fossilised | I come from a land of ice and snow

I come from a land of ice and snow

Asgard sat atop the branches of Yggdrasil since time began, and little had changed in their society in the years since. Each Asgardian was long-lived into the millennia, their lands were fertile, their people brave and strong. They had their vassals, their allies, and their enemies. Yet even those who opposed them respected the might of the Golden Dias, and the royalty who sat upon it. Currently that was Odin Borson, though he grew weary more easily now and had begun to consider passing the throne to his eldest son.

He had been blessed with many children, but only two that he considered worthy of his lineage and status. His firstborn, Thor, strong and honourable and everything an Asgardian warrior should be. His second son, Loki, was not natural born, though none knew that but his wife. He was different, a creature of magic and mayhem, of sharp intelligence. Both were worthy, but together they would take Asgard to a new prosperity, he was certain of it.

Midgard, where the mortals dwelt, was a land raided every few centuries for stock. It was seen as a breeding ground, much like a corral for cattle. Mortals were lesser, short-lived and weak, they were fit only as slaves. The last raid had taken place when Loki had been but a baby, nearly a thousand years ago, but the mortals that had been taken had been bred and cared for so that a healthy slave population still thrived. Slaves were given a weakened mixture of Idunn's crop with their food, to extend their natural lives to at least a few centuries in order to make them worth the effort to train. They had no rights, but they were taught well that this was their natural position.

All slave children were raised in a central pen and taught the same when small, those that then displayed talent at cooking, riding, hunting, housework, artisan skills, or singing were then measured off to be specially trained for higher masters. Every five years those who could afford to buy a slave, or those of high enough status to simply demand them, came to the corral and chose. Those who were chosen were special, were envied, and those who were not ended up working the fields out in the far reaches of Asgard, the most menial of work.

Anthony and Steven had been friends since they were little and being raised in the large pens together. Both had excelled, Anthony at crafting and Steven at warrior's skills, but neither were chosen when they were five, nor ten, nor even fifteen. Now, at twenty, it was their final chance to be chosen before they would be assigned to one of the meanest farmers beyond the borders of the great capital. Steven woke Anthony as the dawn rose, mingled excitement and nerves on his face.

"Anthony! Wake up, I've got news! I heard the overseer talking to one of the passing guards, and Princes Thor and Loki are coming to the corral today."

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Bucky stepped up beside Steve on silent feet and looked up at the picture, seeing it moving inside his mind. He could hear Gabe cracking some dumb joke and everyone laughing, not because it had been that funny, but just because they had been drunk on the adrenaline of still being alive.

A small smile touched his lips, here and gone in a moment, before he turned away from that picture to where a broken cinefilm projector was playing a jarring loop of a few seconds of Steve waving at a crowd rather than the full movie it was meant to play.

"They'd be proud to know we were still fighting to save the world, even if we hoped it would be saved after that war."

And at least none of them would have lived to experience the terror these days had brought.

"There's always war. There is always going to be war. We didn't even stop it...two big bombs dropped on civilian cities ended the war for us." And that was just simplistic and not wholly true but Steve had read about the atom bombs after being rescued from the ice. "Funny that it might have ended the world." Funnier still that the Asgardians, which had triggered the end of civilization on this planet, might also be responsible for saving it, once they rescued whoever they could from the training moon.

Steve stayed stoic as he ripped the glass, humidity and temperature controlled case containing his old uniform right out of the display. No alarms sounded. The electricity hadn't been cut off, but the alarm system was by the EMP caused by the aftershocks of the bombs dropped over this city after the Asgardian ravaged it.

He carried the case with him, passed the displays of his old sketchbooks, two of which were opened to pages of Bucky Barnes and two more each of Peggy. Peggy's images were beautiful, but also sincerely platonic. Steve had too much respect to show her the way that might dishonor her image. He didn't flaunt how beautiful he found her, how kissable her lips looked--

But the sketches of Bucky?

Those were almost embarrassingly intimate. There was even a little memorial plaque states that the images were of Steve Rogers' best friend, drawn during war time, and that many of the images, which could be found online at the museum's website, during this time period were of the realities of war as depicted on the face of his childhood friend.

Neither Bucky nor Steve could know it, but their relationship had been the subject of countless debates. Historians had written books on it, students had studied it as part of their thesis on LGBT members of the military. These sketches, so intimate and detailed, and a number of letters sent from Bucky back to Steve in New York before he enlisted were used as the primary evidence for supporters of the theory that they had been in love.

