NOTES: Day 5 of the 30 Day OTP Challenge - 'Kissing'

SUMMARY: He's kissed women before. This kiss is not like those. Maria doesn't take, but she definitely expects. And Steve discovers he likes fulfilling her expectations. Or Four Times Steve Rogers Kissed Maria Hill, And One Time He Didn't.

Love And Other Disasters

As they ride the elevator up to Maria's apartment, Steve shifts the over-large yellow toy under his arm. "I guess I can't persuade you to take this?"

The look she slants him holds a sly amusement. "I won it for you."

"And you want me to walk into Stark Tower holding this."

Her only answer is a grin – a swift flare of a bright and fighting beauty, and it transforms her face from serious SHIELD agent to laughing woman.

Desire hits Steve like the Valkyrie hit the ice, and his body moves before his brain has a chance to veto the action.

It's probably just as well - if he thought about it he'd never—

But Maria doesn't try to evade him. Her face lifts and her mouth meets his—

He's kissed women before. Peggy. The secretary at British Intelligence. A few girls when he was younger, brash with the juice of hopeful youth before it faded in the light of hard reality. But those women – well, and girls - kissed like well-bred ladies from seventy years ago. Well, except for the secretary, who tried to hoover his tongue out of his mouth.

This kiss is not like those.

Maria knows exactly what she wants and isn't afraid to invite it.

Bold without being pushy. Sweet but not soft. Confident and tender and testing. She doesn't take, but she definitely expects. And Steve discovers he likes fulfilling her expectations.

He feels like he's falling, with that exhilarating terror that gripped him as he leaped from Howard's plane, going in to rescue the 107th – choosing to fly and risking the fall. But the floor is solid under his feet, and Maria's waist is lean and lissome under his hands, and her mouth— He could drown in her kiss, the demanding desire that pounds his heart against his ribcage, and causes her heart to thud beneath the press of his hand against the thin cotton of her shirt—

"Ahem!"

Her hands are clenched in his shirt and her cheeks are pink as she looks at the man who leans in the doorway of the elevator. Big and broad across the shoulders, the man tilts his head mischeivously. "Going down, Maria?"

Maria drops her hands from Steve's shirt. "Shut up, Andrew."

"Not likely, considering," he laughs, and steps back to let them emerge from the elevator car before walking in and hitting the floor button. "Don't be good - be very good!" His smirk lingers after the doors close over him.

Steve adjusts his hasty grip on the giant toy as he follows Maria down the hallway. "A neighbour?"

"Yes. And he's going to tease me about this forever." Maria stops outside a door and turns to him, her cheeks still pink. Embarrassment at being caught kissing, or embarrassment at being caught kissing him? "Thanks for today."

"The date, the toy, or the kiss?"

Her brows lift and her mouth curves. "All of the above?"

"Would you like to do it all again sometime?"

And this is the crux of the moment – of the day and the last few weeks that they've been in 'negotiations'. How far she wants to take this relationship, whether she wants it at all. Whether he wants to invest himself in a woman who won't ever see him as a hero – just as a man she can love.

He waits. Maria appears to be considering it – and him – with wary care. "Maybe not the kiss," she says after a moment.

Then her laughter trembles against his lips as Steve claims her mouth again in grinning retaliation.

Steve knows better than to expect any displays of affection from Maria at work. While there are no rules against a relationship between them, she needs to maintain a professional reputation at all times - and all the more because of her unofficial position as Fury's second-in-command.

He's learned not to expect more than professional concern from her when they're in public. Sometimes it stings, but he counts it the price to pay for loving a woman with her own mind, her own ambition, and the avenues available to pursue that ambition.

So when she halts him on his way to the Quinjet for a mission, Steve's not expecting her to close the door of the consultation room behind them, step in close, and plant her mouth on his.

But he's not protesting.

His hand feels clumsy in his gauntlet as it cradles her neck, but there's no awkwardness in the kiss - just a fierce passion and a ferocious tenderness that Steve accepts without question. Maria may not be affectionate; that doesn't mean she doesn't care.

But they don't have forever – he's due out on the Quinjet, and if they take too much longer—

Maria leans her forehead against his, her lashes thick and dark against her cheeks for a moment before she draws back. "You have to go."

"I'll be careful."

She snorts in her throat as she steps back from him. "You can't afford to be careful. Go do what you have to and try to come back in one piece."

