A/N: Well, I don't know about you, but after all that angst, I'm in need of some fluff. This is just a little ditty that came to mind while I was writing my last Captain Hill story. (Well, that's our shipping name for them around here. :D) But you don't have to have read that one to appreciate this. Takes place about a year after Avengers 1. Completely in my headverse. :)

Please R&R, but if you have a negative review (which I have no problem with) please sign in so we can actually discuss it in private, not here on my story pages. Otherwise, I will delete your comment. Thank you for your consideration.

"Hey, beautiful," Steve leaned against the counter in the Avenger's common living room and smiled his greeting into the phone after listening to Maria's 'hello' at the other end.

"Hiya, soldier," she replied, and Steve could hear her own smile through the line.

He silently reveled at the sound, but felt something was missing.

"This greeting is much better in person," he said, turning into the counter and lowering his voice so the room's other occupant, Dr. Bruce Banner, ostensibly wouldn't hear.

"Later, soldier," he heard her laugh, and the sound, as always, was a balm to him.

"How much later?" he asked, allowing his frustration seep through his words.

Usually it was she, at base, waiting for him to return. He'd have so much to do on his mission he wouldn't have a lot of down time to miss her. This time was more difficult. A week waiting for her to return from a mission in Eastern Europe while he had very little to do was starting to grate on him.

"I'm trying to wrap things up here," she said. "Maybe another 48 hours, or so?"

Steve groaned, and Maria laughed again.

"Poor thing," she said. "Now you know how I feel."

"Really?" he asked. "I need to be much better to you when I get home."

"You're wonderful to me when you get home," she said, her voice husky enough to make his heart quicken and goose bumps pop up on his arms.

He swallowed hard and let out a slow breath as he tried to regain control. Hearing her laugh at his reaction an entire ocean, and half a continent, away didn't help matters.

"I probably should have called you from my apartment," he told her, as he rubbed his hand over his face, hoping to do something to dispel the flush he knew must be apparent.

"Where are you?" she asked.

"Avenger's living room," he replied.

"Stark's not there, is he?" she inquired, and tried to sound concerned, but Steve could hear her mirth.

"No," he told her. "I am somewhat intelligent."

She laughed again and Steve thought it would be his undoing.

"I need to see you laugh," he said, recalling her smile and the way her eyes always shined as they shared a laugh together.

"You will, soon enough," she reminded him. "In the meantime, you sound like you need a mission to keep you busy."

"No, Maria," he whined, and not a very fake whine. "If you send me on a mission now, I won't be here when you get back. It's already been two weeks since we saw each other."

"We saw each other a week ago," she said, though he could, again, hear humor in her voice.

"Passing each other on a landing pad as I returned from a mission and you left for one does not count," he stressed.

She was laughing again and that just added to his sense of deprivation.

"Nothing big," she assured him, and he prepared himself with more opposition.

"Why don't you pick up a few things I need from the grocery store and drop them by my place so I'll have them when I get home," she said.

He took a moment to recover from the surprise he felt. He'd been prepared for something more SHIELD related, with more potential to keep him away from her longer.

"I think I can handle that," he told her, finally.

"OK," she said. "I'll text you my list later."

There was noise in the background of Maria's call.

"I have to go, Steve," she told him quickly.

"OK," he acknowledged. "Be safe."

"I will," she replied. "And I'll be home soon."

She ended the call, and Steve stared at the phone, saying a silent prayer for her safety.

"Still can't say the "L" word," Starks's Ironman mask-filtered voice surprised Steve and he turned to find Stark in a tuxedo topped with one of his masks.

"Can't say as I blame her," he went on, and Steve rolled his eyes as he pocketed the phone.

"Thought you were at a party, Stark," Steve grumbled, as he made his way toward the elevator.

"Yeah, that was boring," he replied. "So I cut out early."

Steve turned in surprise and he and Banner exclaimed, in unison, "You left Pepper?"

"I told her I couldn't deal with it anymore," he shrugged and reached up to take off his mask. "She understands."

Steve caught a tired look on the billionaire's face before Tony turned to set the mask down on a nearby table. He walked toward the bar as he rubbed his hands on his face as if he was trying to wipe the exhaustion away. Behind the bar, he faced them as he poured a drink.

"Can I get you two anything?" Tony asked.

"Shirley Temple?" he glanced at Bruce, before turning to Steve. "Or a Virgin Margarita?"

Steve just shook his head. Stark made it hard for a person to feel more than a moment of pity for him. Maria had told Steve that was the whole idea behind Tony's sarcastic attitude. Steve was trying to understand, but the man didn't make it easy.

