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If Steve thought the dynamics of their professional relationship would change once Maria acknowledged their involvement, he’s got another thing coming. It doesn’t even blur slightly at the edges. In fact, without S.H.I.E.L.D’s rigid command structure and the respect owed to her by rank, Maria has retreated further behind her mask.
He knew it would be difficult, but it never occurred to him how difficult. Nor does he expect the startling realization that he likes difficult. He enjoys the chase, the confrontation, and her special brand of grudging submission on the battle field and contained competency off it.
Her heels click in perfect rhythm with the thud of his boots as they round the corner into the observatory. Does she notice how synchronized their movements have become of late? Both in and outside of the bedroom?
“Fatalities?”
“Only when engaged. Mostly guys left in a fugue state going on about old memories, worst fears and something too fast to see.”
“Maximoffs.”
The Good Eye has always had answers on the tip of her tongue but these days, it’s almost as though she anticipates his requests before he even thinks them. And sometimes, when they’re alone, a little bit of his Maria slips in.
“If I thought Ultron were bringing peace I’d hang up my shield.”
“Would you?”
A tilt of her head. A barely imperceptible smirk tugging her lips, breathing legitimacy into a notion he’s been too preoccupied to question. Who would he be without the shield?
It’s not a direct challenge, not in their role as Captain and Head of Logistics, but not just the soldier either. What then? A lover? A friend? A woman with everything to lose and the balls to blow it all up for what she believes in?
It’s all Steve can do to lean back, throw her an exasperated glance and walk away before he makes her an accomplice to indecent exposure.
There’s no mistaking the innuendo in the senator’s smirk as he questions whether Maria can be depended upon to – remain objective. Maria doesn’t do public and embarrassing opposition. She’s too professional for that.
Sometimes, Steve really wishes she would.
For all of her graciousness, Pepper has been ruthless in her reprimanding of SI employees who couldn’t or wouldn’t accept Maria’s appointment as their superior.
“Sadly, Stark Industries can’t control the reactions of petty men outside of our employ,” Pepper had commented while Steve escorted her to a shareholder meeting. He didn’t think he imaged her muttering the word "yet" before she closed the board room door behind her.
The blunt force of Romanoff’s boot against his left shin is an abstract pain, one that tells him he’s not disguising his anger very well. Unlike Maria, who has barely blinked since the swarthy senator with his Colonel Sanders mustache pointedly drew his eyes between Maria and Steve. The two aides on either side of the senator lean forward, gleeful spectators, expecting her to shrink before them.
“I can assure you I’m more than capable of dealing with this or any other issue that arises.” Maria’s well practiced tone doesn’t falter for a second.
How often has she had to deal with this?
Has it happened so often that she’s become used to it? Just like the way prolonged contact with a disease builds immunity?
Steve imagines reaching across the tiny divide of the mahogany table, snatching the senator around the throat and launching him out the window. He leans his knee against Maria’s, hoping to convey support and then sensing the tremble in her. A caustic fury scorches his chest until he feels her hand on his wrist below the table, constricting his pulse until he can feel each furious beat in his fingertips.
It’s not a comforting gesture but a restraint, a reminder that she can handle herself.
There’s nothing for Steve to do but clamp down on his anger and let the comment and several others in the course of the meeting, roll off his back.
He doesn’t realise he’s picked up a pen and is drawing on her hand until she shivers. Still she doesn’t move away and at the end of the meeting there’s a bracelet of stars decorating her wrist, culminating in a pendant of his shield.
Her brows knit together when she sees what he’s done and she retracts her hand into the sleeve of her blouse. Luckily it’s not her right hand which she uses to grip the senator’s fist in a steely shake. Her lips move so quietly even Steve can’t catch what she’s said. The senator leans closer but Maria is already letting go, stepping back and turning away.
Later he finds her in the gym, beating the living daylights out of a punching bag. She doesn’t slow when he approaches and for a second he thinks he’ll join her until the angle of her punches changes and he notices the red seeping through the wrapping around her hands.
She doesn’t resist as he scoops her up around the waist and deposits her on the bleacher step. She flinches as he unwinds the wrapping, his teeth grinding as the blossom of blood expands. Her knuckles are torn up badly but it’s not that sight which steals all the air from his lungs. It’s the fact that his drawing is still there, plain as day, completely unwashed.
