This has to be the most awkward of a silence I've ever experienced.
I mean in the history of all awkward silences myself or anyone else for that matter have ever experienced in their lifetime, this silence takes the cake.
After hobbling down the hallway and clumsily lowering myself back onto the couch, Steve had taken a seat in the small lounge chair on the opposite side of the coffee table. Neither of us had spoken a word since. We were just sitting there, occasionally making eye contact only for Steve to look away taking apparent interest in the cracked wood floors of my apartment. I suppose he was waiting for me talk first, but that wasn't going to happen. I know I said I'd hear the guy out and I will, but I have no intention of making this any easier on him.
He looks so uncomfortable, sitting there, fidgeting in his seat. I'm not to proud to admit, I'm enjoying seeing him squirm a little. After all, if it wasn't for him I'd still have a job I loved, not to mention two working legs.
Eventually, the silence becomes so prolonged that Steve breaks it, clearing his throat loudly.
"How's your ankle?" His eyes travel down to the brace around my foot, and then back up to meet mine.
"Broken." I answer, plainly.
His cheeks turn pink, ever so slightly. If we hadn't just been sitting here across from each other I probably wouldn't have noticed the difference.
"Sorry about that. There were..." He shifts again in his seat as he looks for the end of his sentence. "extenuating circumstances."
"I know." I laugh, hollowly. "I've been stuck on a couch for three weeks, and you think I haven't watched the news?"
The story had been all over every channel for the past two weeks. The Black Widow, Natasha Romanoff, had worked with the man currently sitting in my living room to take down H.Y.D.R.A., a terrorist organization that infiltrated S.H.I.E.L.D, the very government organization they worked for.
It hadn't been hard to connect the dots after I'd seen the footage. He had clearly needed his suit to expose the organization for what it was, to save the innocent lives H.Y.D.R.A. threatened. I don't know who or what he worked for now. To my knowledge, S.H.I.E.L.D had been disbanded. I guess he was probably jobless now too. That's probably why he had time for taking trips to the museum and making house calls in the middle of a work day.
"Well if you know then you can understand, surely." He reasons.
"No, I don't understand, and don't call me Shirley." I reply, taking the time to peel off the wrapper of the Milky-Way he had brought me.
"(Y/n)." His eyes narrow.
"Cap." I deadpan, taking a bite of the chocolate.
"I think we're past the point of you calling me Cap." He grumbles, starting to sound annoyed. "It's Steve."
"I don't think we need to be on a first name basis." I answer once I've finished chewing, then add. "Cap."
He groans, standing up from the chair and pacing slightly, obviously frustrated.
"Look." He sighs, trying to keep his tone calm in spite of the fact that my stubbornness is eating away at his nerves, slowly ticking him off. "I'm not happy with the way I left things. I'm just trying to find a way to make it right. Couldn't you at least try to cooperate?"
"Cooperate?" I scoff. "Are you serious?"
I toss the candy bar onto my side table, too annoyed for chocolate. Well, too annoyed for chocolate that from him anyway.
The truth is, I don't blame him for taking the suit. I get why he did what he did, I understand why it was necesarry. I just don't understand why what he did to me was also 'necesarry'. I'm not going to accept his lame ass sort of apology just to ease his conscience. If I did, then what's stopping him from going on and doing this to another innocent person. For all I know, he's already done this to other people. I'm not going to let the fact that he's Captain America wither my resolve. We all have to draw the line somewhere. This is where I draw mine, in thick, dark, permanent ink.
"You're supposed to be a super-hero." I tell him, plainly. "You're supposed to save people, not willingly hurt them as a means to an end."
"I did save people!" He fights back. "Millions would have been dead if I hadn't stole that suit. You weren't even supposed to be there! I had it timed out to take the suit when a guard wasn't on duty! What was I supposed to do? Let you run to the police?"
"Yeah maybe!" I argue stubbornly, indignant. "Or maybe you could have, I don't know, not tackled me to the ground? You could have not broken my ankle? Or you could have at least offered to help me when you did, instead of abandoning me on the third floor with no way to get down. I had to hobble down three flights of stairs on one foot!"
