![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
I went skulking around the AvengerKink Pinboard the other day and found this round nine prompt:
Steve has a fetish for black guys. He feels bad about it because it feels wrong to be attracted to someone based on the color of their skin, but he can't help but be attracted to them more than other races. He ends up sleeping with Fury, Rhodey, and Sam on various occasions.
Title: Hottentot
Author: Not Applicable
Pairing/Characters: Steve Rogers/Gabe Jones, Steve Rogers/Sam Wilson, Steve Rogers/James Rhodes, one-sided Steve Rogers/Nick Fury, Steve Rogers/OMC
Rating: Explicit
Genre: Slash
Word Count: 5082
Warnings: N/A.
Summary: Steve Rogers definitely has a type.
In the spring of 1942, Steve read an article about Hottentot Venus. Sarah Bartman. Saartjie Baartman. Put on display in chains and cages for the white world to ogle at her breasts, ass, and vagina. After she died her sexual organs were preserved and put on display, and her tribe were having a horrible time getting her remains back for a proper burial. The grotesque nature of her treatment would stick with him forever, but he wouldn't come to appreciate that until much later in life.
Steve grew up in Hell's Kitchen and sometimes wandered across 110th Street into Harlem, where no one would bother a little guy like him because they knew how it felt to be judged for something that they couldn't control. He could be small and sick and people would leave him in peace. The bartenders would serve him even though they knew he was a lightweight, and the men at the bars he frequented didn't hesitate to tell him he was cute. Harlem was a safe place for him. He had friends there, wonderful folks, and they knew things about him – private things. He could go to the park and find a guy for the night, tell them that he had to go slow because of his asthma, and they would respect that. Everyone was kind and the men were beautiful, their faces all eyelashes and lips and cheekbones, their skin like a million different shades of sweet earth. He'd run his hands along their hair and just rub the pomade into his skin – it smelled so good, made his hands so soft.
*
Steve became Captain America. He grew over a foot and would never experience a heart palpitation or an asthma attack again. His limbs were long and his muscles were bulging, and suddenly the people he'd never really been interested in were noticing him. Even Peggy Carter was making eyes at him suddenly, when before she'd seemed to only notice his strength of character and not much else. It was disheartening, to say the least.
He went to Europe and ended up rescuing Bucky from Hydra, as well as over a hundred other POWs. They were from all different countries and the various segregated platoons of the US military, an increasingly familiar moment when soldiers of all kinds were working together and having to fight alongside each other. He saw the way they all looked at him and he was reminded of his own wandering eyes, the way they fell on Gabriel Jones's sweaty neck whenever they were all leaned over a map together. He gazed at Gabe's skin and thought of people leering at Ms. Baartman, and he felt a little improper – but Gabe spoke French and German and Italian and Portuguese and Russian and Farsi and Cantonese, and he had dimples, and he loved the Dodgers. He could get fight songs going at the pubs and was polite to the “working girls” that came around the troops. Steve couldn't think about anything beyond licking Gabe's neck, watching his pale hand sink into dark flesh and pulling him close against him.
Bucky fell and Steve tried to get drunk, to no avail. The other Commandos managed it well enough, however, and at the end of the night it was up to Gabe and Steve to pour the others into bed. They went outside and walked into the woods together, talked about Howard University and Bucky and Washington DC and New York City. They leaned shoulder-to-shoulder against a tree trunk and watched moonlight filter through the branches above them, and when their lips met it felt like most natural thing in the world. They just leaned together and kissed, and Steve whispered, “You are beautiful,” along Gabe's mouth, which made him laugh. “I mean it,” Steve breathed as Gabe slid a hand down the front of his fatigues, mumbling softy in Portuguese (“assim como você”) along his neck.
They took turns fucking each other out there in the Italian forest. The moon made Steve glow pale blue and Gabe showed up almost purple in the light. Steve pressed his face against cool bark and looked at their hands together on the tree trunk, Gabe's breath warm on his neck. He didn't have to ask Gabe to go slow because he could breathe now, he was strong now, and Gabe let go and took him by the hips when Steve's fingers began sinking into the flesh of the tree. Steve muffled a moan when their bodies pressed flush together, but Gabe didn't muffle his at all as he came, shouting.
Steve sat and leaned back against the tree trunk, and he let Gabe straddle him so he could watch him, watch his grin spread wide in his dark face at Steve's thrusts, hard and fast up into him. Hard and fast, for the first time in his life. Steve slid pale blue hands up a deep purple chest, his thumbs catching nipples that were sharp and dark as onyx. He wrapped his arms around Gabe and rested his face against his chest as he fucked him, Steve's breaths long and his eyes focused on that dark expanse of skin. He rubbed his face along Gabe's chest and kissed him there, soupy statements swimming through his head (he is lovely, he is so lovely exactly the way he is) as he shut his eyes and came, his mouth open in a silent cry.
They managed to have sex another time before Steve fell, too, in a foxhole during a full moon, the sky littered with stars and the Milky Way like a backbone across the heavens.
*
Steve slept.
Well, he didn't really sleep at first. He sat in the cold for 72 hours before his heart rate finally began to slow and his vitals began to decline, and he hallucinated until everything went dark: tastes of bathtub liquor in Harlem, politely turning down offers to dance, Gabe's skin, assim como você, his fingers buried in a tree trunk, their hips locked together in a desperate rhythm on the forest floor, poor Saartjie Baartman being treated like a freak instead of being admired for her beauty. He remembered a newspaper photo of a clay bust of her face. High cheekbones and gorgeous eyes, full lips slightly agape at whatever was before her.
Steve woke.
His first few weeks back in the world were confusing and upsetting and horribly lonely, and Nick Fury seemed to understand that. He was stern with everyone except Steve, it seemed, but he didn't mind the special treatment at all. Fury would answer all of his dumb questions and went with him to visit Gabe Jones's grave in DC. He did not react at all when Steve cried.
“I knew Jones,” Fury said. “You two were close.”
Steve stood up straight but did not wipe his eyes. “Yes.”