Her eyes are still wild with unrepentant loathing and he wishes there was some way he could shield her from the unfairness of the world. But he knows that’s not what she wants or needs. She may be a damsel but her distress is not for him to appropriate.
All he can do is sit beside her, waiting for her breathing to even out, for her head to finally sink onto his shoulder.
What he doesn’t expect is when her angry breaths even out, is for her to lift her wrist, turn it around, and say:
“You’re not half bad at this drawing thing, Steve.”
Steve can’t help noting that staff at S.H.I.E.L.D Human Resources were much more accommodating than SI department head Maggie. Back in the day he could get anything he wanted from Accounting or Statistics. Now all he wants is Maria’s home address and Maggie is looking at him like he’s some kind of stalker.
This could all be avoided if Maria would take him back to her place. But not once has she offered. They go back to his more often than not. Or she just disappears. If he’s honest with himself, it hurts his pride a little. Yes they’re low profile but he thought that meant no wild public displays of affection, not a line in the sand between personal and professional.
Chronologically, he’s got at least forty-years on Maggie but she peers over her wire rimmed glasses as though he’s a school boy sent to the principal’s office.
“No means no, Captain.”
Since charm didn’t work, Steve tries for diplomacy. “What if something were to happen to her and I needed to get to her quick?”
Maggie snorts. “Maria seems like a woman who can handle herself.”
Okay, how about a misleading romantic gesture. Steve leans on his elbows and gives her his most winning smile. “I just want to have a gift sent to her.”
His hope plummets when she returns his grin with one of her own. “As much as I’d love to see you get out of that one alive, I have a job to keep and a life that’s not so bad I want to go throwing it away. Might I suggest you just ask her nicely?”
He leaves the department in a foul mood because he has asked her nicely. And not so nicely. And sneakily. There’s a reason she’s a spy and she’s holding this one close to her chest. He’s just about resigned to following her home one night when Clint shakes his head.
“This can only end in tears,” Clint says. “And Maria doesn’t cry so….” He rubs his eyes with two clenched fists like a baby and then points at Steve.
“What would you do if your girlfriend wouldn’t show you her place?”
Clint pauses on their way to the quinjet. “Firstly, I don’t have a girlfriend. Secondly, can I please be around when you call Maria your girlfriend to her face? And thirdly, the last person Maria dated-” He punctuates the word dated with air quotes, “- didn’t even know her real name.”
They lapse into silence on the helipad and Steve’s focus becomes glued to the slim figure tapping her foot at their arrival.
“Two minutes gentlemen. Ultron’s not going to sit on his hands for us.”
Maria doesn’t acknowledge him as they cross paths but she remains on the helipad until the quinjet is out of sight.
Three days later he arrives home in the middle of the night frustrated, empty handed and completely out of patience. He hears the television before he slots his key into the lock and finds her shoeless and asleep on his couch.
A wave of fondness washes over him as he takes in the files scattered on his coffee table, the beer bottles in the sink and her phone charging beside her head. Bubbling warmth settles in his chest as he lifts her from the couch and her arms encircle his neck. In a moment of uncharacteristic vulnerability, he thinks she might have inhaled his scent.
He takes off her jacket and finds a taser in her pocket. There are two shock discs sown into the hem of her skirt and a palm sized flat disc in the lining of her shirt that he’s pretty sure he shouldn't be touching. Ever since S.H.I.E.L.D's fall, rogue H.Y.D.R.A agents have shown up at her doorstep. When Steve undressed her one night and got the electric shock of his life, she simply cocked an eyebrow and said: “We’re not all super soldiers.”
As he climbs into bed beside her, Steve can’t help thinking that maybe it’s not about her home so much as the one he’s gotten used to with her in it. The one he’s growing more terrified of losing every day.
If he were an insecure man, Steve would be feeling a little like the last priority. They’ve had the talk about work versus relationship and how he’ll never win on that front but he figures one night out of a dozen isn’t too much to ask for. Of course with Ultron out there and everyone scrambling for answers, Maria is literally run off her feet.
Stark and Banner are putting in overtime trying to locate Ultron but nobody seems to notice that everything else falls into Maria’s lap. With the fear of Ultron being in every system they’ve had to revert to pen and paper and Steve’s living room looks like half the Amazon was felled for scrap paper.
He won the battle and got her to come home but lost the war and now the rustic Italian feast he’d spent hours cooking for her is no more than a congealed mess of tomato and pulled pork.
