First Marvel -bites nails-. Which isn't to say go easy, just, keep it in mind? Thanks friends!

(was crossposted to Tumblr and AO3)

Fingertips

Her entire body vibrates with the touch, shivers sparking like shocks over her skin while his arm holds her pinned against his chest. She gasps, writhes a bit. She's not ticklish, but the sensation of gentle fingertips against her spine keeps her pliant and breathless. It's a spot, she knows, and now he knows it too.

She's so fucked.

Acceptance

She is no shrinking violet. She is strong and tough and metal that cannot be bent. She has rules and he follows them because there's no way he could risk fucking this up. Not now, not with her. Never with her.

So as much as he wants to reassert control, remind her that he is not her plaything (and she is not his) he accepts that this is the way it has to be.

Hurt

He's the one that gives them away. It doesn't surprise her, not really. Shit hit the fan so fast and so hard she's not even sure she managed to get a breath before the bullet tore through her side. She'd gone down, of course, because despite her demeanour she is only human and she thinks she hears him cry out her name.

But later, when she wakes up with him at her bedside she wonders if maybe having someone so steadfast in her life isn't so bad after all.

Game

She's never been a big fan of roleplay. She does it enough every day, plays someone harder, more brittle than she is. She's done it her whole life, hidden things away. Undercover missions and slipping under the radar and pretending that nothing bothers her. She's played a lot of roles in her life, but after her shooting he's been treating her like glass. So she sends him out to a bar and struts in, head high and whole and pretends she doesn't know who he is.

It's a role she'll willingly play again if it means experiencing the explosive outcome.

Lips

He knows he is all things good and wholesome, patriotism and freedom and the damn red, white and blue. But he is also an artist and he knows he sees beauty in so very many things. He's not even sure when he first noticed it, the curve of her lip, the bright and brittle way she smiles in the midst of battle. The stern frown that makes him want to press his own mouth to its edges until it curves upwards in a shy smile meant for those closest to her.

She kisses like fire and smiles like the sun and he thinks he's never seen anything more beautiful.

Irritable

More than anything else, his even temper drives her crazy. Calm and composed where she's on a hair trigger, pulling her in when she wants to wrap her hands around an agent's throat and managing to do so without undermining her authority. Quiet words and stalwart presence and she can't keep reaming the damn kid out when he's there, defensive and standing up for their decisions. Yet she's glad he's there, that he supports decisions he believes in. And later, she catches him having a quiet word with the same agent about honour and duty, responsibility and teamwork.

She brushes away pride and inadequacy with an irritated huff, but catches his little smile out of the corner of her eye.

Blush

He can vividly remember the first time he saw it, the pink flush that starts at her neck and rises up over her ears and cheeks. On any other woman it would be endearing. On her, it's striking and breathtaking because of all the things it means and the myriad of things it doesn't.

So he doesn't care when she chokes off a cry as she shatters because he doesn't need her sounds to know he's got her.

Stress

Everything's fine until she loses all contact with him. Then nothing's fine as the helicarrier scrambles and she holds her breath. There's nothing, still nothing, almost always nothing for the better part of two weeks. She barely eats, barely sleeps and tries to keep it together under all the stress. And then he strides onto the helicarrier and scoops her up regardless of everyone around.

Her body goes limp, stress slipping out of her muscles as her arms go around his neck.

Trying

Things change after that, clear and definite. Outside, nothing's changed, but they know it's not the same. Her eyes flit to his when he walks onto the bridge, his gaze follows her on the tarmac. There's nothing anyone can see that's changed. But he knows, and she knows. They're no longer just living, just passing each other and spending time together.

They're trying something new and beautiful.

Roses

They show up in her doorstep on a rainy April afternoon. She can't for the life of her think of who they would be from since he's been overseas for two weeks now (and she refuses to reflect on how much she misses him) and even with their new normal, this isn't really his style. They're tiny little things, yellow rosebuds of all things, in a pot and not just stems. Full plant. Her own baby rose bush.

