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Maria notices him on her first day at the BAU and not just because he’s her boss, nor because SSA Steven Rogers’ reputation precedes him. Rogers is just a hard man to miss. Broad shoulders fill out a blue suit that rumours correctly call his ‘uniform’ and she can see the cut of his chest when he rises to shake her hand, smoothing his red tie down as he reaches across his desk.
“With all due respect, Agent Hill,” he says as he settles back in his seat. It does nothing to detract from his dominating presence. “We didn’t request a press liaison.”
Maria is undaunted. She merely offers him a wry smile. “No,” she concedes easily, “but you need one. Your technical analyst has enough on her plate without tracking possible cases and we both know Wilson and Barnes are better suited to straight field work than combing through your sheer volume of cases.” She cocks her head to the side. “Plus, I’m sure we can both agree Barton is the last person you want handling press conferences.”
She’s seen the tapes. It’s not pretty. It’s not really a secret that Rogers’ BAU team has a checkered past, and very little of it any definition of pretty, but watching the consistent way Barton loses his temper in front of dogged reporters is something of a record.
Intensity flares in his eyes, a bit of admiration that she can’t help but think is probably utterly devastating when honed and focused. “We have a good team.”
Her smile doesn’t change. “I’m not denying that, sir. I’m telling you I can make it better.”
His eyebrow rises, a little disbelieving and she thinks maybe a little impressed with her absolute confidence.
Unmoved in the face of that disbelief, she presses her palms to the edge of his desk and leans in a little. “If I can’t make your team more efficient in six months, I’ll ask Fury for a transfer myself.”
She notices him her first day, but she dismisses him too. She doesn’t need his approval. She needs the space to do her job. Whether Rogers wants her to or not.
What surprises her is that it is the most antagonistic team member that accepts her first.
At his core, Tony Stark is an asshole. There’s no two ways about it. He is utterly uncensored, doesn’t bother to think before he speaks and is down right rude to Darcy Lewis, their bubbly and borderline insane technical analyst. Working with him yanks Maria right to the edge of her patience without fail and she does her level best to keep her own temper in check.
The pivotal moment comes in Barstow, California, a ritualistic murderer who is set to kidnap and ‘sacrifice’ six people in his next attack. They’ve been stonewalled at every turn, the small town closing ranks and leaving the team frustrated and at loose ends. Maria is, of course, at the helm of the press conference they’d had no choice but to call when the news comes in that the next six bodies have been found. Chaos, naturally, erupts.
Maria lets them chatter away, scream questions, almost obscenities, then raises her hand and waits. It takes time, but slowly, so, so slowly, they calm.
“What are you going to do to keep us safe?”
It’s the last question that is shouted into the growing silence and Maria lets her eyes hunt out the heckler. His eyes are angry, terrified, a mirror for the rest of the press gathered around her little podium.
“Agent Rogers has already presented you with our profile,” she says, voice calm and level. This, she thinks, is where she thrives. Under pressure, when no one believes in them. This is where she shines.
“You all know exactly who this man is. You’re friends with him, you help him out. You have coffee with him, exchange smiles on the street. I understand this is not something any of you would like to entertain as a possibility. I understand this is more than just an affront to your down, and more than just a crime. I understand we are outsiders to you and there isn’t a single member of this community who wants to be known as a tattle tale.”
She lets her eyes scan the crowd, the microphones and recorders pointed her way. She doesn’t have to remind herself that she’s not friends with these people, that she has absolutely no reason to sugar coat these words. Her job isn’t to make it sound pretty, her job is to make it sound real.
“We are not super heroes,” she says. “We are the Federal Bureau of Investigation so we can’t do it alone. Now, I am not asking for help. I’m telling you that if you don’t let us in, more people are going to die. If you’re okay with that, so be it. If not, there’s a tip line to call with any information you have. Thank you.”
She steps down from the podium, ignores the disapproving look on Rogers’ face and the disturbed shock on Barnes’. She strides into the station instead, head held high, intent on her purse and the antacids within. She loves going up against the press but it has always done a number on her stomach.
Stark looks up when she returns from the press conference, catches her attention before she can reach for her bag. “That’s some stone-cold balls you’ve got there, Agent Hill.”
Rogers makes a sound from the doorway that sounds almost angry and even Wilson sighs out an irritated “Stark”. But Maria, who is often the one on the front lines of Stark’s heavily antagonistic relationship with Lewis, offers him a feral grin. She’s been around the genius enough to recognize the insult as both admiration and acceptance.
The first time Rogers steps in for her during a press conference in Florida it takes all of Maria’s strength and training not to rip him a new one right there in front of the entirety of Miami’s press. She is angry. Beyond angry. Yes, some of the comments had been beyond sexist – because as much as it seems Rogers would like to believe people are somehow inherently good, Maria knows and has experienced the exact opposite – but it’s nothing she can’t handle. It’s nothing she hasn’t effectively handled before.
She’s been dealing with sexism since the day she was born, a father who hated her for taking after her mother and a military career that forced her to be so ambitious she’d all but carved up her own insides in a mission gone absolutely FUBAR. She has her fair share of emotional and physical scars from tussles over what she is and isn’t capable of and a longer list of successes.
She does manage to hold onto her temper until they’re back in the conference room. All it takes is a quick glare in Stark’s direction and the room clears, Rogers watches in confusion until he looks back at her and sees the absolute thunder on her face.
