19 with Steve? Please and thank you!
Soft angel artsy Steve. I hope you like it!
Kisses meant to distract the other person from what they were intently doing.
Bare feet. Bare chest. Long cotton lounge pants tied low at the hips. His hair is messy, sleep mussed; golden strands catch the early morning sunlight as he sits, hunched over the small wooden desk butted up against the window. His hand moves in determined strokes, rippling the muscles along his broad, strong back.
No files. No schematics. No mission briefings.
He’s focused, but peaceful. A rare glimpse of Sunday morning domestication. Of normalcy. As if putting his life on the line for the sake of the world isn’t his day job.
He’s so engrossed in his work he doesn’t hear you approach, startles a bit when you press warm hands onto his back, slide them up over his shoulders and wrap them around his neck.
“Hey, handsome,” you murmur, leaning over his shoulder to press a kiss onto his temple.
“Mornin’,” there’s a smile to his reply, but he doesn’t break stride, long fingers working magic across the paper stretched before him.
Color coats the tips of his fingers. Soft purple, dusty pink and sunset orange gather beneath his nails, along his cuticle beds, staining the skin down to the first joints. The box of soft pastels you’d gifted him last Christmas sits open to his right, neatly and carefully maintained.
You watch as he smooths fingers along the paper, carefully blending each swath and stipple of color into a dusky, watery sunset. It’s beautiful. Not unlike everything Steve has a hand in.
You move your hands from around his neck, slide them beneath his arms and spread them across the front of his chest. You lean forward, press against his back, place soft kisses along his shoulder and up his neck. He’s silent until your mouth reaches his ear, and then he breathes a long sigh through his nose.
“Do you know,” he murmurs finally, “how incredibly distracting that is?”
You smile against his skin, smooth your hands down his torso, along the muscles that involuntarily tighten beneath your fingers, “Mmhm.”
“And you aren’t a bit sorry for it, are you?”
Steve chuckles, leans back in his chair and tugs at one of your hands, effectively pulling you from behind him and down onto his lap. He settles you there, presses the pastel he was holding, warm yellow, into your own hand, and guides it over the paper.
“No,” you protest, “I don’t actually wanna mess it up.”
“You won’t,” and his lips press against the back of your shoulder now, “I just need a bit here.”
He guides your hand along the horizon line of the drawing, and then your fingertip, blending out the final touches of color as he presses intermittent kisses against you.
“There,” he says, satisfied. His hands drift to your waist, bleed color onto the soft white cotton of your sleep shirt.
Your eyes sweep the finished product, admiring Steve’s ability yet again, “It’s beautiful,” you say, “Makes me feel like I’ve been there before.”
“You have,” he answers, bunching the fabric in his fingers, tugging it up to expose bare thighs. Lips move along your skin as he continues, “Remember Beirut? The botched mission where Sam broke his leg. And you were so sick.”
And images flash across your mind, pieced together and half forgotten with the hazy sickness of flu. Steve carrying you up flights of stairs. Holding your hair back while you were ill. Pressing a cool cloth to your forehead. It had hit you hard, crippled you for several days, had forced Steve to familiarize himself with you in ways that were too intimate for either of you at the time. In ways you were grateful you couldn’t remember much of now.
“Good times,” you tease as he tugs your shirt over your hips, slips his fingers beneath the hem and skirts them across your stomach, “I can see why you want to remember them.”
“I do,” he insists, fingers drifting ever higher, “It’s where I first knew I loved you.”
“Ah,” you arch against his touch, tilt your head back onto his shoulder, allowing his mouth access to your neck, “That’s so-” you shudder as stubble drags across your skin, “-wrong,”
There’s a pause. You sit up straighter, process his words again.
“That’s so wrong,” you repeat.
Steve’s silent, fingers rubbing lazy circles along your ribcage.
Lips touch the nape of your neck, “Yeah.”
“That was way before we were together.”
“Yeah, well?” You shift in his lap, turn so that you can see his face. It’s sweet, all the places pastel dust has found its way onto him. A swoop of purple across his forehead. A dusting of orange along the side of his nose. Your heart swells, flutters in your chest as you smile at him, “you never told me that.”
“Technically I did. You were just in too much of a fever pitch to remember.”
And you shake your head, your laugh exasperated as you regard him. Fingers move to rub away the color on his forehead, but you only make it worse, spreading yellow alongside it. Steve mirrors your smile, and it’s sweet and lovely and a little bashful.
“So I’m slow on the uptake,” he shrugs, “It all worked out in the end, right?”
“Yeah. Because I was tired of waiting. Because I kissed you.”
And he laughs, tucks a lock of hair behind your ear as he closes the distance between your mouths, “I’m not above returning favors.”
