[ Steve knows that Helmut Zemo isn't a liar - even in their broken goodbye, he'd been honest, hadn't he? They loved one another, but the pull of duty had been too strong, the questions of the future too big, even though theirs had been planned together - simple and lovely and God if he doesn't dream about it some nights. If his sleepy, war-torn mind doesn't fashion what they could have had from dirt and debris, turning shellfire into fireworks, downpours into starry nights, balmy days into a beachy day spent lakeside.
Dreams. Nightmares. Everything blends together into one perfect, sleep-deprived storm. ]
I spoke to so many people.
[ Pleaded, really, but he needn't go that far. The footmen, the ladies, the whatever-servants they might be, the message had died on his lips the moment he spoke it. Mom's dying. You should come. She'd love to see you. What he'd wanted to say was that he, of all people, needed him. That even now, in the rain, Steve feels like he's a man sinking slowly, quicksand slowly eking him out of existence, having started the moment that dorm room shut behind him. ]
I believe you. She knows. She knew.
[ Partially. With all that money, all that power, Zemo hadn't made an effort to see her, to reach out to her before that, had he? The woman who wrapped him up in her love even when Steve's heart felt like it died on the tiled, sticky hall tiles. He knew she sent gifts, sent letters, all returned with an angry red stamp weeks later: Not Deliverable. Return to Sender.
He opens his mouth to speak again, his face a pinched, frustrated thing, when the arm hooks round his back, drags him down. His body, heavy and chilled, doesn't react at first, standing awkwardly in the embrace, as though muscle memory has gone away after years of disuse. It hurts, having him here. It rips open an old wound chock full of scar tissue (one that never really healed) and sets it delicately beside the hole where his heart bleeds from, where the name Sarah Rogers courses through his veins in an agonized wail that has yet to be freed.
His head dips, presses into his shoulder, against the slope of a neck he used to kiss, and his arms remember their stuttering reach, creaking their way around the man's thin frame, drawing him tight as though a buoy in the torrent. He thinks he'll hug him then be done with it, create space where it had been made nearly a decade ago, but his joints lock up, his shoulders shake, his breath comes up hitched in his throat.
The rain feels like roaring white noise in his ears, and it's probably for the best because he can't hear the agonized sob that claws its way free as those familiar, dangerous fingers slide into the hair at his nape.
Why are you here? You're just making it worse. Why didn't you come sooner? She needed you. I needed you.
I need you.
A shuddering breath, words left unspoken, but he gives a watery huff at the comment, the breath so warm against his ear. Steve doesn't move, fingers digging into the small of Zemo's back and the fine, bespoke fabric, the smell and feel of him safe enough for now.
For now. ]
She'd have scolded me for not dancing in it.
[ How can he, when his feet are cast from lead, when his whole body has rusted through, eaten away by the tricksy lurch of oxidation, by the years he's been only a hollowed tin man. A soldier with a gentle man tucked away inside, hiding beneath his ribs, away from the light for so long, that he’s all but forgotten his name. ]
[for a few agonizing moments he thinks steve won't return the embrace - that he's so angry, that despite his words he doesn't really believe that zemo is telling the truth. that maybe he'll push him away and ask him to just turn around leave, because being here now won't bring her back. it doesn't mean anything, and maybe he's made things worse by his half-presence. it lances through his very heart with the same intense pain it had eight years ago knowing that it's not entirely wrong, and would be completely justified if true. steve had been willing to give him the world - promised him everything to his name and zemo had walked out on it all the same like it wasn't the most precious, priceless gift he'd ever been offered. like he doesn't run through the what-ifs on a daily basis, fantasizing about the life that could have had together.
he's in the dark about the attempts to reach him. and while this is the first bit of illumination shed that perhaps something is amiss at his household, it can't be his focus now. the one singular thing on his mind is steve and what will bring him the most comfort, empty as it may be in lieu of the gaping whole sarah rogers has surely left behind. there's a piece of himself that feels like it's forever lost, and that was from less than two years of her affection. he can't imagine thirty of them, ceased in the blink of an eye. sometimes it felt like they were their own little world - those weekends and that glorious summer shared with just sarah and steve, the stuff of hollywood stories fascinated with the evolution from boys into men with the guiding light of one strong, irreplaceable influence. he'd never felt so carefree - so invincible and free to cherish the love he craved and the freedom outside of the stifling walls of his family's castle.
did she go peacefully? was it in her sleep? how long? did she ask to see me?
it's a small smattering of the dozens of thoughts that bombard him all at once, and steve feels as much like an anchor in his grief as he's trying to offer in return. the tension finally bleeds out and he feels steve all but melt against him, arms wrapping with a painful familiarity right in the same spot they always rested when he'd do this out of fondness and a need not to be apart than out of the necessity of needing something to cling to from the open, jagged edges of mourning wounds. he's not so arrogant to think he's still part of that - not in a million years. it's a double-edged sword of wanting steve to have something (someone) to look forward to as much as he doesn't know he could bear the idea of man fully moving on and letting their love be a worn, faded piece of the past.
the sob that wracks against him is so gutwrenching it brings the tears he's been keeping at bay springing to the corners of his eyes, letting them slip shut as he murmurs out a soft shhhh, it's alright, i'm here against his skin and holds him as tightly as one arm can allow. his fingers flex, slipping up into the wet, short hair at the back of his neck as they adjust and do their best to soothe what he already knows can only scratch the surface of comfort. nothing short of resurrection will make steve's life feel the same ever again, and there's no such thing as miracles - no matter how hard he's wished for them over the years himself.
he doesn't pull back either, arm staining from how tightly it's clinging around him. it strikes him so clearly that he doesn't want to let go - he can't, because he's not sure he'll ever have the chance to hold him like this again. which is exactly what he thought when that door closed on him in the dorm, and now...
he lets out a small, breathy noise of amusement to mask his own emotions in the moment. this is about steve, not his own shortcomings and the fact that he wasn't here, didn't know - ]
Well, it's not too late to do so.
[he almost teases he knows his way around a waltz, or that he remembers them swaying absently to old, staticy records wafting through that cabin. but what good will it do besides hurt them both? he's not so cruel to be dismissive of the notion. it feels very much like he's standing on eggshells, trying to balance the love he's lost and still holds under his skin and what he needs to reconcile and repurpose as...a friend? no, that would require a consistent presence he hasn't had since university. an...acquaintance, then. a deep, distant acquaintance. fuck, it hurts just to think it.]
As I recall...you don't exactly have two left feet.
[ Steve loses himself to the tears for a few seconds longer than he expects, pressing into the easy warmth of a body his own still knows. How his fingers know exactly where to press, where the slope of a waist is, where the bend of a throat or where the prickle of a bear starts long before its owner lets it grow out. His body knows this man, knows how to move with and around it.
He shouldn't be holding him, shouldn't be entertaining him, shouldn't be willing to let him in when he shut that door eight years ago. But there's the rain, the memory of his mother tucked in a chapel with beautiful stained glass windows, and he can already hear her voice in the back of his head that begs him to give him a chance.
What is there to lose? Steve's heart dissolved out of his chest years ago, fading to some protective little cage of sinew and bone, and with Sarah gone? Steve breathes heavily into his shoulder, catching his breath, the air hitching shakily with each inhale.
Well it's not too late to do so.
There would be no greater delight in anything than there would be in hitting Helmut Zemo now, for how charming he still is, for how he needles his way in between kevlar and iron, finding the scraps of a man called Steven Rogers and pressing them into the light. ]
We'd have to lose the umbrella. Your suit would be ruined.
[ Trivial, distant, spoken against the very suit, cheek pressed into his neck, which only takes a tilt for it to be his nose pressed to warm skin above the starched collar line. Everything in him tells him to leave, to run to the swampy, muddy burial site and sit there in the rain until it clears, until someone tells him its time to put the delicate, pearly box into the ground. A small, foolish part of him thinks he'll walk back into his apartment or into their family home (full now to the brim with medical equipment and hospice beds) and she'll be there, cooking and singing along to Carly Simon on the radio.
She won't be. He knows that. But having Zemo here, folding himself into the man's chest, makes him think of days when the three of them had been invincible, untouchable. It makes new tears burn into his eyes. Sarah Rogers would not turn down the invitation to a dance, would she? He draws himself away with a sigh, wipes at his teary eyes and with a watery sort of smile, offers his hand. It doesn't reach his eyes, the light of that little smile, but the sorrow behind his blue eyes swallows up everything save for the tiniest hint of fondness. A yearning sort of sorrow that comes from love and not rage. ]
Seems only right to give her a party on the way out. I'm out of practice.
[ I miss her, I miss her, I miss her. I miss you. ]
[it's selfish the way his first instinct is to want to pull him in tighter for a longer embrace, to try and stretch this one moment out into something that could fill the gap he's had for the last eight years. the truth is, it'll never be enough. and if he doesn't stop now then what? then maybe he never will, and seeing as he has to get right back on a plane to sokovia after the service whenever the skies have finally ceased shedding tears of their own for sarah rogers - it's not fair. a part of him has the deeper sense that steve is simply too grief-stricken right now, and it's that outweighing any resentment, disbelief, or anger at the audacity for him to turn up now after he'd walked out of their lives all too resolutely that afternoon. now it's too late to go back; there's nothing he'll ever be able to do to make up for it. and that's something he'll have to live with every day for the rest of his life.
but he does let himself settle back down onto his heels, reluctantly shifting his arm down from his shoulders even if he doesn't do the entirely decent thing and pull out of steve's space completely. in fact, he lets his hand drag around the curve of his shoulder, palm resting flat against the dampness where his decorated lapel is. it only just now registers what all of that symbolizes - what it must mean for his career the last several years. it strikes him so viscerally, painfully in that moment that there's so much he doesn't know and does have the right to ask about now.
his head tips up to meet the glassy look in steve's eyes, still as beautiful and piercing and blue as he remembers - lashes dark and clumped together from drops of rain and looking unfairly good despite that. it's a bad habit zemo had back then, and apparently still has now when the line of his sight drops to the pretty plush pink of wet lips, trying not to think about what they'd feel like pressed against the skin he'd nosed at moments before like old times. he forces himself to tear it back up to take in his wavering smile, the glimpse of something achingly familiar that makes him remember so vividly what it had been like to be the center of this man's world once upon a time.
steve extends a hand. an olive branch, nearly. he looks down at it, swallowing a lump in his throat before looking back up again with a barely masked sliver of surprise in his own expression.]
Ah, I don't give a damn about the suit.
[maybe back when had more arrogance and the need to tease would outweigh the need to admit his deep feelings, he would have haughtily said something like as if i can't afford a dozen more. but admitting that now feels like rubbing salt in the wound that boils down to zemo's inability to walk away from a foundation built on obscene wealth, even if it was never about the money. stability - he told himself, duty, obligation, legacy. but money, that diry, insidious thing felt like something to grease the wheels with all the same.
he tosses the umbrella aside, letting it thwack against the cement and land somewhere upside down, collecting water from the inside out. it's frigid as it pours over him, easily tugging strands loose from his carefully coiffed hair and drenching the fabric of his white shirt nearly translucent under the heavier sink of wool along his shoulders. he squints, trying to keep majority of it from his eyes and lets his hand slip into steve's easily as he leans in to murmur gently.]
Come, it'll be like riding a bike.
[if only the rest of it was so simple,, he thinks with a bittersweet clench in his chest that prompts a fleeting quirk of his lips. his now free hand slips up to steve's other shoulder as he steps in not quite flush, but enough that they can either sway lightly or try to gingerly slip into the steps of an easy one, two, three.]
[ That hand sits warmly in his and the eight years feels like it disappears for a brief moment. It drags him into the past, where fingers twined with his in a damp, dark club, or in a movie theater, or in shared moments in a thin dorm room bed. He shouldn't be doing this. He shouldn't entertain the many ghosts standing before him, but something in the rain (the grief) makes his logic go sideways, makes it all skew funny and he finds himself holding the man's hand again as he steps in.
The surprise doesn't leave his face when the umbrella is left for naught, because a Zemo of the past might have made a fussy comment about the expensiveness of his suit, or insisted maybe Steve hold the umbrella, and so on, and yet seeing him in the rain like this, raw and open and willing makes that terrible wound in his chest burst back open.
Eight years. Eight long years and Helmut Zemo waltzes in on rain clouds and plucks the very air out his chest somehow in a way that other guests haven't been able to reach, haven't been able to tap into for all their efforts. The distance between them feels wrong, the space where rain divides them, and he doesn't know why but his free arm reaches around the slender dip of his waist and pulls him in close, letting his chin rest upon rain-kissed locks, knocked loose from their pristine coif.
Selfish, to take this. To soak up the warmth of him like he'd never left, but it does something small to ease the screaming despair waiting to crawl out of his throat. It slows the tears, calms the beat of his heart. No easy one, two, threes, but a simple, close sway, the tilt of his head to rest his cheek on his hair, and he can almost hear the crackle of an old record playing in a dimly lit dorm room. ]
I was thinking Glenn Miller, maybe. The one Ma liked so well. Moonlight Serenade?
[ Stay, the old, scared boy from senior year wants to say. Choose me. Please, Stay. The words die at the back of his throat regardless and he sucks in a shaking breath, the tears still slipping hot down his cheeks as he sways easily in the rain, the hiss of it hitting the pavement the only sound. The sorrow of his mother's death will fix nothing, it will only make regrets and stack them carefully atop all the others.
Steve's eyes slip closed for a few long moments, his breathing coming in little hitches still, until finally he speaks again, his voice quiet: ]
I didn't think you'd come. [ A beat. ] I'm glad you're here.