“Do I ever try and lead this team?” she asks, voice deceptively cool.
He must catch on, because he stops shuffling around the papers the team’s left scattered on the table. “I’m sorry?”
“Do I ever try and do your job? Do I ever try and present a profile, delegate assignments?”
“I’m not sure I understand.”
She clenches her hands into fists to keep herself from actually lashing out and landing one in his solar plexus. She could. She’s fast enough. “Never step in front of me during a press conference.”
He blinks at her for a moment. “He was-“
“Can you honestly stand there and tell me you believe I haven’t heard it before?”
“It doesn’t matter,” he tries, even has his hands up. She is so, so far from placated.
“Of course it matters. You stepping in for me tells them I can’t do my job, that you don’t trust me to know how to handle pitbull reporters and their big mouths.” She has to brace herself on the table, give herself some sort of grounding because she is livid. “This is not the first time, nor will it be the last that someone calls me a bitch or an ice queen, that someone questions my competence just because I have a pair of breasts instead of a dick.”
He flinches. She doesn’t care.
“You do that and you undermine me. Every single time you step in on my behalf, it tells the reporters that I’m an easy target, that they can rattle me, and you. It lets them win and if we want, even for a second, to control the flow of information, we cannot give them that kind of ammunition.”
“I was trying to help.”
She’s not getting through to him, she can tell. He feels more than a little justified in his actions and while okay, she can admit that it’s in his personality, she is not and will never be okay with that. Other team members may let him defend them, but it’s never been Maria’s style.
“You didn’t. Now if you’ll excuse me, I need some air.”
Except it’s not air she goes for. Instead, she swipes her bag from just inside the door – they’d hit the ground running and really haven’t stopped – and heads for the gym.
It turns out she’s not alone when she steps into the workout facilities. A flash of red by the hanging bags catches her attention. Natasha Romanov is a woman Maria cannot figure out. She’s read her file, of course, knows she’s ex-KGB, where her reputation had been utterly ruthless and lethal. The woman herself is largely quiet and withdrawn, a little more animated when paired with Barton but only blossoming in isolated corners in quiet conversation with Barnes.
Maria is not unfamiliar with fraternization between teammates and she knows the signs. But she cannot bring herself to report whatever intimacy exists between Barnes and Romanov when there’s no evidence of it affecting their jobs.
Maria’s surprised to find she’s far from upset about her teammate’s presence. There’s not much else to do when they’re unfortunately at loose ends and trying like hell to regroup. Instead, she steps up to the bag next to Romanov, tucking the last edge of tape away neatly near her wrist.
“Hill,” Romanov grunts, but says nothing else. Not that Maria thinks for a moment she needs to. The thing about working with Romanov is that she is uncannily perceptive. Maria wouldn’t put it past her to know exactly what happened, both in the press conference, and in the conference room afterwards.
Maria offers merely a nod, unsure of whether she can hold a conversation with the irritation boiling through her. It may be a little too much rage, given the kind of man Rogers is, but that doesn’t change the fact that she can do her damn job and she will never accept anybody stepping on her toes.
Romanov stops the swing of her heavy bag a moment later, pauses before turning to Maria. “He was out of line.”
There is a level of comfort in the fact that Maria knows she doesn’t have to verbalize her agreement. Instead, she steps back, huffs out a breath and takes a kick at the bag. It goes swinging, of course. She’s a former Marine and deceptively strong. She falls into a pattern, zones Romanov out and doesn’t realize until Romanov’s bracing the bag on the other side that there’s something challenging in the redhead’s eyes.
“Spar with me.”
It’s not a request, but Maria arches an eyebrow anyway. Romanov is another agent whose reputation precedes her and from what Maria’s heard, sparring with Romanov is a bit of an honour and definitely a test. Maria doesn’t cower easily, and most certainly not when she’s carrying quite this much temper.
She follows Romanov to the mats, barely has time to realize the other woman’s striking out before she dodges, bounces away. Romanov’s eyes are glinting now, her face focused. “Good reflexes.”
But that’s far from Romanov’s best, as Maria learns a few moments later. Romanov keeps her on her heels, keeps her on the defensive and there are times Maria feels like she’s scrambling to keep herself from hitting the floor. She does that too, more often than she’d like, but she can appreciate just how honed and how brilliant Romanov’s skills are.
Formidable doesn’t do the woman justice.
It’s nice, the give and take pattern. Maria has to focus completely on the work, on defending herself so she doesn’t hit the mats quite as often as she probably could have. Then Romanov gives her a hole. It’s a cheap shot, a gift, but Maria’s not stupid. Still, Romanov’s fast, catching her foot. Maria braces herself to hit the floor, but Romanov’s grip on her ankle shifts. Instead of flipping Maria onto the floor, she lowers her foot just a little, just enough.
“You’ll do more damage here,” she says, her voice low. “Too high and your center of gravity is off. It’s easier to throw you.”
Romanov lets go of her ankle and Maria lowers it to the floor, straightening just a little. The redhead steps back, drops gracefully to the floor and reaches for her toes.
“You aren’t heavy enough to be an aggressive fighter like Steve,” she says, flowing easily from one side to the other. Maria copies her, stretches out blissfully worn muscles and doesn’t miss the redhead’s deliberate relation between Maria and the team leader. “But you have speed, agility and you have the fight. People underestimate you. Spar with me tomorrow. We’ll work on the rest.”