There were also, of course, those who adamantly opposed those theories and there had even been controversy in the past where extremist Christians had picketed a college teaching that theory, denouncing them for smearing the name of one of America's greatest heroes. Bucky didn't know any of that, all he knew was that the sketchbooks caught his eye and he couldn't leave them, metal fist leaving shards of glass everywhere so that he could tuck both into his jacket.

"...let's get back, we need to get out towards the survivors as soon as possible. I know this looks awful, but there's still hope. That moon we found is incredibly sustainable with energy and places to grow food. We can start over, figure it out."

Humanity wouldn't die because of this.

"Love how you suggest that when I'm already out in the hall first," Steve said from around the corner, the case with his uniform sticking up over a partition wall that once was used to display and to guide visitors around the exhibit. "Also gonna beat you back!" Steve just couldn't stay somber for long. This was his past, this was a place he could never again get to, so being upset about it, for missing his old life, was ridiculous. And if that was silly, so was letting it affect him enough to cloud an afternoon racing his best friend back to the Asgardian skiff through radioactive streets carrying museum memorabilia that had once changed lives and launched careers of people that had been touched by seeing Captain America and his fellows in their old glory.

The headstart didn't end up helping Steve win the race, he was too bogged down by the heavy case that he nearly dropped inside the skiff before he caught himself on a large golden metal beam to keep from crashing.

A plastic shower curtain of sorts had been set up between the hold and the rest of the skiff and Tony's voice gave just one warning before Bucky and Steve were drenched in fluid to remove and wash away the lingering radioactive particles on their clothes and skin: "Hold your breath, guys."

He wa eating freeze dried blueberries in Bruce' lab, sitting on a console that had not been torn out, and watched Steve and Bucky fight against the shock of the cold shower.

"Probably should have warmed it," he grinned at Bruce and offered him the bag.

Bruce was still reeling from the fact that he had been rescued and, more than that, that there might actually be hope for rescuing other people and rebuilding. He had thought that he would be left alone on a dying world, unable to join the rest of his race, alone forever. It made him feel even friendlier towards Tony than he had anyway.

Pausing in the middle of sorting through what medical equipment there was, he glanced up at the screen and grinned in return, though he didn't take the blueberry offered to him.

"Careful, annoy them too much and you might end up having to ask me for a set of false teeth when they knock yours clean out."

"Barnes has already threatened that. I have to watch my mouth, not my temperature control," Tony said, shrugging at the disregard of the offered food. Bruce would have to go through the radiation bath eventually too and it was probably good that he didn't touch the food that Tony was shoveling into his mouth. "Though speaking of having to engineer myself some backup teeth..."

Tony leaned forward on the button the transmit what he was saying to the laughing, horse playing super soldiers.

"Hey guys, got one more stop before we go and see what Barton's been hiding from us. There's an arc reactor sunk into the Bay and if Rogers gets his fancy frills, I want mine too." There was just a prototype of his armor at the old Tower, but Tony could do a lot with just a prototype.

As the shower shut off, Steve shook his head to clear his ears and wiped the water from his face, hair slicked back. "You could have saved the bath for after the errand!"

Tony grinned at Bruce. "Oops."

Bruce pushed off the low table he had been working on and rolled up his sleeves, already resigned to having to go through that too. He wasn't sure how effective it would be considering that he was pretty radioactive by his very nature, but it might be able to keep him from being dangerous to be around for other people. It wouldn't be good if the resident doctor just made patients even more ill.

"You should put me through that shower now," he said, as Bucky and Steve prepared to go off on the new mission for Tony once he got them a bit closer. The armour would probably take both of them to carry, as it wouldn't be operational, JARVIS had been taken out by the EMP, but they could get it.

"Anything else that's needed?" Bucky asked. "We might as well get everything now, it'll be harder once we start to pick people up."

"You don't want to get into the ring with those boys," Tony said, which was about as far as he would go considering his promise. But seriously. They had been wrestling in the decontamination shower. How were they both too blind to see that the other was perfectly all right with his friend being sweet on him? Tony would never have survived in the 40s. He just didn't have it in him to be subtle. "Once we hit New York, you'll have a little privacy."

