@avenge-of-ultron @somebeliebers Based on "Die For You" by The Weeknd
I'm findin' ways to articulate
The feeling I'm goin' through
I just can't say I don't love you
'Cause I love you, yeah
It's hard for me to communicate the thoughts that I hold
But tonight I'm gon' let you know
Let me tell the truth
Baby let me tell the truth, yeah
Steve felt like a proper idiot; no, more than that, and so much worse, he felt like a downright stalker. This wasn't who he was, not this guy who sat on the balcony of his apartment night after night, hoping for the city around him to silence enough for him to hear you in the apartment above. With his enhanced hearing ability, most days he could catch the gentle footfall above him even when you were barefoot and trying to move quietly for his benefit in the middle of the night. It still woke him. It woke him because the imagination of what you might be wearing to bed that night crept into his dreams anyway, and he hated himself so much for thinking about you like that, that his mind wouldn't allow him the luxury of sleep; he didn't deserve it.
He had been your downstairs neighbor for almost a year now, and you had been one of his closest friends for most of it. But that was all. You were friends, and he valued that so much that he was terrified to bring up how he was feeling. Steve didn't have a lot of people in his life that he trusted as much, and to lose one could be devastating. To have you be one of them would be too much, and that fear silenced him and left him suffering just like this night after night. He closed his eyes and listened intently, imagining to himself that the sounds were something mundane and downright dull, because that was his dream; to live the normal life, and to have you at his side. He couldn't deny that the sounds of making dinner was music to his ears, or that a night spent on the couch in the depths of terrible Netflix was the perfect way to have an evening at home, so long as it was with you. What he wouldn't give to not be ready to fight the world at any moment, fearing that the call to his final battle might come before he had the nerve to just be honest with you.
The chill in the air around him began to frost the beer bottle in his hand, even though his own heat had started warming the liquid inside. With the first tip back to take a drink, he said a quiet curse into the night sky, meant for Erskine and the senior Stark, for denying him the ability to numb his pain this way. A waste of good liquor, Tony would say, but there was still something in the idea of drinking that gave him just a little solace. Of course, Tony would also say that he was being a pussy about this and he needed to put on his big boy pants once and for all.
God, how he hated when Tony was right.
You know what I'm thinkin'
See it in your eyes
You hate that you want me
Hate it when you cry
You're scared to be lonely
'Specially in the night
I'm scared that I'll miss you
Happens every time
I don't want this feelin'
I can't afford love
I try to find reason to pull us apart
It ain't workin' 'cause you're perfect
And I know that you're worth it
I can't walk away
What Steve didn't know, was that you weren't much better at this than he was, and you had been playing the role of buddy for so long that your window to make your relationship more had closed; or that's what you believed. So, from day to day, you passed in the hallways of the building as you each retrieved your mail with your usual banter, or sometimes carried a few too many bags of groceries in just to get his help to extend the moments a little further. He would gladly take your invitations for dinner a few times a week, but only if you insisted that you needed him to so that you wouldn't have leftovers. Dinner was normally followed by a movie, finding the two of you under the same blanket and curled up on your couch, but the second that it was over, he was up and gone with a quick thanks and a promise to cook for you the next time. He had yet to make good on that promise after nearly a year, but you didn't care so long as he kept taking your invitations and so that you could see him again.
Steve was gone on missions so often that you began to worry that the day might come when he didn't return, and the invitations would never happen again. When he was out on lengthy missions, you would sit on your balcony and close your eyes each night before bed, imagining that you could hear him going about his normal routine, just to trick yourself into not feeling so alone, and to get the images of the danger he was in out of your mind. You wanted so much more with Steve, but your heart knew what that could really mean, and how it could end at any second, and it was keeping you mute from telling him how you felt.
Even though we're going through it
And it makes you feel alone
Just know that I would die for you
Baby I would die for you, yeah
The distance and the time between us
It'll never change my mind, 'cause baby
I would die for you
Baby I would die for you, yeah
When thunder and lightning began to roll into the city, Steve let out a long sigh at his rotten luck, taking the last, final drink of his beer before making his way back into his apartment. He closed the window behind him gently as to not make too much noise; you had been silent for nearly an hour now, so he knew that you must have finally gone to bed. He was ashamed for knowing that, and he decided on one more beer to wash that disgrace away before he too turned in for the night. He had barely tossed the top of the next bottle into the garbage when a window-shaking clap of thunder echoed around him, making him jump in surprise enough to spill his first drink down the front of his shirt.
"Son of a-"
But his words were cut short when his senses startled as well, hearing you running the length of your apartment above, your steps heavy and almost frantic, until they were suddenly silenced again. He stood in place for a moment, beer in hand and shirt dripping, looking up at the ceiling as if he could see through it to follow your movements. After he was satisfied that you had likely fallen asleep on the couch and were now staying in your room, and after the sound of his own pounding heart calmed, Steve turned to grab a towel to clean up the mess that was already beginning to dry, only to spill again when another rumble of thunder repeated. Only this time, he heard a loud crash of breaking glass from your room that sent him sprinting up the stairs and to your door.
"(Y/N)?! (Y/N), are you okay? I'm coming in!"
His first instinct was to kick the door down, but thankfully that beer didn't affect him, because he was able to quickly reason out that it would do much less damage to simply rip away the knob and lock instead. These old buildings were a comfort to him on most days, reminiscent of his previous life, memories making brief visits with every creak of a floorboard or squeak from a door hinge. But now that he held your destroyed lock in his hand, he considered that something with a little higher security might be in order. The mechanism fell from his hand with a bang and a force that dented the floor, but he didn't stop to move it; his goal was singular and focused, and within seconds he was startled to a halt within a new doorway, seeing a haze of bloodied footprints from your bed and into your closet.
