None of them said much else until they were out and safely back in the van, Natasha behind the wheel. As soon as they were seated, Hill stripped off her gas mask and said, “If either of you need to get to medical—oh my God, it smells like a peep show booth in here.”
Sam shrugged. “I told you you didn't want to know.”
For a second Hill looked sick, but she took a deep breath and snapped into brisk efficiency faster than Sam would've thought possible. “Right. Medical it is. We--”
“Like hell,” said Steve. He stripped off his own gas mask. Underneath, he was pale and he looked kind of like he wanted to shudder right out of his own skin, but brisk efficiency was a language he could speak even when the rest of the world was coming apart around his ears. “I don't need it. All the physical damage is stuff that'll heal on its own by tomorrow morning.”
“Steve, Insight goes up tomorrow morning.”
“I know. Which is why we need to spend our time tonight coming up with a plan. Especially because... look, there's stuff we didn't know that we have to take into account now. Someone we all thought was dead.”
“Funny,” said Natasha dryly without taking her eyes off the road, “I think Hill was trying to figure out how to tell you the same thing.”
-
Steve spent most of the car ride in silence, either trying to wrap his head around what had happened to him or just dragging himself slowly back to the land of the living. Back at Fury's hideaway, the whole group spent a few minutes exchanging just enough information to get everyone on the same page before Steve took off for the showers. “You guys probably don't want to spend an entire meeting having to smell me,” he said with a halfhearted parody of a grin. “Won't be long. If I'm not out in fifteen minutes, come haul me out.”
“You can take longer if you need to,” said Hill. “There's time.”
Steve shifted on his feet, visibly tempted and visibly fraying. He scratched a flake of nobody-wanted-to-know-what off the side of his face. “I, uh. No. No, it's all right, we've got business to get down to. Fifteen minutes.”
Sam was still only starting to learn Steve's particular dialect of 'feelings, what are feelings?' but he was pretty sure that translated to '...or else I may never want to come out.' Which no one would blame him for doing, but Sam also wasn't hypocrite enough to blame him for finding mission planning a more appealing prospect than standing around wallowing in his own misery indefinitely. “Fifteen minutes,” he said, “then I come by to make sure you haven't drowned.”
He gave it twenty before he knocked on the bathroom door. “Steve, you alive in there? I borrowed some clean clothes off Fury. Hope you look good in black.”
The water turned off inside. “Thanks,” Steve said through the door, sounding a lot more flat and subdued than the horrible false animation that had carried him through the first little group chat. “Just a minute. Don't come in, okay? Just hand 'em through the door.”
Sam did so, kind of relieved—for the sake of Steve's privacy? for the sake of his own squeamishness?—that he didn't have to look. He'd seen the bloody graffiti on Steve's body when he first rushed into the lab, but Steve had been kind of a mess all over and Sam hadn't stared long enough to make out what it said. He had the feeling he didn't want to know. He had the feeling Steve wouldn't want him to know.
“Sam?” came Steve's voice, quiet, just on the other side of the door.
“Yeah?”
“Thanks for getting me out of there.”
Sam's throat constricted. “Good to have you back.”
Steve opened the door and stepped out. His skin was pink from hot water and vigorous scrubbing, and if his eyes were a little red-rimmed, it wasn't past the point of plausible deniability. Fury's old t-shirt and black jeans didn't fit him right; they weren't any more constricting than the two-sizes-too-small athletic shirt he'd been wearing when Sam first met him jogging on the Mall, three days and a lifetime ago, but now it felt wrong to look. He was walking funny. Whether it was down to his injuries, or having to move around in jeans that were too small around the hips and thighs, he moved like he was trying to hide an awkward...
...oh, shit, those jeans hid nothing.
“You need another couple minutes?” Sam asked. “We're still waiting on a pot of coffee before we start planning anything. It's going to be a long night.” It was the last thing would've expected to see, but dude, if the VA group sessions had taught him anything, it was that one person's counterintuitive was another person's most logical way to deal. If Steve had been in there jerking off to try to get the metaphorical bad taste out of his mouth, that was his goddamn business and the best thing Sam could do was try and give him a gracious way out to finish the job.
But Steve shook his head. “Nah, let's get cracking.”
All through the initial stages of the planning, Steve was fidgety and distracted. Too quiet, too, except when he was talking about Bucky Barnes. Even then, he went in stops and starts, letting loose floods of information only to pull back and start dancing around the details of how he knew things. “He was kept in cryo between missions, it's why he hasn't aged. They said he was given some version of the serum. Zola experimented on him during the war, that must've been what he was researching. Must've helped Bucky survive the fall.”
“And they just... told you all this?” said Fury dubiously.
“Why would they have been lying? They thought I was about to die. Why bother?”
“Why bother telling you?”
Steve clammed up.
