The meeting room was too quiet for his liking. Not truly silent—there was the faint hum of the air conditioning, the soft scrape of pens against paper, the occasional throat clearing—but quiet enough that his mind could wander. Steve sat at the long table, posture perfect as always, hands folded in front of him as if he were listening with the same disciplined attention he gave every mission briefing. But he wasn’t. Not really.

His eyes drifted, against his will, to the other side of the table. She sat there, scribbling notes, brows furrowed in focus, her hand brushing a stray strand of hair away from her face without thought. It was nothing extraordinary, nothing cinematic or world-stopping, yet it made his chest tighten in ways he hadn’t allowed himself to feel in years. He realized his palms were damp, and he quickly rubbed them against his pants under the table, hoping no one would notice.

It was ridiculous. After Peggy, he hadn’t believed there could be anyone else. He told himself for so long that whatever parts of him were capable of loving like that had been left in the 1940s, buried under decades of ice. He convinced himself that mission came first, always. That there wasn’t time, or maybe even space inside him, for something as fragile and terrifying as this.

But then, without him realizing it, she slipped into his days like sunlight sneaking through blinds. He found himself catching small things—the sound of her laugh bouncing off metal corridors, the way she leaned forward when she listened, how she never interrupted even when she disagreed. Those details piled up quietly, until one day he noticed that whenever she wasn’t in the room, something felt unfinished.

Now, sitting here in the middle of yet another strategy meeting, surrounded by the most brilliant minds he knew, Steve’s thoughts weren’t on the maps or the numbers. They were on the way her pen tapped absently against her notebook. They were on what it would be like to reach across the table and take her hand, just once. He imagined the warmth of it grounding him. He imagined walking beside her, years from now, away from battlefields and chaos, somewhere simple and steady. A porch. A quiet morning. Coffee she probably wouldn’t drink all of, but he’d still pour for her.

He shifted in his chair, willing the thoughts away, but they came rushing back stronger. His throat felt dry, his pulse loud in his ears. It was a different kind of battlefield—no shield, no fists, just the weight of wanting something he swore he’d given up long ago.

For a moment, the meeting blurred, voices becoming muffled, as if the room itself had faded and only she remained in sharp focus. He wondered how it would feel to tell her. He wondered if she already knew. He wondered if maybe she’d been waiting for him to admit it.

And then, clear as day, the truth sank into him with the steady force of inevitability.

He was in love.

The thought terrified him, but it also steadied him in a way no order or plan ever could. It wasn’t about the danger of losing her, or the risk of reaching for something fragile. It was about finally admitting that he wanted more than duty, more than sacrifice. He wanted her.

He swallowed hard, forcing his attention back to the table just as Bruce leaned forward, eyes narrowing. “Steve? You still with us?”

Steve blinked, shifting his gaze away from her. He straightened, cleared his throat, and nodded once. “Yeah. Yeah, I’m here.”

But his heart, for the first time in decades, was somewhere else entirely.