It took all of twenty minutes in the skiff. The take off and landing took the longest and by then, Tony had a whole laundry list of what the two should be looking for. New York was a total dead city. There were no heat signatures anywhere and no radioactive fall out save for what was in the atmosphere. It was just below maximum levels for a standard person, though, and long term exposure was not recommended. The majority of Steve's and Bucky's mission was to bring back as much of the lab that Tony used to enjoy long days in as possible.

And they did a fairly good job too, enough to keep Tony busy instead of dousing them with another shower immediately upon their return with the large reactor, JARVIS might be gone, after all, but his program was safe. He just would need to be upgraded to a new personality. FRIDAY.

Evidently Tony happened to like various accents from that particular region of the world?

It was late by then, giving Bucky a little time to look at the sketchbooks he had stashed. It had been lucky that the jacket he had been wearing was waterproof and the pages hadn't been damaged at all. With Steve chatting with Banner and Barton angrily stomping around since they needed to get a move on, he'd have some time.

Right up until Tony caught him of course.

"Yanno, I took this class back at MIT once to get better at technical drawing. We actually studied some of Cap's work. Not the portraits. The diagrams of the HYDRA facilities he used to jot down from memory for the top brass. But that? What you have in your hand right there? That was a book my dad left me and as soon as he died I donated it and all of that other junk to the Smithsomian. I always wondered if dad was jealous of you."

Bucky had seen a lot of Steve's art in his life, but somehow he had never really seen these before. Perhaps because Steve knew that part of him had poured things too personal to be seen into his drawings, things that might lead Bucky to some interesting revelations about their place with one another. Not that he had realised yet, he was too busy just... staring.

He glanced up when he heard Tony's voice, brows furrowing slightly as he closed the book with his finger marking the place where he had been so that he could go back there when he needed to.

"What do you mean? Why would Howard have been jealous of Steve, because of Peggy?"

He hadn't met Howard all too often, and he definitely didn't want to think about the time that the Soldier had met Howard, but he had thought the man was arrogant and a bit of a jerk, but not that bad. Steve had liked him.

"Yeah," Tony said sarcastically. "Because of the woman that appears exactly two times in that book." Tony had become very familiar with it. His dad caught him drawing little figures in the corners of it, or changing sketches to include tanks or planes and that had been it. Tony didn't come home for Christmas that year and the mark on his face lasted for two weeks.

There weren't many chairs left here, considering the people that they had hoped to pack into the skiff, so Tony took a spot on the floor, nail beds chock full of grease from the hardware he had been working on.

"There's one picture, after the monkey that I drew the rocket pack on, towards the end of the book-- actually I think that might have sparked Stonewall in a way. You'll get to it eventually."

Steve had spent the night drawing Bucky as he slept. It was just the two of them, the lights were down really low and he could barely see anything but a sliver of face and a bare chest with tags. The light ended in a sharp v at Bucky's navel and the image was smudged so heavily with dimensions of charcoal that it looked almost like an underexposed photograph. It was beautiful and real and heartbreaking. But no one knew the story. Or the panic Steve felt when it was finished. He'd even started to tear it out before a siren interrupted him. He never remembered to go back to the book to finish the job. So it was ripped down the edge. No one knew why.

Tony was pretty sure his dad jerked off to the image plenty of times though. Or maybe he just did in Tony's head and wasn't that sort of gross to imagine your dad like that?

He had issues. No one was going to deny him that.

"Hey, don't forget to go all the way to the back. You'll have some ten year old Tony Stark originals. They're worth a pretty penny these days you know?"

Bucky still didn't quite get what Tony was talking about. Even if he was insinuating that Howard Stark had liked men in an inappropriate way, which was clearly not true as his very existence proved that Howard liked the dames, surely it would have been anyone close to Steve that he would have been jealous of, not Steve himself. He surely would have had a thing for Cap.

"I think you're imagining things, Tony."

He sat back against the wall, legs stretched out in front of him and light glinting softly from the ridges of his metal arm. He wasn't that far from the man in some of these sketches, a little more serious and a little more muscled, but mostly the same handsome guy.

"Steve's an artist, he drew whatever was around him. That was just me a lot of the time, and I don't see why Howard would be jealous of that."

Bucky did, though, open the sketchbook again to start once more flicking through to see what other secrets this old paper contained. It was good, Steve had always been phenomenal at art, there was no wonder these had made it into a museum. Even if he hadn't been Captain America, he still probably would have ended up in a gallery for art of wartime.