Steve had, however, promised her he'd try to learn to tolerate it, even if he couldn't stand it. Stark was a good man when it counted, Steve reasoned, and braver than some well-trained soldiers he'd known. He supposed the latter was where Maria had hoped the two would connect. She'd given him the dossier SHIELD had put together regarding Tony's capture and incarceration in Afghanistan. It was impressive, to say the least.

"I'll just take a beer," Steve said, and turned away from the elevator and headed toward the bar.

Tony raised an eyebrow and Steve knew his action had piqued the billionaire's curiosity.

"Lonely, Cap?" he queried, and Steve tried not to be nervous.

His usual honesty didn't really work with Tony, as the man had a way of twisting everything everyone said, or did. So he just nodded and shrugged in a non-committal way as he took the bottle from Tony.

As Steve popped the top off his bottle, Tony reached under the bar into the micro frig and grabbed a bottle of root beer, then carried it, and his drink, over to the table where Bruce sat, working on his laptop. Half-way to the table, Stark turned to Steve, who had remained at the bar, and jerked his head toward Bruce in invitation.

Steve took his own drink with him as he walked toward the table, then sat across from Banner, with Tony in the seat to his left.

Bruce thanked Tony, then the three sat in silence as they drank. It wasn't an uncomfortable silence, but it was something that didn't yet feel natural. It had only been a few months since the repairs to the tower had been completed adequately enough to make it livable, and Stark had invited the other Avengers to live there. Maria had encouraged Steve to move in, knowing he wasn't happy staying at anything SHIELD offered, and Steve was fairly certain he surprised Tony by being the first to accept the invitation.

Things had been tense, at first. Tony kept teasing Steve about his relationship with Maria and asking him why he didn't just live with his girlfriend. Steve tried to be nice, but he still didn't feel comfortable with a lot of modern life. He told Maria that he never felt more like a man out of time than he did when he was with Tony.

It had been a conversation with Pepper that had finally helped Steve hope for something better. He had asked her about how she'd come to be CEO of Stark Industries, which had led to a long story about the relationship she had with Tony, and, ultimately, about the effects of the battle in New York on him. She told Steve that Tony had been suffering from PTSD, which Steve had never heard of before. So, after their conversation, he did what he always did when there was something he needed to know about modern life, he went and asked Maria.

She told him a bit about it, then took him down to the library to find him a book. She had said there was more information on the Internet, but Steve had cringed. He'd tried that route before and had accidentally clicked on an ad for something called a video game that had him thinking they were under attack from yet another realm. He was glad he'd been at Maria's when it happened. If he'd been with someone else, he'd have been far more embarrassed. Now he avoided the computer whenever possible. He preferred real books to reading on a lighted screen anyway.

One afternoon, Maria told him what Stark had gone through almost immediately following the battle and Steve was again amazed at the man's resilience. He knew that if the Avengers were going to be a full time group, Stark should definitely be with them. Maybe not leading them, the man still acted on impulse far too much for Steve's liking, and it was hard to work under his leadership because he was so caustic, but Steve definitely knew Tony was a man he wanted to fight alongside.

Steve went to take another drink from his bottle only to find he'd emptied it.

"Another?" Tony asked.

Steve shook his head.

"No, thanks."

"How much would it take you to get drunk anyway?" Tony asked.

Steve laughed slightly and shook his head.

"No, seriously, how much?"

"I've never tried to find out," Steve said.

"Ever been drunk?" Tony asked, and Steve thought it odd.

"Why all this interest in my levels of inebriation?" Steve questioned.

Tony shrugged.

"Just trying to figure out how goodie-two-shoed you really are," he replied.

Steve sighed and let out a slow breath.

"Well, back then, we didn't really view alcohol the same, I guess," Steve told him. "A person could drink a little more and not be considered drunk, or a drunk."

"I have that view myself," Tony remarked, and both Steve and Bruce chuckled at that.

Tony turned to Bruce now.

"What about you, doc? Ever tie one on before you turned into the lean-green-fighting-machine?"

Steve watched as Bruce smiled and shook his head, "I don't think there's much 'lean' in 'the other guy.'"

They all had a slight laugh at that and Bruce went on.

"Once, I got drunk," he said. "I was at a high school party and some idiot decided it would be great to spike the punch."

Bruce shook his head.

"I was so sick, I never drank to excess, again," he told them. "And, of course, now I can't drink at all."

Tony leaned back in his chair and stared at the ice melting in his scotch glass. The look on his face told Steve he was thinking how to word what he wanted to say, so Steve waited.