The note is typed and simple: until I get home.

Goosebumps

They form over the skin beneath his lips as he presses tiny, brushing kisses over her shoulders and along her collarbone. His hands span the entirety of her naked back, callouses catching on scarred skin. They're not perfect, but they're perfect like this, the feel, touch, taste of him below her, above her. It doesn't matter how she has him, but that she does.

On her windowsill, tiny yellow buds blossom.

Chocolate

She remembers reading A Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day to one of her step-siblings (half-siblings, whatever). She remembers being resentful of the damn books, hating every moment of significance to her life. But now, how many years later, she's flashing back to that same damn book and the incredible significance of the title. She drops her head to the desk as her last meeting leaves and is just getting comfortable for a five minute moment (really, five minutes, karma owes her at least that even if she doesn't believe in fate and all that) when a throat clears above her. The chocolate bar catches her gaze first, followed closely by amused blue eyes.

"Bad day?" he asks.

She smiles just a little. "It's actually looking up."

Dancing

They both know it's a kind of coming out. A Stark gala and their combined, if reluctant, fame (at least for him) making a spectacle of them whether they want it or not. She keeps her head up, her arm threaded through his and while they both hate dancing, they escape as fast as they can. It's a reprieve as they sway together, a chance to build a world unto themselves if even for a moment.

They both take it greedily and gratefully, aware that it's a tiny way to keep their intimacy private amidst the sparkling show.

Teeth

He thinks the thing he likes best about her is, quite frankly, how badass she is. In a lot of ways she reminds him of Peggy (he can't lie about that and oh, hadn't that been quite the fight and no, no she is not Peggy Carter). She is strong and resilient and he's seen her in battle.

It's one of those times, the helicarrier under attack and both of them holding their own. He gets a glance at her, a split second and sees her teeth bared in a feral, dangerous flash of a smile. He thinks it might be the moment he falls completely and irrevocably in love.

Garden

It starts small. He gripes about how sterile her apartment looks (they spend more time there and it's a long story she continually refuses to tell) even though she has a terrible habit of leaving books, magazines, even bowls and cutlery strewn about the place when she gets called in at the last minute, and brings over a basil plant the next time. He drags her out to the market a week later, and a mint plant joins the basil one on her fire escape. Then it's rosemary and cilantro, oregano and chives until she has a veritable herb garden just outside her window.

She thinks about arguing, but it means he's at her place almost every day and well, she can't argue with that.

Snow

They walk through Central Park on an absurdly cold day in February. Neither of them are off duty (she's never off-duty) but they don't have to be on base or in Washington and it's a strange feeling to be at home together. They take advantage, oh have they taken advantage. But he'd wanted to actually get out of the apartment and sometimes she's a sucker for a pretty face. Or maybe it's just that smile.

A smile that turns mischievous a second too late for her to keep him from shoving snow down the back of her coat.

Dinner

Her favourite black dress is in tatters, he has bloodstains on his nice shirt and there are agents crawling all over the damn building that used to be a restaurant. She huffs out a sigh, hands on her hips, every inch the former-deputy director of an international intelligence agency despite the amount of skin on display. He runs his hand over his face, smears soot down his cheek. She does not find it attractive.

"We just wanted dinner," he says.

"Yup."

"On our anniversary."

"Yup."

"A quiet night, just once."

"Yup."

He sighs and looks over at her. "Chinese?"

They eat it back at her apartment (their apartment, because really, she should make it official since he's always so reluctant to push her), sweaty and sooty and still in their torn clothes.

Family

The one thing about him she just cannot find disappointing is that he has no family. She's never been good at families. God, actually she flat out sucks at them and it's always been a bone of contention in the past. Well, the kind of sketchy past that she doesn't really have because, well, S.H.I.E.L.D. But she is probably more than a little irrationally glad he doesn't have a family.

Except one day, long after the Avengers have accepted she'll be around, she finds herself sitting at a massive table in Stark Tower, surrounded by their happiness and laughter and comradelier and realizes maybe his family isn't biological. And maybe she has nothing to worry about anyway.

