[PSL] Steve and Sam ; mid-Winter Soldier

[stark_spangled]

for sizeofyourbaggage

Comments

[stark_spangled]

"You do that," Steve fires back, as easy as a Sunday afternoon. The smiling and laughing he needs some work on, but bantering and exchanging good-natured insults? That sort of thing you never lose, if you're going to survive working with the kind of people SHIELD works with. It means he feels comfortable enough to let his guard down, anyway.

His smile grows a lot more lopsided when Sam asks about Natasha. "I'm surprised you even noticed the car."

When Natasha's in the vicinity, she tends to grab attention. It's what she's good at, and Steve's not so cynical that he can't admit she earns it, beauty, skill, or not. There's a lot more to her than meets the eye. He just wishes she'd let him see it every so often without wondering if she's just playing him. He sighs without even thinking about it, and bobs his head.

"Yeah. I guess I can be kind of focused," he admits, which is a watered-down way of saying he takes everything a little too seriously. It drives her crazy. "Before?"

He leans back for this one. There's a quip like the one he gave Natasha dancing on the tip of his tongue, because it's easier defusing the conversation with self-deprecation and jokes about barbershop quartets than it is to let himself think about how everything he knew really is dead and gone. But he knows when the moment is wrong, and right now he'd rather be honest. It still comes with a small, dismissive wave of his hand, though. "I was an artist. I used to work as a freelance illustrator before the war."