“Did you move the Wakandan discourse file?” The look she throws him is accusatory.
“Believe me I wouldn’t dream of it.”
Her expression is a mix of fatigue and anxiety kept at bay with caffeine and sheer force of will. She reaches across the coffee table, wavers and then catches herself before she topples.
That’s the last straw for him. “Okay, that’s enough.”
Her slowly blinking lids open wide and then narrow as he swipes everything that was on the table into one massive pile.
“I’ve got work to do!” She snatches for the pile and he holds it away from her.
“You’ve always got work to do. It’s not going to get done if you’re dead.”
“That’s a bit melodramatic.”
He doesn’t like the way her eyes dart. He knows that look. It’s the one she gets before she makes a move that could be his undoing.
“Put the files down Steve.”
“Two hours. That’s all I’m asking.”
She takes a step closer. She’s stubborn but then so is he. They both know she’s truly on the brink of exhaustion because she throws her arms in the air and slumps back on the couch.
“Fine. Have it your way you big baby.”
Steve reheats the pasta on the stove and she takes the plate grudgingly as he picks a Netflix movie. The Venn diagram of their preferred movies only intersects at action so he chooses the latest spy blockbuster.
Her bites are small and she chews with the determined thoughtfulness of one whose mind is splintered in too many directions.
Steve knows she hates his hovering almost as much as she resents his protective surveillance. The words one more bite almost escape him when she sets the largely untouched meal down on the coffee table. He admires her tenacity, respects her dedication and adores the serpentine smile that changes the quality of her face when she figures out a solution.
But this work, the constant pressure to stretch herself to fit a rusted framework, well, he’s worried it’ll kill her.
Then she peeks at him from the corner of her eye. When she turns her head, sapphire eyes softened by the warm lighting and the wine, he can’t imagine working without her.
“Let’s play a game.” Her speech isn't slurred as such but it's more fluid than her usual crisp tone. “Every time someone does something implausible, I drink. Every time there’s a real device, you drink.”
“I can’t get drunk, Maria.”
Her nose scrunches like she’s only just remembering this. Steve tries and fails to recall how many wines she’s had.
“Okay, every time they do something plausible you take off a piece of clothing.”
He slings his arm over her shoulder, settles his palm on her hip and drags her until they’re shoulder to chest. Wine tumbles over the glass and splashes onto the wooden floor. “Or we could just cut out the middle man.”
She rolls her eyes and he acquiesces. By the time they reach the credits, he’s down to his underwear and socks and she’s well and truly hammered. Her eyelids flutter closed but when he moves to switch the television off she startles awake.
He snatches her up before she can glance at the clock and realise she’s lost more than two hours. That’s how she tells time. Hours lost as opposed to hours stolen once more by the job.
This time he steals her first and drops her lightly into bed.
“Taking advantage of me while I’m drunk, Captain?”
“It’s about the only time I can take advantage of you, Hill.”
The heat in his belly electrifies as her already unfocused pupils dilate. He wants her to rest but her fingers dig deep into the back on his neck as she pulls him down on top of her.
“Okay but only once. I’ve got reports to type up.”
He takes advantage three times and her breathing is long and steady even before he climbs off.
Now would be a good time to relieve her of the pile of work in the kitchen, preferably with a stern talk with Tony, but he knows which battles are lost before they’re even fought. Steve’s always been an all or nothing kind of guy and sometimes on quiet nights like these, he wonders what Bucky would have to say about him playing second fiddle to a woman’s career.
Then the dreamer in him wrestles everything else aside for the glimmer of hope that one day he might be able to introduce Bucky to Maria.
He goes to bed smiling at the thought of the Winter Soldier cowering behind his metal arm as Maria molds him to her liking.
Steve knows he’s gone off the deep end when even Romanoff steps back. He watches, with fists balanced on the table, as the surveillance footage shows Maria leaping out a second story window, luring the legionnaires away from the theater district.
“Where is she?”
“Fine has her,” Barton says. “Couple of broken ribs and a dislocated shoulder.”
“Pepper?”
“Tony’s taking her back to the tower.”
“Don’t do it, Steve.” Romanoff’s warning falls on willfully deaf ears.
Of all the Avengers, Romanoff is his closest confidant when it comes to matters of Maria. He’d realised this when he’d called her out the first time the SI board questioned Maria’s allegiance in public.
