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Steve Rogers’ idea of “fun” wasn’t going out to watch NBA eastern conference games at a bar-and-restaurant when he and his friends could just as easily watch the court from the comforts of their own couch, but that was probably the reason his best friends thought he was “as fun as a grumpy old man.” (Bucky’s words, not his; ironic, considering the guy was older than him.)
The bar was filled with numerous people when Steve had gotten there with Sam and Bucky, but the three of them were able to grab a high-top table without much trouble. “One last semester until your graduation, pal,” Bucky said when half-time started. He raised his beer to Steve, nodding with a grin. “How ya feelin’?”
“Anxious. Scared,” Steve confessed, twisting the beer bottle in his hands. “Mostly scared.”
Sam snorted out a laugh, shaking his head as he took a long pull from his drink. Over the other voices surrounding them, he asked, “Man, what the hell could be scaring you?”
Steve shrugged one shoulder, the corners of his mouth tugging down in a frown. He wasn’t really in the sharing mood, let alone wanting to unload everything onto his best friends, no matter how long they had stuck by his side over the years.
The truth was, Steve felt… Like stalling a car, or like placing a stamp on an envelope, or even like stepping into wet asphalt: Stuck. While he was growing up, the railroad tracks of life had already been laid out for his generation by the last — a linear timeline that went from school, to work, to marriage, to family. Once someone left high school, they were expected to head straight onto college, and that’s what they’d all done. Things had been going according to plan for the first couple of years, the train chugging along like nobody’s business. Steve had gone to Boston University with Bucky — both having received full-ride scholarships, so it was an easier decision to make, leaving Brooklyn behind — and they had gotten lucky to have Sam as one of their suitemates.
That train Steve was riding immediately derailed halfway through junior year when doctors diagnosed his mom Sarah with cancer. (The only solace they had was the knowledge that they’d caught it early, but Steve, the dutiful son that he was, decided to forgo his education in exchange of taking care of his mom back home.) At twenty-years-old, Steve went from getting good grades, participating in extracurriculars, and pulling internships left and right to a college drop-out working full-time at a mechanic’s shop so he could help pay for his mom’s chemotherapy and outrageous hospital bills.
Since then, he’d watched his friends finish school and start their careers without him. But Steve never complained — not once — because unlike what everyone else thought about his situation, his mom was never a burden. It took a few years, a few hard-won battles, and a few shed tears, but Sarah eventually beat her cancer, and the only thing she wanted to do was watch her only son walk the stage at graduation.
Now that he was nearly twenty-six, Steve had half a year from finally completing his undergrad in Architecture. Everyone was excited for him, expected him to have the rest of his life all lined up, but it was something he didn’t want to admit to anyone. It was the stone he kept turning in the palm of his hand, what he was so afraid to face: Steve had no real plan for his future.
Yeah, there was a lot to be scared of, actually.
“There’s just…” Steve hesitated, pursing his mouth momentarily before looking up at both Sam and Bucky. “I don’t know what I’m doing with my life, guys.”
Bucky’s brows furrowed together in confusion. He sat forward, making a point to stare his friend dead in the eyes. “What the fuck are you on? I thought you had that job lined up with—”
“They passed on me, Buck,” Steve admitted sadly, rubbing a palm over his face and through his hair. “I just… I dunno, maybe it’s a good thing. I can stay home with Ma to make sure she’s—”
“Oh hell no.” Sam cut him off, shaking his head vehemently. The patrons around them suddenly shouted in unison, and all three of them glanced at the scores on-screen before returning to the conversation. “Steve, listen up. It’s their loss for not hiring you, but you have to get your head out of your ass because I know as well as you do that your mom, bless her goddamn heart, doesn’t want you at home any more than you want to be there.”
“That’s not—”
“When was the last time you did something for yourself, man?” Sam asked. “The last time you had any real fun?”
Steve blinked a few times in thought, frowning. “I mean… I went back to school,” he offered, voice falling flat.
