Imagine If You Assembled The Avengers: Volume 2

Die For You (Rogers x reader)

@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.