Steve went to his hotel room and pulled himself off twice, once while thinking of Nick Fury and another while remembering moonlit patterns on the ground, a bourbon-laced mouth against his, his nails scraping through short hair and his teeth sinking sweetly into Gabe's bottom lip, soft as a perfectly ripe peach.
*
Steve was ready to rejoin the world. He was ready for dinners on the town and learning what young people did for fun nowadays. He watched television and was fascinated by the plethora of faces he saw, accents and skin tones from all over the world, and all here in New York, too. Men dated each other openly and across all cultures and classes, and they had casual sex openly, too, and that was okay. Steve knew what he liked but he also knew how it could come across if one knew he was born in the 1910s, and he cursed the fact that he had seventy years of social dynamics to relearn.
But the more time passed, the more Steve learned about the 21st century. The main thing was that he had no reason to hide his interests – any of them, whether it was drawing or baking or black guys. It was easy for him to come out about the first two. Turned out that the entire team loved sitting for portraits (Steve always marveled at how still and calm Tony was in those moments) and they also loved homemade apple pies and bread puddings. He would make piles of orange scones at breakfast and come back to the kitchen an hour later to find them all gone, so one day he made double the amount just to see the smiles on everyone's faces. He walked in at lunchtime to find Tony smearing tons of butter onto one and speaking rapidly at a man in desert fatigues at the bar who was trying to get a word in edgewise while eating as well. Both of their heads snapped up quickly and Steve felt light when Jim Rhodes smiled at him – he'd seen a million photos of the guy, had dreamed of one day seeing that smile aimed in his direction.
Tony called him Rhodey, and Rhodey was going to be spending a fair share of his two-month leave in New York. Steve thought Tony was a great guy but an obnoxious one as well, and this surprisingly gave him and Rhodey plenty to talk about. Rhodey was more than just a handsome man and Tony's friend, but he was also military nerd and an engineer, and he didn't seem to swoon over “Captain America” the way most military types tended to nowadays. Rhodey mentioned seeing Gabriel Jones give a lecture during his years at the United States Air Force Academy, and Steve nodded his way through that information as calmly as possible. “Great guy,” he said, ignoring the heat in his eyes. “He was one of my Commandos.”
“Yeah, he talked about that,” Rhodey said. “I got a copy of his book, too. He talks a lot about being on the front line and segregation in the military, but mostly about the Commandos. And you.”
Rhodey seemed to be pinning him with a look. His expression was pointed but slightly playful, and Steve couldn't help but give a grin in return.
“Like I said,” he responded. “Great guy.”
That night he watched everyone else get drunk, and Rhodey helped Tony to bed once it was clear he wouldn't be able to make it on his own. Steve kept listening for his return, glancing at the door whenever he heard a noise, but after a while he let it go, lest he give himself away.
Of course the conversation turned to sex after a while, and he knew that the world assumed of him. Little pipsqueak gets juiced up into a golden god but has no time to get laid before being frozen for decades...Cap's probably still a virgin. He thought of drawing and baking and black guys.
“How about you, Cap?” Barton chimed in, his expression smarmy beyond reason. “Tell us all about your first kiss.” Bruce nudged Barton and shook his head.
Why not?
“It was a girl, one of my neighbors,” Steve said. “But the one I think about the most is this guy that ran the first speakeasy I went to in Harlem. He never took any guff from the cops but he'd always hide me if they came around – he said they'd claim they were hurting me or something, I don't know.” He wasn't even looking at the team, was just talking and gazing out of the windows, towards the Apollo Theater. “I was tiny back then so he could treat me like a damsel in distress sometimes, but it was okay. It was kinda true, I guess.”
“Wow,” Natasha mumbled, pulling her legs up onto the overstuffed chair she lounged in. She spilled a bit of her beer but didn't even seem to notice. “Kinda ballsy for that day and age, right? Gay interracial dating...” Steve was impressed. He hadn't even mentioned this man's race, but Natasha was a spy and horribly perceptive, even after eleven beers.
“Yeah,” Steve said. “Being gay was hard enough and me being white didn't help things much, either. But nowadays isn't so bad. I don't have to hide anything anymore, right? Woulda been nice to have taken my old boy out on a date.”
*
Steve knew that in the 21st century, all people were pretty much on the same page and all demanded the same level of respect. That party had been enough to show him that this particular “interest” of his could be construed as tokenizing or just downright inappropriate, so for a while he let the others believe that the days of his youth were peppered with black lovers out of necessity, because he could only go to Harlem to find like-minded men to cruise.
Once life began to move on past the Avengers Initiative's first mission, he pretty much gave himself away – but that was okay because he was determined to do his own thing if he was finally allowed. He wanted to flirt and cruise and kiss and go home with people, and it definitely seemed that the others were picking up on his “type.” He always lunched with Nick Fury if they were ever at SHIELD headquarters, and a young military recruit named Sam Wilson began hanging around him more and more as well. Sam had a friendly smile and was remarkably tactile, always leaning an elbow on Steve's shoulder or bumping him for emphasis during a conversation. They went out after work often to drink and watch baseball games, or they'd come to the tower for dinner and ESPN. Sam had a bird named Redwing and was nimble as a dancer during hand-to-hand combat, and when they got close enough Steve could smell the oil in his hair, scented with flowers and fruit. Steve often wondered how it would feel on his palms.
The team would go out to parties and bars and clubs and Steve would spend his entire night drinking scotch (his dad had liked it, and so did Tony) and politely chatting up the boys and girls around him, and he'd always zero in on some Jamaican busboy or an Afro-Cuban personal trainer, a lawyer with parents from the Sudan or Côte d'Ivoire. He marveled at modern New York and the different types of people who lived in the city now, all the restaurants and dancehall clubs and mambo nights, and he was welcome to enjoy it all. Melting pot, that was the word they'd used in all the SHIELD literature he'd had to read after they thawed him out. He could have his fun out in the light of day now – he was almost expected to, it seemed, and so he did. He saw the others grinning at him sometimes, Tony smirking over the rim of his glass as Steve whispered into a Brazilian man's ear.
“It means 'so are you,'” the guy said back to him.