“Because you wanted to, or because you felt obligated to?” Bucky questioned, giving him a side-eye. When Steve didn’t respond immediately, he added, “I’ve known you since we were in Pampers, Stevie. I’ll know if you’re lying through your perfect teeth.”
His eyes narrowed to slits, but Steve said nothing else even when Bucky raised a hand and said, “See? I told you.”
Sam’s eyes flickered around the crowded college town bar. It was still early in the night, with numerous people sitting at the counters and filling the other tables. “Tell you what,” he started, “tonight’s the night you do something for yourself. Let loose. Have some fun.”
“Sammy, ‘letting loose’ is not in my vocabulary,” Steve scoffed, taking a swig of his beer.
“Hell, maybe we can even find you a nice chick and get you laid tonight,” Bucky teased with a wag of his eyebrows. “Time to swipe your V-Card, Stevie!” That earned him a swift smack to the shoulder.
“Humor me, man, c’mon,” Sam pleaded, urging the blond to ignore the brunet beside them. He straightened up, glancing around the bar for a few moments. The gears in his head were turning, and Steve noticed the second that Sam’s eyes trained to the front entrance. “I dare you to go up to the next person that walks in through that door and ask them out on a date.”
“Absolutely not,” Steve groaned, grimacing.
“It’ll be fun!”
Reluctantly, Steve gave into his friend’s request and the three of them waited, watching the front door like their lives depended on it. Steve felt his heartbeat spike upon seeing a big, burly guy donning a leather vest step into the establishment. He scanned the bar until he waved at a group sitting in the far corner booth.
“Hard pass.”
Bucky teased, “He seems like he’d give great hugs.”
“Eat a dick.”
Bucky and Sam tried and failed to stifle their snickering, finding too much enjoyment in the stupid game they were playing.
Twenty minutes passed by before anyone else came in. “This is ridiculous,” Steve dejectedly said, growing frustrated. “No one’s going to walk in through that door, and I won’t even — want to…”
His eyes flickered to the door again when he saw it move from the corner of his eye. His heart stuttered when a woman stepped through, clad in a beige overcoat and wearing a purple beret that sat on top of her dark hair. Steve sat there for a moment longer, watching her red-stained lips form into a grin as she spotted her own friends near the bar.
“Hey, Steve?”
“Yeah, Sam?”
There was a smile in Sam’s voice as he said, “You’re drooling like a dog.”
Steve’s mouth shut immediately, his teeth clacking together as he did so. He swiped the back of his hand over his lips, flipping his friends the bird when his skin came up dry. “Seriously, fuck you guys.”
Bucky smirked, chuckling. His eyes tracked the woman wearing the beret across the bar, and he inhaled a whistle through his teeth. “Ooh, she’s a cute one. If you don’t go for her, Steve, I will.”
“Fine, yeah, go,” Steve huffed, pressing his mouth into a tight line.
“What?” Sam squawked, blinking at him with wide eyes. “No, man. Go get your girl.”
“I feel… weird. I’ve never picked up—”
Suddenly, Sam rose up halfway from his seat, cupping his hands over his mouth. “Hey, miss!” he called out loudly.
Steve threw him a pleading look, immediately shrinking into his seat when nearly everyone in the bar turned to gawk in their direction. “Samuel,” he hissed as soon as his mouth was free. “Sit down!”
Bucky started howling in laughter, hiding his face in his hands when Sam’s thundering “Yo, Raspberry Beret!” finally caught the girl’s attention. She threw a look at them over her shoulder, brows drawn up on her forehead incredulously. Her brown eyes flickered between the three of them before she shook her head, returning to talk with her friends. A few patrons sitting near them openly laughed.
“Sam, what the fuck?” Steve berated, moving his hands over his eyes as if he could hide away from the world. In that moment, he wished that he had the ability to will the earth open underneath him to swallow him up whole. “You’re so embarrassing. Was that really necessary?”
“Yes,” Sam replied smugly, planting his butt back into his seat. “Yes, it was. Now you can walk on over to that poor woman and apologize on my behalf.”
Steve’s jaw dropped as he shook his head, admittedly shocked and impressed all at once. “You are a menace.”