I'm in part surprised by the hostility in my voice. I'd known I wasn't pleased with how he'd treated me, but I hadn't realized how much I'd been holding on to it. Three weeks of brooding, stuck on my couch jobless has left me full of resent with no place to put it. Now that he was here, that the opportunity had fallen into my lap, whatever small piece of my patience that had been left prior to him pounding on my door and demanding to speak with me had been apparently ripped to shreds.
"And I'm sorry about that but-"
"I lost my job!" I cut him off. "I loved that job and I got fired to protect Stan, the man who would have gotten fired if I hadn't stepped in. All because of you."
"I know but-"
"It doesn't matter if the cause is good." I interrupt him, again. "It doesn't matter who you were trying to stop or who you were trying to protect. If you don't have limitations, if you're willing to hurt people in the process then you're no better than Loki or H.Y.D.R.A. or any of them."
"I know!" His voice booms over mine, bouncing loudly off the walls of my apartment so that it hangs over my head like a storm cloud.
Whatever I said had clearly hit some kind of nerve with him. He looks so agitated that I'm almost positive he's going to yell at me. Only he doesn't. Instead he walks back to the lounge chair and plops down onto it like this conversation alone has taken the life out of him. I wouldn't say that made me feel good about myself, but I'd be lying if I wasn't the tiniest bit victorious that I'd succeeded in ruffling his feathers.
"I'm sorry, okay? I'm sorry about all of it." He says, sounding put out. "I didn't even know you got fired until I went back to the museum to find you and apologize. Stan told me what happened and where I could find you."
His eyes scan my face carefully, looking for some sign that I might relent. That I'll accept his apology. I do my best to keep my face blank, unresponsive. I think I must have succeeded at that too because he leans forward on his chair, and gives me an irritated look.
"What else do you want from me?" He asks, exhasperatedly.
"I want you to leave me alone but you don't seem keen on doing that." I mutter, sarcastically.
"There must be something I can do." He continues, ignoring my request, his eyes lighting up with an idea.
"I could go talk to the people at the Smithsonian." He offers. "I could get you your job back."
I shake my head no, quickly, refusing the suggestion.
"Why not?" He furrows his eyebrows, confused. "You just said you loved that job?"
"I did." I agree. "But I can't go back to it now. They just fired me, that's not a place I want to go back to again."
My voice sounds slightly tired now. His insistence on getting me to accept his apology is starting to drain me, not mentally, but physically. Apparently, he needed me to forgive him as much as I was determined not to. I'm starting to think about doing it just to get him out of my apartment and give me some peace.
"Okay so we'll find you a different job." He insists, unfazed. "There must be something else you'd want to do."
"Can you just-"
"People have to put job openings up all the time online, right?" He asks, reaching forward, and snatching my laptop from off my coffee table and opening the screen.
"Hey!" I cry out indignantly, staring in horror as he scans over the open program on my computer.
I start to fight my way off the couch for the second time today, propelling myself with my one working foot so that I'm closer to his seat and reaching for my laptop. He just ignores me, turning to the side so it's out of reach.
"How do you type in the address website? Where's the long box at the top of the-" He pauses, his eyes narrowing in on the screen. "Wait what is this?"
"Okay this is seriously unfair." I complain, continuing my struggle to stand up. "And a major invasion of privacy, give it back."
I place a knee on the coffee table in between us, leaning over to grab the computer for a second time. He stands up, lifting the computer so it's out of reach, his eyes still transfixed on the screen, flipping from side to side as he takes in the words I'd typed there.
"You're a writer?" He asks, voice distracted as he continues to evade my attempts to retrieve my device.
"No." I answer furiously, about two seconds away from taking one of my crutches and poking him with the pointy end until he drops the machine. "No, I'm not, now give it back."
He's quiet for a moment, concentrating on one of the paragraphs and persistently moving out of my way everytime I get close to grabbing it back from him. Then, as if he hadn't already embarrassed me enough, he starts to read aloud.
