They'd already started before it occurred to Sam that, in terms of mindless distraction sex, rape roleplay with a guy he was mad at, who was also in a strange mood, wasn't the brightest idea.

It was plenty distracting, at least. For instance, Steve had put way more thought into this Crossbones thing than Sam would have guessed. Steve wasn't the best at deliberately communicating what he wanted, but he was usually just as shitty at hiding it, so Sam could generally see what was coming. He hadn't seen a damn backstory coming.

"Crossbones," Steve announced authoritatively, "is a mercenary."

"Okay," said Sam, surveying the tiny hotel room doubtfully. It looked cleaner than the last place, but it was miniscule. They weren't going to be able to stage much of a fight. Steve took up most of the room between the bed and the dresser just standing there. "Does he like using knockout gas or blackmail or something? Because..." He put his arms out. He could touch the bathroom door with one hand and the headboard with the other.

"He likes a fair fight," Steve said. "For the fun of it. He spent a long time working his goddamn ass off for an organization that promised security and didn't deliver. He's out for himself now. Well..." He reached across and easily pulled Sam onto the bed. "More or less fair."

"You get what I'm saying, though. I'm not seeing space to defuse a bomb or rescue hostages and make a heroic but doomed attempt to end your villainy."

Steve leaned down and kissed him. There were more teeth involved than Sam felt was necessary. "Fine, but the—what, the Golden Eagle—doesn't have anything blackmail-worthy."

"Fuck that, you haven't seen the Golden Eagle's browser history."

"Crossbones," Steve continued, "has been after the Golden Eagle for a while. I might be willing to settle for a home invasion instead of a pitched battle, if an opportunity fell into my lap."

Sam did his best not to laugh. "If you put a sock over your head, I'm, uh..."

"I'll blindfold you, how about. Gotta maintain my secret identity somehow."

"You're not blindfolding me and gagging me, though, so pick one."

Steve's eyebrows tilted, but then he nodded. "I don't really want to cover too much of your face, anyway."

"Thanks, I guess."

"A blindfold might look like your little goggles. Or a domino mask. It'd be thematic." He dragged his thumb down Sam's mouth.

"Those flight goggles are very sophisticated technology," Sam said, a bit indistinctly.

"I bet. How about you go to sleep? Someone sold you out, your address... You're in bed already when I attack."

Sam grimaced, also hard to do with a thumb on his mouth. This was getting awfully close to home again. He'd been more comfortable with the bomb defusing scenario.

Steve gestured to the room. "If I'm already on top of you, you can struggle all you want. We're not going to run into any walls or knock the dresser over."

And it wasn't like it was that close to home. Sam had never even had his house burgled, and they were in a hotel, so the surroundings weren't familiar or—Right. Well, his house wasn't ever going to get burgled now, that was for sure. Sam sighed and nodded. The faster they got to the actual sex, the better.

Steve kissed him again. "You have to know it's me," he said. "I mean, Crossbones. Recognize my voice, or something. And say it."

"I'll do my best to call you Crossbones without laughing, but if you actually call me Golden Eagle to my face, I'm not making any promises."

Steve grinned. "Cross my heart, I won't." He pushed Sam onto his back. "Work on getting to fake sleep without theatrical snoring, I'm gonna hunt up a blindfold."

"Fine..." Sam threw an arm over his eyes; a second later the room went even darker when Steve hit the switch. This hotel wasn't right on the beach the way the last one had been, but they were close enough that he could hear the music the bonfire kids had started blasting, and over that the music from the bar across the street. They were both too faint to cover the small sounds of Steve moving around the room. And they were both too faint—

That wasn't Steve.

Sam sat up, planting a foot on the ground. "Steve," he said, because it had to be Steve, he hadn't disappeared in two seconds.

In the Air Force, he'd gotten so used to hearing the guys in his unit move around in the dark he'd started identifying them by the sounds they made, the way they moved. They all had; everyone was jumpy, adrenaline-high, paying too much attention to every last sound. He'd never dropped the habit. He knew what Steve sounded like in the dark. This wasn't it. Steps too heavy and then too silent. Too sharp a thud when he closed a drawer. His breath too rasping.

"What's up?" Steve stepped into the light from the window, orange from the streetlight and blue from the neon bar signs.

"Shit," Sam said, sighing again. "Nothing, sorry. Go ahead. I'm fast asleep over here, not even snoring."