“Good lu-uck!” he sang in reply, wiggling his fingers mockingly.
Steve looked back at Bucky and Sam one last time before he forced himself to move up and out of his seat, one in front of the other. He ran his fingers through the front of his hair nervously, feeling his heart trying to leap out of his chest with every precarious step. By the time he was directly behind the woman, the palms of his hands were grossly sweaty.
Steve cleared his throat, probably looking as awkward as he felt. The brunette stole a glance at him, the expression on her face stoic. “Hi, um… I’m really sorry about my friend back there. He’s had one too many to drink, and he never really — yeah, sorry.”
She turned her head to her two friends for a split second before returning her attention to Steve, raising a calculating brow. “What, he doesn’t yell at random girls from across a rowdy bar on the regular?”
“Not unless he’s trying to make me look bad in front of a cute girl,” he automatically replied without thinking, feeling his face and chest heat up in milliseconds.
The woman blinked twice in succession, looking more surprised than anything. A laugh escaped her lips, and it lacked the vitriol that Steve was already expecting to hear. Steve wouldn’t care in the slightest if she ended up deciding to throw a colorful cocktail in his face, because that laugh was the most beautiful thing he’d heard in his life.
He didn’t miss the blatant onceover she gave him, either, almost sizing him up right in front of her. “Okay. Well, in that case…” She smiled at him, playfully teasing. It managed to reach her eyes, big, brown, and doe-like. “Perhaps I can let it slide this one time.”
It took all of two seconds for the exchange to process through his head, but Steve shook himself from his stupor. With a kind smile, he extended a hand to her. “I’m Steve.”
She clasped his hand with hers, gripping a lot tighter than Steve would’ve expected from a woman who couldn’t have been more than five-foot-two. “Natasha. Pleasure to—”
The whole bar exploded in uproar, cheers and whoops surrounding them. Steve and Natasha both winced simultaneously, looking around at the other bar-goers as they punched the air or jumped up to their feet. They turned to the screen above them and watched as the scoreboard highlighted the Boston Celtics gaining two points over the Brooklyn Nets.
Steve let out a hushed “oh, that sucks,” something that Natasha surprisingly still heard amid the raucous crowd. “We’re up two points and you say, ‘That sucks’? You’re already breaking my heart, Steve. Don’t tell me you’re a Brooklyn fan.”
He rubbed the back of his neck sheepishly, shrugging a bit. “Guilty. I mean, you can take the boy outta Brooklyn, can’t take Brooklyn outta the boy.”
Natasha’s eyes lit up as a small smile tugged at the edge of her full lips. “You’re from New York?”
“Born and raised.”
“What are you doing all the way out in Mass?”
“Just, uh, finishing up my undergrad at BU. I was—”
“Shut up!”
Steve did as he was told. Natasha raised her hands, shaking her head. “No, not literally. Sorry. I was — fuck, sorry. Just realized what a small… I-I went to MIT, just across the way. But I’m originally from the city.”
Steve felt like he was walking on clouds. “No kidding.”
The two of them stared at each other in the time it took three heartbeats to pass, completely and utterly enamored with one another. Another round of cheers erupted in the bar, a result of yet something else happening the game. Natasha was the first to break their bubble, grinning as she leaned in and said, “I’d probably hide your alliances around here if I were you. Wouldn’t want these Bostonians beating up your pretty-boy face.”
“I think I’ll take my chances,” Steve chuckled, smiling back.
As the game went on, they got to talking about their lives. Steve revealed that he wasn’t the Quarterback Casanova that everyone thought him to be, and she thought it was endearing. “You’re not some super successful sports ball guy? You have the body for it.”
“Now. I was a skinny kid! All I had were hands for art and floorplans.”
“I bet you were just as cute,” Natasha said, grinning up at him with a twinkle in her eyes that caused Steve’s stomach to do Cirque du Soleil-worthy flips. Over the course of the night, Steve realized just how being with Natasha was easy. And he probably shouldn’t have, but he let himself imagine for a moment that there might be something else lingering under the surface. There was a fire, a flame, something fierce in Natasha’s veins that drew Steve to her like a moth.