“You are lovely,” Steve said later that night, using his nose to push dreadlocks away so that he could say it into his ear. The guy just laughed heartily and bucked back at Steve, “assim como você,” falling off of his lips.
One night Steve and Rhodey sat in a booth at Tunnel for hours, yelling over the music about God-knows-what, and Steve tried not to gasp when Rhodey leaned in to make a point and let his hand fall on the back of his neck. Steve nodded and tried to look like he was listening when he was really wishing that he could go out-of-body and look at the back of him, see that big dark hand pressed against his skin. The contrast alone – just the thought of it – made heat pool low in Steve's belly. He excused himself and went to the VIP bathroom to find Tony on his cell phone and chattering non-stop while they both peed.
Steve finished up and went to wash his hands, and Tony walked up behind him, a drunk grin on his face. There were two sinks so Steve knew Tony wasn't waiting for him to finish.
“Sam just got here,” Tony said lightly, though his grin was anything but.
“Great,” Steve said, rinsing his hands. He glanced up at Tony in the mirror to see him smiling and shaking his head, an I-knew-it gesture coming from a guy like him.
“What is it?” Steve asked.
“You like black guys,” Tony said.
Steve actually appreciated Tony's bluntness, but still. “I like all guys.”
“No, not just like 'you like Rhodey and you're probably fucking Sam,' but what I mean is you only wanna hook up with black guys,” Tony continued, and now he was leaning against the sink beside Steve, his grin getting larger and larger. “I'm not judging you, don't get me wrong – not at all. You know my dad stayed friends with all the Commandos after you disappeared. Gabe Jones came around a lot. Great bone structure on that guy.”
“I'm not fucking Sam.” Steve took a breath and turned off the water, realizing his jaw was set.
“It's not a big deal nowadays, you have to know that,” Tony said, and his voice had a bit of a comforting tone to it. “Seriously, I don't care – no one does. I just never expected that out of you. I had plenty of conversations with my dad about stuff like that when Rhodey and I were trying to do our thing back in college, and you're from the same time. Let's just say he didn't approve of our involvement, and not just because Rhodey's a guy.”
“I'm not your father,” Steve said, trying to keep his voice even. He had the feeling that Tony's drunkenness was overshadowing his earnestness, so Steve decided to hold off on getting too defensive. “And I'm not some old fogey, either. I like who I like. I can't help what or who I find to be beautiful, and I don't fight it. You told me I didn't have to hide anything about myself anymore. Is that still true?”
“Definitely,” Tony said, grinning a bit and nodding with a sincerity that impressed Steve. “To be honest, I don't understand how you were ever friends with Howard. You're like...a million times better than him.”
Steve didn't like hearing anyone badmouthing their parents, but he still decided to take that as a compliment. “Well, I didn't know him that well,” Steve said. “But thanks, I guess.”
He went back out into the club to find Rhodey on the floor with Natasha, dancing near her but not against her. Steve didn't like betting all of his chips on an unknown (did Rhodey even think of him in that way?) so he posted up at the bar with Bruce, who chatted idly with him until Sam approached. Now Sam, who liked to pin Steve to the mat and never ever called him 'Cap', was much less of an unknown. He thought of what Tony said in the bathroom – did it really seem that way between them? Steve lost track of Bruce after a while, and he ended up standing at the bar with Sam until Tony tapped his shoulder, indicating that they were all going home.
“Hey,” Steve told Sam. “Come back to the tower for a night cap.”
Back at Steve's apartment, Sam knelt on the living room floor and sucked Steve's cock as he sat on the couch, Steve's hips twisting gently as he gripped Sam's short afro. His face reddened at the warmth, the wetness, and he looked down and saw Sam's gorgeous mouth on him, someone's lips on his cock for the first time since Italy, and he came with a long moan, his whole body vibrating in a way that was almost unreal. He let go of Sam's hair but he didn't back away, didn't stop.
Steve swung his legs up onto the couch and let Sam yank his pants off while he took off his own shirt, and he did a slight double-take at the sight of Sam's thick cock jutting from the zipper of his pants. As lovely as it looked, it still wouldn't do. “Take off your clothes,” Steve said. “I wanna see you, you're beautiful.”
Sam chuckled and put one foot on the ground as he planted his other knee into the couch, giving Steve a wonderful view as he removed his shirt. “I bet you say that to everyone you bring home,” Sam said as he pulled his pants off of one leg, then the other.
“Yeah, pretty much,” Steve said, still panting a bit from his orgasm, and Sam laughed as he leaned down and kissed him, a hand sliding beneath him to get him ready.
Seventy years was a long time to go without intimacy and Steve had almost forgotten that he could fuck as long and as hard as he wanted now. Sam wasn't a supersoldier but he was young and fit, and he wasn't holding back when he hooked Steve's leg into the crook of his arm and pistoned at him like he could take anything. And now Steve could, and he wanted to. Steve held on tight and moaned all he wanted – he could do that now, too.
*
Rhodey was due to leave in the morning, so Tony ordered food and alcohol and the night went like many nights did in Avengers Tower. They drank and played games and shared overly personal stories but didn't get embarrassed after the fact, and Steve shocked them all during the few times he chimed in with a dirty story that wound up topping their previous ones. He didn't tell too much, stuck to his “greatest hits” if you will, mostly vague re-tellings of an evening with a Moroccan rent boy or gay sex in foxholes, and he couldn't help but feel a bit disturbed by everyone's awe. He'd known that he'd been exalted from a military spokesperson to a superhero during his time in the ice, and it made him feel less human every day. He still felt like a tiny kid from Brooklyn with a heart condition and a penchant for ethnic men, but this new body, this copyrighted and trademarked nickname of his took away his new right to shamelessly fuck whomever he wanted while also having a preference for a certain type. Nobody got shocked nowadays if a guy only wanted to date brunettes, right?
Rhodey had stopped drinking early in the night and Tony was no good by two am, and luckily everyone else had been smart enough to drag themselves to their respective floors before they got too drunk to walk. Steve stuck around to help Rhodey put Tony away for the evening, and it didn't take long to wrangle him into the bed and turn out the light. Rhodey exited first and Steve followed silently, realizing after a while that they were heading towards Rhodey's guest room.