Finally, Tony asked them, "When you were young, did you ever think you'd be here at this moment?"

"Here, as in, in the middle of Stark Industries?" Bruce asked to clarify.

"No," Tony shook his head. "Here as in doing what we've done, seeing what we've seen, being what we've become."

Bruce shook his head immediately.

"I never thought I'd be anything more than a scientist of some sort," he told them. "I figured I'd spend my life in the lab, maybe make some sort of incredible discovery to help mankind, then, if forced to, retire."

Steve thought about Bruce's words. The doctor's view of his own future certainly matched with what Steve already knew of the man. His goals had been good ones, but somehow things had gone awry, and now he had to live with the results of the accident the rest of his life.

Steve wasn't sure he was ready to answer the question after Bruce's reply. Bruce had had a much more difficult time of it than he had, a fact he didn't want to point out to the man by saying that, yes, he had always thought he'd do what he did, just not here in the 21st century, so he turned to Tony.

"What about you, Stark?" he asked.

Shaking his head, Tony said, "No."

He thought for a while, and Steve and Bruce waited.

"I wasted my whole life, my whole genius, living for myself," he said, and his words caught Steve by surprise. "I never really thought about the future."

"What changed that?" Bruce asked, though Steve thought he must already know. Didn't everyone know what had happened to Stark in Afghanistan?

"Pepper," he said, and both other men at the table stared at him in surprise.

Tony smiled at them. And Steve thought it might be the first real smile he'd seen on the man's face.

"In fact," Tony said, and leaned in as he motioned to them to lean in closer as well. "I have quite the surprise."

Then he reached into his pocket and pulled out a small, black, velvet box. Steve might have very little experience in romance, but even he knew the significance of that box.

Tony set it on the table and with shaky hands opened it to revealed a ring with a huge blue sapphire. Steve was taken aback for a moment. He had expected to see a diamond there. When he looked up though, Bruce was congratulating Tony and asking him when he planned to pop the question.

"She doesn't like diamonds?" Steve asked, and both men turned to him and looked as if they didn't understand the question.

"Oh, that's right," Tony said. "Capscicle probably hasn't heard about the diamond industry."

Steve shook his head.

"It's a long story, but Pepper definitely doesn't like diamonds," Tony informed him.

"Well, congratulations," Steve said, still not entirely understanding the specific meaning of the unusual jewel on an engagement ring. He thought he'd ask Maria when she came home, but then thought better of it. Asking Maria about engagement rings was not something he thought he was ready to do.

"Saturday night, if all goes as planned, I will be well on my way to becoming the new Mr. Pepper Potts."

Steve stared at him in open confusion now. Had things really changed that much?

Then both Tony and Bruce were laughing and Steve realized it was just a joke and joined them.

Finally, Tony bade them 'goodnight,' and they both wished him luck.

Steve collected his and Bruce's bottles and carried them over to the bar, placing them in the recycling trash, something not unknown to him, as returning bottles was a common practice during his youth. Bruce walked over to join him and sat on a stool on the opposite side.

"What about you?" Bruce asked.

"Sorry?" Steve shook his head, not entirely sure what Bruce was asking.

"Did you imagine yourself doing what we're doing?"

"You mean, fight against aliens and alongside demi-gods?" Steve answered, hoping, again, to deflect.

"Fighting, period," Bruce said.

Steve took a breath and ran his hand through his hair. Before he could answer, his phone rang indicating he'd received a text.

"Excuse me a moment," he said, as he pulled out the phone, knowing the message would be from Maria. The message, her grocery list, brought a smile to his face. Then another message came from her and when he read that, his shoulders slumped and he closed his eyes in frustration.

'Zero contact. Time indeterminate.'

He sighed as he slipped the phone back into his pocket. He hated this. Hated that he couldn't see her, and now he couldn't even talk to her. There were times, near the end of a mission, or on the transport home, when all he could think about was how many minutes until he saw her again. Wondered what he was even working for, did the people they were protecting appreciate it? From what he watched on the news and read in the papers it didn't seem anyone did.

He opened his eyes again and stared blankly across the room, considering Bruce's question. He thought back through his childhood, the first fight he got in at school when a boy teased a little girl in their class and wouldn't apologize, but instead pushed the girl to the ground. The anger he felt at the bigger boy for the injustice of the situation had driven him to throw his first punch.

He remembered when he met Peggy, and for the first time in his life found a woman intriguing. He could see in her eyes that she was different than the girls he grew up with. She had an incredible strength, and she believed in fighting for what was right. She had given him up to that fight, spent her life believing he had died for the cause of freedom.