"You sure? Should I look you over for jellyfish stings? They can mess with you."

"The day I let you play doctor on me, Rogers, is the day I want you to take me to an actual hospital."

"Probably for the best."

Sam lay back down. On his side this time, so he could stare at the wall without interrupting Steve's blindfold quest, which had gone dead quiet. Steve could be silent when he wanted to be. That didn't usually happen when it was just the two of them, but they didn't usually stage home invasions.

Lying on his side wasn't a great position to be in when two hundred+ pounds of super-soldier landed on him. He imagined his shoulder and elbow had caused Steve some discomfort, which he was fine with, since he'd had the air knocked out of him and spent the next few seconds kicking ineffectually while gasping for breath.

If the elbow thing bothered Steve any, he didn't act like it. He shoved Sam onto his stomach, pinned Sam's ankles with his own, and panted against Sam's neck, sounding the opposite of pained. Sam would've rolled his eyes if he could have collected himself, which was when he realized that this wasn't the best kind of distraction sex. Normally he'd have been pleased to get Steve going, even if the specific way he'd managed it wasn't his own favorite. But he wasn't in a giving mood, and waiting for his lungs to start working again wasn't getting him there.

Sam jabbed his left elbow back and reached up with his right hand, going for Steve's hair. If it were real I'd go for the eyes, he thought, like he could tell where he was going to hit. He could've slammed his head back, too, broken the guy's nose. If it were real.

Steve caught both his wrists; all his weight went from his arms to his body, pushing another breath out of Sam and jabbing his dick into Sam's lower back. Steve stayed like that, settled into a position Sam would have been impressed by, for all the core maintenance involved, if it weren't depriving him of oxygen and making it way too obvious that this already had Steve unreasonably hot. They still had their clothes on, for fuck's sake. Steve dragged Sam's arms further into the position they'd started to go, twisting his left arm up his back and his right down behind his head until his fingertips touched.

Sam coughed, going limp, and Steve eased off too, at least on Sam's upper body. Sam tried to buck under him, throw him off balance. It seemed for a second like it had worked, and then Sam realized Steve had let him get the momentum up, let him bend at the waist. He jacknifed them so they were straight up on their knees, his ankles still pinning Sam's in place. He pulled Sam's hands closer together, until he could hold them both in one of his. Sam's biceps protested and he realized this was the worst position he could have gotten stuck in; he'd been hoping that if he attacked from two different directions at least one of them would work, and regardless of how Steve held his hands behind his back it would always have given him a tremendous amount of control. But this was bordering on painful as a baseline, it screwed Sam's neck around, and swim or no swim he was going to cramp up. Now I know, he thought. In case it ever happened. At least he could breathe, sitting up and God knew with his chest open.

Steve sat back between their heels, dragging Sam with him and onto his lap by the wrists, his free hand jabbing into Sam's abdomen in counterpoint to his dick at Sam's ass. It was like sitting on an industrial tool, he was so hard already. Sam wondered if porn rules applied and this was a given, or if he was supposed to be shocked by this turn of events.

"Got you," Steve growled, close to his ear, so Sam dropped that line of thought in favor of trying to remember his comic books.

"You," he said, and winced, because he sounded more scolding than aghast and enraged. It worked fine for Steve, to all appearances. He made a few quick movements, then grabbed a handful of Sam's shorts and dragged them down his thighs. The waistband caught, but there was enough give for Steve to stick his dick between Sam's legs, heavy and wet against Sam's balls, which should have felt good. Steve dragged him closer, and Sam's right bicep twinged harder as his head was forced down.

"Me, who?" Steve wormed a hand down the front of Sam's shorts and wrapped his fingers around both of them at once. Sam wasn't all that hard, but Steve jerked them together and the jolt of sensation was exactly what Sam had been after. All he'd been after, but...

"Crossbones," he said, maybe not with a straight face, but Steve couldn't see that.

"Yeah," Steve said, vowel long, voice too deep. "And I got you." His dick pulsed and he came, mostly in Sam's shorts. Sam thought belatedly of the cleaning lady. They should've hunted up some condoms, given this probably wasn't the end of the evening's events. Sam's neck ached and he had a strange, dislocated view of Steve's hand moving under his shorts without being able to see what it was doing, and then a belatedly clear picture when Steve drove a couple sopping fingers up his ass. Sam gasped for air and Steve dragged out, scooped up more jizz and did it again. He was using another finger or Sam had locked up instead of relaxing.

