Captain America (Steve Rogers)

The storm had arrived faster than the weather service predicted, turning what should have been a routine evening into the sort of inconvenience Steve was still learning to appreciate. Back in his day, a snowstorm meant being stuck somewhere until it passed, not an endless stream of alerts on a phone insisting that everyone should stay indoors. The building's heating system had apparently decided to take the same advice. By the time you arrived at his apartment, the radiators were barely warm, and Steve had already dragged two blankets onto the couch and made enough coffee to suggest he was preparing for a siege.

He opened the door before you could knock twice, dressed in a gray sweatshirt and sweatpants, his hair still slightly damp from a shower. For someone who had spent most of his life sleeping in military barracks, he had become surprisingly particular about being comfortable at home. His eyes moved immediately to the snow clinging to your coat and boots, and he stepped aside to let you in. “You shouldn't have come over in this,” he said, though there was no real reprimand in it. He took your coat from your shoulders before you could protest and hung it near the radiator, where it would presumably dry eventually.

The reason you'd come was sitting in your bag: a stack of files that needed reviewing before morning. Neither of you particularly wanted to spend the night working, but the alternative was going back out into a city that had become increasingly difficult to navigate. So you settled in at Steve's kitchen table, laptops and paperwork spread between the remains of takeout, while snow accumulated against the windows.

Hours passed almost unnoticed. Eventually, Steve looked up from his own work and found you asleep with your head resting against your folded arms. He watched you for a moment, his expression softening into something almost unbearably fond before he quietly closed his laptop. There was no point waking you just because the paperwork said otherwise.

He stood, crossed the room, and carefully pulled one of the blankets from the couch around your shoulders. He hesitated there for a moment, close enough to hear your breathing, before stepping back.

It was nearly five in the morning, the kind of hour when the city seemed to belong to nobody. You'd both gotten back from a mission a few hours earlier, too wired to sleep and too exhausted to do anything productive. Somewhere between dropping his gear at the office and standing in the elevator beside you, Steve had decided that coffee and pancakes sounded better than going home.

Now he sat across from you in a booth near the window, sleeves pushed up to his elbows, staring with mild suspicion at the enormous stack of pancakes the waitress had put in front of him.

“I don't remember pancakes being this big.”

He cut into them anyway.

Outside, Manhattan was slowly beginning to wake up. Cars moved along the street below, headlights disappearing into the gray-blue morning, while inside the diner an old radio played quietly behind the counter. It was ordinary. Peaceful, even.

Steve found himself appreciating that more than he expected.

He'd spent so much of his life surrounded by noise—war, orders, alarms, gunfire, crowds—that quiet moments still felt like something he had to consciously notice. These mornings with you had become one of those things.

“You ever think about how strange this is?” he asked suddenly.

He gestured vaguely between the two of you with his fork.

“Five in the morning. Sitting in a diner in New York. Eating pancakes after chasing somebody across three rooftops.”

A faint smile tugged at his mouth.

“I'm pretty sure this wasn't in the job description.”

His gaze lingered on you for a moment longer than usual before he looked down at his plate.

“You know, when I first woke up, I didn't think I'd ever have anything like this again.”

He said it simply, without self-pity. Then, after a moment, he added, quieter, “Friends. A life. People who actually know me.”

His eyes returned to yours.

“I'm glad you're one of them.”

The bookshelf had seemed like a simple enough project.

Steve had bought it because he'd decided his apartment needed more storage, and despite having absolutely no reason to believe he was qualified to assemble furniture, he'd been very confident when he'd told you he could handle it himself. Two hours later, the instructions were crumpled on the floor, several pieces were scattered across the living room, and the finished bookshelf was leaning at an angle that suggested it was considering collapsing out of spite.

You stood in front of it with your arms crossed, trying very hard not to laugh.

"I don't see the problem," Steve said.

"It's leaning."

"It's not leaning."

"It's absolutely leaning."Steve stepped back and looked at it from another angle, as if a different perspective might somehow change the laws of physics. "It's probably the floor."

You stared at him.

"What?"

"The floor is crooked."

"The floor is not crooked, Steve."

He sighed and dropped onto the couch beside you, looking genuinely defeated. You sat down next to him, still fighting a smile as the two of you looked at the disaster he'd created.

"You know, for someone who fought through a war, you really got taken out by a bookshelf."

"I fought Nazis. I didn't fight particleboard."

That finally made you laugh, and Steve's expression softened as he looked at you. He'd always liked making you laugh. It was something he'd noticed about himself years ago and never really examined too closely.

The apartment settled into a comfortable silence after that. The television was playing quietly in the background, and for a while neither of you said anything. You'd spent so much time together over the years that silence had stopped feeling like something that needed to be filled. Steve had gotten used to you being there. He'd gotten used to your shoes by his door, your coffee mug sitting beside his in the mornings, your voice carrying through his apartment whenever you were telling him some ridiculous story from work.

Eventually, you glanced at the clock and started to stand.

"I should probably head home."Steve looked up at you. "Already?"

You paused. "It's almost midnight."

"I know."

"You just said that like you wanted me to stay."

Steve hesitated, then gave a small, embarrassed smile. "Maybe I do."

You sat back down.

He looked at you for a moment before adding, more quietly, "I like having you here."

There was nothing dramatic about the way he said it. That almost made it worse. It sounded too honest to be a joke, and Steve seemed to realize that too.

He looked toward the crooked bookshelf instead.

"Besides, I need someone here to witness this thing finally kill me."

You laughed, and Steve smiled.

Neither of you mentioned that you'd decided to stay.