Archive of Our Own

Steve shifts slightly, a little uncomfortable in the compact car as he waits for Sam to finish getting information from the young woman at the counter. He lifts a finger to scratch absently at his cheek. The beard has come in well, but he’s still not quite used it. Sometimes when he walks past a window, he doesn’t immediately recognise himself in the reflection on the glass.

Most of the time, it feels like he’s stayed true to himself while the world has changed around him. But every now and then he wonders if maybe he is different now. If he left a part of himself behind with everything else he gave up when he chose this path.

Through the windshield, he sees Sam’s posture shift, and he can tell that his friend has turned on the charm full-force. Sure enough, the woman ducks her head shyly for a moment, and when she looks up again there’s a huge, bright smile on her face.

The smile hits Steve like a punch to the stomach. It looks just like the one you’d given him when he finally worked up the courage to ask you out on a date. He’d made a mess of it at first, stumbling over his words and saying such awkward and foolish things that he briefly considered giving up altogether.

”I’m gonna… start over again,” he muttered with an embarrassed chuckle, rubbing the back of his neck. Then he held out a hand, offering a handshake.

“Hi, I’m Steve,” he said with a hopeful little half-smile. “I was wondering if you might like to get a cup of coffee with me.”

You stared at his outstretched hand with a crease between your brows for a moment before saying slowly, “Well, I’m not really interested in getting a cup of coffee…”

His heart sank into his stomach as he awkwardly lowered his hand. He was just starting to wonder how he could have so completely misread this entire situation and how best to backtrack while maintaining at least a shred of dignity when the corners of your lips twitched upwards.

“… So how about dinner?” you finished.

He blinked at you in surprise, and the playful sparkle in your eyes had him chuckling again.

“Sounds perfect,” he grinned.

Your smile grew wider, lighting up your entire face. It was warm and winsome, sweet and sincere, bright and absolutely beautiful. If he wasn’t already in over his head, that smile would have had him falling all over again. And he knew in that moment that he wanted to keep your smile in his life for as long as possible.

The sound of the car door opening jolts Steve out of his reverie. He looks over as Sam settles into the passenger seat.

“You get what we needed?” he asks, sitting up straighter and shoving his thoughts of you back behind the door in his mind that he tries to keep closed as much as possible.

“Yep. Let’s go,” Sam confirms. As they begin to drive away, he muses, “She was pretty cute. Pity I’ll never see her again.”

The door creaks open, and a wisp of pain escapes through the crack.

“Yeah,” Steve says hollowly. “Pity.”

“I hope everyone likes stone fruit,” Wanda says, hauling the grocery bags onto the kitchen table in the safe house. “It was cheap.”

Sam raises his eyebrows at the amount of peaches, plums and nectarines spilling out onto the table. “Well, we might not be able to eat out, but at least we know we’re not gonna get scurvy while we’re stuck here.”

“If you like, you can go back to eating convenience store food for every meal,” Wanda returns with an arched eyebrow.

Sam just gives her a toothy grin and goes back to cleaning his pistol, and Steve shakes his head a little as he gets up to help pack the shopping away. Life in exile hasn’t gotten any easier and they’re still getting on each others’ nerves from time to time, but he’s proud of how they’ve been able to pull together into some kind of family.

“Thanks for looking after us, Wanda,” he says to her with a gentle smile. She smiles back gratefully and turns away to rinse the fruit in the small kitchen sink.

Once everything has been cleared away, Steve grabs a ripe nectarine from the bowl Wanda set out on the counter and sits back down on the couch to resume reading the messages Natasha has sent through about a potential job in Argentina.

He absent-mindedly takes a bite, but the instant the flavour floods his tongue, he finds himself lost in a memory: you, standing barefoot at your kitchen counter, cutting up fruit for breakfast after the first time he spent the night with you.

“Morning,” you greeted him almost shyly, looking up from the cutting board as he ambled into the room.

He smiled. “Good morning.” God, you looked beautiful—all tousle-haired and bright-eyed, wrapped loosely in your bathrobe, bathed in the morning light.

“Sleep well?”

“Better than I have in a long time.”

He watched you sweep the cut pieces of fruit from the board into a bowl, saving a slice of nectarine to pop into your mouth. You sucked the juice from your thumb and forefinger, an unconscious and innocent gesture, and Steve felt heat stir deep in his belly.

He walked around the counter so he could slip his arms around your waist. Taking advantage of the tilt of your head, he trailed a line of kisses down the side of your neck, and a pleasant little thrill ran down his spine when he heard you sigh and felt you relax into his arms.

