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John’s first thought is that Bob’s room is nice. It’s clean, satisfyingly so. It’s decorated, too, contrasting with John’s barren room. Bob has art hung up on his walls, vinyls of bands John has never heard of. John glances around, trying not to make it too obvious that he’s looking. But well, he is.
John’s second thought is that Bob’s room is warm. He has the same hardwood floors as John does, the same window, the same central heating system that runs throughout the tower. But where John’s room is cold and dark, Bob’s is bright and feels like a coat wrapped around his shoulders.
“You don’t have to tell me anything,” Bob starts, turning back to John. “But when—if you want to talk about it. I’m here.”
“I know,” John replies, offering a half smile. It isn’t so much a smile as a quirk of the corner of his lips. But he tries. “I don’t know if I want to talk about tonight. But I do—I want to talk to you. I want to tell you things. I was thinking about what you said. About me not being a bad person. But I think that you’re wrong.”
“I’m trying,” he adds. “I’m trying to be better. But I already screwed up the past. I tried to do the right thing, Bob. And I fucked it up. I don’t regret it. But I fucked it all up. And everything that came after is because of me.” He bites the inside of his cheek. “I wanted to be better.”
“Better than who?”
“Everyone. Guess I always had something to prove.” John shrugs.
Bob moves closer, eating up the distance between them. He doesn’t reach out to touch John, but John sees his hand tremble as if he wants to.
“My mom—not the most stable of people. She kind of lost it after my dad died. Ignored me most of the time, if I saw her at all it was because I’d done something wrong.” John continues, shifting closer to Bob so that the small gap that existed between them is now and truly covered.
“I judged her for it, you know. For putting a dead man over her living kids. My siblings never really noticed. When my mom was around she wasn’t really around. I understand now what I couldn’t as a kid. Why she fell apart, why she stopped being a mother the moment she was no longer a wife. I just wish she’d chosen me over his memory. Guess I’m a hypocrite because I put an ideal over my wife and son. I let it warp me. And I’ll never be able to make that right with them.”
Bob opens his mouth to speak, but John beats him to it, turning to him with tears soaking his long lashes. “I hated my mom for so long because she loved my dead dad more than she loved me. How twisted is that? I tried so hard to not become my mom. Guess I fucked that up, too.”
“That’s.. wow. That’s—“ Bob says, after a beat. His eyes are wide. John nods, scoffing at himself.
“Yeah, sorry. I shouldn’t have unloaded all that on you.”
“No, that’s not what I mean.” Bob continues. “You—you’ve suffered a lot. I never would’ve known.”
Nobody does. John thinks. Except you and my ex-wife.
“I haven’t had it that badly. Not compared to you, anyway.”
“It isn’t a competition.” Bob shrugs. “You know that, right?”
It hadn’t occurred to John until then. It must show on his face, because Bob’s eyebrows screw up tight.
“Uh, yeah.” John says, because he feels like he should.
Bob shakes his head. “Jesus, John. Okay, we’re going to lay some things out right now.”
“Okay?” John replies, confused.
“We’re going to list out the mundane things about ourselves. I’ll go first. My name is Bob. I’m an ex-addict. My father was abusive. I like Lego and everything bagels. I used to wear socks to bed until I was twenty. Now, you.”
John rolls his shoulders, deciding to go along with it. “My name is John. I had a hamster as a kid. I used to be Captain America until I murdered a terrorist in public. I’m an absent father. I’m—“
I’m a closeted bisexual. I’m terrified of never being worth anything. I’m a failure. I wake up every day regretting my life choices. I’m a husk of who I used to be. I think I’m falling in love with you.
John shakes his head. “Why are we doing this, Bob?”
“It’s a therapy thing. I think. You say the obvious, surface level stuff about yourself and you let it kind of hang in the open. Then you go deeper.”
“Deeper? Like, the first person I killed?”
“Deeper like—the first movie that ever made you cry.” Bob supplies.
My own private Idaho.
“Wow,” John deadpans, poorly disguising the humor in his voice. “Really getting to the dirt there, Bob.”
Bob’s cheeks flush. “We don’t have to do it.”
“No, I'll do it.” John smiles, shocked at himself. “It was the campfire scene in my private Idaho. It spoke to me, I suppose.”