Then he thought about Maria's eyes in a firefight, her determination and strength. The courage in her voice as he heard her sound out orders over the comm. The way she stood up for what she knew was right, even when she was opposed by those in authority over her. He thought about how he felt watching her command, and that returned a smile to his face.

"Yes, Bruce," he turned to the scientist. "This is exactly what I always thought I'd be doing."

To his surprise and relief, Bruce smiled at him.

"Well, it's good to know at least one of us knows what he's doing around here," Bruce laughed.

Steve sighed and pulled out his phone again. Looking around the bar he found a pad of paper and a pen. He started to write down the list Maria had sent him. Maybe that would keep his mind off the zero contact.

Make-up removal wipes

Ice cream-Bunny Tracks flavor

Soup-canned chicken noodle

Staples

"Make-up removal wipes?" Bruce's voice interrupted him. "Getting pretty serious in this relationship, huh?"

Steve looked up and saw Bruce chuckling at him.

"That means it's serious?" Steve asked.

"It means she trusts you to pick out personal items for her," Bruce explained.

Steve smiled at that thought.

"You know," Bruce continued. "You don't have to write it down."

Steve furrowed his brow in confusion.

"The list," Bruce pointed at Steve's work. "It's on your phone, you just use that."

Steve felt himself blush. Yet another thing he'd forgotten.

"Yeah, I guess you're right," Steve said, and he started to put the pen and paper aside.

"But, you might actually want to, in this case," Bruce said, looking at the paper in front of Steve. "At least at some point."

Steve shook his head, feeling confused again, as he watched Bruce walk across the room toward the elevator.

"And definitely don't leave that list where Tony can find it," Bruce laughed and shook his head as he stepped into the elevator.

Steve looked down at his phone again, then at the paper. Why would this time be different, he wondered.

Still, he decided it wouldn't hurt to have it on paper. Weren't people always complaining about their computers crashing and losing all their information?

Steve started to write, then double checked the next item.

"Yellow napkins?" he asked aloud.

"I'm afraid there are no yellow napkins in this level of the Avengers Tower," an ethereal voice came out of the air and Steve, not for the first time, jumped at the sound.

Shaking his head, he replied back to the air, "That's OK, JARVIS. I'm just thinking out loud."

"Yes, sir," the AI replied. "Let me know if I can be of any assistance to you."

"I will," Steve said, and the room fell silent again.

He wrote 'yellow napkins' on the next line, then 'oranges,' and...

"U-no bar?" Steve said aloud, again. "They still make those?"

"Yes, sir, they do," the AI replied. "Though the company which made it when you were acquainted with it was acquired by Annabelle Candy Company in 1978."

"Well, that's good to know," Steve said, always glad to find a reminder of his past still in existence.

Steve tore the page from the notepad and started toward the elevator.

"If I may, Captain," the AI began.

"Yes, JARVIS?"

"It might behoove you to remove a few of the pages from the notepad, lest Mr. Stark make out what you wrote," JARVIS said.

Steve stopped at the elevator doors and turned to look at the notepad across the room.

"Does Mr. Stark know you are telling me this?" he asked.

"Mr. Stark programmed me to help you in any way you need," the AI informed him.

Steve laughed. Could a computer have a sense of humor? Shaking his head, he returned to the bar and tore off a few pages.

As he descended in the elevator to the street level, he read the list on the paper again. He really didn't want to look at the device that had delivered the news that not only would he not be seeing Maria any time soon, he couldn't speak with her either. He found himself curious as to why she wanted yellow napkins. He supposed she meant the paper ones everyone seemed to use.

The napkins proved to be the most difficult item to acquire. He couldn't find them nearby, at all. He'd had to take the subway to her apartment to put the ice cream away so it wouldn't melt, so he thought he'd check with the market where she always shopped.

The clerk said they had never carried yellow napkins and Steve found himself confused.

"Is it for some sort of special occasion?" she asked.

"No, I don't think so," Steve replied. "Just some things she wanted me to have at her apartment when she comes home from her business trip."

Steve showed the clerk the paper with the list.

"See, just the normal sort of things, I suppose," he told her.

The clerk glanced at the list, then she looked up at Steve with an odd look on her face, before she smiled at him.

"I'd get cloth, and maybe some flowers to match," she said, as she folded the list and handed it back to him.

That only confused him more. He looked at the list again and saw that she had folded it so only the first letters of each word were showing. He felt his face grow warm. It was obvious, now, why Bruce had told him to write the list out, then hide it from Tony.

He glanced up at the clerk, still blushing, but she just smiled and told him where to possibly find the napkins.