[ I've missed you. ]
Not many people knew her like you did. It helps. [ The grief, the pain. He and Zemo surely share one in the same sorrow right now, but he doesn't say as much. ]
[it's a very dangerous thing, the realization that no matter how many years have passed all it takes is one moment in front of steve rogers to feel like the fissure that had split right between his heart at walking away and built the foundation of his new life on top of is ready to crumble all over again. that maybe now that he's here he could just stay, pick up the pieces of that life they had planned with one another and try to put it back together. maybe the edges would have a bit more friction from disuse, but he knows they'd slot right in if he was the one giving the indication. steve wasn't the one who closed the door and gave up on them (because, no matter how much sarah had tried to soothe him at the end that it wasn't giving up, that was so acutely what it felt like). hope breeds eternal misery, his father had said to him once, and at the time he simply hadn't understood it. what a wretched way to live life without hope and purpose - and yet, now more than ever he realizes it's painfully true.
what good does the hope springing up in his breast that he could simply walk away from his life in sokovia and stay here with the only man he's ever loved really do when he knows in two days time he'll be stepping back on a plane to sokovia, back to the wedding plans and slipping a ring onto his finger that may as well be a shackle? steve is a man whose memories are still one wrong glance at a head of tall blonde hair away from spilling through the surface he's tried so resolutely to carefully craft and keep at bay. sometimes when he's alone late at night in the rooms separate from nikoleta he's been insistent upon, he can suspend himself in moments plucked from the past and pretend he can still feel the sensation of steve's palms flexing along his shoulders, his waist - feel the brush of lips ghosting in a content smile when they would lie twined together every night in their shared dorm senior year.
it's selfish of him to fall so easily into the old patterns. his body feels as if it never left the safe space between steve's strong embrace and the little place to tuck his chin between shoulder and neck. the weight of steve's jaw pressing atop his head is familiar too, only he knows now there's no chance he'll dip further and steal a kiss even if his chest aches for it anyway. zemo lets his own hands press firm against the rain-sodden navy fabric that nearly looks black from the amount of water it's absorbed. they slide up his lapel to drape around his neck, gripping lightly at the base of it so he doesn't something foolish like lift his chin to cup his cheek instead.
if he listens closely, he can pretend he hear that specific song too. he lets it drown out the sound of the rain and steve's tear-stained, trembling breaths. he can pretend they're young with nothing to lose but time with one another.]
Of course I came.
[a reverent murmur as his arms tighten, lightly swaying and following steve's lead. it's cold, numbing down to his bones, but it barely registers.]
I would have wanted to say goodbye to her, properly. She was -
[more of a mother than my own, even if it was just two years. there's a lump in his throat that keeps it from coming out and really letting the memories spill out onto the pavement and pooling into puddles with the rain.]
She was one-of-a-kind, Sarah Rogers.
[his own eyes shut, and if the water running down the side of his face against steve's lapel includes a few tears of his own, it doesn't matter now. one hand shifts from the back of his neck to splay along the side of it, stopping short of where he'd really like to hold him even if it's already far too intimate.]
The least I can do is pay my respects now. And... [another pause, this one longer until he barely whispers out what he's known since oeznik put the paper in his hands.] I needed to be here. For you.
[ A man out of time. From the moment that dorm room door shut, to the moment Sarah Rogers took her last breath, Steve has felt like he's been racing the clock, with no idea what waits him at the finish line. Idly, he wonders if this is it. If this rain-sodden dance is all he had to look forward to, if his loneliness would both start and end with Helmut Zemo.
It seems fitting, that the hole in his chest should never heal, that his lungs might echo and squeeze around the name he desperately wanted to say, wanted to promise his mother was on his way, was coming, that he'd be there soon. And he is here, now, though it's late. Maybe the rain is Sarah's way of beckoning this moment, he doesn't know, but all he can feel is the press of hands along his lapels, his neck, the perfect fit of a jaw against his shoulder.
It isn't fair. ]
I told her. For you.
[ Quiet, something to be missed among the hiss of the rain and the rumble of distant thunder. ] I told her you had come while she slept. That you sang her to sleep with that lullaby you taught her. It made her very happy.
[ Steve Rogers, incapable of lying, sounds as honest and open and real as he can despite the desperate sorrow he feels hollowing out his chest. There's nothing else for the world to eat at. His heart gone, his lungs empty, only ghosts and dust whispering between his ribs and making up a man known as Steve Rogers, the soldier. There is no son here, no lover. He doesn't know where those men have gone.
But Zemo's speaking still and for a moment, when that warm palm slides to his neck, when that lilting accent forms the word you, the roaring fury in his gut wants to scream don't. Don't open that door, don't walk in like eight years haven't gone by and left him empty, don't make him admit to the love he feels swelling full and deep in the shadows of his mind.
Instead, he tucks his head closer, cheek to the man's temple, nose pressing at the cold, damp hair there, at the smattering of precious, perfect marks that once upon a time he might have counted with his lips. The nearness keeps him together, breaths some warmth and clears some of the dust, and he's sure he can hear Sarah Rogers somewhere, distant and far, telling him to just try. ]
I needed you here. [ Another shift, his forehead bumping inelegantly against Zemo's, their noses bumping with the slide of the wet and rain. ] I can't do this by myself. I'm trying. [ He chokes, breath hitching again but he brings it under control again, careful, measured. When he speaks again, his voice turns vulnerable and soft, a stricken whisper such a far cry from the fiery, passionate, vibrant man Zemo knew. But he's nothing now, here int he rain, in the cold, and there's nothing waiting ahead for him he knows.
There will be no little house with dinner waiting, no bright laugh or warm smiles, no hand in his or kisses at his cheeks, no love to whisper in the middle of the night between cheap, college sheets. None of that. Not anymore. ]
[there's a quiet, wounded noise that curls in the back of his throat he can't suppress when he thinks about the knowledge that sarah was waiting for him. his fingers tremble in an uneven flex against steve's skin, and this time it's more tears than rain dripping down the sides of his eyes at the knowledge that he never got the chance to say goodbye. the only parental figure who expected nothing of him and accepted him at face value is gone - a deeply formative experience he never would have been afforded if he'd stayed in sokovia or gone back after that first year. he'd thought of her over the years, replicating her firm but fair voice and recalling her mannerisms when he needed advice and knew picking up the phone or opening the door to that past life was out of the question.
what would sarah rogers say?
it had gotten him through so many crucial moments long after he'd left america, and he'd foolishly held onto the hope that maybe someday he'd have the courage to speak to her again. to write her letters, to thank her for the impact she'd left in his life so long after his departure. and now he'll never have the chance - taken from him, whether by a cruel twist of fate or the greater machinations of someone on his or his fiancée's staff. and he knows fury will settle in after the shock that it's happened and the sorrow for steve's and his own loss, but right now he can only handle one at a time. he doesn't speak right away, afraid his voice won't be able to handle what he wants to say without cracking or completely breaking down on steve. he's supposed to be here in support, not to drag his own baggage into the light.]
I would have been by her side. Held her hand, sang it exactly like you said. There's so much I needed to say.
[he'll never forgive himself for not having had the chance to, but it doesn't seem right to tell steve as much in this moment. he won't add another burden to him, to prompt him to - what, offer him pity for it? steve has every right to ask him to leave, to tell him he's too late. and there's something hollow in the man he's holding in the moment, but even when he has nothing left somehow that inherent goodness finds a way to shine through. one of the things he'd loved - still loves most about him. but the change in him is nearly equal in the way it draws a tight ache in his chest and makes him wonder what he's seen out on the battlefields in war - where life has taken him now that some of that light has been burned out of him. if he hadn't left, would it still be there?
zemo feels him move impossibly nearer and does nothing to deter it - encourages it even as his own face shifts near enough that when their foreheads press and their noses just barely nudge against the other their lips are close enough to share the same breath. it lacks the passion or the thrill of wondering if they'll brush - it's not about a kiss he doesn't have the right to steal, it's about being as close as he physically and mentally can for a man he can't watch break apart under the crushing strain of grief and loneliness. just hearing it in his voice is a devastating blow, and if zemo is the last thing he has to cling to, he'll give it to him. and maybe he shouldn't if he's just going to turn around and leave...but how can he walk away now that he's here?]
I'm here, Steve. This part - you don't have to do alone.
[his wet palm presses against the droplets of rain and tears clinging along the side of his face, holding it lightly as he looks up to meet his gaze. he pushes up onto his toes, tipping his head back to press a soft kiss to his cheek.]
Let me drive you back. It's not stopping anytime soon, and you'll - [catch your death, as sarah used to say, but he can't bring himself to utter it under the circumstances.] You need to get dry and warm.
[ Sarah rarely mentioned Zemo when she spoke to Steve, but occasionally he would come up after the first year of hurt had passed. The man's name built a callus on his heart, because he understood the leaving, but it didn't change the hurt of it. But Sarah spoke his name with the reverent love of a worried mother, and a tiny part of Steve hated Zemo for that. Hated that his Sokovian barbs could somehow reach the very light that is Sarah Rogers. She never did anything in half measures, though, did she?
Again Steve finds a hint of anger bubbling up in the back of his throat, acrid and hot, though it never leaves his tongue. Why didn't you come? Where were you? Why didn't you just call her? ]
She knew. Whatever it is you wanted to say, she knew.
[ She had a way about her, that woman. Knowing eyes and a knowing smile, her laugh lines deep and full. Thinking about her feels like a scraped knee, dragged over broken asphalt, stinging and bleeding and raw, the open air more enemy than friend. He blows out another sigh, aware of how close they are and how he feels the need to sink closer, to pull him in until no air remains, but he doesn't.
Helmut Zemo is as fleeting as the rain. Come morning, the skies might clear and blue up, the sun will yawn wide, and the man himself will dissolve as though a mirage built by the storm. Steve knows. Nothing he loves can stay, nothing he loves is permanent, and he carries that across his shoulders into every battle, into every skirmish.
The kiss to his cheek almost breaks him, another quiet sob swelling in his throat, catching and coming out sounding more strangled and agonized than weepy. What had it felt like, years ago, when those lips touched his own? When they danced like this and stole butterfly kisses on a balmy dock? His lips are warm against his cheek now, and Steve nods, resigned, almost defeated. Agreeing to leave means letting him go, means unwinding his arms from that slender waist, means creating distance again when, for the first time in nearly a decade, there isn't. ]
I'll catch my death, I know. [ How many times had Sarah said that as she fussed and wrapped him up tight in a scarf, a sweater, a rain coat. How many times had she wagged a finger at Zemo and told him to make sure Steve kept warm?
Missing Sarah Rogers will never end. ]
Your suit's wet. Drying rack at my place, so it doesn't shrink. I can make coffee.
[ An invite, of sorts. A withered olive branch wrapped up in selfish ivy; he doesn't want to be alone right now, and the idea of saying goodbye to him here in the rain feels like an impossible task.
He'll come around, Stevie. It's a mother's intuition. We just know these things. For a few seconds, brief and careful, he tilts his head, letting his lips find the man's temple, brushing soft against the cold, damp skin, before letting him go. ]
[a whisper so soft it may not even register from where his lips are still pressed against steve's cheek. he knows this moment is ultimately as fleeting as the rain around them, and yet it feels as visceral as the wetness sinking bone-deep in its chill. a part of him thinks maybe if they stay here under the pouring skies and locked in this embrace, maybe they can stay suspended in a world where it's just the two of them. sarah is gone, but he's here with steve and it's just like old times - them against the rest of the world. no outside influences, nothing else but the two of them wrapped up in each other like one beating heart. his fingers tremble against steve's cheek, clinging to the last semblance of what he's allowed in this moment.
they only still when he feels his kiss reciprocated against the wetness of his temple, something he leans into despite himself. there's another soft squeeze of the one arm still wrapped around steve's shoulders, and then he too reluctantly lets them both drop. he bends down to pick up his umbrella and shake it out, knowing it was foolish to have let it get soaked as he dumps out the amount of rain accumulated and undoes it to hang wetly. he'll have the car ride to figure out what to say, to quietly share more memories no matter how much it hurts, and then maybe -
his gaze lifts up sharply, meeting steve's gaze once more and letting the way he's been invited in even though he knows full well he doesn't deserve it seep into his face. it smooths out quickly, one small vulnerability he'd only allow to the man standing before him drenched and handsome as ever from where he stands. despite himself, his lips stretch into a thin and tight smile as he pushes back up onto his feet as beckons for him to follow where a sleek, black car is parked a few feet ahead by the curb.]
Okay.
[he motions for his driver to stay inside, holding open the back door for steve and gesturing for him to slide inside first. and once he does, zemo uses the open door as leverage to lean inside, not moving to shut it and go around onto the other side yet.]
One condition - I'll make the coffee.
[only then does he push it shut, coming around the other side to slide in next to him. he pulls on his seatbelt, ignoring the way the chill seeps in now that they're somewhere dry, and turns back to his guest. he shouldn't do it, but one hand reaches down where steve's is in the space between them to rest lightly over it.]
Let me take care of you, Steve, please.
[while i still can, hangs unsaid, too painful to have to spell out.]
[ The rain brings with it a chill he only begins to feel as he parts from Zemo, the heat of the man's body against his own dissolving into the damp of his coat. He feels the loss deeply, stinging in that old wound that won't close, despite his best efforts. He half expects the man to turn him down, to tuck himself away in his expensive car and return to an expensive hotel, having done his duty here. But he sees the surprise in the man's expression, mirrored in his own, and for the briefest moment, Steve releases a breath he hadn't realized he'd been holding.
The rain seems to fall harder, ushering them both toward the sleek car, and Steve dips into the back seat, wincing at the way the damp of his uniform slides against the leather seats. He half expects the door to shut, but he glances up as the man leans in, and Steve's caught up in the look of him leaned there, hair wild from the rain, cheeks pinked from the flush of cold, and he's sure he can see the youthful man Helmut Zemo used to be, bright eyed and coyly leaning into the doorway of a dorm. ]
Coffee's on you. Got it.
[ The quiet of the car unsettles him, the rain tap-tap-tapping an unsteady rhythm overhead. The burial will wait for a sunnier day, where Sarah Rogers can be put to rest surrounded by warmth and family. He sighs, letting his head fall back against the seat, his eyes slipping shut as he half expects Zemo to climb in silently, for the space between them to feel utterly expansive all over again, even if he can feel the lips and fingers burning hot against his cheek from earlier.
It's the fingers around his own that draw him out of his reverie and he turns, eyes opening slowly to peer at the man across from him. He squeezes his hand, glancing down at it once. He must look a mess, he realizes, soaked through and run ragged from worry and weeks of poor sleep. He turns his hand against Zemo's, letting their palms rest together, and he considers his words, considers the offer.
While I still can certainly lingers unsaid in a way that stings, sharp and painful deep in his chest. He lets out a slow, watery breath, and swallows thickly. He should say no, he should turn him down and climb out of this car while he still can. While he can still walk away with the shattered remains of his heart still intact.
His fingers carefully slide between Zemo's, curling in against his palm and he finally nods, his expression pinching into something sorrowful, painful, like he's utterly lost within the confines of his own skin, his own body. ]
Okay.
[ Quiet, almost a whisper, and he nods his head ever so slightly, letting it hang low, damp hair falling and sticking against his forehead, shielding the way his eyes burn all over again. ] Okay.