Crying

It happens at the stupidest time. Seriously it does. She has a weekly appointment with Pepper at this manicurist's place (because men make deals on the golf course and Pepper Potts does them from a salon chair, when it's not her CEO chair). The damn place explodes because some idiot wants to get at Tony and the next thing she knows the chair she's uncomfortably wedged behind (she's stunned, okay?) is yanked away and she blinks up into his concerned face. She blinks for a moment.

"Are you crying?"

He drops his head, chokes out a laugh. "There's smoke in my eyes."

"Sure, Cap. Whatever you say."

Anger

They've both always believed that life is too short for fighting. Well, and they do it every day, so when it comes to them, they both like to think they're pretty good at talking out their issues. Except she was blown up two weeks ago and he's been a little overprotective and she's had it. Talking to him hasn't worked, so when his face goes blank when she tells him she's headed back to work tomorrow, she explodes. He fires back, something about independence and recovery time and she thinks it's pretty rich coming from a guy who had been running days after being dropped into the Potomac under an exploding helicarrier.

They argue back and forth until he loses it and accuses her of being unable to understand that loving someone means keeping them safe. She's stunned for a minute (it's an unwritten emotion between them, strong and true but never verbalized) before she says, "Now you know how I feel."

Silent

Sometimes, after the bad days, it's hard to wind down. Adrenaline and fear, maybe triumph and a bone-deep weariness make it difficult to just settle. Too tired for the gym but too wired to sleep and everything finally crashing down. It's always been loud in his head in these moments, scrambles and screams, memories and fear. Even when they save the day, the deaths haunt him, the trauma plagues him.

One day, they go home together – it's an order - and curl up on the couch because that's what she needs. He's surprised to find that while the fears are there and he knows it won't stop the nightmares, wrapping his arm around her quiets the voices.

Different

He thinks maybe he's known from the beginning that she's different. Different in so many ways. She's not like women he's run into (maybe with the exception of Peggy) and he cannot figure her out for the life of him. Hell, he looks back on how their relationship develops and really, given how he could not read her, he doesn't know how it did.

Things are different now. Now he can read every twitch of her body, the way her eyebrow twitches in a debriefing when she wants to make a sarcastic comment, the most minute downward tilt of the corner of her mouth that indicates her supreme displeasure during work hours. He knows what she's looking for when she runs her hand down his arm (a hug) or when she wears her pajama pants before 9PM (a quiet night in). Things are different, here and now and with her, and it turns out, he's a huge fan of 'different'.

Enthralled

She leans against the doorway to the gym just watching. It's not a chance she gets often – he tends to hit the gym while she's working – and she is going to savour it. He is… something else. There's a freedom and fluidity to him, something so easy to watch for hours and she thinks she could. She knows he could, is infinitely familiar with his stamina, but this is totally different. Blow and parry, block and attack, he moves with grace along with his much tinier opponent. He's good though, holds his own through a number of bouts and she loses track of the score.

When he finally notices her, a grin splitting his face wide open, and she asks who won, Natasha grins and tells her it's a tie.

Pillow Fort

It's just outreach. That's all it's supposed to be. An eight-hour shift in the children's ward with a handful of the more child-friendly Avengers for some good PR and giving back. Except then pillows start going missing. It's not a national emergency level thing, but it's definitely curious and she rolls her eyes as the nurses glance pleadingly at her. It gets worse when the kids start disappearing too, complete with medical equipment and she'd be nervous, but she knows the whole floor's been locked down.

And sure enough, she finds the pillows and the kids in the last room, safe and sound encased in a pillow fort that she can actually say she finds impressive. So when he asks her to join, she shrugs and climbs in.

Pain

She buries her father on a Tuesday in July.

He's right beside her because he refused to stay behind and she hates it, hates having him here, seeing her at her weakest, at her most vulnerable.

But that night he holds her close, rubs his hand along her back and doesn't ask questions.

She's at a point where she thinks maybe he does make things hurt less.