It was Natasha who eventually said, “They were gloating. Weren't they.”
“Yeah,” Steve muttered.
“Okay. The details you've given us—the cryo, the serum—were they what was supposed to bother you? Could they have been made up to get under your skin?”
“No.” Steve took a deep breath and shifted uncomfortably in his seat. “One of the... stories could have been a lie. I hope it was. But those things were just incidental details. Rumlow would have no reason to make them up.”
Natasha glanced sidelong at Fury. “If it were my interrogation, I'd take it.”
Not long after, they took a break for more coffee, since Steve was knocking it back at such an inhuman rate that there wasn't much left for anyone else. He looked like he could use a break and some fresh air, anyway. Sam didn't think it was particularly stifling inside, not enough for him to be sweating and tugging at his shirt collar like Steve was, but he'd already noticed that the safe house's resemblance to a bunker was putting him on edge. And he'd only spent half an hour, tops, getting in and out of that Hydra hellhole. He and Steve fell into step side by side and by unspoken agreement headed out to the causeway.
“You want me to see if Fury's got any camomile tea stashed away somewhere? Maybe some hot chocolate?” said Sam once they were out in the breeze. He nodded to the mug in Steve's hand, half-full of the burnt dregs from the bottom of the last pot of coffee. “You look pretty wired. I'm pretty wired, and I haven't even been trying to keep up with you.”
One of the corners of Steve's mouth quirked up in a half-smile. “This stuff's better comfort food than hot chocolate. It's almost as bad as Army coffee.” They both laughed at that, and Steve added, “Anyway, that's one of the side effects of the serum. Can't get drunk, can't get wired.”
“You are drugged, though, aren't you?” said a voice behind them. They turned around and saw Natasha leaning back against the closed door, her arms crossed.
Steve said nothing, so Natasha continued, “I don't know any interrogation drugs offhand that would get around the serum protection, but you've been showing symptoms ever since we got you out. Sweating, flushing, restlessness. Dilated pupils. And I've seen you run five miles without getting that out of breath. What did they give you, some kind of hallucinogen?”
“Why would they give me interrogation drugs?” Steve said, glaring at the ground. “It wasn't an interrogation.” He stretched his cramped posture out a little and leaned back against the causeway railing.
Sam didn't realize that was supposed to be an answer until he looked at him, really looked, and saw his silhouette from the side. With his legs uncrossed it was painfully obvious that he was still erect.
“Aphrodisiac,” Natasha said grimly, and Steve nodded.
FILL: Hydra/Steve sex pollen gangbang 12/?
Sam shrugged. “I told you you didn't want to know.”
For a second Hill looked sick, but she took a deep breath and snapped into brisk efficiency faster than Sam would've thought possible. “Right. Medical it is. We--”
“Like hell,” said Steve. He stripped off his own gas mask. Underneath, he was pale and he looked kind of like he wanted to shudder right out of his own skin, but brisk efficiency was a language he could speak even when the rest of the world was coming apart around his ears. “I don't need it. All the physical damage is stuff that'll heal on its own by tomorrow morning.”
“Steve, Insight goes up tomorrow morning.”
“I know. Which is why we need to spend our time tonight coming up with a plan. Especially because... look, there's stuff we didn't know that we have to take into account now. Someone we all thought was dead.”
“Funny,” said Natasha dryly without taking her eyes off the road, “I think Hill was trying to figure out how to tell you the same thing.”
-
Steve spent most of the car ride in silence, either trying to wrap his head around what had happened to him or just dragging himself slowly back to the land of the living. Back at Fury's hideaway, the whole group spent a few minutes exchanging just enough information to get everyone on the same page before Steve took off for the showers. “You guys probably don't want to spend an entire meeting having to smell me,” he said with a halfhearted parody of a grin. “Won't be long. If I'm not out in fifteen minutes, come haul me out.”
“You can take longer if you need to,” said Hill. “There's time.”
Steve shifted on his feet, visibly tempted and visibly fraying. He scratched a flake of nobody-wanted-to-know-what off the side of his face. “I, uh. No. No, it's all right, we've got business to get down to. Fifteen minutes.”
Sam was still only starting to learn Steve's particular dialect of 'feelings, what are feelings?' but he was pretty sure that translated to '...or else I may never want to come out.' Which no one would blame him for doing, but Sam also wasn't hypocrite enough to blame him for finding mission planning a more appealing prospect than standing around wallowing in his own misery indefinitely. “Fifteen minutes,” he said, “then I come by to make sure you haven't drowned.”
He gave it twenty before he knocked on the bathroom door. “Steve, you alive in there? I borrowed some clean clothes off Fury. Hope you look good in black.”
The water turned off inside. “Thanks,” Steve said through the door, sounding a lot more flat and subdued than the horrible false animation that had carried him through the first little group chat. “Just a minute. Don't come in, okay? Just hand 'em through the door.”
