Touch Me I'm Going to Scream // [Stucky]

Chapter 12

Steve has already had breakfast—yesterday's leftovers—, visited Sam, spent two hours in the gym, practiced with the shield at Barton's shooting range, taken a shower, and now he's settling on his couch with a sketchbook. Steve believes he'd need to write a book of sonnets to express the awe he feels every time he looks through the large windows in Tony's tower—also, how out of place. He only needs a few words to express how unworthy he is of living in such a place.

Steve wishes his mom could spend at least a day in the Tower, a day in this new New York with everything Steve could give her now. As a kid, he had spent a lot of time daydreaming about all the things he would buy his mom when he grew up. She'd died before he got the opportunity and even if she had lived longer... Well, for starters he hadn't had much money and then he had traveled to the future in the form of a block of ice.

Steve has quite the collection of sketches of New York's and Washington's skylines but the action of drawing them once and again, sometimes from memory, brings him tranquility.

Steve's drawing the Iron Man armor giving Hawkeye a ride when he hears a door slowly sliding open. Steve doesn't lift his head because he already knows it's just James getting out of his bedroom—for the first time today. He knows this primarily because he checked the box with protein shakes and noticed that not one of them was missing, and secondly because he asked J.A.R.V.I.S. He felt bad for prying but he wanted to make sure everything was okay with the man.

From the corner of his eye, Steve makes out James' shape, shoulders hunched and head bowed, his hand inside the front pocket of his sweater—Steve notices it's the one he gave the man a few days ago. James hesitates before entering the living room and heading directly in the kitchen. Steve can hear him only because of his enhanced senses but it's easy to notice that James is trying to be as quiet as possible while preparing himself a protein shake.

Steve acts as if he isn't aware of his presence. He doesn't want to just sit and ignore James, it doesn't feel right, but he tells himself that perhaps that's what James needs. Space and time for himself... to... be alone... and... feel his skin pricks every time he makes a sound.

After a minute, Steve thinks it best to keep him company. He stops acting like he's using his pencil for something more than drawing random lines and gets to his feet, leaving the sketchbook on the coffee table. He steps into the kitchen area and has a perfect view of James' back and how it goes eerily still. Steve sees his shoulders rise to his ears and then the man turns into a statue. Steve feels like a threat, the enemy.

"Hey, pal," Steve says, feeling like he shouldn't be speaking, that he's only going to make things worse. But he perseveres, knowing that right now James doesn't have any other options aside from Steve. "The boxes arrived this morning. I knocked on your door but maybe you didn't hear." Steve knows James did hear him.

Steve gives a step forward and James' muscles tense further, shifting under the clothing. Steve winces, believing such strain must be painful. He still remembers the man's body, black and blue, bloody...

Steve shakes the image away and gives a tentative step forward. He can't see James' face and he really needs to read his expression so as to know what is going on through his head, at least part of it. He had thought they had made progress yesterday, had seemed like James was more comfortable in Steve's presence. Steve thought James had understood he isn't an enemy.

Really naïve of him.

"James?"

Steve quickens his pace when he hears the man rasping for breath. Placing a careful hand on his arm, Steve turns him around.

James raises his only arm and stumbles back.

For a moment, Steve's brain can't register what is happening, what James is trying to do. He's been Captain America for some years now—sometimes it feels like too many—, a figure people expect to help them, save them from peril. Even before the serum, when he was just Steve, he had done everything possible to give a hand to those who were in need of it. Now, Steve gets a glimpse of James' face and feels horrified at the fear he sees there directed at him.