He pressed as close as he could, yet no matter how much he strained or reached, the bars remained an immovable, solid wall all along his side. The chill of the metal felt all the more sharp against his skin for how it contrasted with the warmth of the man on the other side of them, with the bright lure of familiar and right that he represented. He hated them all the more for standing between him and the promise, the real possibility, that there was something beyond these bars and this pain.

"I won't." It wasn't a promise he could make, and yet to say anything else was unthinkable. It was a sense he shared - that if this moment was allowed to end, it wouldn't be so easily found again. He knew, in that moment, that he would do anything to hold onto it. Until then, until he had to fight, Steve just let himself relax and bask in the warmth. "Just like this. I won't."

Like this, with this temple resting against the bars, he could look into the man's eyes for the first time. And what he saw there was something vast and deep and hidden, like the well of blackness in his mind.

This time, however, he didn't feel like he was falling. It felt more like flying. "Yeah," he murmured, as though tasting the word and all it meant. "And I know you." Didn't he? Not just here, not just now, but...before.

There must have been a "before".

In the shadows, with their hidden windows and listening devices, their captors watched and listened with baited breath. The two of them would already need another session in the chair after this, but now it was time to see just how much work was ahead of them.

And it could all come after they slept, the better to extract htem once more with a minimum of fuss and lost fingers.

But this bond, this connection, even that sense of knowing...they could potentially use that.