Steve lets himself taste her one more time – a promise to himself and to her.

Unsaid is that if he does what he has to do, she won't question if he doesn't come back in one piece.

Steve is pretty sure he blends into the lunchtime crowd - jeans, boots, ratty shirt, baseball cap. Other than the ratty shirt - which Barton helpfully provided since Steve had nothing that Natasha thought was worn enough - it's not that different to what he wears casually.

With the grunge of a three-day beard, he's not noticeable as Steve Rogers, Captain America. He's just 'Steve' - a guy waiting for his girl to meet him for lunch.

He orders two Coors at the bar and takes it over to one of the window booths, stretching himself out with an eye on the parking lot outside - full of pickup trucks and semi-trailers and old, dinged-up cars.

The waitress comes around and Steve tells her he's waiting for someone. She shrugs and goes back to the kitchen as the cook calls the next orders, and Steve turns back to the window.

There's no sign of Maria, and he wonders if she was able to get away after all.

She's been out here for two weeks, with almost no contact. Neither Natasha nor Clint admit to knowing what project she's on, but they both stressed that he shouldn't push. Natasha even stressed it again when Maria called him and arranged to meet him for lunch. "Let her set the tone. If she doesn't talk, don't pressure her."

Another truck has pulled up, and a couple of middle-aged guys are waddling out. There's a battered blue car that's just pulled up in the corner space, and the driver eels out of the beat up vehicle before sauntering across the parking lot in high-heeled boots, as big earrings swing by her jaw.

She's halfway across the parking lot before Steve realises the legs he's admiring belong to Maria and nearly spits his beer. It's never occurred to Steve that loose hair, tight top, short shorts, and long legs could be a camouflage as well. But one thing's for certain - no-one's looking at her face. Heads turn as she sashays in the door, takes a lazy look around, and heads for Steve's booth. In this light, her eyes look green and soft under the bouncing curl of her hair, and the knowing smile on her lips puts colour in his cheeks.

Steve stands in habitual courtesy, expecting Maria to slide into the booth opposite him with a smile. Instead, she walks right up to him, slides long arms around his neck, and gives him a kiss that tastes of bubblegum and promise - a light nip at his lower lip before she slides deep and takes him with her. What else is Steve to do but let his hands come down on her hips, pulling her up against him.

This is the meaning of hot and heavy, he realises, dazed as his mouth moves against hers, wanting, tasting, having.

Someone in the bar wolf-whistles, and she eases up and draws back, a smile playing on her lips. "Hey, you."

"That's quite a greeting."

The outfit and makeup might not be the Maria he knows, but the warning glitter in her eyes is very familiar. "Just don't expect it every time, soldier."

Steve grins. "Guess I'd better get another one in while I can, then."

Afterwards, they have lunch. He doesn't ask about the work she's doing out here. She doesn't tell. But while sliding her hand across the table to touch his, she slips him a microchip.

Frost and blood and mud and damp fill Steve's nostrils as he drags himself up from the churned snow. His muscles ache from weariness and cold, but that's nothing to the clench of his heart as he stares at the carnage before him.

Corpses lie like broken dolls, cast aside in a superhuman fury. Blank eyes stare at the sky, and drops of scarlet show where blood was shed, smeared, spattered across the pristine snow.

"Sweet and holy mother of God," Barton mutters.

Steve swallows and steps out of the complex, heading for the nearest body. Maria was commanding this detachment of agents and special forces. They were primed and prepped to deal with anyone – or anything – trying to escape the facility.

They were supposed to be primed and prepped to deal with anyone trying to escape the facility.

"Life-signs?" He asks Stark.

"I'm not picking anything up." Stark turns, hovering some eight yards up for a better view. "But it could be the cold – respiration and pulmonary signals drop." He lands and heads out and away from Steve, to the other side of the track that stretches up the hill and into the treeline like a muddy ribbon. "Guess we do this the old-fashioned way."

They're not just looking for Maria; these people were colleages – faces and names that Steve's worked with. Some of them were friends.

Most of them are dead.

"Got a live one," Natasha reports.

Barton reports another one further over. Steve keeps looking, scanning the bodies for a familiar line of head, a familiar tangle of limbs – anything, even if he dreads finding her.

"Rogers," Stark's voice comes in low and quiet – a private line. "I've got Jerry Stone here. He said Hill set a trap further up the road, inside the treeline."

