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Their time in France is painfully cliche: crepes and Coca Light and the Eiffel Tower and gawking at the Mona Lisa like lovesick schoolgirls and Steve’s hand brushing against Sam’s hand and Sam’s hand brushing against Steve’s hand—and when their pinkies interlock for several moments it’s definitely, definitely, definitely an accident, nothing more.
At around sixteen hundred they leave the Louvre and decide to grab some vittles.
"This way," says Sam, nodding toward a deserted alley, a crack in the city between two old rows of 20th Century apartment buildings. "My friend told me about this place about ten blocks away. Mind if we walk?" he asks, already moving. "I get claustrophobic on the trains."
Steve is so goddamn thankful Sam knows his way around Paris’s twisting pathways, the streets nothing like the grid Steve is used to back home.
They arrive a few minutes later to a little cafe, a-hole-in-the-wall but finely decorated, a few tables set up outside with checkered cloths and vases of flowers.
"You want to sit indoors, right?" Sam asks, opening the door for him.
"If you don’t mind," says Steve, hoping it’s not too much of a bother. He doesn’t remember ever telling Sam he doesn’t prefer to eat outside, but then Sam doesn’t need to be told a lot of things.
While Sam slides into a booth in the back, Steve pulls the waiter aside and gives him his credit card, explaining to the man in what is surely terrible French to charge everything there and not to bother bringing them a check. The waiter smiles knowingly and nods.
It’s just—Sam always insists on at least splitting the check, and Steve wants him to know that he doesn’t have to do that. Steve can take care of it, and he can take care of Sam.
Steve says, “On your left,” and takes a seat next to Sam on the booth instead of across from him. That’s not weird, right?
"I saw that, what you did with the water," says Sam, and even though he’s not laughing, his tone is lighthearted.
"You’re not angry?" Steve asks.
"Nope. But I don’t think you understand what you just got yourself into financially by deciding to pay for everything. See, when I know I’m splitting the check I hold back. I budget. I’m sensible. Now, though…Appetizer, salad, main course, dessert, the most expensive bottle of wine."
Steve feels some of the tension he’s been feeling unwind itself, and he smiles and says, “Have whatever you want.”
The thing is, he doesn’t really know how to do this—woo. Flirt? Why can’t Steve summon the chutzpah to say, Hey, Sam. I think you’re great. Really fucking great. I want to—I mean I’m—but, Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, he can’t even finish the thought hypothetically, let alone speak the words aloud.
Sam smears butter onto a thick slice of toasted sourdough, smiles. “You okay?” he asks, taking a bite of the bread. There’s a bit of crumb on his lip and he wipes it away with the side of his index finger, and Steve wants to kiss him there—on his finger, then up his wrist, and to his arm, and shoulder, and end on that area of his neck where there are the tiniest brown bumps from where he’s shaved.
"I think I’m just a little tired. Do you mind if we call it a night early?"
"See, it’s all that running you been doing at rocket speed. Slow and steady wins the race, man," says Sam, and his grins come so easily, without effort, without edifice.
#
They take the train down to Nice and freeze on the ‘beach’, shirtless, in trunks, salt dried on their skin.
Steve doesn’t think he’ll ever be used to this new body, five years from now or ten years from now or twenty. Non-asthmatic lungs. Legs and arms that carry the weight of his dense, dense bones so easily.
It’s like he traded bodily ailments for mental ailments. Violent images in his consciousness that become clearer rather than foggier when he closes his eyes and tries to forget: faces haunting his peripheral vision and nightmares that creep into his waking life. He is always on alert. He does not know how to still his worry. He is a pacifist soldier. He’s a deserter. He is a knot of guilt and anxiety, and he knows the world needs changing but he doesn’t know how to do it.
"Do you maybe want to get out of here?" Steve asks.
Sam sits up on the towel, one knee up against his chest, the other leg sprawled out onto the rocky sand. He is—smaller than his personality? Slight. Chiseled and statuesque but somehow still delicate. There is a sparse smattering of black hair beneath his belly button, leading downward, and it gives Sam this frightening realness. Steve knows that if he reached out and touched there, Sam’s stomach, his abdominal muscles would contort, and the skin there would yield to his touch, and it would be beautiful and sexy.
"Hey, my eyes are up here," says Sam.
"Of course." Steve swallows. "I’m sorry."
He looks up to see Sam smiling, again, but this time it’s only a half grin, like part of his face isn’t sure what to think and holds back.
#
There’s one bed in their hotel room, but they’re adults so they can handle it. Whatever. They shower. They have a couple of beers and watch the only station in English they can find.
Steve’s got a deck of cards and they play rummy on the mattress, cross-legged.
A breeze from the open window slips in, and a Jack of Diamonds falls onto the floor. Sam reaches down to get it, his shirt riding up, his boxers just visible under his pajama pants. Plaid. Black waistband.
A group of rowdy people pass by in the hallway outside their door, bumping into the wall noisily.
Something about a bombing on the news.
The smell of North African food wafting in from outside.
A moth buzzing at the bedside table lamp.
Sam explaining his stance on violent opposition while laying down yet another set of cards.
Sam winning the game, again.
Sam saying his favorite movie is Terminator 2: Judgment Day because the central relationship is of a mother and her son, and Sam was always really close to his mother, since it was just the two of them against the world.
A commercial about biscuits with lemon filling.
Sam saying birds navigate by sensing magnetic fields. Sam scratching his neck. Sam worrying his bottom lip as he looks at his new cards. Sam smiling. Sam frowning. Sam. Sam. Sam.