Then she rises gracefully and heads for the women’s locker rooms. It’s only then that Maria realizes she and Romanov hadn’t been alone either. Rogers and Barnes aren’t even trying to pretend they’d been working the heavy bags. Instead, Barnes’ mouth tilts up in a smile.
“She never offers to train anyone,” he tells her. “I think you passed, Agent Hill.”
Rogers says nothing, but he doesn’t need to. His eyes are brilliant blue, penetrative in ways that make Maria uncomfortably warm. She shrugs it off because she can’t make sense of it, can’t find a reason for it. Instead, her head comes up and she meets both Barnes and Rogers’ gazes in turn. Then, with a nod, she heads for the showers.
When she returns to the conference room, to the work that awaits, there’s a cardboard coffee cup at the seat she’d chosen, doctored just as she likes it. An apology, she knows and while there is a part of her that would like to shove it away – or better, pour it over Rogers’ head – she can be the bigger person. Still, when he enters the room, locks gazes with her, she takes a very careful, deliberate sip of her coffee.
Apology accepted, she says with her eyes. But do it again and you’ll regret it.
He nods.
They’re in Charlotte when Maria makes a shot that saves Rogers’ life.
It’s so, so close, sprays his cheek with blood and brain matter but he walks away mostly unscathed. She doesn’t get any accolades, just a relieved nod from Rogers himself. She hadn’t expected anything else, never has, and doesn’t need the recognition. She had the shot and she’d taken it. No questions asked and without a doubt that the Bureau will rule it a good shoot.
Still, she catches up to Rogers outside, where he is very reluctantly being looked over by the EMT. There’s an angry red mark on his throat that will bruise from the choking and she can see red flecks in his bright blond hair. Her temper is cold, flaring in her chest, a feeling she kind of dislikes since it seems to be directed all too often at Rogers.
“Don’t you ever put me in that situation again,” she says, her voice low and sure because boss or not, he’d screwed up. “Don’t you ever deviate from the plan. I don’t care if you saw an opening, I don’t care if you think you can do it on your own. Your one-man superhero show is not entertaining; it’s dangerous. To everyone.”
He watches her carefully, warily. “That’s not a promise I can give you.”
“I’m not asking for a promise,” she retorts, because her blood is still pumping, her hands still shaking. “I’m telling you: don’t you ever put me in that position again.”
She starts away then, having said her piece, but his shout of her name calls her back.
“Hill.”
She pivots on her heel, offers him a raised head, determined and not at all intimidated by him. He’d made a mistake and while yes, the man she’d killed hadn’t been a good person, she’d still killed someone today.
“You did good work.”
It spikes through her in ways she shouldn’t, an acceptance she never, ever expected to get from him. She’s not sure how she feels about the warmth that heats her stomach, leaves butterflies in her, and offers him a quick nod before she strides away.
It’s mostly adrenaline and that unidentifiable thing that carries her through the rest of the clean up, the debrief, the natural aftermath of the case. It wears off on the plane, leaves her exhausted enough to fall asleep. It isn’t normally her MO, she like using the quiet of the jet to put a heavy dent in her paperwork. She’s asleep enough that she doesn’t even feel the plane descend, has to be woken with a shake to her shoulder.
“Hill.”
It’s Barnes and she startles awake, blinking up at him. There’s something she can’t identify in his face and she finds her eyes fluttering shut on a groan.
Barnes chuckles. “Come on. Drinks are on me.”
She wants to say no. She really, really does. Her body protests any movement and honestly, she just wants to tumble into bed. But that thing in Barnes’ face keeps her from refusing. She takes his offered hand instead, even lets him lift her bag down from the overhead bins and carry it down the tarmac.
“There’s a dive bar not far from here,” he tells her, his voice low. The rest of the team’s already inside, but she gets the sense he has no intention of returning to the bullpen. “I’ll drive you back to your car, assuming you can still drive when we’re done.”
It’s a surprisingly daunting revelation until Barnes shoves three shots of strong Russian vodka under her nose.
“To Rogers and his fucking hero complex. May he one day stop being a reckless idiot.”
Maria barks out an involuntary laugh before she follows his example and downs her first shot. It’s unexpected, the vehemence with which Barnes says the words. “I get the impression this isn’t the first time.”
Barnes snorts once, then takes his second shot. “Far from it. Far from the last, too. You know, the day I met him he had a black eye, a bloody nose and probably a concussion, but there he was in this back alleyway, gangly fists up, swearing a blue streak as he taunted a guy four times his size. We were nine.”
A strange emotion races through Maria, warmth and incredulity. “Wait, what?”
“You didn’t know? Steve hasn’t always been such a hunk of man meat.”
Maria chokes on her laughter this time, and maybe a little bit on her second shot. “You need to stop hanging out with Lewis.”
“She’s half the fun of the BAU,” he retorts with a smile that Maria thinks could easily melt hearts, and maybe more than a few panties. “Nah. Steve hit puberty, gained about a foot and a half. The most uncoordinated sixteen-year-old Coach had ever seen. Went to the gym, got him working out, then joined up.” He sends a sly smile Maria’s way. “He tell you about his Captain America days?”