“I'm packin' it in,” Rhodey said, though he didn't seem particularly weary. He glanced up at Steve with a grin that made him feel bold.
“That's a shame,” Steve replied. “I'm not tired at all.”
They arrived at Rhodey's door and it was open, the bedside lamp on. “What were you thinking?” Rhodey asked, and he slid his hands in his pockets. The gesture made Steve's pulse quicken for some reason, his chest throbbing for a moment.
“Whatever you were thinking,” Steve responded. Rhodey looked away with a sharp sigh and an embarrassed grin, and Steve almost felt proud of himself for being able to make the War Machine blush.
“Are you hitting on me?” Rhodey asked him.
“Absolutely,” Steve responded. He didn't have to hide anything about himself anymore.
“Well, I...” and Rhodey trailed off, scratching at his nose for a moment. “It's just that you – I mean I really like you, Steve, I respect you and I'm into you, but...” He trailed off again, almost turning away for a moment.
“But what?” Steve asked, but he was sure he could guess.
“You only fuck black guys,” Rhodey said plainly. “I don't care who you sleep with, really, but I don't wanna be part of anyone's 'Hottentot' thing.”
Saartjie Baartman. A woman on display to the world whether she liked it or not, objectified, simplified down to her anatomy. It disgusted him to think of a person being treated that way, and the fact that Rhodey had used that term definitely made him realize how Rhodey felt about his preferences.
“I know how it looks,” Steve said, “but I like who I like, and to me it's no different than preferring blonds to redheads. I think you're gorgeous and an awesome guy, Rhodey, regardless of all that.” He caught the way Rhodey's grin faded a bit and Steve felt guilty for a moment. “It's okay – I'm still gonna make out with you once you're done insulting me.”
Rhodey laughed incredulously, clearly caught off guard. “I said I respect you, and I mean that,” Rhodey said, and finally he began to approach Steve. “I just wanted to be sure that you respect me, too.”
Steve's breath caught in his throat so he just nodded as they closed in on each other, Rhodey pushing Steve back against the door frame and pinning him with a deep kiss. “Jesus,” Steve mumbled, unable to be more articulate when his senses were overwhelmed by Rhodey's heavy scent and the taste of his tongue, a hand gripping his ass and squeezing playfully. Steve eased off of the door frame and started walking back to his bed, one hand on the back of Rhodey's neck and the other gripping the waistband of his jeans. They stood at the foot of the bed and kissed, and Steve brushed his knuckles along Rhodey's zipper to find his cock hot and hard already. He reached back and stroked his hand up and down the length of him, squeezing, and Rhodey gusted a hot breath into their kiss.
Steve sat on the bed then and unfastened Rhodey's pants, inching them down his hips a bit along with his underwear and then folding them down, and he had to duck back when Rhodey's hardon flopped out, dark brown like the rest of skin and rock hard, curving slightly to the left, thick as his arm back when he was a ninety-pound weakling, smelling sweet and male and tasting like clean skin when he nuzzled and kissed it. Steve took it into his mouth and tasted a man on his tongue for the first time seventy years, and he took Rhodey in long, deep strokes that had big hands twisting carefully in his hair. Steve sighed around Rhodey's dick and moved faster, swallowing when Rhodey ran off a little in in his mouth. Steve reached down and pressed a palm into his own crotch, trying to relieve some of the pressure built up from a month of flirting with this man.
He felt Rhodey's hips rocking towards his face and he slowed his stroke to match that, going deep every time and feeling spurred on by the way Rhodey groaned his name. “Fuck, Steve,” rough and raw from this throat, and Steve whimpered and finally pulled out his own cock, jerking himself off when he tasted Rhodey leaking a steady stream across his tongue. He pulled away and took Rhodey into his free hand, stroking them both and gazing at the hardon in front of him, shining with his spit, a pearl of precome standing stark white against Rhodey's skin. Steve thought of saying you're beautiful but maybe that was considered a bit cheesy nowadays, though he always meant it when he said it.
“You have a gorgeous cock,” he said instead, and Rhodey just sighed a weak moan and leaned forward, his brow knitted and one hand on Steve's shoulder now. Steve took him in his mouth again and sucked him in earnest, letting a slick finger slide behind Rhodey's balls and along his hole. Rhodey's knees buckled and his fingers sank into Steve's shoulders, and he was only able to ease his fingertip in to the first knuckle before Rhodey came in his mouth, his moan croaking and almost shocked, his voice finally coming in wordless shouts when he felt Steve swallow around him.
Steve spit generously into his hand and slicked up his own leaking cock, and he didn't have to say anything because Rhodey was shucking off his clothes in a flash and climbing onto the bed as Steve scooted back towards the headboard. Rhodey straddled his lap and Steve took him around the waist, entering him smoothly, and Steve wasted no time in moving quickly in and out of him, he was already so close. He placed his hands on Rhodey's hips and leaned back a bit, his knees bent as he thrust his hips up to meet Rhodey's, and Steve's eyes drifted shut when Rhodey squeezed sharply around him. He lay back and huffed, his eyes focused on nothing, his hands gripping Rhodey's hips and his thrusts unrelenting now, and he glanced up to see the moon out of the window, the room full of deep purple and pale blue and Steve screwed his eyes shut and came, achingly happy just because he was present, here and now, his eyes watering with pure joy.
Rhodey left for Edwards AFB that morning and they agreed to keep in touch. But Steve wasn't an old fogey – he knew how things worked, but he hoped Rhodey meant it when he said he wanted to do it again some time.
Steve and Sam still saw each other some times, no strings, no stress, no problems. Steve adored Sam – horribly talented and lithe and funny and flexible Sam. Sam who saved Steve's life in battle occasionally and gave sensuous and intense blowjobs that sometimes left Steve unable to meet his eyes afterward. They were great friends and occasionally a bit more than that, and that was just fine with both of them. Beyond that arrangement, Steve was having his fun and forgetting what shame even felt like. He liked who he liked and brought home who he liked, and so what if they all had earth-toned skin and marvelous hair, and if he ever slipped up and told them they were beautiful they often laughed, but some would just say, “thanks,” or “so are you.”