Shut up-shut up-shut up. Stop talking stop talking stop talking you idiot shut the fuck up stop talking
“Spoke to you, huh,” Bob mutters, more to himself than to John.
“What about you?”
“Easy. Jeepers Creepers. Scared the shit out of me.” John laughs, his first real laugh in a while, and he finds himself, not for the first time—grateful for Bob’s company.
*
John settles into the untouched side of the bed, questioning if he should even be there. He doesn’t want to put Bob out in any way, having already dumped so much onto him. But John doesn’t trust himself to be alone right now. And he doesn’t want to be. He wants to be wherever Bob is, so he can deal with the temporary feeling of discomfort.
Laying his head back onto a pillow, John settles in. Bob’s bed is also more comfortable than his, which is annoying, but whatever. He’s slept in worse conditions, so he’s not complaining.
John pulls the covers up to his chest and turns his head, watching as Bob tinkers around his room, closing drawers and flicking off his lamp. He has LED stars on his ceiling that cast the room into a gentle glow, John notes.
Bob, with his back to John, places his headphones onto his bedside table before moving the covers back and getting into bed. The mattress groans beneath their combined weight.
Bob’s bed is a tight squeeze with both of them in it. John isn’t a small man—tall and built. And Bob, whilst on the leaner side, is nearly as tall as John is while lying down. Plus, he’s like, ripped.
Huh. Who would’ve thought, definitely not John.
John definitely doesn’t think about Bob’s muscles as he lies awake at night, unable to sleep.
He definitely doesn’t think about what Bob would look like naked. Definitely not.
What John does think about, however, is if Bob was always that built or if it happened because of the serum.
Stop looking at him, a voice in his head sounds.
But John’s eyes have minds of their own, apparently, because they begin to wander toward Bob. He’s lying on his back now, one arm slung beneath his head, staring up at the stars on his ceiling. It’s the angle he moves at that gives John a vantage point. A button on his pajama top has come unbuttoned, a sliver of tan skin exposed.
John’s mouth dries up. He looks away, cheeks burning beneath his beard. It isn’t very scandalous, but the sight has John looking away quickly anyway.
Thankfully, Bob doesn’t catch him. But still. John shouldn’t—he can’t look again. He promised himself he wouldn’t.
Bob’s knee touches his thigh underneath the blanket and John’s leg jerks involuntarily.
“Sorry,” Bob splutters, shifting away, probably sensing John’s discomfort.
“No, it’s, uh, fine.” John coughs. “Don’t worry about it.”
John’s body is having a very particular reaction to Bob.
He realises it too late, when Bob shifts once again. A simple brush of a thigh against his leg is enough to give John an extremely embarrassing semi. Fuck, what is he, a hormonal teenager?
He’s humiliated, so much that for a moment he contemplates just leaving. Getting up and going back to his own room. But he doesn’t want to do that. He knows that he won’t.
Embarrassment be damned.
John has been in situations worse than this one. He has been squeezed into trenches and forced into cots where he could smell what the people beside him ate for breakfast that morning. He was used to spending a night or two in close quarters with another man.
So why is it that sitting a little too close to Bob is what gives John’s dick its first little push in months?
It’s a cruel joke, really.
He’s a healthy man in his late thirties, recently divorced. He hasn’t had a physical outlet for his stress since a few months before the divorce. It turns out that becoming a national disgrace and a public punching bag does not bode well for one’s libido—so, it’s fine, he thinks.
This is normal. John’s body is having a reaction to his proximity to Bob. John’s body is reminding him that it exists.
His brain and his body are ganging up on him. That’s all it is.
Bob is attractive and kind, he’s warm and smells nice—and John is normal for thinking so. He isn’t—he isn’t breaking any rules. He isn’t committing any grave sins.
He’s not.
But why does it feel like he is?
Bob is looking at him now, it’s entirely too intimate. John can feel his soul being dissected, he can feel Bob peering into his eyes as if he’ll find the secret of the universe within.
The thing is, though, John doesn’t move away.
He kind of wants to. He kind of doesn’t want to.
Bob doesn’t move away, either.
John’s breathing picks up as Bob shifts closer, opens his mouth to speak, and then stops. He glances toward the blanket, where John is gripping it for dear life.
Bob lifts his end of the blanket, throwing it away from their bodies. John can’t breathe. He can’t remember the last time he felt like this—felt this exposed.