You turned around to face him and draped your arms around his neck. “Don’t you want some breakfast?” you asked, and though your voice was nothing but demure, the smile on your face set his whole body alight.

“Maybe later,” he murmured.

Then he kissed you, long and deep, relishing in the now-familiar sweetness of you blended with the taste of the nectarine, delighting in the knowledge that this was only the beginning.

He shakes his head and takes another bite to clear his mind, but the fruit seems insipid and bland now. He chews and swallows mechanically as he pushes down the sudden ache in his heart and re-focuses on Natasha’s messages. These happy memories always leave such a bittersweet aftertaste, and he’s becoming accustomed to the flavour of regret.

The knock on the motel room door has Steve on edge until it continues on in Natasha’s familiar pattern. He relaxes and pulls the door open to find her with a thin towel draped over her shoulders and a plastic bag from the nearby drugstore dangling from her fingers.

“Hot water’s out in my room—can I use your shower?” she asks apologetically.

He lets her in and she disappears into the bathroom. He goes back to poring over the maps and notes spread out on the bed, and for a good twenty minutes, he’s able to focus on the planning and the details.

But then she opens the bathroom door, and Steve is hit with the sweet floral fragrance of her shampoo—the same scent as the one you liked to use. He’s immediately drawn back to the last time he smelled it: nearly two years ago, the morning he’d left for Peggy’s funeral. The very last time he saw you.

“Do you have everything you need?” you asked, pulling your bathrobe a little tighter across your body.

“I think so,” he answered, looking over at his suit bag hanging from your coat hook, his shield on top of his duffel by the door.

He looked up, and at the sight of your sober face, he held out his arms. You stepped into them immediately, enveloping him in a tight embrace, tucking your face into his neck. He closed his eyes and focused on the warmth of your body, the softness of your skin, your damp hair under his cheek.

“You shouldn’t have to go through this alone,” you murmured. “I wish I could come with you.”

“I do, too,” he sighed. He leaned back and attempted a small smile. “But I’ll be okay. And I won’t be alone.”

“Thank God for Sam,” you acknowledged. You gave him an equally tiny smile, but it faded quickly.

You looked so concerned for him, so sad about a loss that wasn’t even yours to mourn, and his heart swelled. He bent down to kiss you, soft and slow, and as soon as his lips left yours you snuggled into his body again, wrapping your arms even more firmly around him.

For a long time he just breathed deeply, drinking in the comforting and familiar scent of you, letting the solid reality of your presence ground him, centre him.

Eventually, he stepped back and you let him go without protest. He gathered up his gear and tried to smile again.

“I’ll be back in a few days,” he reassured you. You nodded and moved forward for one last kiss.

“Love you,” you said softly.

This time when he smiled, it was nothing but sincere. “Love you too.”

“You okay, Steve?” Natasha asks.

“Fine,” he answers quickly, forcing a smile. “Just tired.”

She eyes him suspiciously, but to his relief she just comes closer to take a look at the routes for the next day’s job.

“You need a hand with this?”

“I’ve got it covered. You should get some sleep.”

Normally, he appreciates her input. But he knows that if she stays to help tonight, he won’t be able to think of anything but all the times he held you close and breathed you in. He can’t risk getting lost in his memories, not when there are people counting on him to stay present.

“Alright. Let me know if you need anything.”

The moment Natasha walks out the door, taking that sweet floral scent with her, his shoulders slump and he rubs a weary hand over his face. The ache of missing you has faded a little over time, but tonight he can feel the full force of it all over again, throbbing and tender like a fresh bruise.

Two weeks after Thor kills Thanos and the enormity and permanence of their failure has fully sunk in, Steve finally musters up enough courage to try to contact you. He’s been putting it off, unsure of what he’ll say to you if you’re alive, afraid of finding out that you’re gone and having to add yet another heavy burden to the crippling weight of grief he already carries. But he can’t ignore the pull any more.

It’s been over two years, but he can still dial your number by heart. His heart pounds faster and his grip on the phone tightens with every pulse of the ringtone.

“Hi, you’ve reached—”

Voicemail.

He hangs up immediately without leaving a message. What message could he leave after all this time? How can he be sure that you’ll actually hear it, that you haven’t disappeared in a pile of ash like everyone else?

He grimaces and pinches the bridge of his nose. Your voicemail recording has unexpectedly opened up another aching wound to join all the rest: the painful memory of the last time he heard your voice, when he’d called you after the mess with Tony to tell you he wasn’t coming home this time, breaking your heart and crushing his own in the process.