Steve has a fetish for black guys. He feels bad about it because it feels wrong to be attracted to someone based on the color of their skin, but he can't help but be attracted to them more than other races. He ends up sleeping with Fury, Rhodey, and Sam on various occasions.
Title: Hottentot
Author: Not Applicable
Pairing/Characters: Steve Rogers/Gabe Jones, Steve Rogers/Sam Wilson, Steve Rogers/James Rhodes, one-sided Steve Rogers/Nick Fury, Steve Rogers/OMC
Rating: Explicit
Genre: Slash
Word Count: 5082
Warnings: N/A.
Summary: Steve Rogers definitely has a type.
In the spring of 1942, Steve read an article about Hottentot Venus. Sarah Bartman. Saartjie Baartman. Put on display in chains and cages for the white world to ogle at her breasts, ass, and vagina. After she died her sexual organs were preserved and put on display, and her tribe were having a horrible time getting her remains back for a proper burial. The grotesque nature of her treatment would stick with him forever, but he wouldn't come to appreciate that until much later in life.
Steve grew up in Hell's Kitchen and sometimes wandered across 110th Street into Harlem, where no one would bother a little guy like him because they knew how it felt to be judged for something that they couldn't control. He could be small and sick and people would leave him in peace. The bartenders would serve him even though they knew he was a lightweight, and the men at the bars he frequented didn't hesitate to tell him he was cute. Harlem was a safe place for him. He had friends there, wonderful folks, and they knew things about him – private things. He could go to the park and find a guy for the night, tell them that he had to go slow because of his asthma, and they would respect that. Everyone was kind and the men were beautiful, their faces all eyelashes and lips and cheekbones, their skin like a million different shades of sweet earth. He'd run his hands along their hair and just rub the pomade into his skin – it smelled so good, made his hands so soft.
*
Steve became Captain America. He grew over a foot and would never experience a heart palpitation or an asthma attack again. His limbs were long and his muscles were bulging, and suddenly the people he'd never really been interested in were noticing him. Even Peggy Carter was making eyes at him suddenly, when before she'd seemed to only notice his strength of character and not much else. It was disheartening, to say the least.
He went to Europe and ended up rescuing Bucky from Hydra, as well as over a hundred other POWs. They were from all different countries and the various segregated platoons of the US military, an increasingly familiar moment when soldiers of all kinds were working together and having to fight alongside each other. He saw the way they all looked at him and he was reminded of his own wandering eyes, the way they fell on Gabriel Jones's sweaty neck whenever they were all leaned over a map together. He gazed at Gabe's skin and thought of people leering at Ms. Baartman, and he felt a little improper – but Gabe spoke French and German and Italian and Portuguese and Russian and Farsi and Cantonese, and he had dimples, and he loved the Dodgers. He could get fight songs going at the pubs and was polite to the “working girls” that came around the troops. Steve couldn't think about anything beyond licking Gabe's neck, watching his pale hand sink into dark flesh and pulling him close against him.
Bucky fell and Steve tried to get drunk, to no avail. The other Commandos managed it well enough, however, and at the end of the night it was up to Gabe and Steve to pour the others into bed. They went outside and walked into the woods together, talked about Howard University and Bucky and Washington DC and New York City. They leaned shoulder-to-shoulder against a tree trunk and watched moonlight filter through the branches above them, and when their lips met it felt like most natural thing in the world. They just leaned together and kissed, and Steve whispered, “You are beautiful,” along Gabe's mouth, which made him laugh. “I mean it,” Steve breathed as Gabe slid a hand down the front of his fatigues, mumbling softy in Portuguese (“assim como você”) along his neck.
They took turns fucking each other out there in the Italian forest. The moon made Steve glow pale blue and Gabe showed up almost purple in the light. Steve pressed his face against cool bark and looked at their hands together on the tree trunk, Gabe's breath warm on his neck. He didn't have to ask Gabe to go slow because he could breathe now, he was strong now, and Gabe let go and took him by the hips when Steve's fingers began sinking into the flesh of the tree. Steve muffled a moan when their bodies pressed flush together, but Gabe didn't muffle his at all as he came, shouting.
Steve sat and leaned back against the tree trunk, and he let Gabe straddle him so he could watch him, watch his grin spread wide in his dark face at Steve's thrusts, hard and fast up into him. Hard and fast, for the first time in his life. Steve slid pale blue hands up a deep purple chest, his thumbs catching nipples that were sharp and dark as onyx. He wrapped his arms around Gabe and rested his face against his chest as he fucked him, Steve's breaths long and his eyes focused on that dark expanse of skin. He rubbed his face along Gabe's chest and kissed him there, soupy statements swimming through his head (he is lovely, he is so lovely exactly the way he is) as he shut his eyes and came, his mouth open in a silent cry.
They managed to have sex another time before Steve fell, too, in a foxhole during a full moon, the sky littered with stars and the Milky Way like a backbone across the heavens.
*
Steve slept.
Well, he didn't really sleep at first. He sat in the cold for 72 hours before his heart rate finally began to slow and his vitals began to decline, and he hallucinated until everything went dark: tastes of bathtub liquor in Harlem, politely turning down offers to dance, Gabe's skin, assim como você, his fingers buried in a tree trunk, their hips locked together in a desperate rhythm on the forest floor, poor Saartjie Baartman being treated like a freak instead of being admired for her beauty. He remembered a newspaper photo of a clay bust of her face. High cheekbones and gorgeous eyes, full lips slightly agape at whatever was before her.
Steve woke.
His first few weeks back in the world were confusing and upsetting and horribly lonely, and Nick Fury seemed to understand that. He was stern with everyone except Steve, it seemed, but he didn't mind the special treatment at all. Fury would answer all of his dumb questions and went with him to visit Gabe Jones's grave in DC. He did not react at all when Steve cried.
“I knew Jones,” Fury said. “You two were close.”
Steve stood up straight but did not wipe his eyes. “Yes.”