Steve bought two, then he went to a city nursery nearby and bought a mini-rose bush with yellow flowers and took a picture of a white rose and texted it to her phone so she could see it when she read her messages. If she didn't understand flower meanings he figured one good turn deserved another because everyone had figured out what her list had told him before he'd even realized there was a message there. In fact, he suspected even JARVIS had known.

He went by the apartment each day as he had been, to get her mail and occasionally run a dust cloth over the few pieces of furniture she had. He'd been tempted to walk into the bedroom. She wasn't in it, he'd reasoned, and it did need to be dusted and swept, but he couldn't bring himself to do it. They hadn't been dating very long, at least he didn't feel they had, and walking into her bedroom felt to him like a violation of her privacy.

Instead he'd sit on her sofa and read the magazines that came in the mail. They weren't the ones he'd seen Pepper reading at Avengers Tower. Maria read Scientific American, Smithsonian, American History Magazine. Nothing about business, or fashion, or, Steve felt a blush come to his face just remembering some of the things he'd discovered were written about in other magazines.

It had now been four days since Maria's last text, and Steve, quite honestly, was beside himself. Fury had assured him that no news was good news, but Steve couldn't stand not knowing. Mostly, he couldn't stand not seeing her, not hearing her voice, not talking with her. He hadn't slept well since that last text. He worked out more, hoping to make himself tired. This was more than just the fact that the super soldier serum made him not need sleep as much as a regular person, it was stress that had crept its way inside him.

That day he did his normal routine, picked up her mail, took the lift up to her apartment, checked if the rose bush needed water, stared out her window down the street hoping that somehow he'd see her coming home. Finally, he sat on the sofa and started to read one of her magazines, but four days without sleep began to take its toll and Steve found his head bobbing forward on more than one instance before he finally gave in and tried, without success, to get comfortable on her couch. At last, he rested his head on the arm rest and let his legs mostly dangle over the other end, before he succumbed to sleep.

It was her scent that he became aware of first, it was strong and feminine at the same time and told of strength and courage and maybe even love. His eyes fluttered open to find her looking at him with a smile.

"I hope you weren't lying here for four days," she said.

He sat up and touched her face before he kissed her gently.

"Why didn't you call?" he asked.

"I was going to clean up and go over to the tower," she told him.

He smiled then pulled her on to the couch to sit next to him in his embrace.

"Are you home for a while?" he asked.

"Yes," she informed him, "But you probably won't be."

"Shh," he said. "I'm just gonna do like Tony does and ignore the call."

"I like that idea," Maria laughed.

Steve pulled away and gave her a surprised look.

"Well, when you do it to someone else, not when he does it to me," she explained, laughing, and Steve leaned down to kiss her again.

When he pulled away, she looked up at him shyly, and Steve, as always, found the look unusual. It had only started a few months ago and he wondered if it didn't have to do with what Bruce had suggested, that she was getting more serious about their relationship. Jasper had told him that Maria hadn't dated for years before she started dating Steve, so it would stand to reason that she might not be sure about things. That worked for him, though, because he was unsure himself. He was happy to take things slowly and hope they progressed to where he wanted them.

"You got my list?" she asked.

He smiled again, nodding.

"Did you get my picture?" he asked in return.

She blushed slightly and nodded.

"That was very creative, you know," he told her as he pulled the list from his pocket.

"I just wish I'd been smart enough to figure it out myself," he laughed.

She laughed with him.

"That's OK, I had to research to figure out what the flowers meant," she confessed.

"Oh, then maybe you'll know what these mean," he said, standing and walking over to the windowsill to get the mini-rosebush.

She smiled, then stood and walked to him.

"Thank you," she said, quietly.

"Welcome home," he told her. "I missed you, too."

He leaned down and kissed her lightly, then pulled her into his arms.

A/N: For those who need to see the note in order, because I totally would. I would have been as dense as Steve if anyone ever did this to me. :D

Note:

Make up remover,

ice cream-bunny tracks,

soup,

staples,

Yellow napkins,

oranges,

u-no bar

Also: White roses mean 'I miss you;' Yellow roses mean 'welcome home.'

And, lastly, I hope, there are apparently ethical diamonds. I actually knew nothing of the diamond trade until one of my sisters got engaged a few years ago and insisted on a sapphire engagement ring. That's what I was thinking of as I wrote the story and then, later, I researched and learned about ethical diamonds. But I couldn't figure out how to change the story to make those work without some long drawn-out convoluted explanation (not unlike this one). Anyway, just so you know, there are OK diamonds out there. :)

Thanks, again, for reading my story. Have a Happy Mother's Day.