and she cried out, nails digging into his shoulder. He did it again, and again, until she was almost dizzy with it. But she linked her ankles behind his legs and begged, "Don't stop, don't stop. Please."
He shook his head, moving faster, harder. The table shook. It was rougher than she expected, raw and elemental, but it was so fucking hot. She was in an awkward position, half falling off the table - which she was a little concerned they were about to break - without his hands gripping her thighs she'd have already toppled. But she didn't care. She didn't think any man had ever been this deep, had ever made her feel so good.
Pleasure built back up in her, impossibly high and hot. When she sensed she was getting close, she whimpered, "Please," helplessly and heard him growl, clearly enjoying the begging. Had she had any more of her senses, she'd have pushed him, dug up some explicit dirty talk describing exactly what she was begging for. But currently, all she could manage was the one word, over and over, until everything snapped and all she could do was gasp as the first waves of her orgasm crashed through her.
The table banged against the wall, and she heard the sound of cracking wood. Steve lifted her entirely, and held her as she shuddered against him. As she was was coming back down her back hit the cool stone wall and he fucked her against it, short rough strokes until he groaned and shook himself.
Somehow he kept his feet under him as he rode it out, hips rocking lightly into her, causing little aftershocks of pleasure fluttering through her. Very slowly he eased himself down to his knees and settled her on his lap, still buried inside her.
Utterly spent and satisfied, she put her head down on his shoulder, hugging him as they both tried to catch their breath. He rubbed her back, neither of them saying anything for a while.
She pressed a kiss to his shoulder. "Well. . . I think I'm sufficiently worn out to sleep now."
Steve chuckled. "Yeah, me too."
"Want to try doing it together?"
He sighed deeply. "That sounds really nice."
After a couple more moments of basking, he helped her get to her feet and they quietly tugged on enough clothes to walk down the hall to his room.
Neither of them ever slept alone after that. If she'd known the sex would be this good, she'd have jumped him sooner.
Life continued on much as it had. Sam's teasing didn't get any more subtle. Wanda spent more time in the world with Vision than she did with them. For the most part, they all tried to find their new normal. And she thought, generally, they succeeded.
Sharon's family missed her, and though she wouldn't risk going to the US, she felt comfortable enough meeting them somewhere closer to her turf. Her father, apparently, had always wanted to see Machu Pichu.
"You could come with me," she suggested to Steve. "THey'd probably like to meet you."
"I think it's too touristy for someone as recognizable as me. Beard her no."
He was probably right, but she still felt weird leaving him. "Well. It'll only be a week." She kissed him. "I'll miss you."
He pulled her close. "I will miss you, too. I hate sleeping alone."
Both of them slept better together. She didn't know what his dreams were, other than the ones where she grew old as he watched. Whatever they were, they got better when he had her to curl up with.
Her face wasn't famous, so she had a little more freedom in how she traveled. She booked a regular flight under a fake name and packed a bag of vacation clothes. On the day she left, she made a point of saying goodbye to everyone. It was very, very hard to let go of Steve. "Call me if you need anything. I can come back early."
"We'll be fine. I promise. Have fun and try to relax a little, huh?"
"I'll try. But I'll be missing my partner in my favorite relaxation activity." He gave her a very sexy smile, then kissed her deep enough to make her toes curl. Hopefully it would be enough to hold her until she was back.
Machu Pichu was fun, though very crowded with tourist. Though she could have been anywhere, it was just so good to see her parents. She told them what she could about her life, and Steve. They saw all the sights and she went through the market and bought gifts for everyone back at the compound.
She'd ducked into a restaurant to get a cold drink and wait for her family when the news broke about the alien ship in New York.
Steve would want to get involved with that. Nat often made the joke that they'd get back in the worlds graces if there was another alien invasion. But there were four hours of train and bus rides between her and the nearest place to even try to head home.
By the time her parents had joined her, the ship had disappeared back into space and the newscasters were wildly speculating on what it could mean.
They went back to their rental and she obsessively checked her messages while waiting to hear more news.
She still hadn't heard anything and was just about to tell her parents she was leaving early, when they both disintegrated into ash.