Steve went to his hotel room and pulled himself off twice, once while thinking of Nick Fury and another while remembering moonlit patterns on the ground, a bourbon-laced mouth against his, his nails scraping through short hair and his teeth sinking sweetly into Gabe's bottom lip, soft as a perfectly ripe peach.
*
Steve was ready to rejoin the world. He was ready for dinners on the town and learning what young people did for fun nowadays. He watched television and was fascinated by the plethora of faces he saw, accents and skin tones from all over the world, and all here in New York, too. Men dated each other openly and across all cultures and classes, and they had casual sex openly, too, and that was okay. Steve knew what he liked but he also knew how it could come across if one knew he was born in the 1910s, and he cursed the fact that he had seventy years of social dynamics to relearn.
But the more time passed, the more Steve learned about the 21st century. The main thing was that he had no reason to hide his interests – any of them, whether it was drawing or baking or black guys. It was easy for him to come out about the first two. Turned out that the entire team loved sitting for portraits (Steve always marveled at how still and calm Tony was in those moments) and they also loved homemade apple pies and bread puddings. He would make piles of orange scones at breakfast and come back to the kitchen an hour later to find them all gone, so one day he made double the amount just to see the smiles on everyone's faces. He walked in at lunchtime to find Tony smearing tons of butter onto one and speaking rapidly at a man in desert fatigues at the bar who was trying to get a word in edgewise while eating as well. Both of their heads snapped up quickly and Steve felt light when Jim Rhodes smiled at him – he'd seen a million photos of the guy, had dreamed of one day seeing that smile aimed in his direction.
Tony called him Rhodey, and Rhodey was going to be spending a fair share of his two-month leave in New York. Steve thought Tony was a great guy but an obnoxious one as well, and this surprisingly gave him and Rhodey plenty to talk about. Rhodey was more than just a handsome man and Tony's friend, but he was also military nerd and an engineer, and he didn't seem to swoon over “Captain America” the way most military types tended to nowadays. Rhodey mentioned seeing Gabriel Jones give a lecture during his years at the United States Air Force Academy, and Steve nodded his way through that information as calmly as possible. “Great guy,” he said, ignoring the heat in his eyes. “He was one of my Commandos.”
“Yeah, he talked about that,” Rhodey said. “I got a copy of his book, too. He talks a lot about being on the front line and segregation in the military, but mostly about the Commandos. And you.”
Rhodey seemed to be pinning him with a look. His expression was pointed but slightly playful, and Steve couldn't help but give a grin in return.
“Like I said,” he responded. “Great guy.”
That night he watched everyone else get drunk, and Rhodey helped Tony to bed once it was clear he wouldn't be able to make it on his own. Steve kept listening for his return, glancing at the door whenever he heard a noise, but after a while he let it go, lest he give himself away.
Of course the conversation turned to sex after a while, and he knew that the world assumed of him. Little pipsqueak gets juiced up into a golden god but has no time to get laid before being frozen for decades...Cap's probably still a virgin. He thought of drawing and baking and black guys.
“How about you, Cap?” Barton chimed in, his expression smarmy beyond reason. “Tell us all about your first kiss.” Bruce nudged Barton and shook his head.
Why not?
“It was a girl, one of my neighbors,” Steve said. “But the one I think about the most is this guy that ran the first speakeasy I went to in Harlem. He never took any guff from the cops but he'd always hide me if they came around – he said they'd claim they were hurting me or something, I don't know.” He wasn't even looking at the team, was just talking and gazing out of the windows, towards the Apollo Theater. “I was tiny back then so he could treat me like a damsel in distress sometimes, but it was okay. It was kinda true, I guess.”
“Wow,” Natasha mumbled, pulling her legs up onto the overstuffed chair she lounged in. She spilled a bit of her beer but didn't even seem to notice. “Kinda ballsy for that day and age, right? Gay interracial dating...” Steve was impressed. He hadn't even mentioned this man's race, but Natasha was a spy and horribly perceptive, even after eleven beers.
“Yeah,” Steve said. “Being gay was hard enough and me being white didn't help things much, either. But nowadays isn't so bad. I don't have to hide anything anymore, right? Woulda been nice to have taken my old boy out on a date.”
*
Steve knew that in the 21st century, all people were pretty much on the same page and all demanded the same level of respect. That party had been enough to show him that this particular “interest” of his could be construed as tokenizing or just downright inappropriate, so for a while he let the others believe that the days of his youth were peppered with black lovers out of necessity, because he could only go to Harlem to find like-minded men to cruise.
Once life began to move on past the Avengers Initiative's first mission, he pretty much gave himself away – but that was okay because he was determined to do his own thing if he was finally allowed. He wanted to flirt and cruise and kiss and go home with people, and it definitely seemed that the others were picking up on his “type.” He always lunched with Nick Fury if they were ever at SHIELD headquarters, and a young military recruit named Sam Wilson began hanging around him more and more as well. Sam had a friendly smile and was remarkably tactile, always leaning an elbow on Steve's shoulder or bumping him for emphasis during a conversation. They went out after work often to drink and watch baseball games, or they'd come to the tower for dinner and ESPN. Sam had a bird named Redwing and was nimble as a dancer during hand-to-hand combat, and when they got close enough Steve could smell the oil in his hair, scented with flowers and fruit. Steve often wondered how it would feel on his palms.
The team would go out to parties and bars and clubs and Steve would spend his entire night drinking scotch (his dad had liked it, and so did Tony) and politely chatting up the boys and girls around him, and he'd always zero in on some Jamaican busboy or an Afro-Cuban personal trainer, a lawyer with parents from the Sudan or Côte d'Ivoire. He marveled at modern New York and the different types of people who lived in the city now, all the restaurants and dancehall clubs and mambo nights, and he was welcome to enjoy it all. Melting pot, that was the word they'd used in all the SHIELD literature he'd had to read after they thawed him out. He could have his fun out in the light of day now – he was almost expected to, it seemed, and so he did. He saw the others grinning at him sometimes, Tony smirking over the rim of his glass as Steve whispered into a Brazilian man's ear.
“It means 'so are you,'” the guy said back to him.
“You are lovely,” Steve said later that night, using his nose to push dreadlocks away so that he could say it into his ear. The guy just laughed heartily and bucked back at Steve, “assim como você,” falling off of his lips.