[he should keep the distance in the car, not let himself be drawn into his selfish want for closeness. that magnetism between them - the one that made him completely incapable of being pulled into steve's orbit even when he tried so hard to resist - is something he shouldn't be surprised has stayed the same over the last eight years. zemo is anything but a naïve man, and yet he somehow hadn't anticipated the intensity now that he's back here. a foolish oversight, an inevitable losing battle against his heart that even time can't take away from him. the need for excuses is apparently still alive and well - because the first thing he does is cycle through why he's doing this, coming up with the answer that he's moving in close to steve once more to maintain some semblance of warmth between them.
reaching for his hand is a simple comfort. a gentle reassurance that for now he is still here and he's not going anywhere else for the time being. but he doesn't protest or pull it away when steve flips his palm, and the truth of the matter is steve isn't quite the one that initiates lacing their fingers together. his own move well before he has the presence of mind to stop himself, finding he can't deny steve anything right now when the grief has so viscerally hollowed him out. or maybe it's just taken what was left from him, scraping it off the edges from a hole that had already been there and steadily emptying over the past eight years. it's not arrogance or a desire to want to be the source of his pain, and he can't pretend to know what steve has been through at all after his absence. but - there's a part of him that has the intuition that it hasn't been easy, and losing sarah is one of the last fixtures he had in an already tightknit circle.
it's why he presses his arm against steve's, the shift of wet sleeves getting in the way of the warmth he knows lies beneath. he can't resist squeezing his hand again and turning to face him directly when he knows he should stare straight ahead and stay quiet until they get there. but having him so close - seeing the way his head hangs and the pain is so raw the way it's etched into his stupidly handsome features - it makes that tightness in zemo's chest clench painfully. and maybe it's because he'd do anything to see it lessened that he reaches up again, hand cupping his cheek once more in a movement that's far too much an overstep, and uses it to gently turn his face once more to meet his gaze. his eyes shift across the droplets of rain clinging to his lashes, the wetness on his lips and all the way back up to the loose strands of hair stuck against his forehead.]
Okay.
[he repeats it unnecessarily, softly like he's trying to convince himself that this is all he's coming back for. dry clothes, coffee, maybe finding out the last time he ate something and cooking for him like he used to. he should let go, move back in his seat and play the role of an old friend rather than an ex-lover who could only fulfill one half of the moniker. he knows realistically they haven't been in the car for long, that whatever scenery is passing them by outside seems like it's moving quickly along a main thoroughfare, and yet it feels like all time slows down to just the two of them in this moment.]
Steve, I -
[his gaze drops and a slow, shuddering breath slips from between his lips as he tamps down on whatever reckless desire is seizing him in the moment and wanting to push forward and do something even more selfish than a kiss to the cheek, something that will open a door he shouldn't if it's only going to cause steve more pain.]
I've missed you more than anything. I only wish we were not reunited under such circumstances.
[ Being out of the elements only reinforces the fact that he's soaked through, the chill finally beginning to set into his skin, his bones, mingling with the wear of exhaustion. He feels like he's been hit by a bus, what with the way his chest feels tight, his heart aches, his head feels full to bursting with grief. Fingers twin with his though and his eyes flit down to his lap, to the space between them where their hands sit.
Once upon a time they sat in the back of his mother's station wagon like this, letting it rumble down the road and rock them to and fro while they whispered against one another's ears, laughed against shoulders, sang loudly to reach the front seat where Sarah sat. His eyes fill and a few fat tears slide down his cheek, masked only by the drips and trails of water from the rain, from his hair.
He hardly expects the palm against his cheek and he swivels to look at Zemo dumbly, tired eyes widened in surprise. Muscle memory drives him to lean his cheek into the touch, to soak up the warmth those chilled fingers offer. It's comfort, it's familiarity, and it feels so much like homecoming that he almost wants to cry over that, too. It isn't fair.
Stop, he wants to say. Don't. There are a thousand things that Steve can carry, that he can bear up on his shoulders and heave with him through the day. He carries those heavy things into his dreams, where he spins tales of futures he never had, trips they never took, plans they never made. And to face all of that while also knowing that Sarah Rogers' light has guttered out?
He can't. He just can't. And yet his free hand raises to touch the back of Zemo's, pressing it softly against his cheek, cradling it nearer as if it soak up the little warmth it offers. It's such a human gesture, the touch, reminding him that he is flesh and blood, not metal and motors, not some tin soldier waiting to march back to war. It undoes something in him, makes his shoulders round, makes the air leave his lungs in a harsh, agonized little sound. Like he wants to scream but he's choked on it instead, like he's reeled it in at the last moment. ]
I... [ What does he say? What words are right here? He can't make sense of it as the car bumbles along, rumbling to a stop at a red light. He can hear the music up front, blocked off by a privacy screen, but it's something classical. Bach, maybe. Rachmaninoff. It's hard to say. ]
I've missed you, too. I... I'm glad you came. [ A sigh and he looks down where their linked fingers lay between them. ] I don't think I want to be alone right now.
[ Shouldn't be, even though that's what everyone seems to think he needs. What they've prescribed him for his hidden grief. They don't see that the sorrow, the pain, is not neatly boxed in, tied up prettily in satin bowls and ribbons. It's a wild, furious thing instead, bustling behind his ribs and lying in wait. For the moment that grief can become a tangible, physical thing made up of sound and tears and the rush of air. It feels like he might suffocate on it one day. ]
It shouldn't have been her. [ ... It should have been me. ]
[once upon a time he would have lived for the moments he could catch steve off-guard - the surprise in his eyes when he'd nudge up against him carefully hidden from view in a few stolen, public moments. the flush high on his cheeks when zemo would murmur something under his breath that was exceptionally laden with innuendo or outright raunchy depending on their surroundings. and of course - the soft kisses unexpectedly pressed to steve's jawline or behind his ear when they were finally alone and he could show his affections more openly in their dorm room or the lake house. part of him wishes he could replicate at least one of them now, distract him somehow from the all-consuming pain and the tears that are still falling openly down his cheeks. he can feel it against his palm, the way they aren't chilled from the cool air and removal from the elements outside.
he'd know the hand that covers his own from memory muscle alone, only he can feel more rough spots along his fingertips that have grown over the years. he can picture the same fingers that used to caress along his bare back so tenderly having the same skill and purpose cradling a gun, maneuvering around an enemy's pressure points in the midst of sand and grit and the horrors of war. thinking about steve out there alone makes his heart seize, the visceral fear that ay any point these last years it might be him laid out in a beautiful oak box in his navy blues and decorated lapels. the thought makes his throat swell, thin lips pressing into an even tighter line and eyes slipping shut briefly to try and wipe the image from his mind.
it's hard enough to have lost sarah - what happens if he loses steve someday? all the time he's wasted living a life that's always felt like an ill-fitted suit, no matter how much tailoring it's subjected to it simply never fits like a second skin. never feels right.
he can't go down this road. he shouldn't, but it's hard not to when everything in him is screaming to stay. at least he has this evening to be here, though he would never think to imagine it can begin to come close to making up for the way he left. but if he can help alleviate even one small bit of steve's pain today, he'd give it up in blood, sweat, and tears if he could, but apparently all that's needed is his presence in the end. the car stills at a light, zemo starting to vaguely recognize their surroundings despite the modernization of the signage on america's greatest hits in fast food and retail stores. steve has a good ear, it's rachmaninoff - the meandering middle of piano concerto number two. it barely registers over the rush of is emotions roaring in his ears, the way it hits him as though physical when steve admits he's missed him too. it's not that he's surprised. he simply knows he doesn't deserve to hear it reciprocated.
but much in the way steve can read behind the lines in what zemo's leaving unspoken - so too can he. it pinches his features, has him sliding in closer than he should and letting their legs nudge together across the wet upholstery of the seat.]
There is never an easy time to lose someone you love, especially not family. It should not have been her, no.
[zemo swallows thickly, looking up at steve with a desperation for him to understand. it shouldn't be you, either. not you, not ever.]
She would have wanted it this way though, and she would want to see you happy again. She's left so much of herself in the lives she touched - just think what she would say to see us together like this. I can nearly hear it.
[like old times. he lets out a shaking laugh to conceal his own tears and choked off voice, fingers flexing against steve's cheek.]
[ Maybe Sarah would celebrate this moment if it meant that when Steve got home, Zemo would come in to stay. Not for a few hours, not for the night, but stay and do something about the strange, open wound in his chest. He knows that his mother had hoped they'd find their way back together at some point, and he's not sure that's what's happening here, either. But Zemo's right, in a way. She'd be astonished, happy, even.
It makes the knowledge that Zemo will be gone come morning, a ghost of his past, hurt all the more. Why does he have to shoulder that, too? Among everything else, why does he have to feel the sting of a goodbye all over again?
And yet, like a moth to the flame, he can't seem to pull away. He keeps his hand anchored in Zemo's, allows the man to touch his face and turn into him, for their legs to brush, speaking as though the last eight years doesn't span between them like a gaping maw, waiting to swallow them whole. There's something magnetic between them, though, as there has always been. The natural force of something unseen that makes his torso feel heavy, makes his whole body sink so that their foreheads press together again, his own hand carefully pressed over the one on his face still. ]
She'd tell you to stay for dinner, first.
[ A watery laugh and he tilts his head back away from Zemo's, the land slipping away to smudge at the tears that won't stop, no matter how often he tries to tell the well to dry up. To tell them that no one will be there to catch them, to see them, when all this is over. His tears won't matter when he's sat alone in a dark, quiet apartment, waiting out the hours for the grief to dissolve.
There is never an easy time to lose someone you love.
The words make his throat swell, make him look away, even as his free hand falls to Zemo's wrist, fingers holding to his arm and curling into the fabric of his finely tailored sleeve. The dorm room door shutting behind him had splintered his heart, and now the sound of Sarah Roger's coffin shutting quietly after has left an angry, bottomless hole in his chest where his heart might have been, once.
If they're nearby to his apartment, if they're stopped at light or roaring through traffic, Steve can't tell. The world feels like a thick, foggy blur around him, like his ears have been stuffed full to the brim with cotton, pressured and swollen loud in its quiet.
His forehead parted from Zemo's just so, he can see the reflection of desperation in those eyes, something he's sure stands mirrored in some fashion in his own, but he doesn't know what to do with it. Comfort him? Wrap his arms around him and drag him into his chest? Kiss his temple, his hair, his cheeks, his lips, breathe him in like he used to and breathe warmth into him. He doesn't have it, though, can't muster the flame he used to wrap the man up in and urge him into calm. So he rests his forehead against his again, their noses brushing, nothing but the sound of their breathing and shivering breaths for a few long seconds. ]
Put on a record. Make us dance. Then she'd tell you to take your shoes off, stay a while.
[there's a distinct sort of agony and realizing just how much of steve has been hollowed out, and it will only linger as zemo tries to pick apart the precise percentages he is responsible for. that's a guilt he'll have to carry with him for the rest of his life now that he's seen it up close instead of just wondered and worried for the last eight years whether or not steve would ever think back of their time together as fond, forget about it outright, or harden it into something akin to hate for the way he'd been abandoned. zemo would not begin to presume that his current condition it's entirely his fault, but the way steve is - or more accurately isn't reacting to certain things tells him that this is a man who has been straddling the line of grief and loss for some time, who might be hanging on by one hand before he falls over into something he can't return from. this isn't about saving the day either, or imagining that one day might somehow be the salve and bandage for an old wound he's ripped wide open. there's a keen awareness that this might not actually be good for steve, having him here. but the alternative of thinking about him alone...that makes zemo's heart clench; that feels impossibly worse.
the steve rogers of the past might have already tried to find a way to get him to stay, to exhaust all alternatives and refuse to give up on what they had. to remind him with passion and a touch that he sometimes still feels on his skin like an invisible brand what they have together. and yet even though he's so close, pressed against zemo like this and cupping over the hand on his cheek with all the tenderness he remembers of balmy summer days on the dock and cozy fall days with brisk winds and hands hidden under too-long sweaters - the exhaustion in him has finally won out. he never thought he'd see the day where steve looked like he'd stopped fighting altogether. it's heart-wrenching, and it makes him feel like he needs to make it up for the both of them.
he hums lightly, thumb running along steve's cheek in a soft soothing swipe of a motion as he breathes in what may as well be a shared breath from that proximity. his nose shifts gently against steve's, eyes glancing upwards when he pulls away ever so slightly to drink in his expression. his own is clouded by heartbreak at seeing steve so empty from the passion he fell in love with, the hope and the good-natured strive for more. it's as if the light has been completely snuffed out, dashed by the rain that keeps beating down against their windows in a torrential smatter.
there's desperation in his gaze, yes. but maybe there's a bit of hopefulness too, for one of the first times. hope that in being here, maybe it doesn't have to be all the way as awful as steve seems to have expected. hope that they can share in this moment one more time, and maybe part on circumstances that won't feel like he's leaving half of his heart in new york all over again.]
Well, we're doing it out of order this time. But - we had our dance. The first thing I will do is take off my shoes, and then once we are warm and have dried our bodies and our tears - I will cook for you.
[a shaky exhale, the roomy side of the partition suddenly feeling like the walls are closing in.]
Yes, I'll stay awhile. For both of you.
[he hesitates one brief moment before letting his lips press to the wet, cold corner of steve's mouth as softly as he can manage. a selfish thing he can't help but steal for himself.]
[ Hollowed out. Steve feels exactly like someone has taken a knife and carefully peeled away at all the vulnerable parts of him, leaving them exposed and raw, like a white-hot nerve screaming for repair. He'd had the hope of the future on his shoulders when he met Zemo in that dorm room the last day he saw him, dreaming of traveling, schools, maybe purchasing a ring when it didn't feel too soon. Steve had let himself believe that life might allow him the easy path, just once, just once. Like the antique rug in his mother's living room, it was pulled violently from beneath his feet, and one thing has since led to the next. Zemo leaving, Steve joining the military, sending his graduation gift in the mail to a boy he knew he'd never see again, getting the call that his mother had been sick, coming home to watch her wither over two weeks.
Hollowed out. Nothing remains but the bones and scrapes, waiting for the carrion birds to come carry him away. ]
We never did anything in the right order, you know.
[ Quiet, watery. He's drawn from his thoughts by the soft swipe of a thumb, by words that go so far in soothing the white noise in his mind. So, Zemo will stay a little while. Take his shoes off, cook. But the word stay in the beautiful timbre of his voice breathes hot life back into his lungs, and his heart seems to skip a beat back into rhythm for the first time in years.