“I will not stand for the lies and slander!” she exclaimed when he dared to suggest Brooklyn was the better spot to be than Manhattan. There was a smirk on her face, and Steve couldn’t help but mirror it. “Nope, no, sir. My borough is far superior.”
“I guess there’s only one way to settle this, then,” Steve replied, feigning resignation.
“You’re right. Obviously, whoever can do the most push-ups will come out the victor.”
Steve did a double-take, his brows knitting together when he saw just how serious she was. “You’ve gotta be kidding.”
“You’ll learn, Steven, that I do not kid around.” Natasha raised her chin defiantly, her mouth tilting slightly up at the corners in an attempt to fight back a smile. “You and me, right now. Drop.”
“C’mon, Tasha, I can’t—”
She giggled, starting to pull her overcoat from her shoulders. “Drop.”
“The floor’s disgusting!”
“No excuses, Stevie!” Bucky shouted from behind him. Of course, they’d been watching the two of them from the moment Steve had walked over. “Drop!”
Eventually, the other patrons in the bar started to chant, their attention captivated by the two of them now that the basketball game had finished. Steve never would’ve thought he’d end up doing exercise in the middle of a crowded bar with a cute girl he just met, but stranger things have happened. (No. No, this was definitely the strangest thing to ever happen to him in his life.)
Sam, Bucky, and Natasha’s friends were hovering over them, counting loudly with every push-up. They had gotten through nine before Steve made the incredibly moronic decision to raise his head when he pressed down, risking a glance at Natasha in front of him. His breath caught in his throat when he realized how close their faces were; he could’ve counted the lashes on her face if he wanted to (and on God, he wanted to).
Steve never did finish that last push-up.
~*~*~*~
They went out on a proper date the next weekend Natasha was back in town. Well, out being the relative term. Steve had invited her over to his apartment for a home-cooked meal — something his Ma’s family always made — and she arrived a lot earlier than he’d expected. It couldn’t have worked out better than if he’d planned it, though; the night had been one of the best as of late. Natasha jumped right into helping Steve finish prep by cutting up the vegetables, before taking up the task of cleaning up around his little kitchen.
Steve left the pot to simmer, making his way over to Natasha perched on the countertop. He moved to stand in front of her, bracing his hands on the counter on either side of her. They both stayed there for a quiet moment, eyes tracing the contours of each other’s faces before their gaze met. The air between them felt thick with something Steve couldn’t exactly name.
Natasha’s tongue slipped past her lips, pulling her bottom lip between her teeth. Her pupils were blown so wide that there was barely a sliver of brown visible, and Steve knew his eyes mirrored them. “You know… This is the point in the long staring contest when one of us would—”
Steve cut her off, closing the space between them, pressing his lips to hers in a close-mouthed kiss. He raised a hand, holding her face as she pulled him closer by the front of his shirt. It started off sweet, innocent; the kind of kisses shared between young couples in the backseat of a car while parked at a drive-in movie theater. It was slow, tongues brushing against each other, teeth nipping lightly at lips kissed red. Steve slowly felt himself slip into a drunken stupor from the taste of Natasha, heady and addicting.
He wasn’t sure who’d initiated it, maybe it was a joint decision, but the stove was soon turned off and their clothes left a trail leading to Steve’s bedroom. The fog that had formed around Steve’s head disappeared when Natasha’s words caught up to him: “How do you want me?”
Right. That.
The pause must have been one second too long, because a slight look of concern flashed across Natasha’s face. She reached out for Steve, asking, “You okay?”
“Yeah,” he said, clearing his throat. Steve averted his eyes, staring at the very interesting crack in the top corner of his room. How long had that been there? He should fix that soon. “I’ve just, uh… Never really…”
Understanding dawned on her face. He fully expected her to laugh at him, humiliate him, and then leave him, in that order. Instead, Natasha crawled to him on the bed, letting her fingertips dance across his skin as they slid up to play with the hairs at the nape of his neck. She leaned up to capture his mouth with hers, a chaste peck that went straight to his gut. “Hey. It’s okay,” Natasha whispered against his lips. “I’ll take care of you.”