Sam did so, kind of relieved—for the sake of Steve's privacy? for the sake of his own squeamishness?—that he didn't have to look. He'd seen the bloody graffiti on Steve's body when he first rushed into the lab, but Steve had been kind of a mess all over and Sam hadn't stared long enough to make out what it said. He had the feeling he didn't want to know. He had the feeling Steve wouldn't want him to know.
“Sam?” came Steve's voice, quiet, just on the other side of the door.
“Yeah?”
“Thanks for getting me out of there.”
Sam's throat constricted. “Good to have you back.”
Steve opened the door and stepped out. His skin was pink from hot water and vigorous scrubbing, and if his eyes were a little red-rimmed, it wasn't past the point of plausible deniability. Fury's old t-shirt and black jeans didn't fit him right; they weren't any more constricting than the two-sizes-too-small athletic shirt he'd been wearing when Sam first met him jogging on the Mall, three days and a lifetime ago, but now it felt wrong to look. He was walking funny. Whether it was down to his injuries, or having to move around in jeans that were too small around the hips and thighs, he moved like he was trying to hide an awkward...
...oh, shit, those jeans hid nothing.
“You need another couple minutes?” Sam asked. “We're still waiting on a pot of coffee before we start planning anything. It's going to be a long night.” It was the last thing would've expected to see, but dude, if the VA group sessions had taught him anything, it was that one person's counterintuitive was another person's most logical way to deal. If Steve had been in there jerking off to try to get the metaphorical bad taste out of his mouth, that was his goddamn business and the best thing Sam could do was try and give him a gracious way out to finish the job.
But Steve shook his head. “Nah, let's get cracking.”
All through the initial stages of the planning, Steve was fidgety and distracted. Too quiet, too, except when he was talking about Bucky Barnes. Even then, he went in stops and starts, letting loose floods of information only to pull back and start dancing around the details of how he knew things. “He was kept in cryo between missions, it's why he hasn't aged. They said he was given some version of the serum. Zola experimented on him during the war, that must've been what he was researching. Must've helped Bucky survive the fall.”
“And they just... told you all this?” said Fury dubiously.
“Why would they have been lying? They thought I was about to die. Why bother?”
“Why bother telling you?”
Steve clammed up.
It was Natasha who eventually said, “They were gloating. Weren't they.”
“Yeah,” Steve muttered.
“Okay. The details you've given us—the cryo, the serum—were they what was supposed to bother you? Could they have been made up to get under your skin?”
“No.” Steve took a deep breath and shifted uncomfortably in his seat. “One of the... stories could have been a lie. I hope it was. But those things were just incidental details. Rumlow would have no reason to make them up.”
Natasha glanced sidelong at Fury. “If it were my interrogation, I'd take it.”
Not long after, they took a break for more coffee, since Steve was knocking it back at such an inhuman rate that there wasn't much left for anyone else. He looked like he could use a break and some fresh air, anyway. Sam didn't think it was particularly stifling inside, not enough for him to be sweating and tugging at his shirt collar like Steve was, but he'd already noticed that the safe house's resemblance to a bunker was putting him on edge. And he'd only spent half an hour, tops, getting in and out of that Hydra hellhole. He and Steve fell into step side by side and by unspoken agreement headed out to the causeway.
“You want me to see if Fury's got any camomile tea stashed away somewhere? Maybe some hot chocolate?” said Sam once they were out in the breeze. He nodded to the mug in Steve's hand, half-full of the burnt dregs from the bottom of the last pot of coffee. “You look pretty wired. I'm pretty wired, and I haven't even been trying to keep up with you.”
One of the corners of Steve's mouth quirked up in a half-smile. “This stuff's better comfort food than hot chocolate. It's almost as bad as Army coffee.” They both laughed at that, and Steve added, “Anyway, that's one of the side effects of the serum. Can't get drunk, can't get wired.”
“You are drugged, though, aren't you?” said a voice behind them. They turned around and saw Natasha leaning back against the closed door, her arms crossed.
Steve said nothing, so Natasha continued, “I don't know any interrogation drugs offhand that would get around the serum protection, but you've been showing symptoms ever since we got you out. Sweating, flushing, restlessness. Dilated pupils. And I've seen you run five miles without getting that out of breath. What did they give you, some kind of hallucinogen?”
“Why would they give me interrogation drugs?” Steve said, glaring at the ground. “It wasn't an interrogation.” He stretched his cramped posture out a little and leaned back against the causeway railing.
Sam didn't realize that was supposed to be an answer until he looked at him, really looked, and saw his silhouette from the side. With his legs uncrossed it was painfully obvious that he was still erect.
“Aphrodisiac,” Natasha said grimly, and Steve nodded.