New tears pour down his cheeks, hot and sharp against his skin, but they fall for that brush of lips against the corner of his own, the nod to something that still aches in his chest. He loves this man still, and it's unfair he knows, to hold onto things he shouldn't, but what will one day hurt? One night? Whatever it is that this is, why is it such a bad thing to want something and get it, just once?
Zemo's lips leave the corner of his mouth but Steve's body moves of its own accord and he slides the hand along the man's damp sleeve to slide fingers into the wet hair at his nape before he gently pulls him in closer so that his lips brush over his. It's slow and soft at first, unsure, until the wild thing called desperation claws its way up into the back of his throat, making him lean in a little closer, part his lips and catch the man's bottom lip between his own. Like years ago, tender and loving and the quiet asking for more. ]
[no, he would agree. they certainly didn't do it in the right order. then or now, apparently, and the fact that there is a now is novelty enough. but he doesn't have time to voice it out loud, not when he's too busy whispering out a soft shhh when he feels fresh tracks of wetness that are too warm to be from the chilled rain on his skin - new tears from the circumstances that maybe zemo is in some way partly responsible for. it makes his chest clench together in an ugly reminder of everything he's lost, everything he made the active choice to walk away from and destroy with his own hand. if he hadn't - there's no doubt in his mind he and steve would have made good on all those promises they'd made one another whispered after passionate nights or giggled between stolen kisses and the escapist days at the lakehouse or in secret little corners of divebars and parts unknown. all they ever needed was each other, and deep down zemo knows that was infinitely more than anything he ever felt from his own family.
all these years he's feared making the wrong choice. he thought he was doing the right thing: honor, duty, obligation to his family and the legacy of their name. making them happy by choosing the right girl and promising the right heir, lining himself up to be the next ambassador or ranking member of sokovian government. doing something good for his country and its people. but what family wants all their own needs to supercede their child's happiness? he's always shut himself down before ever even so much as thinking about the word fatherhood - what his future will look like trying to raise a son or daughter of his own. the thought alone makes bile rise in his throat, a lump swelling in his throat or everything in his mind clouding over.
he doesn't want any of it. he never has. all he's ever wanted is to be with this man - to let their love carry them through life's adventures, to sustain them through anything.
he should pull away, stop encouraging this closeness when it's just painful for them both and probably making it worse for steve. it's making it worse for himself, but so is the distance in an utter catch twenty-two. he feels damned no matter what he decides, and then steve makes the choice for them by cupping so tenderly it makes him ache all over, a wounded noise at the back of his throat like just his touch alone is going to make him split apart. but his hand lifts to curl in his damp lapel, tilting his head back to deepen the kiss and put everything he can't vocalize into it. his tongue swipes against steve's, another needy sound reverberating against his lips.
he feels like he's on a freight train without a brake - reckless, yet utterly powerless to stop. his hand cups steve's cheek even tighter, body shifting to turn and fully face steve's like he needs even more. god, they shouldn't. this door closed eight years ago, but one crack and he's already clawing his way to try to reach the other side all over again.]
[ Kissing Zemo feels like breathing all over again, like his lungs have finally remembered how to move and flutter within his broken chest. The agonized sound makes his hand slide up and down his nape, fingernails a blunt brush against his skin, soothing out of muscle memory alone. He can't pull away to question it, to cradle him close and beckon the answer from him, so he shifts closer across the seat until their knees bump, until he's reminded of how they used to be awkward college boys trying to find dark corners to hide in, where their shins and arms and elbows jutted and jabbed.
He hums low in his chest when he feels the slide of Zemo's tongue against his own and it feels like his chest has been cleaved open, as if Zemo himself had been a dead man and here he is, having come back to life. His free hand falls to Zemo's chest, pressing down his front, sliding to his side and giving a pull that's sure to tangle their legs further, more awkwardly. They fit so much better in a car a decade ago, and yet here they are like drowned rats on a prom night, unable to tear themselves away.
And that's what this is: eight years of misery culminating into one horrific thunderstorm lost now between their lips and fingertips. But Zemo is so warm, even as he tries to curl one arm round the man's smaller waist, the low of his back, broad palm mapping the shape he knows but a shape that's still different in a way that both hurts and excites him.
He breaks the kiss as they hit a particularly nasty pothole, but he keeps his forehead close, lips hovering against Zemo's as he pants between hitched little breaths. The pothole signals they're not far from home at all, and he doesn't have time to question how the driver knows where he's going. He doesn't need to know, as he leans in to kiss him all over again, the hand at his nape sliding to the side of his neck, cradling him there like the most precious, fragile thing even though he's sure he's shattered, crystalline glass himself.
He barely registers the sound of a voice from up front, behind the closed, tinted barrier: ]
We're here, gentlemen.
[ Steve keeps his forehead against Zemo's, his fingers against his face, against his back. Can't they just freeze them as they are, right now? Take a picture of this moment and live in it until the day they die? Why did their blossoming future turn into rain clouds and pain and sorrow? He keeps his eyes closed, catching his breath, his nose nuzzled up against Zemo's. ]
Coming in?
[ Because it all still feels like a strange, twisted, surreal dream. ]
[it's a veritable deluge of emotion he's tried for the past eight years to bury deep and forget about - as if steve didn't inhabit his thoughts every single day, as if the right shade of sandy blonde hair or an easy laugh and a twinkle in blue eyes didn't make his heart stop in passing. everything was an aching reminder of what could have been, whether a painful memory making its way to the surface or a heartwrenching what if for all the moments he'd lost in his decision to commit to family. how ironic they both had sacrificed pieces of themselves for their country - utterly different in their methods, yet no less broken and empty for it now. he's willing to bet steve has the physical scars to prove it, a mimic of how he was always the one to wear his heart on his sleeve whereas zemo's are an emotional toll, not visible or skin-deep and far beyond the collected face he presents to the world every day.
how quickly it all falls apart - the impossibly complicated dam he'd built around his heart as flimsy as if it were constructed of sheer tissue paper after just one chance opportunity to be back in steve's presence. even as it lies in shambles, it's not even enough to make him consider stopping. especially not when steve reciprocates it with the same desperate intensity - like maybe he missed zemo as much even though he knows he doesn't deserve it for breaking the love of his life's heart. for never giving them a fighting chance together, for walking away because he was too scared to abandon the path his life had been mapped out along since youth. it feels like one mistake after the other up until now - like pressing himself into steve's arms and kissing him with the same reckless abandon of their university days is the first thing he's done that's right.
his knees knock against steve's, upper body twisting to get as close as possible without all but splaying in his lap. this isn't the place - maybe he shouldn't even let it get that far. it's hard to think past the safety of the back of this car, the way the world narrows into a concentrated pinpoint of steve's lips and steve's body and being in steve's arms. zemo can't stop the way he groans against steve's mouth, blatant in his need like steve is as essential as water or the very air in his lungs. his hands slide down along the broad width of his shoulders, fisting in the wet fabric and arching his back when steve's big hand splays along his lower back. they always fit so perfectly together - two halves to one whole as if made for one another in the precise shape of their bodies, all the gaps in between filled with their utter adoration and devotion.
zemo flinches when they hit the pothole, nose bumping lightly against steve in between a breathy laugh of disbelief. his eyes flick upwards, hesitant now that the initial spell of passion has been broken - like maybe steve will reconsider. god, he hopes not. but the thought barely formulates in its entirety before he's pulled into another heated kiss, fingers flexing as he works his jaw and licks into the familiar warmth of steve's mouth with a hunger that's been dormant since the day he kissed him goodbye at their dorm.
he's so lost in the moment, eyes squeezed shut and body shifting closer, closer until there's a gentle wrapping of knuckles along the partition. only then does he hear it, pulling away with audible, heavy breaths. steve still doesn't make any move to pull away, and it's just as well because zemo doesn't think he can move right away. like he's afraid this will change the course they've set themselves on, pull the emergency brake -
he's still wanted. steve asks like it's even in question, and zemo tilts his head to let his cheek rub against him in an affectionate little motion. there's a soft exhale, obvious relief as his eyes slip shut too.]
I wouldn't dream of being anywhere else. [a pause, and he huffs out a small laugh around a teasing slip around the silk of his accent.] And I can't let you freeze all alone in there, can I?
[his hand slides down, reaching for one of steve's and lacing their fingers together as the door up front opens and shuts. a few moments later the back door on steve's side opens too, an umbrella held up over to shield their exit. zemo murmurs out a thank you in sokovian, telling him not to worry about escorting them to the door and instead advising him to get a long, hot meal. his driver nods in acknowledgment, and as soon as the umbrella disappears zemo tugs at steve to run towards the familiar outline of the porch, the sheets of rain drenching them in fresh wetness until they make it up the stairs and under the archway. he feels like he's ten years younger, shivering and drenched and giddy as steve fumbles with the keys to pull him inside.
he should show some respect - take a moment to pause and see the old familiarities and the little trinkets that make it feel like sarah rogers is just around the corner, cooking up something delicious in the kitchen and waiting for zemo to set the table better than her own son. but he feels like a man starved, greedily reaching for steve to pull him down for another hungry kiss now that they have privacy stretching out in front of them.]
[ Every press of lips, every slide of hands and fingers, feels like opening the door to something that feels more like home than anything he's felt in a very, very long time. It feels like the closing of the dorm door and walking down the hall to his own, warmth and light puddling from beneath the jamb as though maybe, just maybe, everything in the past had been some strange, twisted dream.
There's no doubt in his mind that the past is real, if the heat pooling low in his belly tells him anything as they kiss, his own greedy hands dragging the man closer, sliding up his back and into his hair. Kissing Helmut Zemo feels like homecoming, it's as simple as that. The cheek against his own brings out a sigh of his own, his nose tilting to nuzzle at the soft skin beneath his ear. He'd be happy to stay like this, pressed close for warmth, affectionately breathing one another in, because Steve can't seem to get enough air, not with Zemo around.
The rain hasn't let up outside, though, and with his fingers wrapped around the man's, he runs with him up to the house. It draws out a laugh, unexpectedly bright and open in a way that Steve Rogers isn't, but this is some wild dream, he decides. He's running up to the house like they're in their boyhood again, when things were honey sweet and dewy soft. But there's little time to waste as his frigid fingers fumble his keys and let them into the old house they both know so very well.
The door clicks shut and the keys are long forgotten, dropped to the carpet as he reaches for Zemo almost immediately, dragging him in close and closing his mouth over his desperately, something more hungry and greedy than had been present in the car, accented by a heady groan the moment all air is pressed from between their bodies, the chest to chest. But kissing feels like it isn't enough, that the twining of tongues and the sharp bite of teeth can't satisfy the fiery thing welling up in him.
Hands rake up the front of Zemo's body, memorized dips and planes now on the body of an older man, but still familiar. Like roads to home that had needed repaving, though they lead to the same place. Fingers explore, undo any pesky buttons fumblingly with frigid tips, before he slides his hands up under the shoulders and pulls, dragging the wet fabric off the man. It gets caught, what for how damp it is, and he breaks the kiss for the soft huff of a laugh against that pretty mouth, though his lips become busy instead on the delicate slope of his neck, biting almost playful and soothing with the flat of his tongue after. ]
Shit. S'wet.
[ Another tug to remove Zemo's jacket, and he hums, pleased, when it finally comes free with a little help, and he slides his hands up over Zemo's ass, his hips, his back, only to pull him near for another kiss before his fingers start tripping at the buttons of his wet, pressed shirt. ]
[it's a little clumsy, fingers shaking as they slip up steve's dress blues from the bone-deep chill and sudden transition into the chilly air of the empty house now that they're inside. but his teeth don't have time to clack together when steve is kissing him again, harder and deeper and that much more passionate. it's all he can do it meet it in kind, rationalizing if he keeps steve close like this they can both get out of these clothes and into something warm before he's at risk of getting sick. he doesn't even care about his own suit being ruined - doesn't care if it ends up in a pile on the floor and doesn't even dry out to avoid wrinkles. it's so hard to think about anything else but steve's mouth on his own, the deliberate slide of tongue and soft lips working hungrily against his own. they only break briefly to breathe, and zemo hardly has time to inhale before they're both meeting again, and again, and again - like somehow the more they do it the more it can fill the gap of all that lost time and make up for it.
he's so cold he barely registers steve's hands starting to undo his shirt and tugging down his jacket until he feels the heaviness of the water-logged sleeves constricting against his elbows. he pulls away to let out a low chuckle at steve's revelation, a teasing:]
Wise deduction, Captain.
[his own hands shift back to help tug down his jacket, one arm slipping free right when steve decides to slip that talented mouth down along the dampness of his neck and add to it with his own tongue. zemo lets out a soft noise, a pleased little groan and tips his head back to give him better access. but he feels like he's lagging behind, quickly tugging free steve's tie and yanking it off with a flourish from under the sopping, previously pressed white collar of his button down. clever fingers work open the buttons on his wool uniform jacket, taking a detour to brush briefly over the pins up along his pectoral. he wants to hear the stories behind them - to know what steve had to face out there to earn them. but it's hardly the time, especially not when he captures his mouth yet again and zemo is powerless to try and interrupt. he pushes steve's hands away from his body only briefly enough to make a quick attempt at peeling him out of both his jacket and shirt at the same time, fingers sliding skittering along his cold skin.]
Work with me here, come on.
[as if he's not just as distracted - pressing needy pecks of his lips against steve's before huffing out a breath and pausing to give a good tug on his arms and hear the splat of his wet clothes landing on hardwood floors. his hands run back up those finely sculpted arms, a pleased hum as he can tell steve has gotten bigger, impossibly so. but his brows furrow when he feels a few imperfections - scars? old wounds? those weren't there before when they were young and carefree and both their hearts and bodies had been unblemished.]
[ Steve could weep for how much he has missed this, missed this man and as his own shirt and jacket come off he huffs something of a laugh, caught in his throat. It might be a downright sob, were Zemo's lips not playfully pressing against his own in feather-light brushes. The fingers that slide up his arms, his shoulders, make him shiver in line with the bite of the cool air on his damp skin. He doesn't meet the man's eyes, knowing too well that his body is not that of the spry, college athlete he loved eight years ago. That war and training and days spent beaten by the sun haven't always been kind to him. The hum reassures him, but it doesn't change the flush of heat in his cheeks, the soft huff of something incredulous. He should pull away, put a stop to all this.
Instead, he dips his head again to press a kiss against Zemo's shoulder, hands sliding down along the planes of his chest, his sides, to the dip of his low back, then up again, mapping out the man who used to be a boy he could draw to perfection from memory alone. His fingers know the way, know the dips and valleys, pleasantly surprised to find he's firmer in some places, softer in others, in ways that makes him want to dip and taste the differences on his tongue.