“No,” she says with a bit of incredulity. She’d been a Marine, but the stories of the Howling Commandos and their leader had already been legendary, long before she’d done her first tour.
Barnes’ mouth turns soft. “He’s always hated bullies, you know? That’s why he fights, because he can’t stand someone taking advantage of someone else. Ever. And then one day, he gets up in front of the 107th, just before we earned the name Howling Commandos, and he’s drunk.” Barnes barks a laugh, but there’s melancholy in it, a sweet sense of what could have been and memories tainted with death. Maria would know, she has memories like that.
“We’re all down, battle weary, you know? The guy gets up, starts talking about truth, about justice, about defending America from the terrorists. Couldn’t have been more patriotic if it had come from the Commander in Chief himself.”
Maria can picture it, actually, the way the whole team looks to him for guidance, for a moral compass. The way he carefully and quietly guides them all, the momentary streaks of impulsive recklessness that leave him with an arm around his throat and his face going purple. She shivers despite herself.
“He’s a leader,” Barnes says, and tilts his head so he can look at her. “Born leader. What we’ve been through…” And there’s a story there, though Maria knows now isn’t the time to ask. “I’ll follow him to the end of the line. But he’s not infallible, Hill. He’s a reckless punk that would still die rather than see a team member or an innocent person hurt. What he did today… He’ll do it again. Time after time. Because he’s the best man I know.”
Maria taps her fingers along the side of her third shot as she takes this in, as she accepts it. Still, she fixes him with solemn eyes. “I’ll kill him if he does it again.”
“Sweetheart.” And only the ironic tilt of his mouth keeps her from actually punching him. “You’ll have to get in line.”
By the end of the night, Maria knows she’ll never look at Rogers the same way again. But there’s a comforting knowledge in the back of her mind that she and Barnes are going to be interesting friends.
She watches Rogers a little more carefully after that, from just under her lashes where he can’t tell. She sees the gentle way he works with children, the way his jaw clenches when their UNSUB won’t give up the information they want, the mulish set to his shoulders when he knows he’s right, but he’s getting resistance from local PD.
She sees the scrawny kid Barnes had told her stories about, adjusts in the way she presents him with information. He’s not an immediate action man, preferring to sit back, weigh, consider. He never sends his people into situations that could get them killed, even if he’ll charge in without the same consideration to his own life.
Things change around the BAU, and in her life. She no longer sees his gentle suggestion to head home as a judgment on her skills, but as a leader looking out for those under his command. The way he puts himself in front of her, even when they’re only interviewing witnesses, while annoying, is an instinct for all of them, not just her. A history of defending people, even as a boney nine-year-old without a chance of winning.
Larger than life, in a lot of ways. Exasperating in many others and she still refuses to give him an inch when he defends her, but it isn’t quite as acerbic as she’s been.
He’s still the last person Maria expects to find haunting the hotel lobby at two am. She’s seen the rest of the team do it from time to time – hell, she and Barton had bonded over the perfect three am post-nightmare snack a handful of months ago – but never Rogers. She’s never expected it to be his style, always on the ball, always confident in what they do and how they do it.
So the slump of his shoulders, the defeated line of his spine, the way his hands cover his face, elbows braced on his thighs takes her entirely off-guard. He looks lost, alone in his grief or his struggle. And she is not as cold-hearted as Stark likes to pretend.
She’s been so good so far, keeping her distance from Rogers and the little hum that has underlay their interactions from day one, that intensifies whenever there’s emotion involved. She calls it professionalism, the way she holds herself aloof, but sometimes the traitorous little voice in her head tells her there’s nothing professional in self-preservation. Even if what she’s trying to do is keep her heart whole and in tact. Her reputation, too. Fraternization works well for Barnes and Romanov, for Barton and Lewis too, if she hasn’t gone soft, but Maria’s worked too damned hard to have to worry about being overshadowed by a romantic entanglement with Special Agent Rogers.
Except.
Rogers is the epitome of the good agent when he hasn’t gotten it in his head that he’s the only person who can save the day. He does his job, day in and day out, without seeming to tire and without complaint. He takes care of his team and he is dedicated beyond compare. But that’s not the man dominating a tiny couch in a dimly lit corner of the lobby. He looks so down on himself that she verbally reaches out despite the very careful distance she’s kept between them.
“Everything okay?”
His head jerks up. She’d figured he’d heard her come down, honestly. She hadn’t been quiet. He offers her a bit of a rueful smile, leans back in a way that emphasizes that broad chest. It’s a stupid thing to notice, but she herself is only human.
“Long day.”
Understatement. She can still see the look on Barnes’ face when he’d discovered the bodies, posed perfectly but still warm. They’d been minutes away. Mere minutes. “Yeah.”
“What are you doing up?”
Deflection. She’s familiar with the technique and waves both her tablet and phone. “My job doesn’t end just because we break for the day.”
“No,” he says, and she does her best to avoid the familiar look that lights in his eyes. She knows the team often forgets that her job isn’t just to liaise on-site. Her job is so much more than that, her hours often a nightmare. “I guess not.”
She doesn’t snort, no matter how much she wants to. He’s not being facetious. It’s not in his nature, something she’d pegged right off the bat. He’s earnest and sincere, maybe a little blunt at times, but most certainly not mocking of the work his team does. The work that she does.
