Captain On Ice

Chapter 3

They sat in silence, Steve twiddling his thumbs as he tried to string together a coherent sentence. Where do I even start? He wondered. I mean, she doesn't really want to know; she only came here because - oh God, she's in my room. With me. Alone. Natasha could see the perspiration quickly gathering on his forehead as Steve's complexion grew increasingly pale.

"So, uh..." Steve gulped. "This is my room," he stumbled over his words as he waved his hand around the plain, sparsely-lit bedroom. Natasha almost rolled her eyes at him - almost. She noticed that his eyes did their best to avoid contact with hers, as if their gazes meeting would cause destruction. Suddenly, his stare became fixed on one corner of the room and stayed there. She followed his line of sight directly to his laundry bin where his navy boxers lay on top.

"Steve, I've seen you naked. You don't need to be worried about underwear," she said with a subtle sigh. Steve's eyes snapped to her in a panic. He tried to put on his best poker face and play it off as though it was nothing, but inside he was absolutely dying.

"Excuse me?!" he squealed, taken aback by the sudden realization of her first sentence. "That's... that's not... no, you can't... how? I mean, I was just looking at my sketches."

"You want to tell me why I'm here," she paused, remembering not to use his formal title, "Steve?" He still seemed stifled and uncomfortable, but she noticed the slight relaxation of his shoulders, indicating that she should proceed. "What you told me last night, was that true?"

Steve looked into Natasha - not at her - and she knew. "That I was awake when the plane hit the water?" Nathasha shook her head and gave him a stern look not unlike that of a mother mixed with one of confusion; he never said he was conscious when he crashed. "Oh, that. That's nothing." They didn't need to know. They didn't care. He was just Steve on the inside - the sickly boy that nobody cared about. Tony was right; the only thing special about him came out of a bottle. Why would someone like Natasha even think twice about him? No, she was just being courteous.

"Why didn't you tell anyone? We're a team. We're supposed to know these sorts of things," she said bitterly. In the back of her mind, she was more concerned about how the file S.H.I.E.L.D. had provided her had some fairly important inaccuracies about the super soldier's time as a Capsicle, but she would never say that. Natasha Romanoff may be cold, but she's not a bitch - for the most part, at least.

"It's not important. It's not like I can't perform my dutie-" Steve started, but a sharp alarm and flashing red light stopped him in his tracks.

"AVENGERS ASSEMBLE," Jarvis stated in an authoritarian tone. Natasha scoffed at the phrase, and Steve just rolled his eyes; they both thought it was a tad bit corny.

"Looks like this conversation is going to have to wait," Steve expressed, clearly feeling a weight lifted off of his shoulders. While he had initially been willing to share the burden of his emotions with Natasha, the moment of truth had turned him off from his desire to open up to her. This mission would give him time to clear his head - evaluate the options on how to handle the situation.

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