Steve settled against the headboard, tossing his pillows away as Natasha moved to sit on his lap, wrapping her arms around his shoulders. Her lips were like honey, sweet and slow-moving. She eagerly swallowed the low moans escaping his mouth when she palmed his hardening erection with one hand, the other guiding his hands on her hips.
Natasha shifted, pressing herself to him without breaking their kiss. Steve hugged her close, feeling her warm skin on his. It still wasn’t as warm — as hot — as the moment she grinded down on him, her folds already wet and just—
“Oh, fuck,” Steve gasped, panting into her mouth when she reached down to angle the tip of his cock to her opening. He threw his head backwards, nearly cracking it against the headboard. Jesus Christ. If someone had told him sex was like this, he would’ve — he would’ve—
“Baby, breathe.” She chuckled under her breath, slowly working herself down onto Steve whose muscles were drawn. Natasha started sucking along the line of his jaw, kissing down the column of his neck as he relaxed. “Feeling okay?” she asked softly, pressing a delicate kiss to the hollow of his throat.
Steve licked his lips, huffing, “More than… way more than okay.”
His mouth fell open when she shifted again, beginning to roll her hips as she bottomed out. Steve couldn’t quite bite back the keening moan, feeling her clench around him as she lifted herself and rocked back down. Steve’s name kept falling from her lips as she rode him, mouthing at his ear and whispering sweet nothings that made his head swim.
“You’re so good for me, Steve, fuck.”
His arms wound around her then, and they held onto each other like they’d no sooner disappear if they let go. Steve panted against her neck, feeling that familiar pleasing ache at the base of his spine. He started to thrust up into Natasha as she went, meeting her at every downstroke.
“Look at you, baby. Doing so well, making me — oh, shit. Shit.” She did something wicked with her hips, making wide circles that pulled at the last loose thread of Steve’s resolve. Natasha’s grip on his hair tightened, but Steve reveled in it.
“Tash… Tasha, I’m…” Steve’s head was spinning so much he was seeing stars. He kissed at her exposed skin, leaving light bites before laving them with his tongue. “Babe, my god, do that again.”
And so she did, clenching tight around him as they both moved together, skin dampening with sweat. Steve kissed her again, brows drawn up as he chased the very edge of his orgasm. There was a whine, and it took too long for him to realize it was his own.
Natasha pulled away, pressing her forehead to his and cupping the base of his jaw, breathing in each other’s air. Sweetly, she crooned, “Steve… that’s it, so close. You feel it? Yeah?” The tip of her nose nudged against his, and Steve’s eyes flickered up to meet hers. “Come for me, baby.”
It took one, two thrusts before he was tipping over that edge, his entire body tingling from his chest to the ends of his fingertips. Steve gasped for air, cursing into Natasha’s skin as he let his orgasm rip through him like a tsunami wave. And she was there caressing his hair, drawing invisible patterns into his skin as she slowly rocked onto him again.
They stayed in each other’s arms for a couple of minutes after, simply enjoying the afterglow. Steve’s body felt fucked out, and he probably looked as debauched as he felt, but Natasha was peppering his face with light kisses from his brows to his nose to his lips, and he didn’t care about anything else. If his heart wasn’t already beating at a hundred miles an hour, he would’ve sworn it worked double time when he looked up at the woman in his arms. A pretty pink flush was sitting under her cheeks, lips curved up in a soft smile.
He gazed up at her like she was the one who had hung up the moon, bringing a light to dark skies. When Steve looked at Natasha, he knew in his heart that she was what put his derailed train back on its tracks. For the first time since they met, Steve felt like he had some semblance of a plan for his future, and he wanted Natasha to be a part of it.
“What’s going on in that head of yours?” Natasha teased, brushing back the damp hair that had fallen across his forehead.
Steve gave a small smile, revealing, “I think… I think I’m falling in love with you.” She found his eyes, looked directly into them, and responded with a bright grin. Natasha’s kiss was a reciprocation, all the reassurance he needed.