"Hey, where are you right now?" he asks.
"Right here. Right here," says Steve. Where else would he be?
Sam lets his hand of cards fall to the mattress. “Sorry, when I get started I kind of can’t shut up. Didn’t mean to talk your—”
It’s an accident. They’re talking and then—Steve’s kissing Sam? He hears himself whimper at the feel of Sam’s lips pressing back.
"Fuck, fuck. I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry," Steve says, his hands clasping the bottom hem of Sam’s shirt, the two of them pyramided over the playing cards sprawled messily on the sheet. "I don’t know what—fuck."
Steve feels Sam’s palms over his cheeks, feels his forehead bumped against his own. They’re nose to nose. Outside a car honks. Sirens sound and Steve tries not to flinch.
Then there is silence, painfully long silence, and then Sam’s cracked voice says, “Please. Don’t be sorry.”
Steve can feel his breaths as he speaks. “I’ve been trying to tell you all day,” he says.
"Tell me what?"
"I," Steve starts, but he can’t think when he’s this close to Sam. "I just need you so much, I’m sorry," he says. He doesn’t like needing. Isn’t that why he became Cap? To stop needing so much?
"Then you can have me," says Sam, "if I can have you, too."
Then they kiss. Little pepper touches. Then tongues. Sam opening his mouth. Steve slipping inside. Teeth.
They lay on their sides, front to front, the cards forgotten and bending and creasing under their bodies as they kiss, Steve’s tongue stroking Sam’s tongue and vice versa.
Sam moans and—fuck, it’s so hot. As their kisses grow more frantic, their bodies move closer. Steve feels Sam press against his thigh, hard and straining, and he wants so badly to touch it.
"Can I—"
"Yes, Steve, Steve, please."
#
It may not be the first time ever but it’s the first time in a while, and Steve is so afraid of messing it up, of making the experience anything less than perfect for Sam.
Shirts come off, and it’s nothing neither of them haven’t seen before in the course of their travels, but Steve is still struck by how beautiful Sam is, sitting now at the top of the bed, his back leaned against the headboard.
Sam swallows. His eyes don’t blink as he looks at Steve.
"You can do whatever you want to me," Sam says, breath stopping short in his throat. His voice is doing that whisper-crackle thing that makes Steve think he doesn’t have much longer until he’ll need to be inside of Sam.
Steve flicks his tongue against Sam’s left earlobe, pinches it between his teeth then moves downward, sucking and kissing the skin of his neck, the taste of it perfection, such perfection.
Sam’s hands are on Steve’s shoulder blades, drawing tentative, unsure patterns along the muscles, the touch of it so light that Steve shivers.
Steve moves his lips down Sam’s chest to his nipple: bites, licks, bites again, roves his hands down his sides until he reaches the elastic of his pajama bottoms, slips them underneath and grabs his cock, squeezes, Sam’s hips jerking up. There is already pre-come. It drips onto Steve’s thumb and he wants to lick it from his hand and taste it, taste Sam.
"Take them off," says Steve, his tongue moving to Sam’s other nipple. He feels Sam move underneath him, pushing his pants down, hips shimmying.
Steve’s erection is—painful, pushing against the slit in his briefs and into the nylon of the short he’s wearing. He wants to jerk himself off while sucking Sam’s cock. He wants to fuck Sam, Sam on his back, his dick twitching and spurting come onto his stomach while Steve drives in and out of him. It’s one of those minutes where a hundred different fantasies play at once and all of them involve making Sam beg and moan and cry out Steve’s name.
"You don’t have to do that for me," Sam says when Steve works his way lower, taking in Sam’s scent, curls of black hair brushing against his nose, lips, cheek.
Sam’s penis bobs against Steve’s cheek, and Steve leans into his, his lips brushing against the base and moving up the shaft toward the head.
Steve hears Sam’s panting breaths, and relents, taking him into his mouth, wetting his lips and sliding them over Sam’s length. He feels perfect in his mouth, heavy and solid, the tip of salty with his semen. Steve doesn’t know if he wants to get Sam off straight out, make him buck his hips and writhe into Steve’s face and empty his seed into his mouth. Or if he wants to make him wait. Slide his index and middle into Sam’s hole and finger fuck him.
One of Sam’s hands grab Steve by the ear and the other snatches a wad of his hair, and Steve just wants to say, yes, yes, yes fuck my face, but to do that he’d have to let Sam’s cock out his mouth and he doesn’t want to do that.
He reaches down and begins to rub himself through his sleep shorts, slowly because he knows it won’t take much.
"Steve, shit, I’m gonna," says Sam, each word coming out like a moan.
Yes, yes, come for me, baby.
Steve uses one hand to push his pants and briefs down, grabs his erection, using his thumb to slick pre-come over the length then rubs loosely but fast, imagining himself pumping into Sam. The other hand he uses to touch Steve everywhere he can. His stomach and his thigh and his ass and all the places he’s dreamed, literally dreamed, of touching.
Sam’s hips go rigid then jerk into Steve’s mouth, come spilling out of him onto Steve’s tongue and lips and, God, the feel of it, he lets go, too, a stream of sticky white spraying on the sheets and onto his leg.
"Need you, need you, need you," Steve mutters.
#
Secrets are confessed quietly underneath the blankets, like how Sam didn’t think Steve “liked-liked” him, and the whole conversation is terribly Junior High, and Steve feels a pang for his youth, for Brooklyn, for Bucky and the 40s and a world he knows even if it’s imperfect.
Here, though, now, is Sam, and for that he is thankful.