One night Steve and Rhodey sat in a booth at Tunnel for hours, yelling over the music about God-knows-what, and Steve tried not to gasp when Rhodey leaned in to make a point and let his hand fall on the back of his neck. Steve nodded and tried to look like he was listening when he was really wishing that he could go out-of-body and look at the back of him, see that big dark hand pressed against his skin. The contrast alone – just the thought of it – made heat pool low in Steve's belly. He excused himself and went to the VIP bathroom to find Tony on his cell phone and chattering non-stop while they both peed.
Steve finished up and went to wash his hands, and Tony walked up behind him, a drunk grin on his face. There were two sinks so Steve knew Tony wasn't waiting for him to finish.
“Sam just got here,” Tony said lightly, though his grin was anything but.
“Great,” Steve said, rinsing his hands. He glanced up at Tony in the mirror to see him smiling and shaking his head, an I-knew-it gesture coming from a guy like him.
“What is it?” Steve asked.
“You like black guys,” Tony said.
Steve actually appreciated Tony's bluntness, but still. “I like all guys.”
“No, not just like 'you like Rhodey and you're probably fucking Sam,' but what I mean is you only wanna hook up with black guys,” Tony continued, and now he was leaning against the sink beside Steve, his grin getting larger and larger. “I'm not judging you, don't get me wrong – not at all. You know my dad stayed friends with all the Commandos after you disappeared. Gabe Jones came around a lot. Great bone structure on that guy.”
“I'm not fucking Sam.” Steve took a breath and turned off the water, realizing his jaw was set.
“It's not a big deal nowadays, you have to know that,” Tony said, and his voice had a bit of a comforting tone to it. “Seriously, I don't care – no one does. I just never expected that out of you. I had plenty of conversations with my dad about stuff like that when Rhodey and I were trying to do our thing back in college, and you're from the same time. Let's just say he didn't approve of our involvement, and not just because Rhodey's a guy.”
“I'm not your father,” Steve said, trying to keep his voice even. He had the feeling that Tony's drunkenness was overshadowing his earnestness, so Steve decided to hold off on getting too defensive. “And I'm not some old fogey, either. I like who I like. I can't help what or who I find to be beautiful, and I don't fight it. You told me I didn't have to hide anything about myself anymore. Is that still true?”
“Definitely,” Tony said, grinning a bit and nodding with a sincerity that impressed Steve. “To be honest, I don't understand how you were ever friends with Howard. You're like...a million times better than him.”
Steve didn't like hearing anyone badmouthing their parents, but he still decided to take that as a compliment. “Well, I didn't know him that well,” Steve said. “But thanks, I guess.”
He went back out into the club to find Rhodey on the floor with Natasha, dancing near her but not against her. Steve didn't like betting all of his chips on an unknown (did Rhodey even think of him in that way?) so he posted up at the bar with Bruce, who chatted idly with him until Sam approached. Now Sam, who liked to pin Steve to the mat and never ever called him 'Cap', was much less of an unknown. He thought of what Tony said in the bathroom – did it really seem that way between them? Steve lost track of Bruce after a while, and he ended up standing at the bar with Sam until Tony tapped his shoulder, indicating that they were all going home.
“Hey,” Steve told Sam. “Come back to the tower for a night cap.”
Back at Steve's apartment, Sam knelt on the living room floor and sucked Steve's cock as he sat on the couch, Steve's hips twisting gently as he gripped Sam's short afro. His face reddened at the warmth, the wetness, and he looked down and saw Sam's gorgeous mouth on him, someone's lips on his cock for the first time since Italy, and he came with a long moan, his whole body vibrating in a way that was almost unreal. He let go of Sam's hair but he didn't back away, didn't stop.
Steve swung his legs up onto the couch and let Sam yank his pants off while he took off his own shirt, and he did a slight double-take at the sight of Sam's thick cock jutting from the zipper of his pants. As lovely as it looked, it still wouldn't do. “Take off your clothes,” Steve said. “I wanna see you, you're beautiful.”
Sam chuckled and put one foot on the ground as he planted his other knee into the couch, giving Steve a wonderful view as he removed his shirt. “I bet you say that to everyone you bring home,” Sam said as he pulled his pants off of one leg, then the other.
“Yeah, pretty much,” Steve said, still panting a bit from his orgasm, and Sam laughed as he leaned down and kissed him, a hand sliding beneath him to get him ready.
Seventy years was a long time to go without intimacy and Steve had almost forgotten that he could fuck as long and as hard as he wanted now. Sam wasn't a supersoldier but he was young and fit, and he wasn't holding back when he hooked Steve's leg into the crook of his arm and pistoned at him like he could take anything. And now Steve could, and he wanted to. Steve held on tight and moaned all he wanted – he could do that now, too.
*
Rhodey was due to leave in the morning, so Tony ordered food and alcohol and the night went like many nights did in Avengers Tower. They drank and played games and shared overly personal stories but didn't get embarrassed after the fact, and Steve shocked them all during the few times he chimed in with a dirty story that wound up topping their previous ones. He didn't tell too much, stuck to his “greatest hits” if you will, mostly vague re-tellings of an evening with a Moroccan rent boy or gay sex in foxholes, and he couldn't help but feel a bit disturbed by everyone's awe. He'd known that he'd been exalted from a military spokesperson to a superhero during his time in the ice, and it made him feel less human every day. He still felt like a tiny kid from Brooklyn with a heart condition and a penchant for ethnic men, but this new body, this copyrighted and trademarked nickname of his took away his new right to shamelessly fuck whomever he wanted while also having a preference for a certain type. Nobody got shocked nowadays if a guy only wanted to date brunettes, right?
Rhodey had stopped drinking early in the night and Tony was no good by two am, and luckily everyone else had been smart enough to drag themselves to their respective floors before they got too drunk to walk. Steve stuck around to help Rhodey put Tony away for the evening, and it didn't take long to wrangle him into the bed and turn out the light. Rhodey exited first and Steve followed silently, realizing after a while that they were heading towards Rhodey's guest room.