The promise she’d made him on her first day hasn’t come back to haunt her. The team’s more efficient in ways they hadn’t been before. There isn’t a single one of them that has to be the face to the press should they choose not to. That’s her job. No one else has to spend hours upon hours monitoring news networks and feeds, look through thousands upon thousands of cases, determine which can be dealt with by a simple consult and which are already too dire to let go without feet on the ground. Rogers has never acknowledged it outright, but the fact that she’s still here, that he trusts her judgment, that he often asks for her opinion, even when she narrows the choices down to two or three, says what he doesn’t.
She settles beside him on the little couch, lets him take the tablet from her hands. Her phone, too. He’s telling her she’s working too hard again, trying to remind her that it’s okay to take a break every once in a while. Maria looks at him and wonders while he’s taking care of the team, who looks after him.
She refuses to even consider the idea that it could be her job.
Mostly.
“Do you ever think we make a difference? I mean really make a difference,” he asks her, so, so quiet. She tilts her head, catches his gaze, just barely, valiantly ignores the way his eyes trail over her jaw. She shrugs it off, chalks it up to the always-observant profiler in him, watching her for tells, for lies.
This time, she does offer him an ironic snort, swipes her finger over the screen on his lap until she pulls up her news alerts, ignores the sharp sound of his inhale as she leans close enough to see the screen. There are hundreds of alerts, tracking too many cases to count. His shoulders sag just a little bit more, resigned, cynical.
“Every moment of every day this list is on my mind,” she tells him, because he needs it. “Every single moment I’m guessing and second guessing whether the cases I present to you are the right ones. If New York is more important than Houston; if I have more faith in the cops of a tiny Montana town or a metropolis. Every day I weigh human lives and pull out the cases I think are the most alarming, the most pressing, the most likely to escalate. And every day I hope I made the right decision.”
“Did you? Giving me this case?”
She pulls up a news alert with a grim twist of her mouth, the shooting of a quiet family of four at the only public theatre in small-town Ohio. “I don’t know.”
He blows out a breath before shoving the tablet to the table, shifting just slightly until his thigh is pressed alongside hers. She feels the heavy thump of her heart in response, the flip of her stomach, the butterflies climbing her throat. He absolutely startles her when he raises his hand, cups it under the fall of her hair. She’s stunned by the comfort level it shows and wary of what comes next.
“This job…” He shakes his head, though he makes no move to get any closer, to initiate anything else. She feels her spine relax. Touch for the sake of touch, a grounding, okay. She can endure that. Because there’s no other reason for the press of his hand against her neck. Not him, not with her.
“I promised Buck it wouldn’t be like this when we got out.”
Her heart goes out to him. She can’t help it. She swallows thickly, knows he can feel it where his hand is cupped around her nape. His eyes are intense when they meet hers and she’s surprised at the amount of strength it takes to keep her face neutral.
“You can take the soldier out of the fight,” she murmurs quietly, and the brittleness in his eyes shifts because dammit, he knows, both of them with military backgrounds, with the will and the drive to fight, to save. “But you can’t take the fight out of the soldier.”
Because it is depressing, they see the worst of the worst, but Maria knows she’d much rather be doing this than some office job.
“We make a difference this time, in this case, to these families,” she goes on, not sure herself where the words are coming from. “And we make that enough to go on to the next one.”
“And you can live with that?”
She shrugs, the movement reminding her of the heavy arm just above her shoulders, the warmth of his palm against her skull. “We have to.”
The gentle press of his fingers makes her turn her head, catch his eyes and her breath. She’s hallucinating, she thinks, because she knows how easy it would be for him to tilt her head, just a little, press his mouth to hers. But it’s her imagination because he’s an attractive man and it has been, well, a while.
Her breath catches on instinct as he tugs her in, right up until he tucks his face into her shoulder. The breath releases slowly, thankfully steady. She doesn't dare move, not even when he wraps his other arm around her.
Touch for the sake of touch, she reminds herself. Because there’s no way in hell it can be anything more.
Barton, Maria has known from day one, is a little shit. It’s a sentiment that’s reaffirmed on one of their Team Nights, an unconventional one since, for the first time in as long as Maria can remember, they all make it out.
Including Rogers.
She hasn't been ignoring him all night, per se, but she hasn’t been making a concerted effort to engage him in conversation either. The hum that had been there between them before has changed, shifted, and she’s noticed him watching her just a little longer, a little closer, with that intensity she’d pegged on the first day. She tells herself it can’t mean anything; that it doesn’t mean anything. There’s no way Rogers could want her.
Barton doesn’t seem to agree and he’s managed to draft Stark and Lewis into his little game. They’ve tried everything, including copious amounts of alcohol. As it turns out, both she and Rogers are surprisingly good at moderating themselves.
“I don’t like losing control,” he offers when she arches her eyebrow. “I’ll leave alcoholic status to Stark.”
“He’s not really.” Pepper Potts, apparently Starks’ girlfriend, though how someone quite as polished as the strawberry blonde is with Stark, Maria has no idea. It works though, she can tell. She’s never seen Stark quite so starry-eyed. “Just after bad ones.”
Bad ones. They’ve had more than their fair share recently. Hell, when they’d opened the Seattle file there had been an almost collective intake of breath. It had been Wilson that had finally managed to ask why the hell the weird ones always surfaced in the summer.