Fear

It happens, of course. They're in a broken world full of chaos and bad apples. He'd always expected to be the one to disappear, that eventually his serum-enhanced body would betray him. He has contingency plans in place for that, letters and e-mails and now videos because this time around he wants to make sure that everyone in his life knows they're important, that they're loved.

They haven't said it, and it's the one thing that haunts him beyond anything when she goes missing in the Himalayas. The number of moments, the number of ways float through his head every day, every damn day and it's worse because they literally can't find a trace of her and they refuse to let him go.

But when he hears they have her – and he does, because he knows the right people in the right places – he's on the damn tarmac when the helicopter lands. She's thinner than she should be, covered in dirt and grime and her wrists are rubbed raw, and she's strapped to a massive splint on her right leg, but he thinks maybe it could be worse.

He has nightmares for weeks.

Failed

He has a nasty nightmare one night, almost gets her across the face when he smashes his fist into her pillow. She may not be 100% yet, but she's better and it's enough to get her out of the way. He's devastated when he comes to and finds her braced against the wall, pale and exhausted. Nothing she says or does can reassure him that there's no harm done.

"What happened?" she asks eventually, forcefully, in a tone that brooks no evasion or argument.

He drops his chin towards his chest, unable to look at her and she knows. "I failed you."

She cups his face in her hands, nothing soft about her eyes. They're hard and cold and resolute because sometimes he takes orders better than compassion. "You saved me, you idiot."

When he smiles, even just a little, she smiles right back.

Rain

He's always surprised at just how much she likes the rain. He's not sure why. Maybe because it's something so incredibly fanciful, wistful even and those are not generally things he associates with her. (It's not that she's cold, she's just intensely practical, and rain hampers so many things.) But that's not how it works. He often finds her by the biggest window she has access to, curled up in sweatpants (though there was that one time, in her office, in full uniform and he'd managed to imprint the moment. She's still embarrassed by the sketch, even though he's shown no one) just watching the water fall.

And it's one of those days, one of those moments, where she has a scratch on her cheek that's still a bit bloody and they're both too exhausted that he says it. He can't help himself, can't stop himself, because she is a million juxtapositions and none at the same time (and that whole thing about making sure people know this time). She says nothing, but shuffles forward in her seat. It's a tight fit (like either of them really care) and he buries his face in her neck, listening to her breath and the rain.

"I love you, too."

Lace

They sit side-by-side on stone steps facing the flashing lights of the NYPD. Another Stark gala, another attack, and they're both more than a little worse for wear. There's soot and grime and dirty and blood and it's all staining the lace of her dress as he rubs the skirt between his fingers. It's a habit he's picked up, where she's not totally sure, but she's leaning against his shoulder, half way to dozing (because this is not her job, she was off for fuck's sake and she won't involve herself yet) so she doesn't slap at his hand.

And as she watches the chaos around her with eyes at half mast, she feels him sigh, big and gusty and ruffling her bangs and thinks this is my life. She may have started in the Marines, may have loved the transfer to S.H.I.E.L.D. and may actually like the work she's doing for Pepper and Stark Industries more than she lets on, but she thinks none of that matters in the face of this. It's chaos and it's insane and it's dangerous and God, she wouldn't change it for the world.

Happy

He'd long ago lost hope in having this. In having a life, a place, a home. But there's one thing he hadn't really counted on when he made that decisions – the people. He has friends now, a place in what Stark's called Avengers Tower. He has his apartment in Brooklyn and her apartment in Queens (they really should do something about that, it's kind of ridiculous, really, especially considering the ring in his pocket and the butterflies in his stomach every time he thinks about taking that step) and he has Tony and Pepper, Bruce and Natasha, Clint and, of course, her.

And she's really the one that, well, he hadn't expected. Peggy had been larger than life, a love he hadn't thought people could feel more than once. Yet, here he is, with her, a woman he hadn't expected, let alone a woman he expected to fall in love with. And for the first time in a very, very long time, he can honestly say he's happy.