"Would you," Sam said, and cut himself off. Battle of wills and all.

"We haven't even gotten started," Steve said, blood in the water. "You take a punch pretty well for a guy who's gonna start begging before he's even got a cock in him."

"You run your mouth a lot for a guy who's about two seconds from getting IDed and spending the rest of his life in supermax."

"In a perfect world," Steve said. "I have an idea. Why don't you make sure that happens? Go ahead and yell for a neighbor. Maybe one of the nice ones will come running." He slid his hand down Sam's dick, thumb pressing hard. "None of this has to happen. They'll see my face, right? You can stop this whenever you want. Just scream."

Sam's brain had started to fuzz off at the edges with the pressure on his dick, but he couldn't help automatically mapping out imaginary contingencies. The edges sharpened back up. "That happens, you don't get caught," he said. "You kill them and you run."

"I love it when you threaten people for me," Steve laughed. "Sure, now you mention it. I would have to run, though. All that noise and mess." He nuzzled into Sam's neck and cheek, out of sight but all skin on skin. "No mask, and someone would have called the cops. So the point stands. You don't want this, you can stop it anytime. Any do-good neighbors you don't like too well?"

"A couple of them do still owe me for cups of flour, but I think I'll stick to plan A and just kick your ass when you slip up."

Steve laughed again and stuck his fingers back into Sam. This fingerful of cum was cooling down, and it squelched against what he'd managed to slick Sam with so far. Sam usually enjoyed getting messy during sex—it was why they didn't bother with condoms most of the time—but his stomach rolled. "You should shut up," Steve said, as cheerful as he'd been the whole time. "I can help you out with that."

He dropped Sam's arms. He'd been counting on surprise to stall Sam, he would have bet, but the position was too unnatural; Sam didn't have to expect it to know the second he had some give. He spun for the edge of the bed, whipping his left arm out and around. He faltered a second later, because it was a game, and they'd planned on keeping it to the bed, and his shorts were twisted around his thighs. Another second later and he realized that he'd succeeded in practically clotheslining Steve. The sensation of Steve's throat against his forearm swung back around at him.

"Shit," he said, reaching out. It wasn't even the roughest they'd gotten in bed, but he hadn't been thinking, hadn't controlled the strike at all—

Steve laughed, a bit wheezy, and lunged, a blurred shape in the dark. His nails dug into Sam's thighs as he lifted him and twisted, slamming Sam into the bed on his back. He yanked Sam's shirt up, over his head, and twisted it around his wrists, dragging them down to pin them behind his neck. Sam'd call it an improvement, over the belt and the last hold both. It was like a pillow.

"Last chance," Steve said, weight on Sam's wrists. He pulled something over Sam's eyes. The window and Steve's shape against it, the door outlined in the light from the hall, all blinked out. The cloth slid against Sam's face as Steve adjusted it, pulling it until it was clear of Sam's cheekbones. A blur of orange light leaked under his eyelashes, it was so high, but he still couldn't make anything out. A hand slid down Sam's face, stroking, gentle, and then a thumb and forefinger dug into the hinge of Sam's jaw.

"Last chance for you to walk away from this as a guy who hasn't raped anybody," Sam said, consonants clumsy.

Steve went still again, the way he had by the water. Sam managed to knee him in the ass. It didn't get him anything but a shooting pain in his lower jaw, but he awarded himself points for trying.

"You're sweet," Steve said. "You're a real sweetheart. No, we're late on that one. Last chance for you to scream, at least for a little while." The bed jostled and his weight shifted up as he shuffled forward, and then the tip of his dick smeared over Sam's chin and lips. He let go of Sam's bound wrists. The sound of a slap made Sam jump a little, but nothing had touched him. The hollow, flat sound registered as Steve's hand against the wall above the bed when he said, "What'd you think this is made of, plaster? Tell you what, I bet if I spray it with enough bullets, it doesn't matter: I'm gonna hit someone eventually."

"If you're trying to say 'no teeth,' I hear you, but you can get the same thing by asking someone real nice at a bar."

"You think?" Steve pinched harder at Sam's jaw; his mouth dropped open and Steve started feeding his dick in. "You haven't seen me. Maybe nobody's gonna go home with this."