That thought alone makes him chuckle, low and arm against Zemo's neck. Once upon a time, he might have pushed him back against the door and had his way, but they're here, slick and cold from rainwater, trying to kindle warmth with the press of fingers and lips. It's not enough, but it's stirred something to life in him all over again, and he gives a needy hum. ]
The shower's always warmer, you know. You'll catch your death.
[ An invitation, not a demand, even as he slides his lips back up along the fair slope of his neck, worrying at a spot just where his jaw meets, a spot he found himself pressing little bruises into when they were younger and swept up in the romance of futures. It's difficult, though, to stop kissing him, to stop touching him, even with the promise of warmer, more intimate places. Letting him go now feels like letting him go forever all over again and his body resists.
His hands slide round that slender waist and fingers trip over the buckle of what is surely a bespoke, designer belt, catching the fine leather and pulling, both to relieve the hook and to drag Zemo in for another hot, needy, almost desperate kiss before he applies pressure, gently walking the man a step, then another, backwards toward the bathroom, without drawing his lips away for anything other than the quick catch of air. ]
[it's been years, but he's still so attuned to everything in steve rogers that he catches the way the other man seems to avoid his gaze when he fully pulls off his sopping shirt and jacket and starts to catalogue the new divots and raised skin along his arms and his chest. like maybe he's worried it'll be disappointing somehow, when in fact it just stokes that molten, fiery heat in his chest flooding all the way through his stomach in a way that has him forgetting his ice-cold skin for a few more moments. he's not really looking right now so much as feeling along with his hands and mouth, because he's hoping there will be time for that when they aren't barely past the threshold in a shivering mess. but zemo does take a moment to lift a hand to steve's chin before he can dip his mouth down to fixate on his neck, a soft whisper of look at me. there's a reassuring nod before he steals one last kiss from steve's lips and lets him press his lips to damp skin and trace along his body in kind.
it's not as if his body hasn't changed too - still lithe, maybe a little less full than before from running ragged trying to plan the wedding he won't let himself think about right now lest it break the magic of this moment. but there are parts of him that have gotten softer - the line of his jaw, his lower abdomen. none of which makes him insecure in the slightest, because that was never something steve ever made him feel worried about. the way they fit together was simply too perfect and too adored by his ex-lover, and frankly by his own confidence to ever feel like he wasn't enough. and the fact that they're still standing year eight years later, unable to control themselves or their wandering, desperate hands is testament enough that yeah, there's still a lot of that to go around, apparently. zemo never fell out of love, and maybe he can dare to think that steve never did either. maybe.
zemo tips his head back with a low groan, both hands dragging along steve's arms to fist into his hair and hold him where he's pressed against his neck. he's always been extra sensitive there, and steve always knew exactly how much teeth to use to get him to be marked, to lay claim to zemo's body in a more physical acknowledgment.]
You don't have to tell me twice.
[there's a lazy grin that can be heard in his tone, the murmur of it vibrating against his throat where steve's lips are still so close. he's trying not to shiver - both from the cold and the sensation of those hands he's dreamed of all over his skin yet again. they're more calloused, he can tell, and the texture of it makes his knees weak and his own fingers tighten against steve's scalp before they rake down his back with another low noise hot in his ear. steve's chest is somehow both warm and chilled when pressed against his own, and he can feel the oversensitive drag of skin and muscle against his pink, peaked nipples. he lets steve guide him back, toeing out of his sloshing oxfords and accidentally nudging at steve's knee as he kicks one to the side. he doesn't bother to apologize, instead stilling him for a moment and lunging forward for to kiss him in protest for any small separation - even if it's to breathe.
his other shoe takes some wiggling to make loose, and he busies himself with unbuckling steve's belt enough to unbutton and unzip his pants and loosen them around the enticing dip of his waist and hips. his tongue swipes along the inside of steve's mouth, lips dragging back to offer him another enamored look.]
You're still impossibly handsome, you know? How did you get even hotter, Steve Rogers?
[another quick nip, and he lets his thumbs stroke at the hard-won jut of his sculpted hipbones with a delighted hum.]
The words alone crack open something warm and surprised and vulnerable. He meets the other man's eyes and feels the creep of an old flush in his neck, his cheeks. Like he's some bright-eyed school boy dreaming about futures all over again. He doesn't feel like the war-scarred soldier, the tired captain, the quiet friend. He feels like Steve Rogers for the first time in a very, very long time. No, he hasn't fallen out of love with this man. He never did. He just locked that love away with the boy who kindled it.
The way Zemo's fingers twist in his hair make him moan, shamefully and low against the slope of his neck. The feeling of fingertips and the blunt of nails along the bare planes of his back, sends wild hot fire down his spine. His fingers work feverishly at the belt, the button of pants, loosening the wet fabric clinging to the slender dip of Zemo's hips. Stepping out of his own soggy dress shoes, letting his own pants slide once they're loose, he can't help but hum in appreciation as those fingers trace the jut of his hips. His palms know these planes and valleys as well as he knows his own name and he takes advantage of that, one pausing the journey toward the bathroom long enough to slide his hands up Zemo's chest, fingers tripping over the pretty, pink raise of a nipple, swiping a thumb over it in cautious acknowledgement, his free hand wrapped still round his hips now, letting those tricksy fingers slide beneath the waistband of wet pants and the band of some surely expensive underwear, to palm his ass, warm and soft beneath his touch. He groans, pleased. ]
I could say the same for you, you know.
[ Another nudge back (and the careful side step to avoid tripping over his own wet pants as he manages to step out of them) and they're met with the bathroom door, shut, and he lets out a low laugh. ]
I'd say you should have brought your robe, but I don't think I want anything between you and me right now.
[ Another searing kiss, his tongue sliding hot and needy along Zemo's, the hand from his chest sliding down his side to fumble with the bathroom door handle, opening it behind them and blindly pawing at the light switch, if only so he can keep kissing the other man as though Helmut Zemo is the very air that Steve needs to exist, to survive. But the shiver of cold (and want) takes over instead and he breaks the kiss, pressing their foreheads together as his hands instead reach to pull at the waistband of the man's underwear once more. ]
Out of these wet clothes. I'll get the shower.
[ Though he's having a very difficult time pulling his hands and lips away from the smoldering man across from him. ]
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no subject
Dreams. Nightmares. Everything blends together into one perfect, sleep-deprived storm. ]
I spoke to so many people.
[ Pleaded, really, but he needn't go that far. The footmen, the ladies, the whatever-servants they might be, the message had died on his lips the moment he spoke it. Mom's dying. You should come. She'd love to see you. What he'd wanted to say was that he, of all people, needed him. That even now, in the rain, Steve feels like he's a man sinking slowly, quicksand slowly eking him out of existence, having started the moment that dorm room shut behind him. ]
I believe you. She knows. She knew.
[ Partially. With all that money, all that power, Zemo hadn't made an effort to see her, to reach out to her before that, had he? The woman who wrapped him up in her love even when Steve's heart felt like it died on the tiled, sticky hall tiles. He knew she sent gifts, sent letters, all returned with an angry red stamp weeks later: Not Deliverable. Return to Sender.
He opens his mouth to speak again, his face a pinched, frustrated thing, when the arm hooks round his back, drags him down. His body, heavy and chilled, doesn't react at first, standing awkwardly in the embrace, as though muscle memory has gone away after years of disuse. It hurts, having him here. It rips open an old wound chock full of scar tissue (one that never really healed) and sets it delicately beside the hole where his heart bleeds from, where the name Sarah Rogers courses through his veins in an agonized wail that has yet to be freed.
His head dips, presses into his shoulder, against the slope of a neck he used to kiss, and his arms remember their stuttering reach, creaking their way around the man's thin frame, drawing him tight as though a buoy in the torrent. He thinks he'll hug him then be done with it, create space where it had been made nearly a decade ago, but his joints lock up, his shoulders shake, his breath comes up hitched in his throat.
The rain feels like roaring white noise in his ears, and it's probably for the best because he can't hear the agonized sob that claws its way free as those familiar, dangerous fingers slide into the hair at his nape.
Why are you here? You're just making it worse. Why didn't you come sooner? She needed you. I needed you.
I need you.
A shuddering breath, words left unspoken, but he gives a watery huff at the comment, the breath so warm against his ear. Steve doesn't move, fingers digging into the small of Zemo's back and the fine, bespoke fabric, the smell and feel of him safe enough for now.
For now. ]
She'd have scolded me for not dancing in it.
[ How can he, when his feet are cast from lead, when his whole body has rusted through, eaten away by the tricksy lurch of oxidation, by the years he's been only a hollowed tin man. A soldier with a gentle man tucked away inside, hiding beneath his ribs, away from the light for so long, that he’s all but forgotten his name. ]
no subject
he's in the dark about the attempts to reach him. and while this is the first bit of illumination shed that perhaps something is amiss at his household, it can't be his focus now. the one singular thing on his mind is steve and what will bring him the most comfort, empty as it may be in lieu of the gaping whole sarah rogers has surely left behind. there's a piece of himself that feels like it's forever lost, and that was from less than two years of her affection. he can't imagine thirty of them, ceased in the blink of an eye. sometimes it felt like they were their own little world - those weekends and that glorious summer shared with just sarah and steve, the stuff of hollywood stories fascinated with the evolution from boys into men with the guiding light of one strong, irreplaceable influence. he'd never felt so carefree - so invincible and free to cherish the love he craved and the freedom outside of the stifling walls of his family's castle.
did she go peacefully? was it in her sleep? how long? did she ask to see me?
it's a small smattering of the dozens of thoughts that bombard him all at once, and steve feels as much like an anchor in his grief as he's trying to offer in return. the tension finally bleeds out and he feels steve all but melt against him, arms wrapping with a painful familiarity right in the same spot they always rested when he'd do this out of fondness and a need not to be apart than out of the necessity of needing something to cling to from the open, jagged edges of mourning wounds. he's not so arrogant to think he's still part of that - not in a million years. it's a double-edged sword of wanting steve to have something (someone) to look forward to as much as he doesn't know he could bear the idea of man fully moving on and letting their love be a worn, faded piece of the past.
the sob that wracks against him is so gutwrenching it brings the tears he's been keeping at bay springing to the corners of his eyes, letting them slip shut as he murmurs out a soft shhhh, it's alright, i'm here against his skin and holds him as tightly as one arm can allow. his fingers flex, slipping up into the wet, short hair at the back of his neck as they adjust and do their best to soothe what he already knows can only scratch the surface of comfort. nothing short of resurrection will make steve's life feel the same ever again, and there's no such thing as miracles - no matter how hard he's wished for them over the years himself.
he doesn't pull back either, arm staining from how tightly it's clinging around him. it strikes him so clearly that he doesn't want to let go - he can't, because he's not sure he'll ever have the chance to hold him like this again. which is exactly what he thought when that door closed on him in the dorm, and now...
he lets out a small, breathy noise of amusement to mask his own emotions in the moment. this is about steve, not his own shortcomings and the fact that he wasn't here, didn't know - ]
Well, it's not too late to do so.
[he almost teases he knows his way around a waltz, or that he remembers them swaying absently to old, staticy records wafting through that cabin. but what good will it do besides hurt them both? he's not so cruel to be dismissive of the notion. it feels very much like he's standing on eggshells, trying to balance the love he's lost and still holds under his skin and what he needs to reconcile and repurpose as...a friend? no, that would require a consistent presence he hasn't had since university. an...acquaintance, then. a deep, distant acquaintance. fuck, it hurts just to think it.]
As I recall...you don't exactly have two left feet.
no subject
He shouldn't be holding him, shouldn't be entertaining him, shouldn't be willing to let him in when he shut that door eight years ago. But there's the rain, the memory of his mother tucked in a chapel with beautiful stained glass windows, and he can already hear her voice in the back of his head that begs him to give him a chance.
What is there to lose? Steve's heart dissolved out of his chest years ago, fading to some protective little cage of sinew and bone, and with Sarah gone? Steve breathes heavily into his shoulder, catching his breath, the air hitching shakily with each inhale.
Well it's not too late to do so.
There would be no greater delight in anything than there would be in hitting Helmut Zemo now, for how charming he still is, for how he needles his way in between kevlar and iron, finding the scraps of a man called Steven Rogers and pressing them into the light. ]
We'd have to lose the umbrella. Your suit would be ruined.
[ Trivial, distant, spoken against the very suit, cheek pressed into his neck, which only takes a tilt for it to be his nose pressed to warm skin above the starched collar line. Everything in him tells him to leave, to run to the swampy, muddy burial site and sit there in the rain until it clears, until someone tells him its time to put the delicate, pearly box into the ground. A small, foolish part of him thinks he'll walk back into his apartment or into their family home (full now to the brim with medical equipment and hospice beds) and she'll be there, cooking and singing along to Carly Simon on the radio.
She won't be. He knows that. But having Zemo here, folding himself into the man's chest, makes him think of days when the three of them had been invincible, untouchable. It makes new tears burn into his eyes. Sarah Rogers would not turn down the invitation to a dance, would she? He draws himself away with a sigh, wipes at his teary eyes and with a watery sort of smile, offers his hand. It doesn't reach his eyes, the light of that little smile, but the sorrow behind his blue eyes swallows up everything save for the tiniest hint of fondness. A yearning sort of sorrow that comes from love and not rage. ]
Seems only right to give her a party on the way out. I'm out of practice.
[ I miss her, I miss her, I miss her. I miss you. ]
no subject
but he does let himself settle back down onto his heels, reluctantly shifting his arm down from his shoulders even if he doesn't do the entirely decent thing and pull out of steve's space completely. in fact, he lets his hand drag around the curve of his shoulder, palm resting flat against the dampness where his decorated lapel is. it only just now registers what all of that symbolizes - what it must mean for his career the last several years. it strikes him so viscerally, painfully in that moment that there's so much he doesn't know and does have the right to ask about now.
his head tips up to meet the glassy look in steve's eyes, still as beautiful and piercing and blue as he remembers - lashes dark and clumped together from drops of rain and looking unfairly good despite that. it's a bad habit zemo had back then, and apparently still has now when the line of his sight drops to the pretty plush pink of wet lips, trying not to think about what they'd feel like pressed against the skin he'd nosed at moments before like old times. he forces himself to tear it back up to take in his wavering smile, the glimpse of something achingly familiar that makes him remember so vividly what it had been like to be the center of this man's world once upon a time.
steve extends a hand. an olive branch, nearly. he looks down at it, swallowing a lump in his throat before looking back up again with a barely masked sliver of surprise in his own expression.]