“I’m sorry,” He pushes out, strained. He squeezes his eyes shut.
“Why are you sorry?” Bob asks, just as quiet as he was before.
Please don’t make me say it, Bob.
He just popped a boner in Bob’s bed. Bob is looking at him.
John looks back.
Something shifts in Bob’s eyes. John likes Bob’s eyes. It’s no secret that he’s a good looking man. The kind of good looking people would immediately notice on the street and turn to stare, noting the obvious. But the longer one looks, the more they discover. Bob’s true beauty lies in his eyes, in his deep gaze.
And right now, those eyes are staring at John.
Through John.
John wants to kiss Bob.
The realisation isn’t as startling as John expected it to be. He’s—what he is, and Bob is a very good looking person.
He’s kind and dependable. He’s smart, knows a fuckton about music and places John has never been. John admires him for his strength.
John is falling in love with Bob.
John wants to kiss Bob and it’s starting to become a bit of a problem for him. He knew from the moment he pushed Bob against that wall back at the compound, when he’d glimpsed into Bob’s kind eyes and seen Sentry for the first time, that he would like very much to kiss him.
John wants Bob. He needs him, more than he can verbalise, more than he can safely show. John’s traitorous heart is tugging him in a direction that makes him want to plant his feet to the ground and stay there. But all he can hear is Bob’s gentle voice in his ear, coaxing the anxiety to leave his body, only making things astronomically worse.
How could he possibly leave when it felt so good, felt so right, to be beside Bob like this?
He couldn’t.
Bob’s eternal, ever-knowing eyes slither toward him. It renders John useless to do anything except breathe raggedly. If he doesn’t look away now, he doesn’t know if he can manage to control himself.
Control. What a fickle, breakable thing.
How laughable it is that Bob has managed to kick down John’s sandcastle walls.
“I’m scared.” John admits, to his own surprise and horror. He doesn’t mean to say it—doesn’t mean for it to slip past his lips.
John hasn’t been afraid like this in a very long time.
Bob’s smile freezes. “Of me?”
“No,” John rushes. “Never of you. Of me. I’m scared of me.”
Of how much I want you. Of how much I’m beginning to need you.
“John,” Bob’s voice softens. “What are you afraid of?”
You. The way I feel about you. The things I want to do to you—the things I want you to do to me. I’m scared that I’ll never be able to stop thinking about how you taste. I’m scared that I’ll always be chasing the feelings you give me.
The thing is, John knows fear. Bone deep, right to the gut fear that keeps him awake and frozen.
He’s seen men die in a number of traumatic ways. He’s seen comrades die, strangled by their own weapons, drowned by their own blood. His own hands are stained crimson—unable to ever be washed fully clean.
The first time John felt true fear was the first time a boy kissed him behind the bleachers in ninth grade.
He felt gut punching fear that he’d be found out, every day of his life. That he’d be caught doing, or being someone he wasn’t supposed to be.
John got older, got stronger, became someone the younger him could be proud of. He was physically bigger than his father had ever been, but he still wasn’t bigger than the fear. He still wasn’t bigger than his shame.
As he grew, that fear began to dissipate slowly.
Never fully gone—no. Just, in the background.
Until Bob. Until now.
So, John Walker knows fear.
He’s fucking sick of it.
“Bob,” John whispers, “I’m going to kiss you now.”
“Okay,” Bob smiles.
John doesn’t give himself the time to back out. He doesn’t even give himself the time to question Bob’s reaction. He gives into the feelings that have been building in his chest for, well, as long as he remembers.
John doesn’t think as he pulls Bob close by the front of his pajama top, planting their lips together. It’s a softer kiss than the ones he’s used to giving, but it’s all he can manage. His hand shakes as it settles onto Bob’s cheek, his fingers scrubbing over day-old stubble.
All it takes is a muffled moan of delight from Bob and John is gripping him tighter, deepening the kiss as if he’s a man starved.
In some ways, he is.
He’s been deprived of this—this feeling, this taste, for way too long.
John pulls away first, although he’s loathe to do it. He’s trembling, his heart is beating wildly—and Bob is there. John is being cradled in Bob’s arms before he really knows what’s happening.
“I know,” Bob whispers, knocking his forehead against John’s. “Me too.”
It’s all John needs to hear.