And it’s why they’re out, isn’t it? Team building, but also a time to let loose, be free. A time to be people and not agents. She’s trying, she is, but she can’t help but think there had been a careful calculation to the way Barton had shoved her down beside Rogers, to the cramped sardines nature of the booth.
Background silence falls for a moment, the aging jukebox taking it’s sweet time flipping to the next song. An older, slower tune from maybe the fifties floats over the sound system, lends a mellow nature to the bar’s air. It’s Stark’s eyes that widen, have him all but shoving both Barton and Lewis out of the booth to get at Pepper.
“Dance with me, Pep.”
“Tony-“ But there’s no heat in it and she lets him drag her up and away. Barton and Lewis are next, after a very shifty conversation done only in facial expressions and weird twists of their mouths, and Maria is not blind to the very significant look Barton shoots back at the table. She doesn’t quite realize what it means until Barnes and Romanov stand and follow.
It’s a conspiracy, she realizes, too late to do anything about it since Wilson takes one look at them, arches an eyebrow at her, and makes up an utterly terrible excuse to slide out of the booth and into the crowd. It leaves Maria with Rogers, just the two of them. They’ve been alone on cases, of course, but there’s a charge to this air that feels different, a more concentrated version of the hum that characterizes their every interaction these days.
“Want to dance?”
She has every intention of saying ‘no’, a polite, careful answer that will not offend him. Right up until she looks up at the broad hand he offers and instead of rejection, acquiescence comes out. The smile he gives her is blinding and she’s struck with the idea that Steve Rogers outside of his FBI persona is probably just as devastating and charming as she’s seen from Barnes.
She’s in trouble and for the first time in too long it’s taken her entirely off-guard.
Still, she knows she can’t back out, sets her hand in his. It flashes her back for a moment to her first day, that same broad hand in a dry firm shake. Now it’s gentle around hers, a softness to it that she refuses to even consider as admiration. Still, she’s stiff as he tugs her in, wraps a hand around her back.
A few awkward moments later, he sighs. “You don’t have to do this.”
She blinks up at him a moment, surprised and confused when he won’t meet her eyes. He’s nothing if not direct and it’s something she’s liked about him from the beginning. “Rogers-“
“Steve,” he says and the tone of his voice makes her look up at him, at the heated intensity she’s seen before but never really been able to identify. With his broad hand spread at her lower back, the gentle way he holds hers while they dance, Maria can definitely put a name to it now.
She swallows. “You don’t even like me.”
His laugh is dark, somber. “If only that were the problem.”
She knows he can feel it when her breath catches, knows the tremor in her body isn’t lost on him. He strokes the side of her thumb with his, catches the bone of her wrist and leaves her shuddering.
“We shouldn’t,” she says, just barely loud enough for him to hear. “There are a million reasons why this is a terrible idea.”
Determination flares in his eyes, awareness, and a predatory heat that doesn’t turn her off. At all. The complete opposite in fact and she has to remind herself that this is her boss and they are in public. She cannot and will not sabotage her career like this, not when she has first hand history of him doing exactly that when they’re merely teammates.
She’s not sure if he sees the trepidation in her eyes in the way she holds her body, or if he just knows. There’s a rule about no profiling, but they all know no one follows it.
“It’s just a dance,” he murmurs, leans his head down to say it into her ear. He tugs her closer in the process, presses her body to his. It’s the first time she’s been able to feel the entirety of the hard strength, the coiled muscles just below the surface of a deceptively mild man. “Maria, it’s just a dance.”
It’s not, they both know it, even as she feels her body relax against him, shivers against the stroke of his thumb over her t-shirt. She can’t deny that it feels good, he feels good, but that doesn’t change the ridiculous number of reasons this isn’t a good idea.
Even if he doesn’t hate her.
Even if it’s something else entirely.
She catches Barton’s eye entirely by accident and watches him grin. Knowing, conspiring.
The little shit.
It’s with a surprising amount of affection that the thought drifts through her mind, her body relaxing against the hard strength of Rogers’ – of Steve’s.
She’ll take this, she tells herself and in the morning she’ll pull back, remember why this is a bad idea.
Just five more minutes.
Sometimes, their jobs are more dangerous than others. Sometimes, putting themselves in the line of fire is more than simply a takedown or an arrest. Sometimes, they’re the ones who have to go out and play bait.
Maria knows she’d gotten off lucky. Their UNSUB liked knives, liked blood, liked the helpless whimpering of his victims. But while their victims hadn’t escaped with their lives, Maria had, by a hair and a well-placed sniper shot from Barnes.
It had come close too, too close, actually. She’d all but accepted her death, a thought she hadn’t had to entertain since Madripoor and the suicide mission that had seen her leaving the Marines. Then there had been shattered glass and a thump, the next thing she remembered broad, cold hands on her face.
“Hill, Hill. Maria. Don’t be dead.”
Her eyes had fluttered open into the panicked face of her team leader and she’d started to shake. Oh thank God. Thank God.
“She’s going into shock,” Romanov had said from behind her, shaking her head at Rogers to indicate their UNSUB’s lack of vital signs.
“Okay,” Rogers had said, soft, like she was a anything but an utterly competent agent. “Okay. We’re going to get you out of here.”