“What do you want me to do Rogers? She’s wading in a testosterone pool without a life jacket.”
“There are things Maria allows from you that she wouldn’t from me.”
“Not anymore. Not since S.H.I.E.L.D went down and the whole world saw me on Capitol Hill. Now I’m just any other Avenger but without a dick.”
He’d appreciated the intention if not the imagery. Maria’s connection to them was a weak spot that others would exploit at any opportunity. But he’s not just another Avenger. He’s – they’re – more. Surely the facade of professionalism could slip when matters of life and death were concerned.
The storm that gathers around her face when she sees him completely contradicts his carefully constructed theory. Her expression says get out but the sling around her arm and the cut across her temple begs for him to stay. He settles for standing around awkwardly, shield balanced against the pavement, head supposedly surveying the damage to the buildings.
Injury or not her orders are precise, considered and calmly delivered. When her SI minions scatter he steps towards her.
She takes a step back.
“I’m fine, Captain.”
Her raspy voice and the hand print around her throat say otherwise. “You shouldn’t be out here. Tony’s taken Pepper back to the Tower to recover. You-”
“I’m exactly where I want to be.”
“You’re in shock.”
“You’re overstepping.” Her eyes turn sharper than a razor edge as a pair of EMTs sprint past, glance at them and whisper to each other.
“We’re done here,” she dismisses.
His frustrations bubble over. “You can’t just keep going until you fall over Maria!” Though he’s seen her literally fall over once, get up, dust herself off and continue working until ordered to stand down.
“You’re no longer my superior officer, Captain.”
“Oh just forget about rank and orders for a second. I can’t just stand around and watch you get hurt. I lo…”
Those last five letters never make it out of his mouth because she’s stiffened, her eyelashes shutter and she turns on her heel and walks away. He swallows over and over again, unable to dislodge the intent. Did he really mean it or was it just his fear for her safety overriding his sensibilities?
She doesn’t show up at his apartment that night or any night the week after. Romanoff thinks it’s best to give her time. But time isn’t a luxury soldiers like them have.
As the quinjet speeds on its way to West Africa in search of Ulysses Klaue, Steve can’t help thinking the first time he’s tried to tell a woman he loves her is the last time he’ll ever see her.
The sudden flash of a camera lens to his left makes Steve flinch.
A strain of music blares behind him and then increases into a full scale crescendo, filling in the black and white spaces with vibrant colour. Raucous laughter blinks in and out of his consciousness.
Then he hears her voice. “Are you ready for our dance?”
He turns to face Peggy and the turmoil hits him harder than an Asgardian sledgehammer.
Wrong uniform, wrong time, wrong woman.
Except is it wrong?
“The wars over, Steve. We can go home.” There’s hope in Peggy’s smile. Pure and sweet like a daydream he’d forgotten he once played on repeat to get him through those nights in the chorus line.
Why then does this dream feel like a nightmare? His head keeps turning, even when Peggy is in his arms, like he always imaged she would be, dancing their regrettable lost dance.
A deep set voice tunnels through his brain and causes every nerve to dull. “Captain America. God’s righteous man, pretending you could live without war.”
The voice steals the image away, leaving him gasping beside the staircase, staring at blood stains on his gloves and hearing another voice question whether he would really hang up his shield.
In the quinjet he sits with his back to the monitor. Every word out of Maria’s mouth is like a knife in his side.
“The news is loving you guys. Nobody else is...Until we can find Ultron, I don’t have much else to offer.”
She doesn’t have anything for him at all.
Not a thing since he almost said the unspeakable. He doesn’t have anything that she wants, can’t give her what he thinks she deserves and doesn’t even know where he fits.
When he came out of the ice Steve wanted desperately to go back in time. To the place where he thought he belonged. But is belonging a place or a thing? And if it’s a thing then is his thing war? Is he a hypocrite to clothe himself in righteousness and then thrive on bloodshed?
Steve isn’t mentally present when Maria signs off. He doesn’t stare at his phone waiting for her contact that doesn’t come.
Next thing he knows, he’s standing on the porch of Clint’s farmhouse, staring into a future he knows he’ll never have, without a woman he didn’t realise he needed. He takes the steps down and away from the house.
“You coming back, Rogers?” Romanoff calls.
He pauses. “Yeah. Just walking it off.”
He walks for a long time.