#hellospringday5

[ciarawritesmarvel]

of plans and schemes - steve rogers x reader

Pairing: Steve Rogers x Reader

Word Count: 2.7k

Warnings: Some language, fluffity fluff and they would have gotten away with it if it weren’t for those meddling kids and Tony

A/N: Welcome to Day Five of Hello Spring by @ibwhellospring! So it’s just past midnight which is super annoying buttt it’s longer so hopefully you’ll forgive me! With Sam meddling in yesterday’s, I couldn’t help but have some more meddling kids in this one. Anyway, I hope you enjoy, lovelies and please let me know what you think!

Prompt: Starry Night

masterlist in my bio and tags in the reblog! please drop me an ask to be tagged in bucky, steve or all the hello spring pieces!

---

“What are you guys doing?” you exclaimed worriedly, trying to pull your hand out of Peter’s death grip. He wasn’t budging though and continued to drag you through the corridor from your room, with Shuri not far behind, scuttling after you hurriedly.

“Just trust us, Miss Y/L/N!” Peter assured you.

“Yeah, it’ll all work out,” agreed Shuri, and you shot them both a warning look.

“Somehow, the fact that you can’t tell me where we’re going and are having to drag me there makes me believe that it will not work out.”

The two of them giggled and your scowling only got worse.

You reached the door of the main training room and Peter stopped, letting go of your hand and you angrily pulled away from him, placing your hands on your hips and turning as Peter scurried behind you and joined Shuri in a line that blocked you from going anywhere but into the room.

“Go in, Miss Y/L/N!” Peter urged you and you turned your glare at him.

“What the hell are you kids up to?” you asked them pointedly, making sure to look at both of them in turn in order to guilt at least one of them into telling you what was going on. All you were met with, however, were two mischievous smirks on two far from guilty faces.

“Honestly, we could stand here all night if you want, or you could just go in there and find out,” Shuri told you and you were about to scold her further for talking to her superior in such a way but the truth was...she had a point. You rolled your eyes at their antics and, without another word, walked into the training room and closed the door behind you. You heard them lock it. Oh, they were so in for it later.

You looked around the room. The usual mats and equipment were all stuffed into one corner and in the middle was a singular table, with candles and placemats and cutlery. You wandered over to it, brows furrowed in confusion and lifted the plate cover from the plate nearest to you. The smell hit you instantly and you closed your eyes, inhaled and you smiled despite yourself. Your favourite.

When you opened your eyes again, you saw a note sitting on top of your dinner.

No coming out of here until you tell him how you feel about him. We’re sick of the constant puppy dog eyes when you’re supposed to be teaching us how to be Avengers. Sort it out!

Don’t hate us,

Your students

The little shits.

“Y/N?”

And there he was. Your head snapped up as you instinctively hid the note behind your back and saw Steve standing just inside the opposite door to the one you came in. You smiled at him, though it came out as more of a grimace, as he came further into the room and arrived at the table and you discreetly slid the note into the back pocket of your jeans.

“Hey Steve.”

“Wanda and Pietro just pulled me in here,” he said by way of explanation, “I think they locked the door?”

“Yeah, Peter and Shuri did the same to me.”

“You got any idea why?” he asked and you crossed your fingers behind your back.

“Not a clue. But they’ve made us a really nice dinner.”

Steve lifted his own plate cover and you weren’t surprised to see his favourite dish at his place at the table. And a note. He picked it up and read it and you saw his eyes widen subconsciously. After reading, he tucked it away in his pocket and cleared his throat.

“Looks like they want to thank us for all our hard work,” Steve told you and your heart sank. So he hadn’t got a similar note to you, then. You forced a smile though, used to having to hide your feelings around him and sat down at your place, gesturing for him to do the same.

“Well, I can’t say no to that!”

“So you didn’t get a note then?” Steve asked suddenly, almost cutting you off as he sat down slowly, not breaking eye contact with you and you shook your head nonchalantly.

“No need for two notes telling us that, right?”

“Right.” He sounded defeated, but unfortunately you were too wrapped up in your own head and too idiotic in these matters to even begin to comprehend why. When of course, it was obvious that Steve had gotten the exact same note as you and that his heart was pounding out of his chest at this very moment, just the same as yours. The students listening in to your every word in the security room groaned and looked at each other.

The two of you really were hopeless.

Nevertheless, Steve poured you both a glass of wine and you clinked them together with a genuine smile - even if the two of you thought this was a very platonic dinner, it was lovely to spend any moment in one another’s company.

You did spend everyday in one another’s company, but that didn’t really count. As the two people in charge of running the Avengers’ Training Facility for new recruits, you spent your days in this very training room, shouting at people to run faster, train harder, lift heavier. The stolen glances across the room were enough to drive any one of your students mad, hence the master plan to get the two of you together to end it once and for all.

They hadn’t really thought through the fact that you might be even more insufferable if actually together, but...details, details.

“So, how was your day?” you asked him, leaning forward onto your elbows on the table and taking a sip of your wine.

“We were together all day, Y/N, we literally left each other about an hour ago.”

“Humour me.”

Steve tipped his head to the side as he observed you and a smile spread across his entire face, lighting his eyes with a playfulness not many other people got to see. He leaned in too.

“Okay. It was a good day. This has already made it better. How about you?”

Your heart fluttered at his admission and you forced yourself to return your wine glass to its position on the table and lean back and away from him, putting some much needed distance between you. More for your sanity than for anything else.

“Good too, thanks. But this might just make it great. It remains to be seen.”

“Oh really? A wonderful dinner with your favourite colleague isn’t a definite improvement?” Steve teased you and you cocked a brow.

“Who said you were my favourite?”