He’d carried her out like a child, her body unwilling to support her for even the walk to the ambulance. It had been embarrassing and messy and she knows she’d withdrawn in on herself. Everyone had left her alone, at least, unsure of how to deal with her. She’d been grateful, staring out the window of the jet for the ride home. In fact, she’s not even sure how she’d managed to get back to her apartment, probably hadn’t been cognizant enough to safely drive.
She drops her bag off to the side of the door, wanders toward her living room window. Her hand automatically rises to the gauze on her throat, a precaution. It’s barely a scratch, the line on her throat, that and the bruises on her wrists the only real evidence that she’d been in any trouble.
It had been so, so close.
She jumps when there’s a knock on her door, blows out a breath and shakes her head at herself. She has an elderly neighbour that always greets her when she returns home, a busybody, but a good woman.
“Mrs. Ramsay, it’s late- Oh.”
It’s not her elderly neighbour. Rogers’ eyes are dark, are worried. There are a whole bunch of things on his face she can’t figure out. His hand rises and she feels her breath speed up as his fingers come up to her throat, chase the line of the gauze. He follows the line of her tape to the side of her neck, behind the fall of her hair until his thumb tucks just under the lobe of her ear.
“Ask me in, Maria.”
She shivers at the use of her given name, steps backwards. He follows, maintains the way he cups her head. When the door bangs shut, he steps closer, breath shaking out as he presses his forehead to hers.
“Steve.”
She doesn’t really realize she’s said it until his eyes fly open, the possession in his gaze hard to miss. His other hand comes up, cups her other cheek. She knows what’s coming long before he tilts her head, before his mouth brushes oh so gently against hers. They both release shimmering breaths, his mouth hovering above hers for a moment.
“You could have died,” he whispers against her lips. “You almost did. God, I could kill you for putting yourself in danger like that.”
Her laugh is watery, messy as her hand clenches in the cotton of his shirt. He kisses her again, fiercely. It is hot and it is unrelenting. She ignores the flaring pain in her body as he spins her around and pins her to her own front door, mouth plundering hers with no sign of stopping any time soon. Her breath is short and sharp in her lungs, the aches of her day fading in the face of him. He gives her no quarter, no time to breathe, releases the back of her neck so he can wrap a broad palm around her thigh.
Maria’s head falls back, bares her neck, and he outright growls.
“Ask me, Maria. Ask me to take you to bed.”
Her body is singing, her mind fogged with pleasure. She doesn’t think twice about wrapping her arms around his neck, lifting herself into the cradles of his arms and wrapping her other leg around his hip. She locks her ankles as he takes her weight, heat and want flaring in his eyes.
“Steve,” she says against his mouth. “Take me to bed.”
Maria is not used to waking up disoriented. It’s a hold-over from her Marine days, the uncanny ability to be up and alert at the drop of a hat. But she wakes slowly, lethargically, her muscles aching in ways they haven’t for a very, very long time.
Too long, really.
She tenses, realizing as she does that there is a thick arm thrown across her lower back, just above her hips. A shuffling sound brings her head around to the utterly angelic face of a sleeping Steve Rogers.
Oh God.
She scrambles away, slams her eyes closed as she gets both feet on the floor. There’s a quiet grunt of displeasure, the shift of the sheets, and she bolts. She can’t help it.
A real sense of safety permeates her body as she slams the en suite door closed behind her. It gives her enough presence of mind to look down at her naked body, to catalogue the glorious bruises around her navel, at her hips.
She’d done exactly what she’d sworn to avoid from day one: she’d slept with her boss.
An impulsive decision at best, a vulnerable one at worst. She could argue he’d taken advantage of her, emotionally weak and trying to put together how close to death she’d come, but looking down at herself she can’t deny she’d been a wholly sober and enthusiastic participant.
A quiet thump startles her and it isn’t until she hears the quietly uttered, “Maria,” that she realizes he’s just on the other side of the door. Oh God. She is not ready to face this.
“It’s okay.”
That shouldn’t make her feel as relaxed as it does, shouldn’t leave her shoulders slumping. She’s mature enough to admit, even in her panic, that she’d wondered what he’d be like the morning after. More than that, as her eyes close, she knows she now has first hand utterly blissful memories of what his legendary intensity is like when singularly focused.
Jesus.
He’s a considerate lover, she knows now. Tactile, generous, absolutely, scorching hot. She can remember the feeling of his hands on her hips, of his mouth on her collarbone, her stomach, her thighs. He’s everything she’d expected and so, so much more.
She hears a heavy shaky sigh before he says, “Come out. Please? Please, Maria.”
“No,” she’s murmured it before she can wrap her head around it. “Steve-“
There’s another shuddering breath and her eyes fly open. She has vivid memories of begging him to touch her, to put his mouth back on her, to make her come. All using his given name. She’s never, ever used it before because it had seemed insubordinate. It’s too intimate. But as she swallows she can’t say she hates the way it rolls so easily off her tongue.
“I don’t want to talk about this through the door,” he tells her with absolute conviction. “We can do it over coffee if you want, dressed if that’s what it’ll take, but Maria-“
This is what she hadn’t expected, she realizes. She’s no stranger to one night stands, especially considering how intense it had felt, how desperate it had been. But he’s not letting her hide in the bathroom, is refusing to just walk out of her apartment and there’s a thrill in that; in the idea that he cannot, maybe does not, want to just pretend this hadn’t happened.