"And when all is done, when the war is over and the battles are won, the army dissolves but the soldier survives. What was left of the man had died during the war leaving only a soldier who can't live without one in it's place." He finishes, looking away from the screen and back to me. "You sound like a writer to me."
He lets his arm fall, finally returning my laptop to me. I snatch it back from him, thoroughly annoyed that he read my private work, then I turn away from him to hop back to my seat on the couch.
"Why don't you pursue this?" I hear him ask as his hand wraps loosely around my waist, steadying me when I almost fall over. "It's good (Y/n), really good."
This time it's my cheeks that turn pink.
"It's not good enough." I shake my head evasively as I plop clumsily back onto the couch.
I've never let anyone read my work before. It makes me feel exposed, and vulnerable in a way I hadn't even felt when I was in the museum, running from him to try and pull the alarm. I'm not sure how much he read, and I don't really want to know.
"Well maybe that's because you've never given it a fair shot." He reasons, scooching slightly away from me and then taking a seat on the other end of the sofa this time. "Give yourself a chance, put your all in to writing and see what you can do. If you're already this talented treating it like a hobby, who knows what you could do if you treated it like your job."
"Talented?" I chuckle, darkly. "Which one are you again, Simon or Schuster?"
His eyebrows scrunch in confusion, apparently unfamiliar with the famous publishing company. I'm not sure which is more laughable, the man who got me fired giving me career advice, or a man who doesn't know Simon & Schuster appraising my writing capability.
"Nevermind." I shake my head. "I really don't want to talk about this, you shouldn't have even read it."
He takes a moment before responding, eyes fixed on me, appraisingly. It's like he's trying to make since of something, I'm not really sure what at this point and I don't really care. I just want him to leave so I can sleep. I think he can sense that too because he stands up from the couch.
"I'll get out of your hair so you can rest." He says, and I immediately try to stand up to see him out. I'll have to lock the door behind him after he leaves which means another trek back and forth through the entryway.
He gives me a hand, pulling me into a standing position with ease and passing me my crutches. I'm still confused, shocked by his sudden willingness to leave. It doesn't make sense given his prior insistence on getting me to accept his apology. I sneak a look at him as we make our way back down the hallway, and he's staring forward, determinedly. He looks like he's deep in thought, so focused on something else that I can almost physically see the gears turning in his brain as he continues contemplating.
"Who's that?" He asks, snapping my attention as he gestures towards a picture frame resting on the entry table.
"Jason." I answer, coming to a stop as Steve grabs his jacket off the hook on the back of the door and shrugs it on. "My boyfriend."
He onlynods in response, his face blank, and even. Then he pulls open the door and walks under the frame, turning around to face me once he's fully out of my apartment.
"I really am sorry about your ankle." He says, sticking his hands in his pockets. "I shouldn't have done that, I just panicked when I saw you running for the alarm."
I sigh, holding onto the door for balance.
"It's fine." I finally relent.
As annoyed as I am at the outcome of his actions, I understand them, and if his stubbornness in trying to make what happened up to me is any idication of his character, I'd say his heart is in the right place. I can't take any of it personally, especially if it's true that stealing that suit meant saving millions of lives, like he said. I know I said I had drawn a line, a line he had crossed, but even the most permanent of lines can be smudged now and then. Besides, there was no point in holding a grudge over this. My ankle would heal in a couple weeks, and I'd be back to normal. All that was left to do was find another job, which I would eventually, even if I would miss the museum. Being trapped here in this apartment immobile had left me with nothing to do but stew in my anger. I'd given him a hard time, I'd made him work for it, now it was time to let it go, for my sake as much as his.
"You mean you accept my apology?" He asks, slightly taken aback by my change of heart.
"I do." I reply, simply.
"Just like that?" He questions, disbelievingly.
"I've accepted apologies for much worse." I admit with a shrug, making him frown slightly. "Just don't go breaking anyone else's ankles okay?"
"Even the bad guys?" He grins back, mockingly.
"Goodbye Cap." I ignore his question, rolling my eyes as I begin to close the door.
"What about the really really bad guys?" He calls out loudly as the door clicks shut.
Then, I do something I hadn't genuinely done since I had been fired three weeks ago.
I smile.