“I'm packin' it in,” Rhodey said, though he didn't seem particularly weary. He glanced up at Steve with a grin that made him feel bold.
“That's a shame,” Steve replied. “I'm not tired at all.”
They arrived at Rhodey's door and it was open, the bedside lamp on. “What were you thinking?” Rhodey asked, and he slid his hands in his pockets. The gesture made Steve's pulse quicken for some reason, his chest throbbing for a moment.
“Whatever you were thinking,” Steve responded. Rhodey looked away with a sharp sigh and an embarrassed grin, and Steve almost felt proud of himself for being able to make the War Machine blush.
“Are you hitting on me?” Rhodey asked him.
“Absolutely,” Steve responded. He didn't have to hide anything about himself anymore.
“Well, I...” and Rhodey trailed off, scratching at his nose for a moment. “It's just that you – I mean I really like you, Steve, I respect you and I'm into you, but...” He trailed off again, almost turning away for a moment.
“But what?” Steve asked, but he was sure he could guess.
“You only fuck black guys,” Rhodey said plainly. “I don't care who you sleep with, really, but I don't wanna be part of anyone's 'Hottentot' thing.”
Saartjie Baartman. A woman on display to the world whether she liked it or not, objectified, simplified down to her anatomy. It disgusted him to think of a person being treated that way, and the fact that Rhodey had used that term definitely made him realize how Rhodey felt about his preferences.
“I know how it looks,” Steve said, “but I like who I like, and to me it's no different than preferring blonds to redheads. I think you're gorgeous and an awesome guy, Rhodey, regardless of all that.” He caught the way Rhodey's grin faded a bit and Steve felt guilty for a moment. “It's okay – I'm still gonna make out with you once you're done insulting me.”
Rhodey laughed incredulously, clearly caught off guard. “I said I respect you, and I mean that,” Rhodey said, and finally he began to approach Steve. “I just wanted to be sure that you respect me, too.”
Steve's breath caught in his throat so he just nodded as they closed in on each other, Rhodey pushing Steve back against the door frame and pinning him with a deep kiss. “Jesus,” Steve mumbled, unable to be more articulate when his senses were overwhelmed by Rhodey's heavy scent and the taste of his tongue, a hand gripping his ass and squeezing playfully. Steve eased off of the door frame and started walking back to his bed, one hand on the back of Rhodey's neck and the other gripping the waistband of his jeans. They stood at the foot of the bed and kissed, and Steve brushed his knuckles along Rhodey's zipper to find his cock hot and hard already. He reached back and stroked his hand up and down the length of him, squeezing, and Rhodey gusted a hot breath into their kiss.
Steve sat on the bed then and unfastened Rhodey's pants, inching them down his hips a bit along with his underwear and then folding them down, and he had to duck back when Rhodey's hardon flopped out, dark brown like the rest of skin and rock hard, curving slightly to the left, thick as his arm back when he was a ninety-pound weakling, smelling sweet and male and tasting like clean skin when he nuzzled and kissed it. Steve took it into his mouth and tasted a man on his tongue for the first time seventy years, and he took Rhodey in long, deep strokes that had big hands twisting carefully in his hair. Steve sighed around Rhodey's dick and moved faster, swallowing when Rhodey ran off a little in in his mouth. Steve reached down and pressed a palm into his own crotch, trying to relieve some of the pressure built up from a month of flirting with this man.
He felt Rhodey's hips rocking towards his face and he slowed his stroke to match that, going deep every time and feeling spurred on by the way Rhodey groaned his name. “Fuck, Steve,” rough and raw from this throat, and Steve whimpered and finally pulled out his own cock, jerking himself off when he tasted Rhodey leaking a steady stream across his tongue. He pulled away and took Rhodey into his free hand, stroking them both and gazing at the hardon in front of him, shining with his spit, a pearl of precome standing stark white against Rhodey's skin. Steve thought of saying you're beautiful but maybe that was considered a bit cheesy nowadays, though he always meant it when he said it.
“You have a gorgeous cock,” he said instead, and Rhodey just sighed a weak moan and leaned forward, his brow knitted and one hand on Steve's shoulder now. Steve took him in his mouth again and sucked him in earnest, letting a slick finger slide behind Rhodey's balls and along his hole. Rhodey's knees buckled and his fingers sank into Steve's shoulders, and he was only able to ease his fingertip in to the first knuckle before Rhodey came in his mouth, his moan croaking and almost shocked, his voice finally coming in wordless shouts when he felt Steve swallow around him.
Steve spit generously into his hand and slicked up his own leaking cock, and he didn't have to say anything because Rhodey was shucking off his clothes in a flash and climbing onto the bed as Steve scooted back towards the headboard. Rhodey straddled his lap and Steve took him around the waist, entering him smoothly, and Steve wasted no time in moving quickly in and out of him, he was already so close. He placed his hands on Rhodey's hips and leaned back a bit, his knees bent as he thrust his hips up to meet Rhodey's, and Steve's eyes drifted shut when Rhodey squeezed sharply around him. He lay back and huffed, his eyes focused on nothing, his hands gripping Rhodey's hips and his thrusts unrelenting now, and he glanced up to see the moon out of the window, the room full of deep purple and pale blue and Steve screwed his eyes shut and came, achingly happy just because he was present, here and now, his eyes watering with pure joy.
Rhodey left for Edwards AFB that morning and they agreed to keep in touch. But Steve wasn't an old fogey – he knew how things worked, but he hoped Rhodey meant it when he said he wanted to do it again some time.
Steve and Sam still saw each other some times, no strings, no stress, no problems. Steve adored Sam – horribly talented and lithe and funny and flexible Sam. Sam who saved Steve's life in battle occasionally and gave sensuous and intense blowjobs that sometimes left Steve unable to meet his eyes afterward. They were great friends and occasionally a bit more than that, and that was just fine with both of them. Beyond that arrangement, Steve was having his fun and forgetting what shame even felt like. He liked who he liked and brought home who he liked, and so what if they all had earth-toned skin and marvelous hair, and if he ever slipped up and told them they were beautiful they often laughed, but some would just say, “thanks,” or “so are you.”