“Can’t I come with you?” Your voice was strained, edged with desperation, and even over the phone he could tell that you were close to tears.

“I can’t let you do that,” he said softly but firmly. “It’s too dangerous. I can’t bring you into this kind of life, not when you still have a chance for a normal one.”

“Steve, please. This won’t last forever—it’s got to blow over sometime, right? If I can’t come with you, then I’ll wait—”

“No, don’t do that,” he interrupted. “Don’t wait around for me. It could be years, and you don’t deserve that. Don’t put your life on hold because of me.”

“Steve, please,” you said again, and he knew from your broken voice and ragged breaths that you were crying in earnest now. The sound of it tore at his heart.

“I want you to be able to live your life,” he told you, trying to draw some strength from his conviction that this was the right thing to do. “You should move on. Start again.”

“I don’t want to start again. I want you.”

The pain in your voice pierced right through him, and his eyes burned with unshed tears.

“I know,” he said around the lump in his throat. “I’m sorry. I wish it was different, I really do. But this is how it has to be.”

“Steve…”

“I’m sorry,” he said again. And then he hung up before you could respond, before his own emotions overtook him.

With a heavy sigh, he slips his phone back into his pocket. Maybe it’s better that he doesn’t find out what happened to you. At least this way, he can imagine that you got your chance to start over, like he’d wanted for you. That you’re still out there somewhere, living your life.

It might be a complete fiction, but it’s the only shred of hope he has left.

Barely three weeks later, Steve moves out of the Compound. He’d tried for Natasha’s sake, but he can no longer call it home. It’s just too quiet, too full of ghosts.

Before he leaves, Natasha presses a slip of paper scrawled with an address into his hand. She answers his questioning look with a faint and enigmatic smile.

“I tracked her down,” she says, nodding at the piece of paper. “She’s alive.”

His throat closes up and he can barely choke out a thank you.

This time, he doesn’t allow himself the time to agonise about it before biting the bullet. The very next evening finds him climbing the stairs in your building, his heart stuttering an anxious rhythm in his chest.

He pauses outside your apartment. There’s light and quiet music filtering through the crack under the door, accompanied by the faint sounds of running water and the clink of silverware and crockery. Someone’s definitely home.

He expels a breath he hadn’t realised he’d been holding, squares his shoulders, and knocks.

The noises stop, then the music, and then he hears soft footsteps padding across the floor. Those brief few seconds are enough for an entire constellation of emotions to sweep through him: nervousness, anticipation, longing, dread.

And then the door swings open and for the first time in years, he’s face-to-face with you.

You seem older, more than is warranted by the passage of time. Your hair is much longer, there are dark circles under your eyes, and your clothes hang off you in a way that suggests you haven’t been eating well lately. Your face is careworn and lined with grief, just like all the other survivors Steve has seen these past several weeks. Just like him.

But it’s still you, beautiful you, living and breathing before him. All the things he’d been planning to say fly out of his mind, leaving just your name to fall from his lips, breathless and wondering.

“Steve,” you whisper in return, and your wide eyes fill with tears.

He spends the evening sitting beside you on your couch, talking about everything that happened since he left. There’s been so much loss and pain and sadness since then, in these last couple of months especially, but he discovers there’s still a depth of comfort to be found in sharing those burdens with each other.

When he tries to describe the crushing guilt he’s been carrying since watching his friends dissolve before his eyes in Wakanda, his voice breaks and he has to bow his head to let the wave of emotion recede. In the heavy silence that follows, you reach out and lace your fingers through his.

The instant he feels your touch, it all comes rushing back: every time you ever held his hand, every time you leaned your head against his shoulder, every embrace, every kiss, every lingering caress. The door in his mind is flung open and he’s flooded with all his memories of you, all the feelings he still holds for you.

Tears blur the edges of his vision, and when he looks up he’s amazed to see the same wistful longing mirrored in your own overly-bright eyes. He wonders if somewhere in it all, you’ve always known that he never stopped loving you. If all this time, you’ve felt the same way.

“So what now?” you ask softly, your eyes searching his.

He’s not sure if you’re talking about the world or just the two of you, but he knows his response is same either way.

“I don’t know,” he answers honestly. “I guess… we try to start again.”

You sigh and shift so that you can rest your head on his shoulder just like you used to, sending a pang through his heart.

“Okay,” you murmur, squeezing his hand and nestling a little further into him. “Let’s start again.”

He savours the warm weight of you against him, the touch of your skin where his fingers are intertwined with yours, the physical reality of you beside him again at last—flesh and blood and no longer just a memory. And for the first time in a long time, Steve is filled with hope.