Ah, I don't give a damn about the suit.
[maybe back when had more arrogance and the need to tease would outweigh the need to admit his deep feelings, he would have haughtily said something like as if i can't afford a dozen more. but admitting that now feels like rubbing salt in the wound that boils down to zemo's inability to walk away from a foundation built on obscene wealth, even if it was never about the money. stability - he told himself, duty, obligation, legacy. but money, that diry, insidious thing felt like something to grease the wheels with all the same.
he tosses the umbrella aside, letting it thwack against the cement and land somewhere upside down, collecting water from the inside out. it's frigid as it pours over him, easily tugging strands loose from his carefully coiffed hair and drenching the fabric of his white shirt nearly translucent under the heavier sink of wool along his shoulders. he squints, trying to keep majority of it from his eyes and lets his hand slip into steve's easily as he leans in to murmur gently.]
Come, it'll be like riding a bike.
[if only the rest of it was so simple,, he thinks with a bittersweet clench in his chest that prompts a fleeting quirk of his lips. his now free hand slips up to steve's other shoulder as he steps in not quite flush, but enough that they can either sway lightly or try to gingerly slip into the steps of an easy one, two, three.]
no subject
The surprise doesn't leave his face when the umbrella is left for naught, because a Zemo of the past might have made a fussy comment about the expensiveness of his suit, or insisted maybe Steve hold the umbrella, and so on, and yet seeing him in the rain like this, raw and open and willing makes that terrible wound in his chest burst back open.
Eight years. Eight long years and Helmut Zemo waltzes in on rain clouds and plucks the very air out his chest somehow in a way that other guests haven't been able to reach, haven't been able to tap into for all their efforts. The distance between them feels wrong, the space where rain divides them, and he doesn't know why but his free arm reaches around the slender dip of his waist and pulls him in close, letting his chin rest upon rain-kissed locks, knocked loose from their pristine coif.
Selfish, to take this. To soak up the warmth of him like he'd never left, but it does something small to ease the screaming despair waiting to crawl out of his throat. It slows the tears, calms the beat of his heart. No easy one, two, threes, but a simple, close sway, the tilt of his head to rest his cheek on his hair, and he can almost hear the crackle of an old record playing in a dimly lit dorm room. ]
I was thinking Glenn Miller, maybe. The one Ma liked so well. Moonlight Serenade?
[ Stay, the old, scared boy from senior year wants to say. Choose me. Please, Stay. The words die at the back of his throat regardless and he sucks in a shaking breath, the tears still slipping hot down his cheeks as he sways easily in the rain, the hiss of it hitting the pavement the only sound. The sorrow of his mother's death will fix nothing, it will only make regrets and stack them carefully atop all the others.
Steve's eyes slip closed for a few long moments, his breathing coming in little hitches still, until finally he speaks again, his voice quiet: ]
I didn't think you'd come. [ A beat. ] I'm glad you're here.
[ I've missed you. ]
Not many people knew her like you did. It helps. [ The grief, the pain. He and Zemo surely share one in the same sorrow right now, but he doesn't say as much. ]
no subject
what good does the hope springing up in his breast that he could simply walk away from his life in sokovia and stay here with the only man he's ever loved really do when he knows in two days time he'll be stepping back on a plane to sokovia, back to the wedding plans and slipping a ring onto his finger that may as well be a shackle? steve is a man whose memories are still one wrong glance at a head of tall blonde hair away from spilling through the surface he's tried so resolutely to carefully craft and keep at bay. sometimes when he's alone late at night in the rooms separate from nikoleta he's been insistent upon, he can suspend himself in moments plucked from the past and pretend he can still feel the sensation of steve's palms flexing along his shoulders, his waist - feel the brush of lips ghosting in a content smile when they would lie twined together every night in their shared dorm senior year.
it's selfish of him to fall so easily into the old patterns. his body feels as if it never left the safe space between steve's strong embrace and the little place to tuck his chin between shoulder and neck. the weight of steve's jaw pressing atop his head is familiar too, only he knows now there's no chance he'll dip further and steal a kiss even if his chest aches for it anyway. zemo lets his own hands press firm against the rain-sodden navy fabric that nearly looks black from the amount of water it's absorbed. they slide up his lapel to drape around his neck, gripping lightly at the base of it so he doesn't something foolish like lift his chin to cup his cheek instead.
if he listens closely, he can pretend he hear that specific song too. he lets it drown out the sound of the rain and steve's tear-stained, trembling breaths. he can pretend they're young with nothing to lose but time with one another.]
Of course I came.
[a reverent murmur as his arms tighten, lightly swaying and following steve's lead. it's cold, numbing down to his bones, but it barely registers.]
I would have wanted to say goodbye to her, properly. She was -
[more of a mother than my own, even if it was just two years. there's a lump in his throat that keeps it from coming out and really letting the memories spill out onto the pavement and pooling into puddles with the rain.]
She was one-of-a-kind, Sarah Rogers.
[his own eyes shut, and if the water running down the side of his face against steve's lapel includes a few tears of his own, it doesn't matter now. one hand shifts from the back of his neck to splay along the side of it, stopping short of where he'd really like to hold him even if it's already far too intimate.]
The least I can do is pay my respects now. And... [another pause, this one longer until he barely whispers out what he's known since oeznik put the paper in his hands.] I needed to be here. For you.
no subject
It seems fitting, that the hole in his chest should never heal, that his lungs might echo and squeeze around the name he desperately wanted to say, wanted to promise his mother was on his way, was coming, that he'd be there soon. And he is here, now, though it's late. Maybe the rain is Sarah's way of beckoning this moment, he doesn't know, but all he can feel is the press of hands along his lapels, his neck, the perfect fit of a jaw against his shoulder.
It isn't fair. ]
I told her. For you.
[ Quiet, something to be missed among the hiss of the rain and the rumble of distant thunder. ] I told her you had come while she slept. That you sang her to sleep with that lullaby you taught her. It made her very happy.
[ Steve Rogers, incapable of lying, sounds as honest and open and real as he can despite the desperate sorrow he feels hollowing out his chest. There's nothing else for the world to eat at. His heart gone, his lungs empty, only ghosts and dust whispering between his ribs and making up a man known as Steve Rogers, the soldier. There is no son here, no lover. He doesn't know where those men have gone.
But Zemo's speaking still and for a moment, when that warm palm slides to his neck, when that lilting accent forms the word you, the roaring fury in his gut wants to scream don't. Don't open that door, don't walk in like eight years haven't gone by and left him empty, don't make him admit to the love he feels swelling full and deep in the shadows of his mind.
Instead, he tucks his head closer, cheek to the man's temple, nose pressing at the cold, damp hair there, at the smattering of precious, perfect marks that once upon a time he might have counted with his lips. The nearness keeps him together, breaths some warmth and clears some of the dust, and he's sure he can hear Sarah Rogers somewhere, distant and far, telling him to just try. ]
I needed you here. [ Another shift, his forehead bumping inelegantly against Zemo's, their noses bumping with the slide of the wet and rain. ] I can't do this by myself. I'm trying. [ He chokes, breath hitching again but he brings it under control again, careful, measured. When he speaks again, his voice turns vulnerable and soft, a stricken whisper such a far cry from the fiery, passionate, vibrant man Zemo knew. But he's nothing now, here int he rain, in the cold, and there's nothing waiting ahead for him he knows.
There will be no little house with dinner waiting, no bright laugh or warm smiles, no hand in his or kisses at his cheeks, no love to whisper in the middle of the night between cheap, college sheets. None of that. Not anymore. ]
I need you.
no subject
what would sarah rogers say?
it had gotten him through so many crucial moments long after he'd left america, and he'd foolishly held onto the hope that maybe someday he'd have the courage to speak to her again. to write her letters, to thank her for the impact she'd left in his life so long after his departure. and now he'll never have the chance - taken from him, whether by a cruel twist of fate or the greater machinations of someone on his or his fiancée's staff. and he knows fury will settle in after the shock that it's happened and the sorrow for steve's and his own loss, but right now he can only handle one at a time. he doesn't speak right away, afraid his voice won't be able to handle what he wants to say without cracking or completely breaking down on steve. he's supposed to be here in support, not to drag his own baggage into the light.]
I would have been by her side. Held her hand, sang it exactly like you said. There's so much I needed to say.
[he'll never forgive himself for not having had the chance to, but it doesn't seem right to tell steve as much in this moment. he won't add another burden to him, to prompt him to - what, offer him pity for it? steve has every right to ask him to leave, to tell him he's too late. and there's something hollow in the man he's holding in the moment, but even when he has nothing left somehow that inherent goodness finds a way to shine through. one of the things he'd loved - still loves most about him. but the change in him is nearly equal in the way it draws a tight ache in his chest and makes him wonder what he's seen out on the battlefields in war - where life has taken him now that some of that light has been burned out of him. if he hadn't left, would it still be there?
zemo feels him move impossibly nearer and does nothing to deter it - encourages it even as his own face shifts near enough that when their foreheads press and their noses just barely nudge against the other their lips are close enough to share the same breath. it lacks the passion or the thrill of wondering if they'll brush - it's not about a kiss he doesn't have the right to steal, it's about being as close as he physically and mentally can for a man he can't watch break apart under the crushing strain of grief and loneliness. just hearing it in his voice is a devastating blow, and if zemo is the last thing he has to cling to, he'll give it to him. and maybe he shouldn't if he's just going to turn around and leave...but how can he walk away now that he's here?]
I'm here, Steve. This part - you don't have to do alone.
[his wet palm presses against the droplets of rain and tears clinging along the side of his face, holding it lightly as he looks up to meet his gaze. he pushes up onto his toes, tipping his head back to press a soft kiss to his cheek.]
Let me drive you back. It's not stopping anytime soon, and you'll - [catch your death, as sarah used to say, but he can't bring himself to utter it under the circumstances.] You need to get dry and warm.
sorry for me im feral
Again Steve finds a hint of anger bubbling up in the back of his throat, acrid and hot, though it never leaves his tongue. Why didn't you come? Where were you? Why didn't you just call her? ]
She knew. Whatever it is you wanted to say, she knew.
[ She had a way about her, that woman. Knowing eyes and a knowing smile, her laugh lines deep and full. Thinking about her feels like a scraped knee, dragged over broken asphalt, stinging and bleeding and raw, the open air more enemy than friend. He blows out another sigh, aware of how close they are and how he feels the need to sink closer, to pull him in until no air remains, but he doesn't.
Helmut Zemo is as fleeting as the rain. Come morning, the skies might clear and blue up, the sun will yawn wide, and the man himself will dissolve as though a mirage built by the storm. Steve knows. Nothing he loves can stay, nothing he loves is permanent, and he carries that across his shoulders into every battle, into every skirmish.
The kiss to his cheek almost breaks him, another quiet sob swelling in his throat, catching and coming out sounding more strangled and agonized than weepy. What had it felt like, years ago, when those lips touched his own? When they danced like this and stole butterfly kisses on a balmy dock? His lips are warm against his cheek now, and Steve nods, resigned, almost defeated. Agreeing to leave means letting him go, means unwinding his arms from that slender waist, means creating distance again when, for the first time in nearly a decade, there isn't. ]
I'll catch my death, I know. [ How many times had Sarah said that as she fussed and wrapped him up tight in a scarf, a sweater, a rain coat. How many times had she wagged a finger at Zemo and told him to make sure Steve kept warm?
Missing Sarah Rogers will never end. ]
Your suit's wet. Drying rack at my place, so it doesn't shrink. I can make coffee.
[ An invite, of sorts. A withered olive branch wrapped up in selfish ivy; he doesn't want to be alone right now, and the idea of saying goodbye to him here in the rain feels like an impossible task.
He'll come around, Stevie. It's a mother's intuition. We just know these things. For a few seconds, brief and careful, he tilts his head, letting his lips find the man's temple, brushing soft against the cold, damp skin, before letting him go. ]
im also feral just slower
[a whisper so soft it may not even register from where his lips are still pressed against steve's cheek. he knows this moment is ultimately as fleeting as the rain around them, and yet it feels as visceral as the wetness sinking bone-deep in its chill. a part of him thinks maybe if they stay here under the pouring skies and locked in this embrace, maybe they can stay suspended in a world where it's just the two of them. sarah is gone, but he's here with steve and it's just like old times - them against the rest of the world. no outside influences, nothing else but the two of them wrapped up in each other like one beating heart. his fingers tremble against steve's cheek, clinging to the last semblance of what he's allowed in this moment.
they only still when he feels his kiss reciprocated against the wetness of his temple, something he leans into despite himself. there's another soft squeeze of the one arm still wrapped around steve's shoulders, and then he too reluctantly lets them both drop. he bends down to pick up his umbrella and shake it out, knowing it was foolish to have let it get soaked as he dumps out the amount of rain accumulated and undoes it to hang wetly. he'll have the car ride to figure out what to say, to quietly share more memories no matter how much it hurts, and then maybe -
his gaze lifts up sharply, meeting steve's gaze once more and letting the way he's been invited in even though he knows full well he doesn't deserve it seep into his face. it smooths out quickly, one small vulnerability he'd only allow to the man standing before him drenched and handsome as ever from where he stands. despite himself, his lips stretch into a thin and tight smile as he pushes back up onto his feet as beckons for him to follow where a sleek, black car is parked a few feet ahead by the curb.]
Okay.
[he motions for his driver to stay inside, holding open the back door for steve and gesturing for him to slide inside first. and once he does, zemo uses the open door as leverage to lean inside, not moving to shut it and go around onto the other side yet.]
One condition - I'll make the coffee.
[only then does he push it shut, coming around the other side to slide in next to him. he pulls on his seatbelt, ignoring the way the chill seeps in now that they're somewhere dry, and turns back to his guest. he shouldn't do it, but one hand reaches down where steve's is in the space between them to rest lightly over it.]
Let me take care of you, Steve, please.
[while i still can, hangs unsaid, too painful to have to spell out.]
plz slow and steady makes this race bish
The rain seems to fall harder, ushering them both toward the sleek car, and Steve dips into the back seat, wincing at the way the damp of his uniform slides against the leather seats. He half expects the door to shut, but he glances up as the man leans in, and Steve's caught up in the look of him leaned there, hair wild from the rain, cheeks pinked from the flush of cold, and he's sure he can see the youthful man Helmut Zemo used to be, bright eyed and coyly leaning into the doorway of a dorm. ]
Coffee's on you. Got it.