An impetus, a catalyst, but definitely not a mistake.
Looking down at herself again, Maria can admit, if only in the chaos of her own mind, she’s kind of glad he doesn’t. Yet, she needs time. She needs…
She opens the door, tries not to smile as he stumbles, absolutely and gloriously naked. So much smooth skin, marred with bright red scratch marks, her own possession staring back at her. Mocking her. She forces her eyes up, catches his.
“I need…” She doesn’t quite know how to say it. She doesn’t want him to leave, not yet, but she can’t have this conversation right now. This second. He releases a choked sound she refuses to think sounds even the tiniest bit hopeful. Just because they had sex, she reminds herself, doesn’t mean that there’s anything more here.
“I’ll make coffee,” he says quietly. “But we’ll talk?”
She has to swallow twice to get her voice to work in the face of his shyness, the way he’s being so, so careful with her now when it’s so obvious he really wasn’t last night. “I’m going to shower.”
“Okay.”
She takes her time, lets the water flow over her face as she considers him. Steve Rogers. The epitome of everything good, of everything the Bureau is supposed to be. A dark side, sure, a ruthlessness and recklessness to him that she shouldn’t like as much as she does. Yet, she knows first hand there’s a vulnerability to him, a man who has seen too much, the same way she has. A man whom she now knows is scarred, both physically and emotionally.
A man who has never asked her to be anything more or less than what she is.
She wraps herself in a towel, is confronted with her very messy bedroom when she steps out of the en suite. She shivers at the evidence, body heating despite herself. What does she want?
She wants her job. She wants her independence. She wants her life.
She wants him.
He looks up when she steps into the kitchen, blue eyes going dark and possessive. “That’s my shirt.”
She looks down at the blue tee, swallows because she hadn’t even realized it. Then back up at him, shirtless at her kitchen table, mug in his hand. “I can change-“
“No.”
Jesus his voice. There’s an accent there too, just below the surface that she hadn’t taken the time to notice last night. He glances away from her, down at his mug, seems to brace himself before he looks up at her again.
“We can do this however you want, okay? If you want me to leave, I can do that. If you want to pretend we never did this, I can do that too. I don’t want to, but I can.”
She shivers. He’d do it too, she knows, because he’s nothing if not aware, considerate and understanding. Her fingers clench and unclench at her sides as she watches him, the play of bare skin against muscle as he shifts at her tiny kitchen table.
He looks good here.
Her eyes flutter closed. She sucks in a deep breath. “We can’t tell anyone.”
There’s disapproval that sneaks into his gaze. “Okay.”
“No,” she says immediately, stumbling forward until she can brace herself on the chair opposite him, fighting the urge to reach out. Time. Space. Explanations. “I-“ She forces herself to stop, counts to three as she clenches her fingers then releases them, gathers her thoughts. “I don’t know what this is,” she says.
“You had to know I wanted you. That I want you,” he counters softly, ruefully. “I’m not a good liar.”
No. That’s Barnes’ job, Romanov’s. There’s nothing subtle about Steve.
“But you want more. More than just this.”
He watches her and she lets him, waits because he looks like he’s weighing his options. “I want what you’re willing to give me.”
God. God. It’s so selfless, so Steve.
“I want to get used to this,” she finally croaks out around the heavy lump in her throat. “I don’t want the team poking their noses in. Not yet.”
He looks up at her through his lashes and how had she not paid attention to just how long they were, how beautiful. She feels her fingers twitch against the seat in front of her, wanting nothing else but to reach for him.
“But you’re not saying ‘no’.”
“No,” she agrees breathlessly, something bright flaring in her chest. “I’m not saying ‘no’.”
The release of tension in his frame drops his shoulders from his ears as he meets her gaze head on. There’s so much warmth there, want too, but banked. He stands, comes around the table until he can catch her around the waist, tug her into the hard lines of his body. She goes, easily this time, lets herself bask in the firm stroke of his hand up her back, the little hum she can hear in his chest. Had he made the same sound last night?
The want flares in his eyes as she pushes up on her toes, wraps her arms around his neck so she can shove a hand into his hair. His hands trail lower, under the hem of his shirt. His breath catches as he cups her ass.
“You seem to be missing a key piece of clothing Agent Hill.”
“Oh?” she asks, catching her breath when he leans down to press his mouth against her neck, to her shoulder where the t-shirt gapes. He tugs the cotton over her head in the next moment, forces her to let him go so he can toss it away.
“Many pieces of clothing.”
His hand comes up to stroke, to tease. Her head tips back, her body arching into the touch.
“Did you make the bed?”
“What?” she asks on an incredulous laugh. “No.”
“Good,” he murmurs against her skin lifting her again. The sheer physicality of it, of him leaves her panting against the bare skin of his shoulder. “I’d hate to mess up perfect military corners.”
There’s laughter this time, fun, right up until he has her beneath him, legs around his hips. His touch turns reverent, beautiful, leaves her trembling in the wake of it. Everything is bright now, every move synchronized. Her breath catches before the world goes white and she drags him with her.
He holds her close in the aftermath, his chin tucked on his head, hands cradling her against him. She sighs. She’d noticed him that first day, noticed him and dismissed him, told herself not to get involved with someone who couldn’t appreciate her for who she was, what she did.
In this instance, Maria is perfectly okay with being totally wrong.