OH Bucky. It was cute to think that people had to be attracted to just one one of person. That wasn't true. Sexuality was so much more fluid. Steve had read up a little on it, mostly because he'd never heard the term bisexual before and after reading a little about what it meant on the internet encyclopedia, he'd come to realize how many other people struggled with it. Being part of both worlds, never having a partner trust you with anyone-- okay, that last part? Steve couldn't relate. He'd never dated. He'd never done anything minus what happened on the Night That Didn't Happen. And that didn't count at all.

Tony watched at Bucky flipped through the images, pointing out his contributions as if Bucky couldn't tell the difference in styles.

"He really did draw a wide variety of subjects," Tony commented sarcastically after a moment. This wasn't the book that Steve carried to doodle in. There weren't a lot of images of the Commandos or the general. There weren't maps and brick walls covered in Ivy or tiny towns viewed from hilltops.

This was a little more personal. A lot more personal. And there was a reason Bucky hadn't ever seen it. Not when the topic seemed so singular.

"Oh that one's good. I copied that one a lot. It's hard to draw hands," he smirked as Bucky flipped through a drawing of various parts of himself. Hands, eyes, ears, lips, the back of his neck. His chin. His calves. A study of Bucky Barnes in parts. "Know what? I'm going to let you finish this in peace. We're going in about an hour. That should be enough time for you."

Tony left humming. Not a good sign.

Bucky thought that Tony must have a very boring life if all he had to entertain himself with was the possibility of an illicit attraction between two best friends. There was probably nothing in this book that would be at all weird; after all, he had been modelling for Steve since they were kids, that there would be a sketchbook almost just of him wasn't surprising.

But then he got to that picture.

The way it was drawn couldn't be described as anything other than erotic, with the attention to detail and the way that the shadow faded in just below his navel where the blanket dipped to only just cover his modesty. He was left staring at it for a long time, at the rip in the page where Steve had obviously started to pull it out.

Why? Was he ashamed? Why didn't he tell Bucky?

He closed up the book and set it to one side, waiting for Steve to reappear before they touched down in the first inhabited area, eyes and expression unreadable, tone of voice measured.

"I've been looking through one of your sketchbooks, Steve."

Steve had been busy. Moving down the hallway of the room that Bucky was in, he'd been preparing the others for occupants. "Yeah?" he didn't think anything of what Bucky said. Bucky had seen a lot of his art. For awhile there, it was all Steve did. "You always told me that maybe I'd be in a museum some day." He was making beds, glancing only over his shoulder as Bucky leaned in the doorway. "I guess the idea of Captain America stuck enough for them to keep some of my old stuff in there." He flipped a sheet up and shoved the mattress back. Crisp military corners. Old habits were hard to break. He stood, preparing to move to the next room, but Bucky was just there, blocking him with his eyes.. Staring at him.

So Steve looked back, beautifully sincere in his inability to guess what Bucky had seen or what was going through his mind right now. Steve had no idea that anyone had seen it. He had no idea that it had been the subject of so many books and articles and class discussions. He would have been very embarrassed. At least the page that the museum had chosen to display was just of Bucky in his hat, the picture he'd drawn as Bucky was getting ready for his last night on the town before being shipped off.

"You okay, Buck?"

Had something triggered him? Old drawings from their childhood maybe?

Now that Steve was looking at him directly, Bucky took the sketchbook out of his pocket and flicked it open at the right page, holding it out for Steve to either take from him or just look at. It wasn't subtle, it wasn't anything that even Bucky with his utter idiocy about Steve's feelings could deny. And it made him so mad that they could have had something more all this time.

"Interesting art."

His voice was still very level, even as he continued on.

"Back when I was working for Thor, he ordered me to be your friend and I-- touched you. You only stopped me when you realised I didn't know who you were. Maybe there's something you need to tell me, Steve?"

It took a lot to make Steve look terrified, but this probably was the worst case scenario. He could feel the ground rushing up all over again, he could feel it in his gut, the tightness of it, the fear of the inevitable. But, just like back then, Steve faced his own future with a surprising amount of grace and fortitude.

He did not take the book. His eyes did not linger on the page. He hadn't seen that in a long time, but he knew what it was and he knew why Bucky was angry with him too. He'd been sloppy, but there was no excuse for it now. Here was the firing squad and a lifetime of a carefully kept secret, one he attempted to cover over with his torch for Peggy Carter, and they were all armed and ready to go.