[ The quiet of the car unsettles him, the rain tap-tap-tapping an unsteady rhythm overhead. The burial will wait for a sunnier day, where Sarah Rogers can be put to rest surrounded by warmth and family. He sighs, letting his head fall back against the seat, his eyes slipping shut as he half expects Zemo to climb in silently, for the space between them to feel utterly expansive all over again, even if he can feel the lips and fingers burning hot against his cheek from earlier.
It's the fingers around his own that draw him out of his reverie and he turns, eyes opening slowly to peer at the man across from him. He squeezes his hand, glancing down at it once. He must look a mess, he realizes, soaked through and run ragged from worry and weeks of poor sleep. He turns his hand against Zemo's, letting their palms rest together, and he considers his words, considers the offer.
While I still can certainly lingers unsaid in a way that stings, sharp and painful deep in his chest. He lets out a slow, watery breath, and swallows thickly. He should say no, he should turn him down and climb out of this car while he still can. While he can still walk away with the shattered remains of his heart still intact.
His fingers carefully slide between Zemo's, curling in against his palm and he finally nods, his expression pinching into something sorrowful, painful, like he's utterly lost within the confines of his own skin, his own body. ]
Okay.
[ Quiet, almost a whisper, and he nods his head ever so slightly, letting it hang low, damp hair falling and sticking against his forehead, shielding the way his eyes burn all over again. ] Okay.
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reaching for his hand is a simple comfort. a gentle reassurance that for now he is still here and he's not going anywhere else for the time being. but he doesn't protest or pull it away when steve flips his palm, and the truth of the matter is steve isn't quite the one that initiates lacing their fingers together. his own move well before he has the presence of mind to stop himself, finding he can't deny steve anything right now when the grief has so viscerally hollowed him out. or maybe it's just taken what was left from him, scraping it off the edges from a hole that had already been there and steadily emptying over the past eight years. it's not arrogance or a desire to want to be the source of his pain, and he can't pretend to know what steve has been through at all after his absence. but - there's a part of him that has the intuition that it hasn't been easy, and losing sarah is one of the last fixtures he had in an already tightknit circle.
it's why he presses his arm against steve's, the shift of wet sleeves getting in the way of the warmth he knows lies beneath. he can't resist squeezing his hand again and turning to face him directly when he knows he should stare straight ahead and stay quiet until they get there. but having him so close - seeing the way his head hangs and the pain is so raw the way it's etched into his stupidly handsome features - it makes that tightness in zemo's chest clench painfully. and maybe it's because he'd do anything to see it lessened that he reaches up again, hand cupping his cheek once more in a movement that's far too much an overstep, and uses it to gently turn his face once more to meet his gaze. his eyes shift across the droplets of rain clinging to his lashes, the wetness on his lips and all the way back up to the loose strands of hair stuck against his forehead.]
Okay.
[he repeats it unnecessarily, softly like he's trying to convince himself that this is all he's coming back for. dry clothes, coffee, maybe finding out the last time he ate something and cooking for him like he used to. he should let go, move back in his seat and play the role of an old friend rather than an ex-lover who could only fulfill one half of the moniker. he knows realistically they haven't been in the car for long, that whatever scenery is passing them by outside seems like it's moving quickly along a main thoroughfare, and yet it feels like all time slows down to just the two of them in this moment.]
Steve, I -
[his gaze drops and a slow, shuddering breath slips from between his lips as he tamps down on whatever reckless desire is seizing him in the moment and wanting to push forward and do something even more selfish than a kiss to the cheek, something that will open a door he shouldn't if it's only going to cause steve more pain.]
I've missed you more than anything. I only wish we were not reunited under such circumstances.
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Once upon a time they sat in the back of his mother's station wagon like this, letting it rumble down the road and rock them to and fro while they whispered against one another's ears, laughed against shoulders, sang loudly to reach the front seat where Sarah sat. His eyes fill and a few fat tears slide down his cheek, masked only by the drips and trails of water from the rain, from his hair.
He hardly expects the palm against his cheek and he swivels to look at Zemo dumbly, tired eyes widened in surprise. Muscle memory drives him to lean his cheek into the touch, to soak up the warmth those chilled fingers offer. It's comfort, it's familiarity, and it feels so much like homecoming that he almost wants to cry over that, too. It isn't fair.
Stop, he wants to say. Don't. There are a thousand things that Steve can carry, that he can bear up on his shoulders and heave with him through the day. He carries those heavy things into his dreams, where he spins tales of futures he never had, trips they never took, plans they never made. And to face all of that while also knowing that Sarah Rogers' light has guttered out?
He can't. He just can't. And yet his free hand raises to touch the back of Zemo's, pressing it softly against his cheek, cradling it nearer as if it soak up the little warmth it offers. It's such a human gesture, the touch, reminding him that he is flesh and blood, not metal and motors, not some tin soldier waiting to march back to war. It undoes something in him, makes his shoulders round, makes the air leave his lungs in a harsh, agonized little sound. Like he wants to scream but he's choked on it instead, like he's reeled it in at the last moment. ]
I... [ What does he say? What words are right here? He can't make sense of it as the car bumbles along, rumbling to a stop at a red light. He can hear the music up front, blocked off by a privacy screen, but it's something classical. Bach, maybe. Rachmaninoff. It's hard to say. ]
I've missed you, too. I... I'm glad you came. [ A sigh and he looks down where their linked fingers lay between them. ] I don't think I want to be alone right now.
[ Shouldn't be, even though that's what everyone seems to think he needs. What they've prescribed him for his hidden grief. They don't see that the sorrow, the pain, is not neatly boxed in, tied up prettily in satin bowls and ribbons. It's a wild, furious thing instead, bustling behind his ribs and lying in wait. For the moment that grief can become a tangible, physical thing made up of sound and tears and the rush of air. It feels like he might suffocate on it one day. ]
It shouldn't have been her. [ ... It should have been me. ]
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he'd know the hand that covers his own from memory muscle alone, only he can feel more rough spots along his fingertips that have grown over the years. he can picture the same fingers that used to caress along his bare back so tenderly having the same skill and purpose cradling a gun, maneuvering around an enemy's pressure points in the midst of sand and grit and the horrors of war. thinking about steve out there alone makes his heart seize, the visceral fear that ay any point these last years it might be him laid out in a beautiful oak box in his navy blues and decorated lapels. the thought makes his throat swell, thin lips pressing into an even tighter line and eyes slipping shut briefly to try and wipe the image from his mind.
it's hard enough to have lost sarah - what happens if he loses steve someday? all the time he's wasted living a life that's always felt like an ill-fitted suit, no matter how much tailoring it's subjected to it simply never fits like a second skin. never feels right.
he can't go down this road. he shouldn't, but it's hard not to when everything in him is screaming to stay. at least he has this evening to be here, though he would never think to imagine it can begin to come close to making up for the way he left. but if he can help alleviate even one small bit of steve's pain today, he'd give it up in blood, sweat, and tears if he could, but apparently all that's needed is his presence in the end. the car stills at a light, zemo starting to vaguely recognize their surroundings despite the modernization of the signage on america's greatest hits in fast food and retail stores. steve has a good ear, it's rachmaninoff - the meandering middle of piano concerto number two. it barely registers over the rush of is emotions roaring in his ears, the way it hits him as though physical when steve admits he's missed him too. it's not that he's surprised. he simply knows he doesn't deserve to hear it reciprocated.
but much in the way steve can read behind the lines in what zemo's leaving unspoken - so too can he. it pinches his features, has him sliding in closer than he should and letting their legs nudge together across the wet upholstery of the seat.]
There is never an easy time to lose someone you love, especially not family. It should not have been her, no.
[zemo swallows thickly, looking up at steve with a desperation for him to understand. it shouldn't be you, either. not you, not ever.]
She would have wanted it this way though, and she would want to see you happy again. She's left so much of herself in the lives she touched - just think what she would say to see us together like this. I can nearly hear it.
[like old times. he lets out a shaking laugh to conceal his own tears and choked off voice, fingers flexing against steve's cheek.]
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It makes the knowledge that Zemo will be gone come morning, a ghost of his past, hurt all the more. Why does he have to shoulder that, too? Among everything else, why does he have to feel the sting of a goodbye all over again?
And yet, like a moth to the flame, he can't seem to pull away. He keeps his hand anchored in Zemo's, allows the man to touch his face and turn into him, for their legs to brush, speaking as though the last eight years doesn't span between them like a gaping maw, waiting to swallow them whole. There's something magnetic between them, though, as there has always been. The natural force of something unseen that makes his torso feel heavy, makes his whole body sink so that their foreheads press together again, his own hand carefully pressed over the one on his face still. ]
She'd tell you to stay for dinner, first.
[ A watery laugh and he tilts his head back away from Zemo's, the land slipping away to smudge at the tears that won't stop, no matter how often he tries to tell the well to dry up. To tell them that no one will be there to catch them, to see them, when all this is over. His tears won't matter when he's sat alone in a dark, quiet apartment, waiting out the hours for the grief to dissolve.
There is never an easy time to lose someone you love.
The words make his throat swell, make him look away, even as his free hand falls to Zemo's wrist, fingers holding to his arm and curling into the fabric of his finely tailored sleeve. The dorm room door shutting behind him had splintered his heart, and now the sound of Sarah Roger's coffin shutting quietly after has left an angry, bottomless hole in his chest where his heart might have been, once.
If they're nearby to his apartment, if they're stopped at light or roaring through traffic, Steve can't tell. The world feels like a thick, foggy blur around him, like his ears have been stuffed full to the brim with cotton, pressured and swollen loud in its quiet.
His forehead parted from Zemo's just so, he can see the reflection of desperation in those eyes, something he's sure stands mirrored in some fashion in his own, but he doesn't know what to do with it. Comfort him? Wrap his arms around him and drag him into his chest? Kiss his temple, his hair, his cheeks, his lips, breathe him in like he used to and breathe warmth into him. He doesn't have it, though, can't muster the flame he used to wrap the man up in and urge him into calm. So he rests his forehead against his again, their noses brushing, nothing but the sound of their breathing and shivering breaths for a few long seconds. ]
Put on a record. Make us dance. Then she'd tell you to take your shoes off, stay a while.
[ If only you could stay. ]
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the steve rogers of the past might have already tried to find a way to get him to stay, to exhaust all alternatives and refuse to give up on what they had. to remind him with passion and a touch that he sometimes still feels on his skin like an invisible brand what they have together. and yet even though he's so close, pressed against zemo like this and cupping over the hand on his cheek with all the tenderness he remembers of balmy summer days on the dock and cozy fall days with brisk winds and hands hidden under too-long sweaters - the exhaustion in him has finally won out. he never thought he'd see the day where steve looked like he'd stopped fighting altogether. it's heart-wrenching, and it makes him feel like he needs to make it up for the both of them.
he hums lightly, thumb running along steve's cheek in a soft soothing swipe of a motion as he breathes in what may as well be a shared breath from that proximity. his nose shifts gently against steve's, eyes glancing upwards when he pulls away ever so slightly to drink in his expression. his own is clouded by heartbreak at seeing steve so empty from the passion he fell in love with, the hope and the good-natured strive for more. it's as if the light has been completely snuffed out, dashed by the rain that keeps beating down against their windows in a torrential smatter.
there's desperation in his gaze, yes. but maybe there's a bit of hopefulness too, for one of the first times. hope that in being here, maybe it doesn't have to be all the way as awful as steve seems to have expected. hope that they can share in this moment one more time, and maybe part on circumstances that won't feel like he's leaving half of his heart in new york all over again.]
Well, we're doing it out of order this time. But - we had our dance. The first thing I will do is take off my shoes, and then once we are warm and have dried our bodies and our tears - I will cook for you.
[a shaky exhale, the roomy side of the partition suddenly feeling like the walls are closing in.]
Yes, I'll stay awhile. For both of you.
[he hesitates one brief moment before letting his lips press to the wet, cold corner of steve's mouth as softly as he can manage. a selfish thing he can't help but steal for himself.]
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Hollowed out. Nothing remains but the bones and scrapes, waiting for the carrion birds to come carry him away. ]
We never did anything in the right order, you know.
[ Quiet, watery. He's drawn from his thoughts by the soft swipe of a thumb, by words that go so far in soothing the white noise in his mind. So, Zemo will stay a little while. Take his shoes off, cook. But the word stay in the beautiful timbre of his voice breathes hot life back into his lungs, and his heart seems to skip a beat back into rhythm for the first time in years.
New tears pour down his cheeks, hot and sharp against his skin, but they fall for that brush of lips against the corner of his own, the nod to something that still aches in his chest. He loves this man still, and it's unfair he knows, to hold onto things he shouldn't, but what will one day hurt? One night? Whatever it is that this is, why is it such a bad thing to want something and get it, just once?
Zemo's lips leave the corner of his mouth but Steve's body moves of its own accord and he slides the hand along the man's damp sleeve to slide fingers into the wet hair at his nape before he gently pulls him in closer so that his lips brush over his. It's slow and soft at first, unsure, until the wild thing called desperation claws its way up into the back of his throat, making him lean in a little closer, part his lips and catch the man's bottom lip between his own. Like years ago, tender and loving and the quiet asking for more. ]
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all these years he's feared making the wrong choice. he thought he was doing the right thing: honor, duty, obligation to his family and the legacy of their name. making them happy by choosing the right girl and promising the right heir, lining himself up to be the next ambassador or ranking member of sokovian government. doing something good for his country and its people. but what family wants all their own needs to supercede their child's happiness? he's always shut himself down before ever even so much as thinking about the word fatherhood - what his future will look like trying to raise a son or daughter of his own. the thought alone makes bile rise in his throat, a lump swelling in his throat or everything in his mind clouding over.
he doesn't want any of it. he never has. all he's ever wanted is to be with this man - to let their love carry them through life's adventures, to sustain them through anything.
he should pull away, stop encouraging this closeness when it's just painful for them both and probably making it worse for steve. it's making it worse for himself, but so is the distance in an utter catch twenty-two. he feels damned no matter what he decides, and then steve makes the choice for them by cupping so tenderly it makes him ache all over, a wounded noise at the back of his throat like just his touch alone is going to make him split apart. but his hand lifts to curl in his damp lapel, tilting his head back to deepen the kiss and put everything he can't vocalize into it. his tongue swipes against steve's, another needy sound reverberating against his lips.
he feels like he's on a freight train without a brake - reckless, yet utterly powerless to stop. his hand cups steve's cheek even tighter, body shifting to turn and fully face steve's like he needs even more. god, they shouldn't. this door closed eight years ago, but one crack and he's already clawing his way to try to reach the other side all over again.]
