Calla had gotten very good at being alone. Then Tony Stark found her, New York fell out of the sky, and somehow she ended up an Avenger with blood on her hands in more ways than one. She could handle the aliens. The missions. The impossible odds and near-death experiences that apparently came with the job. Steve Rogers was another problem entirely. He was steady where she was reckless, sincere enough to make her sarcasm useless, and far too determined to stand beside someone who had spent her whole life insisting she didn't need anyone there. Calla had always known how to hold the line. She just never expected Steve Rogers to hold it with her.

"Fuck. Elena, you really need to stop. I'm a grown man, Elena, not one of those little boys you're used to dealing with." New notification: 1 view-once photo. "Fuck. Stop it. I can see you from the window." Some lines are never meant to be crossed. Especially not the one right across the hallway. I know next to nothing about him. Nothing except his massive frame, the ungodly hours he comes home, and the dark exhaustion etched into his face whenever I secretly watch him from my window. He's a stranger, older, a man of few words, yet the pull between us is visceral. A suffocating, inexplicable tension that only thickens every time our paths cross. He knows he shouldn't come near me. So he keeps his distance, watching over me from afar, a fierce protective instinct and a quiet jealousy burning beneath the surface. Until tonight. A local dive bar, a boyfriend who just cheated on me, one drink too many, and my eyes finally colliding with his. Every boundary shatters. I don't know him, but tonight, his hands are the only place I want to lose myself in.