Steve straightened his shoulders and kept Bucky's eyes even if it looked like he was crumbling inside. He had a stiff upper lip to go with those bright blue eyes turning more and more liquid.

"You're wrong, Buck. I stopped you because that's not who you are. And I'm not taking advantage of anyone." His shoulders slumped, and he finally looked away, down at Bucky's feet. "Now listen, I'm sorry. I'm sorry for all of it. But I was never-- II was never going to allow it ruin our friendship and if I told you..." He sucked in a breath and looked up again, face hard and the tears blinked away. He wasn't going to cry now that he was caught. And he wasn't going to run either. "I was selfish. It was wrong. I will stay away from you."

Edited 2017-07-01 16:44 (UTC)

"Yeah, you were wrong."

But then, he had been wrong too, hadn't he? He had held a torch for his best friend since he was a stupid kid in high school and realised that when he went to touch himself, it was a certain shade of blue eyes that he pictured in bed at night rather than any particular dame. He had lived with it for a long time, and now it turned out neither one of them should have had to live with it.

"I love you."

When he said them, the words were hoarse and a bit scared. Even though he pretty much knew that Steve felt the same way now, it still felt like jumping off a cliff without anything to catch him at the bottom. This was the end of their friendship how it had been, no matter what the outcome was. But he didn't let it stop him, he just looked directly into Steve's eyes and plunged on.

"I never wanted to step out with any dame as much as I wanted to step out with you. You've always been my best guy, Steve, and I'm goddamn angry that it took ninety years to know you felt the same way."

There were too many emotions for the span of thirty seconds and even someone with a constitution like Steve Rogers' could barely function for a few moments. He went from scared, remorseful and trying to eek out just a little bit of self worth from all of this despite being about to lose the only person that mattered to him to relieved that Bucky still loved him after all to whiplash in straight on through the notion that it was more than just a brotherly love being bantered about and Bucky actually loved him.

"What?" No, his hearing hadn't failed him. Yes, his foot had actually slid back as if he'd been hit and was catching himself from falling. His heart felt like it gave out somewhere along the way too and it was just too much for him.

He was eighteen years old again, left an orphan by his mother, and Bucky was sitting on the couch with a hand on his thigh kissing him. It was all real. The Night That Never Happened had happened. The lonely moments of feeling wrong and dirty when Steve drew terrible things instead of touched himself were so much less lonely now knowing that they were shared.

But that didn't mean that Steve was ready to hear any of this. "What?"

He should have been punched by now.

The look on Steve's face made Bucky's heart falter for a moment, because he looked whey and horrified as if Bucky had completely misread the situation. Had he? No-- No, Steve had all but admitted it, he knew what the truth was and he couldn't let himself second guess now, it was way too late for that.

So he stepped forwards to follow where Steve had nearly fallen flat on his ass and pinned him to the wall to press a sudden and insistent kiss to his lips. This was no chaste kiss, it was desperate and passionate and full of affection, but it only lasted for a few seconds.

"You heard me, Steve. I'm putting it out there, no more hiding. When you figure out what you want, let me know."

Of the less than a handful of times that Steve had been kissed. He could name all of them and aside for one kiss with a very pushy blonde, they had all been pretty meaningful to him. The press of a chest against his own and the tug downward left him breathless, but his hands hand remained helpless against the wall behind him. He wanted to reciprocate but Bucky was already pulling away from him. Steve couldn't let that happen. He reached forward to grasp Bucky's wrist, the metal one, but it didn't matter and whatever he was about to say was drowned out by Tony Stark announcing everyone to put on their seat belts and put their tray tables up,

The blond laughed, bashful, a blush across his cheeks and nose, and let his fingers slip down to the palm of Bucky's hand. He knew he could feel it, even if it wasn't flesh. He could feel how gentle Steve's touch was and how respectful it was trying to be.

"Let me try that one again. I just-- I want to make sure that this is really what you want and you're not just telling me everything I've wanted to hear since... Since we were sixteen." There was an earnestness in his eyes that very few people ever had. "And-- And I might need you to pinch me. And... And maybe try that again?"

"Only sixteen?"