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He hums low in his chest when he feels the slide of Zemo's tongue against his own and it feels like his chest has been cleaved open, as if Zemo himself had been a dead man and here he is, having come back to life. His free hand falls to Zemo's chest, pressing down his front, sliding to his side and giving a pull that's sure to tangle their legs further, more awkwardly. They fit so much better in a car a decade ago, and yet here they are like drowned rats on a prom night, unable to tear themselves away.
And that's what this is: eight years of misery culminating into one horrific thunderstorm lost now between their lips and fingertips. But Zemo is so warm, even as he tries to curl one arm round the man's smaller waist, the low of his back, broad palm mapping the shape he knows but a shape that's still different in a way that both hurts and excites him.
He breaks the kiss as they hit a particularly nasty pothole, but he keeps his forehead close, lips hovering against Zemo's as he pants between hitched little breaths. The pothole signals they're not far from home at all, and he doesn't have time to question how the driver knows where he's going. He doesn't need to know, as he leans in to kiss him all over again, the hand at his nape sliding to the side of his neck, cradling him there like the most precious, fragile thing even though he's sure he's shattered, crystalline glass himself.
He barely registers the sound of a voice from up front, behind the closed, tinted barrier: ]
We're here, gentlemen.
[ Steve keeps his forehead against Zemo's, his fingers against his face, against his back. Can't they just freeze them as they are, right now? Take a picture of this moment and live in it until the day they die? Why did their blossoming future turn into rain clouds and pain and sorrow? He keeps his eyes closed, catching his breath, his nose nuzzled up against Zemo's. ]
Coming in?
[ Because it all still feels like a strange, twisted, surreal dream. ]
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how quickly it all falls apart - the impossibly complicated dam he'd built around his heart as flimsy as if it were constructed of sheer tissue paper after just one chance opportunity to be back in steve's presence. even as it lies in shambles, it's not even enough to make him consider stopping. especially not when steve reciprocates it with the same desperate intensity - like maybe he missed zemo as much even though he knows he doesn't deserve it for breaking the love of his life's heart. for never giving them a fighting chance together, for walking away because he was too scared to abandon the path his life had been mapped out along since youth. it feels like one mistake after the other up until now - like pressing himself into steve's arms and kissing him with the same reckless abandon of their university days is the first thing he's done that's right.
his knees knock against steve's, upper body twisting to get as close as possible without all but splaying in his lap. this isn't the place - maybe he shouldn't even let it get that far. it's hard to think past the safety of the back of this car, the way the world narrows into a concentrated pinpoint of steve's lips and steve's body and being in steve's arms. zemo can't stop the way he groans against steve's mouth, blatant in his need like steve is as essential as water or the very air in his lungs. his hands slide down along the broad width of his shoulders, fisting in the wet fabric and arching his back when steve's big hand splays along his lower back. they always fit so perfectly together - two halves to one whole as if made for one another in the precise shape of their bodies, all the gaps in between filled with their utter adoration and devotion.
zemo flinches when they hit the pothole, nose bumping lightly against steve in between a breathy laugh of disbelief. his eyes flick upwards, hesitant now that the initial spell of passion has been broken - like maybe steve will reconsider. god, he hopes not. but the thought barely formulates in its entirety before he's pulled into another heated kiss, fingers flexing as he works his jaw and licks into the familiar warmth of steve's mouth with a hunger that's been dormant since the day he kissed him goodbye at their dorm.
he's so lost in the moment, eyes squeezed shut and body shifting closer, closer until there's a gentle wrapping of knuckles along the partition. only then does he hear it, pulling away with audible, heavy breaths. steve still doesn't make any move to pull away, and it's just as well because zemo doesn't think he can move right away. like he's afraid this will change the course they've set themselves on, pull the emergency brake -
he's still wanted. steve asks like it's even in question, and zemo tilts his head to let his cheek rub against him in an affectionate little motion. there's a soft exhale, obvious relief as his eyes slip shut too.]
I wouldn't dream of being anywhere else. [a pause, and he huffs out a small laugh around a teasing slip around the silk of his accent.] And I can't let you freeze all alone in there, can I?
[his hand slides down, reaching for one of steve's and lacing their fingers together as the door up front opens and shuts. a few moments later the back door on steve's side opens too, an umbrella held up over to shield their exit. zemo murmurs out a thank you in sokovian, telling him not to worry about escorting them to the door and instead advising him to get a long, hot meal. his driver nods in acknowledgment, and as soon as the umbrella disappears zemo tugs at steve to run towards the familiar outline of the porch, the sheets of rain drenching them in fresh wetness until they make it up the stairs and under the archway. he feels like he's ten years younger, shivering and drenched and giddy as steve fumbles with the keys to pull him inside.
he should show some respect - take a moment to pause and see the old familiarities and the little trinkets that make it feel like sarah rogers is just around the corner, cooking up something delicious in the kitchen and waiting for zemo to set the table better than her own son. but he feels like a man starved, greedily reaching for steve to pull him down for another hungry kiss now that they have privacy stretching out in front of them.]
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There's no doubt in his mind that the past is real, if the heat pooling low in his belly tells him anything as they kiss, his own greedy hands dragging the man closer, sliding up his back and into his hair. Kissing Helmut Zemo feels like homecoming, it's as simple as that. The cheek against his own brings out a sigh of his own, his nose tilting to nuzzle at the soft skin beneath his ear. He'd be happy to stay like this, pressed close for warmth, affectionately breathing one another in, because Steve can't seem to get enough air, not with Zemo around.
The rain hasn't let up outside, though, and with his fingers wrapped around the man's, he runs with him up to the house. It draws out a laugh, unexpectedly bright and open in a way that Steve Rogers isn't, but this is some wild dream, he decides. He's running up to the house like they're in their boyhood again, when things were honey sweet and dewy soft. But there's little time to waste as his frigid fingers fumble his keys and let them into the old house they both know so very well.
The door clicks shut and the keys are long forgotten, dropped to the carpet as he reaches for Zemo almost immediately, dragging him in close and closing his mouth over his desperately, something more hungry and greedy than had been present in the car, accented by a heady groan the moment all air is pressed from between their bodies, the chest to chest. But kissing feels like it isn't enough, that the twining of tongues and the sharp bite of teeth can't satisfy the fiery thing welling up in him.
Hands rake up the front of Zemo's body, memorized dips and planes now on the body of an older man, but still familiar. Like roads to home that had needed repaving, though they lead to the same place. Fingers explore, undo any pesky buttons fumblingly with frigid tips, before he slides his hands up under the shoulders and pulls, dragging the wet fabric off the man. It gets caught, what for how damp it is, and he breaks the kiss for the soft huff of a laugh against that pretty mouth, though his lips become busy instead on the delicate slope of his neck, biting almost playful and soothing with the flat of his tongue after. ]
Shit. S'wet.
[ Another tug to remove Zemo's jacket, and he hums, pleased, when it finally comes free with a little help, and he slides his hands up over Zemo's ass, his hips, his back, only to pull him near for another kiss before his fingers start tripping at the buttons of his wet, pressed shirt. ]
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he's so cold he barely registers steve's hands starting to undo his shirt and tugging down his jacket until he feels the heaviness of the water-logged sleeves constricting against his elbows. he pulls away to let out a low chuckle at steve's revelation, a teasing:]
Wise deduction, Captain.
[his own hands shift back to help tug down his jacket, one arm slipping free right when steve decides to slip that talented mouth down along the dampness of his neck and add to it with his own tongue. zemo lets out a soft noise, a pleased little groan and tips his head back to give him better access. but he feels like he's lagging behind, quickly tugging free steve's tie and yanking it off with a flourish from under the sopping, previously pressed white collar of his button down. clever fingers work open the buttons on his wool uniform jacket, taking a detour to brush briefly over the pins up along his pectoral. he wants to hear the stories behind them - to know what steve had to face out there to earn them. but it's hardly the time, especially not when he captures his mouth yet again and zemo is powerless to try and interrupt. he pushes steve's hands away from his body only briefly enough to make a quick attempt at peeling him out of both his jacket and shirt at the same time, fingers sliding skittering along his cold skin.]
Work with me here, come on.
[as if he's not just as distracted - pressing needy pecks of his lips against steve's before huffing out a breath and pausing to give a good tug on his arms and hear the splat of his wet clothes landing on hardwood floors. his hands run back up those finely sculpted arms, a pleased hum as he can tell steve has gotten bigger, impossibly so. but his brows furrow when he feels a few imperfections - scars? old wounds? those weren't there before when they were young and carefree and both their hearts and bodies had been unblemished.]
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Instead, he dips his head again to press a kiss against Zemo's shoulder, hands sliding down along the planes of his chest, his sides, to the dip of his low back, then up again, mapping out the man who used to be a boy he could draw to perfection from memory alone. His fingers know the way, know the dips and valleys, pleasantly surprised to find he's firmer in some places, softer in others, in ways that makes him want to dip and taste the differences on his tongue.
That thought alone makes him chuckle, low and arm against Zemo's neck. Once upon a time, he might have pushed him back against the door and had his way, but they're here, slick and cold from rainwater, trying to kindle warmth with the press of fingers and lips. It's not enough, but it's stirred something to life in him all over again, and he gives a needy hum. ]
The shower's always warmer, you know. You'll catch your death.
[ An invitation, not a demand, even as he slides his lips back up along the fair slope of his neck, worrying at a spot just where his jaw meets, a spot he found himself pressing little bruises into when they were younger and swept up in the romance of futures. It's difficult, though, to stop kissing him, to stop touching him, even with the promise of warmer, more intimate places. Letting him go now feels like letting him go forever all over again and his body resists.
His hands slide round that slender waist and fingers trip over the buckle of what is surely a bespoke, designer belt, catching the fine leather and pulling, both to relieve the hook and to drag Zemo in for another hot, needy, almost desperate kiss before he applies pressure, gently walking the man a step, then another, backwards toward the bathroom, without drawing his lips away for anything other than the quick catch of air. ]
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it's not as if his body hasn't changed too - still lithe, maybe a little less full than before from running ragged trying to plan the wedding he won't let himself think about right now lest it break the magic of this moment. but there are parts of him that have gotten softer - the line of his jaw, his lower abdomen. none of which makes him insecure in the slightest, because that was never something steve ever made him feel worried about. the way they fit together was simply too perfect and too adored by his ex-lover, and frankly by his own confidence to ever feel like he wasn't enough. and the fact that they're still standing year eight years later, unable to control themselves or their wandering, desperate hands is testament enough that yeah, there's still a lot of that to go around, apparently. zemo never fell out of love, and maybe he can dare to think that steve never did either. maybe.
zemo tips his head back with a low groan, both hands dragging along steve's arms to fist into his hair and hold him where he's pressed against his neck. he's always been extra sensitive there, and steve always knew exactly how much teeth to use to get him to be marked, to lay claim to zemo's body in a more physical acknowledgment.]
You don't have to tell me twice.
[there's a lazy grin that can be heard in his tone, the murmur of it vibrating against his throat where steve's lips are still so close. he's trying not to shiver - both from the cold and the sensation of those hands he's dreamed of all over his skin yet again. they're more calloused, he can tell, and the texture of it makes his knees weak and his own fingers tighten against steve's scalp before they rake down his back with another low noise hot in his ear. steve's chest is somehow both warm and chilled when pressed against his own, and he can feel the oversensitive drag of skin and muscle against his pink, peaked nipples. he lets steve guide him back, toeing out of his sloshing oxfords and accidentally nudging at steve's knee as he kicks one to the side. he doesn't bother to apologize, instead stilling him for a moment and lunging forward for to kiss him in protest for any small separation - even if it's to breathe.
his other shoe takes some wiggling to make loose, and he busies himself with unbuckling steve's belt enough to unbutton and unzip his pants and loosen them around the enticing dip of his waist and hips. his tongue swipes along the inside of steve's mouth, lips dragging back to offer him another enamored look.]
You're still impossibly handsome, you know? How did you get even hotter, Steve Rogers?
[another quick nip, and he lets his thumbs stroke at the hard-won jut of his sculpted hipbones with a delighted hum.]
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The words alone crack open something warm and surprised and vulnerable. He meets the other man's eyes and feels the creep of an old flush in his neck, his cheeks. Like he's some bright-eyed school boy dreaming about futures all over again. He doesn't feel like the war-scarred soldier, the tired captain, the quiet friend. He feels like Steve Rogers for the first time in a very, very long time. No, he hasn't fallen out of love with this man. He never did. He just locked that love away with the boy who kindled it.
The way Zemo's fingers twist in his hair make him moan, shamefully and low against the slope of his neck. The feeling of fingertips and the blunt of nails along the bare planes of his back, sends wild hot fire down his spine. His fingers work feverishly at the belt, the button of pants, loosening the wet fabric clinging to the slender dip of Zemo's hips. Stepping out of his own soggy dress shoes, letting his own pants slide once they're loose, he can't help but hum in appreciation as those fingers trace the jut of his hips. His palms know these planes and valleys as well as he knows his own name and he takes advantage of that, one pausing the journey toward the bathroom long enough to slide his hands up Zemo's chest, fingers tripping over the pretty, pink raise of a nipple, swiping a thumb over it in cautious acknowledgement, his free hand wrapped still round his hips now, letting those tricksy fingers slide beneath the waistband of wet pants and the band of some surely expensive underwear, to palm his ass, warm and soft beneath his touch. He groans, pleased. ]
I could say the same for you, you know.
[ Another nudge back (and the careful side step to avoid tripping over his own wet pants as he manages to step out of them) and they're met with the bathroom door, shut, and he lets out a low laugh. ]
I'd say you should have brought your robe, but I don't think I want anything between you and me right now.
[ Another searing kiss, his tongue sliding hot and needy along Zemo's, the hand from his chest sliding down his side to fumble with the bathroom door handle, opening it behind them and blindly pawing at the light switch, if only so he can keep kissing the other man as though Helmut Zemo is the very air that Steve needs to exist, to survive. But the shiver of cold (and want) takes over instead and he breaks the kiss, pressing their foreheads together as his hands instead reach to pull at the waistband of the man's underwear once more. ]
Out of these wet clothes. I'll get the shower.
[ Though he's having a very difficult time pulling his hands and lips away from the smoldering man across from him. ]
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