Steve's already moving that way, checking pulses, easing over bodies. Limbs flop and eyes stare, and he knows he'll have nightmares about this. But he can't stop, he won't stop. He has to know.

There's a roar, and gunshots overlaid by a scream. He's up and running before he thinks about it, wind whistling past his ears as he unhooks his shield, preparing to cast it if he needs to.

The truck's swerved and been overturned, bodies sprawled around it. Shadows heave, and Steve approaches cautiously, then realises the thing – oversized, hairy, and humanoid – is in its death throes – and there's someone underneath it, still alive and nearly sobbing as she tries to shove it off.

Maria blinks up at him, her expression blank and slightly dazed, her chest rises and falls with shallow, panting breaths, her handgun sitting limply in her hand. "Steve?"

"Hey. No, stay down. This is Rogers, I've found Hill." But of course she tries to climb to her feet, her jaw set in a grimace, her throat working to contain her pain. "At least one of the test subjects is dead. Was this the only one?"

"Two trucks. Second one got away." She leans against a tree, almost pushing him away, and Steve feels the sting of her rejection before she takes a few steps and stumbles. Then anger takes over.

"I told you to stay down," he says, catching her around the waist. Anger transmutes as she hisses with pain. "Where's it hurt?"

"Ribs," she says. "I'll sit down if you check the others."

God, she terrifies him. But he can't help the fear any more than he can help the wave of something that crashes through him – call it love, call it relief, call it the exhilaration of being alive – and Steve presses his lips to hers - just a momentary brush of lips - and thanks God for mercies, big and small.

"I'll check the others if you sit down," he retorts when he lifts his head, and this time Maria smiles, although it wavers as he eases her down to the snow.

"Deal."

Steve hears the whine of the Quinjet but doesn't think anything of it. Natasha and Clint are due back from Colombia this evening, but he expects they'll tell him what they can when he needs to know. It may be tomorrow morning, it may be never. It doesn't matter.

He's deep in an old favourite – The Count Of Monte Cristo – when someone knocks at his door.

When he opens it, Maria is studying the art on the wall, her brow furrowed. "Is that a Mondrian?"

"Yes." Steve doesn't look at the painting – one of Tony's casual gifts. He's seen it nearly every day for the last two months. He's only seen Maria a handful of times in that same period while her ribs healed. She went to stay with her family when Sandy blew through the northeast, and stayed for Thanksgiving and nearly two weeks longer at her stepmother's insistence.

She only called Steve three times. Texted him a couple of times. Emailed him once.

"Is it a bad time?" Maria's looking at him, and Steve realises he's been staring at her.

"It's never a bad time for you," he says in all honesty.

Her mouth twitches, and she moves in and tugs his face down to hers.

It starts off tentative at first, a gentle tasting, as though testing the water. Steve pushes a little – just a little – and she lets him come deeper. Her hands cradle his nape, her thumbs framing his ears, and he eases her back against the wall beside the door, careful of the fragility she'd deny if he asked.

Maria tastes of darkness and quiet and solitude, her head thrown back, her mouth inviting his heat. Her hands rake through his hair, encouraging him on, and Steve takes his time relearning the taste of her.

He kisses along her jaw, down her throat, soft bites that make her catch her breath, and her hitching gasp makes him lift his head in sudden fear.

"Are you okay?"

"I'm fine," she says, and her eyes skim his face as her hand cups his jaw. "Invite me in, Steve."

It's his turn for his breath to catch. "Are you sure?"

"Yes."

Steve kisses her one more time, light and gentle. "Come inside," he says, and leads her into his rooms, closing the door behind them.

In winter, Steve gets up long before the sun. He's usually in the gym before breakfast, going through the tai chi moves Jim Morita taught him, and which Bruce helped him relearn seventy years later. Sometimes he and Natasha practise against each other – her agility and training against his strength.

This morning, he rolls out of bed and pauses with his feet on the floor, glancing back at the lump of quilts that Maria has burrowed into.

He thinks about sliding back under those covers and waking her up with a kiss.

She doesn't move, and satisfaction brings a smile to his lips. Last night was...a revelation. And a pleasure. But if she's sleeping, it seems unfair to wake her up just because he wants to kiss her.

Steve gets up to go through his morning routine.

He'll let her sleep – at least for the moment.

fin