Bucky grinned and right there it was like the old Bucky shining through, all charming lopsided smile and intense blue eyes. He didn't try to pull his hand away from Steve, projecting an aura of confidence as if this was exactly what he planned and he wasn't also terrified.

"I've wanted this since I was about twelve. I can remember-- you know that Sunday school we used to go to? I still had a squeaky voice and I asked Miss Henderson why two guys shouldn't love each other and she made me say fifty Hail Marys. Steve, you've always been my best guy, so don't-- don't say you want it unless you're all in."

Twelve? Steve wasn't flabbergasted, but he sure was close to it right now, eyes shimmering as his grip on Bucky's hand became tighter. "I remember saying half of those Hail Marys for you so we could catch the last half of the Dodgers game." He and Bucky sat really close that day, shoulders and knees touching as they shared some candy. Steve never really thought about it, but he remembered the whole thing with such clarity.

"I--"

"Anyone born better the nineteen-twenties, consider this your special invitation to join us," Tony interrupted over the loud speaker, though Steve ignored it and instead lifted his other hand to brush Bucky's cheek with his knuckles.

"I'm all in," Steve promised, backside still against the wall as he drew Bucky back in towards him. He might have spent his late teens and early twenties focused solely on fighting for his country and planning to have a wife so he could be considered normal when Bucky had a bunch of kids with his own wife, but there was never a time that Steve wouldn't want to be with Bucky whole heartedly in any way he could be.

Bucky might have always had his charm, but Steve had the mischievous streak and that was what he needed to pull Bucky back into his arms to kiss him with a breathier sigh that he had kissed Peggy Carter during that chase.

Luckily, this wasn't a lot like dancing. Steve didn't step on any toes. He just closed his eyes and felt is way through it.

"Steven. G. Rogers. Are they ignoring me? They're ignoring me, aren't they?"

"No one blames them, Stark," Barton's voice said before Tony took his finger off of the comm.

He remembers that, he had added on an extra Hail Mary on his end to apologise for lying to Steve about why he had been given them in the first place. He told his younger friend that it had been because he fell asleep in his Sunday school scripture one on one, already ashamed of what he felt inside. But it had been as he got older that the shame really sunk in.

It had been illegal; more than that, men who were found to be like that caused more shame to their families than even people who went to jail for things like theft or getting in a fight. At least those were manly crimes, being found to have perverted urges for another man was a sickness, people went into mental hospitals for treatment for it, and so he had buried it.

Even now, with Steve's lips pressed against his own, a part of him was almost sure they were going to get arrested and dragged up before someone to be punished. But then-- he didn't care. He had been punished so much that one more wouldn't kill him, and at least he would get to have this memory.

"...Steve," it was a murmur against his lips. "Do you-- do you want to keep this for us?"

He wasn't ashamed, but he knew that Steve had an image to maintain, especially if Captain America was going to be the leader of the new world. He'd understand if Steve wanted this to be clandestine, secret, though he would find it hard to keep his hands off now that he'd had a taste.

"You don't want to go steady?" Steve immediately misunderstood, which had to be part of his charm because otherwise, Bucky would have left him in the dust a long time ago. He wasn't sure if Bucky wanted more freedom now that he remembered who he was or if he wanted to still find a dame in the end and have those hundreds of kids that would all be beautiful and kind-- "I don't want to share."

He might as well be up front about that. He still had Bucky in his arms, one hand curled against the small of his back and the other at his shoulder because Steve wasn't really sure what role he was supposed to be taking. The last time anything like this had happened, Bucky had been all over him and Steve felt a little like he was along for the ride.

Not that he believed Bucky forced him into anything, he'd wanted to be touched so badly-- But now...now, he sort of towered over his friend and it felt better to be the one leading the dance lesson.

The skiff jolted under their feet. They had landed, and that meant that they had a duty to do. Steve sighed and dropped his hands. "Let's pick this back up tonight."

Bucky didn't want to pick it back up that night, he had waited for decades to have this conversation and he had lived through a hell worse than he had ever imagined to get to this place. He knew that they had a duty to do, but that duty could wait another five minutes, damn it.

"Steve, no."

He reached out and caught hold of Steve again, not allowing the slightly taller man to back away from him. Instead, it was his turn to rest his hand on Steve's lower back, the other one on his hip.

"I just don't want you to be compromised by me. There's nobody else, and if you want to shout it to everyone, then sign me up for the first megaphone."

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