"(Y/N)? It's Steve. Are you okay?"
"Steve?"
He had himself wound into such a frenzy that even the welcome sound of your voice didn't calm his nerves or dampen the thumping of his heart against his chest; he needed to see you, and to convince himself that what he was seeing on your floor was nothing more than his wild imagination. Of course, when he carefully pulled the closet door open, allowing a muted ray of light inside so that he could see, he had to accept that it wasn't his imagination at all. "Come on, you're bleeding," he offered, leaning into the small area, "I've got you." He had just enough room to get one hand beneath your legs, but another clap of deafening thunder only pushed you farther back into the safety of the tiny space.
"Honey, it's just a thunderstorm. You're okay."
"Is it almost over?"
"It just started," he answered, apologetic for something that he had no control over. But if Steve Rogers was good at anything in his life, it was taking the blame for pretty much anything. "I'm sorry. If it helps, I can see if Wanda can do anything? Do you want me to call her?"
"Steve, why are you here?" you nervously asked the question that was hanging between you. "How...how did you know?"
"Yeah, well...it's hard to be Earth's Mightiest Stalker without consistent practice and super soldier hearing." He hoped that this moment would pass quickly, to let him out of this miserable situation; he went so far as to wish another thunderclap would erupt just to distract you, and he immediately felt horrible for wishing that on you. "Okay, I'm getting you out of here so I can look at that foot. Gotta make sure there's no glass from your lamp stuck in there."
"You listen to me?"
"Come on," he deflected, "grab a hold of me."
"How long?"
"Does it matter, (Y/N)?" Steve sighed, shrugging in a heavy defeat. "Now enough, let's go." He waited for you to scoot yourself to within his reach, wrapping his empty arm around your back to lift you up and out into the flashes around your room as the lightning continued. He could feel how tense your muscles were and could practically hear your heart beating just from the adrenaline alone; he knew exactly how that felt, too, because he was sharing in the experience right now. "Sit," he commanded, carefully setting you on the edge of your bed so that he could kneel in front of you, taking your injured foot in one hand while the other fumbled to turn on the light from his phone for a better view. "It looks okay. I'll help you wash it up and get it covered before I go back home."
"How long, Steve?" you asked again, your eyes following his every move as he searched your bathroom for supplies.
"Almost the whole time I've known you."
"Okay," you mumbled, marching your mind through the calendar, replaying moments and milestones together that you shared as friends, and how much you wanted so many of them to be as more. When he returned and took your foot in his hand again, he now refused to look up at you. "Um...would you mind being a little more...specific...ow!"
"I'm sorry, sorry," he grimaced, pulling his hands back from your wound. Rather than continue to torture you in the makeshift workspace with barely any light and limited supplies, Steve decided to hurry and finish to get out of there before he actually caused any damage. Well, at least not any more damage. It would be impossible to have dinner with you ever again, and there was no way that you would let him back on your couch for movie night, that was a guarantee. His creepy secret was out, and he began to get his goodbye prepared when he realized that he had completely missed what you said. "Wait, what do you mean, be more specific?"
"How else are we supposed to know who was first?"
Another crack of sound filled the room, only this time, Steve was fully ready, sitting at your side with his arms around you before the flash of lightning had barely begun to fade. His warmth was always like sitting inside an oven even just being next to him, but with a chill of fear crawling beneath your skin, it was welcome, and you never wanted to move now that you were finally there. You fit so perfectly against him, and you could sense the shift in his attitude and the realization of understanding when his grip on you tightened, but the tense muscles in his chest relaxed as your head rested gently against it.
I'm finding ways to manipulate the feelin' you're goin' through
But baby girl, I'm not blamin' you
Just don't blame me too, yeah
'Cause I can't take this pain forever
And you won't find no one that's better
'Cause I'm right for you, babe
I think I'm right for you, babe
"It started after the first time we met, when you offered to help carry boxes in for me," he whispered against your hair, "like you had no idea who I was. I let you help me just so that I could get you to stay longer and to get to know you a little bit. I haven't looked back since. There's nothing back there that I want to see more than I want to see you."
"It started for me when I saw you drop those boxes down the first flight of stairs. I hid so that you wouldn't see me and so that you didn't get embarrassed...I mean, it would be a huge slam to the ego for Cap to be so clumsy, right?"
"I did that on purpose. I knew you were there."
"But yet we've known each other for a year now and you've never made another move?"
"Back at ya," he smiled to himself. He was just lost in the feeling of hearing you say that you felt the same way about him, and anything said at this point was just a bonus. Now all he had to do was to be sure to not screw this up before it could really begin. If Steve knew one thing for sure, one thing that never failed him in all of his years, was that he wasn't very lucky in things like this by any means. He was a skilled fighter, a skilled negotiator and a master tactician; but as a boyfriend...he had no clue what he was doing.
The silence was starting to become evident, but now that he was allowing his mind to race again, his nerves were making another appearance. You could feel him start to pull away, just as you expected him to, but the miracle of nature seemed to have your best interests at heart, despite the fact that only moments ago, it had made you jump from bed and slice your foot open on your shattered lamp without a second thought. One final clap of thunder stopped Steve's motion, and his arms once again tightened around you in response to your jump of shock.
"Okay, that settles it," he nodded, more to himself than to you, "I'm staying over tonight."
"Wow, I never knew you were so forward," you smiled against him, but not refusing the idea.
"Neither did I, but I do know that I won't be able to sleep if I hear you up here by yourself with this storm going on. So, let's not get any ideas, (Y/N). This is purely for my benefit."
"Of course, never thought anything else," you agreed readily. "I'm so glad that you're my stalker, Steve."