He laughed then, real, carefree, unhinged. It wasn’t his polite laugh that he gave to government officials when they made jokes on their tours, or his angry laugh when one of the recruits gave him cheek, nor the hidden snort when someone made a joke about Tony. It was a laugh that you prided yourself on discovering a long time ago, one that garnered you a pat on the back each time you’d heard it since.

The rest of the night went perfectly swimmingly. You chatted, heard more of Steve’s unrestrained laughter and joined in with much of your own. Sticking to just the one glass of wine, since you both had early morning training schedules, you found the conversation flowed freely without it, the meal demolished in minutes but the dinner never really dying down.

It was three hours in, and by this point the two of you were fully leaned in on the table, all preconceived notions of shyness or awkward crushes forgotten in such welcome company. The students that had been watching you, however, were of a completely different mindset.

They were beginning to lose the will to live.

“Why aren’t they doing anything?” Wanda whined, childish and impatient, and Shuri rolled her eyes.

“We just have to wait, Wan, this was never going to be easy,” she said with a tut and then, after a couple of seconds she added under her breath, “I mean, look at them. They’re idiots.”

“I wish you wouldn’t talk about our Captains like that, Shuri,” Peter said quietly and Shuri stuck her tongue out at him in retaliation.

“What are you guys doing in here?”

The four students froze at the unfamiliar voice in the room and turned, mouths agape, to find none other than Tony Stark in the doorway, squinting to look at what you had been watching on the screen.

“Hi Mr Stark! We’re just-” Peter began, but Pietro nudged him in the side, hard, and he stopped with a small yelp of pain.

“Is that Capsicle and...Y/N? Are you guys scheming?”

He looked stern, and the kids didn’t know what to do. They stayed quiet. Before they knew it, Tony had pulled up an extra chair and wheeled himself up to the desk.

“Why didn’t you invite me?” Tony pouted, beginning to type rapidly at the security computers, the students exchanging worried glances, “I’ve been waiting for these two to make a move since Loki was a bad guy.”

He clicked enter with a flourish and all the people in the room suddenly crowded around the main monitor as Tony changed the scenery in the training room. Tony grinned at Peter and he couldn’t help but return it.

---

You heard a sudden whirring noise mid-sentence and trailed off, looking to Steve with searching eyes. You both got up from your seats slowly, scanning the area for threats or changes when your gaze drifted upward and your eyes widened.

“Steve,” you breathed, pointing upwards and he followed your finger to look at the ceiling. He let out a tiny gasp that had you smiling. Above you, the ceiling panels faded from their usual white into a deep blue, almost black, colour, dotted with tiny shining stars. Dinner below the stars. They really couldn’t have made this more romantic if they tried.

The nerves from the beginning of the night seemed to hit you both like two freight trains.

“If I didn’t know any better, I’d say they were trying to set us up,” you joked with a half-hearted laugh, and Steve snapped his head to look at you with his eyes almost bulging out of his head.

“What makes you say that?”

His question was hardly a question and more of a demand and it had you backtracking quicker than you thought you were able.

“It was a joke, Steve! Jesus…”

Mentally, Steve slapped himself round the face. Twice. Little did he know, there were practically five simultaneous face palms going on elsewhere in the compound. His head screamed at him to fix it, fix it now.

“Wanna stargaze?”

It was your turn to look at him funny.

“Really?”

“Perfect end to the perfect night, right?”

You paused. Contemplated his words. The stark contrast between these words and the scared little child he’d sounded like just seconds before.

“Right.”

You lay down on your backs beside each other and stared up at the faux night sky above you. It was beautiful. Knowing it wasn’t real didn’t do anything to change that fact.

“You really think this will work, Mr Stark?”

“Just wait, kiddo.”

You hoped he couldn’t hear your heavy breathing and he hoped you couldn’t see his chest heaving up and down, up and down. Eyes may have been trained on the ceiling but the rest of your sense were anywhere but. Ears tuned in to tiny sounds of breath, of life nearby. Nose tuned in to Steve’s cologne, to your perfume. Swallowing thickly. Hands slightly clammy against the cold training room floor.

“They’re just lying there!”

“Give it a minute!”

You decided to murmur something you’d been meaning to say right from the beginning of the meal. Steve turned his head to face you.

“What was that?”

You sighed slightly, annoyed at having to repeat yourself, but you did it nonetheless. You wanted him to know. You turned too and tried desperately not to let your breath hitch at the close proximity.

“You are my favourite. Colleague, I mean.”

“I am?” he sounded genuinely surprised and it made you even more determined to reassure him.

“Of course you are, Steve. You’re-you’re basically my favourite person at this point.”

Your confession made you feel stupid and childish and foolish in every way but it was out there now and there was nothing to be done about that fact.

“You’re mine too. Favourite person, I mean.”

He echoed your delivery and you smiled at him, turning your head back to the ceiling.

“Good.”

“Or at least, second to Bucky,” he whispered quietly and you laughed loudly at him.

“Oh, you’re such an ass.”

The two of you laughed and Steve ripped his gaze from you and returned to the ceiling himself, picking a star to focus on.

“Mr Stark, this isn’t working!”

“Oh, fuck this.”

The intercom system pinged, indicating an incoming message and the two of you sat up from your position on the floor, looking at each other questionably.

“I didn’t want to have to do this, you imbeciles,” Tony began, his voice booming through the speakers in the room, “Read each other your letters. Now. That means the one in your back pocket, Y/N.”

The two of you were frozen in time as the ping sounded again and the room fell silent, except perhaps for a distinct and raucous laughter from somewhere nearby that sounded specifically like Shuri.

“You-” Steve gulped before he could continue, and you still looked like a deer in headlights, “You got a letter?”

The pieces fell into place in both your minds, slowly and methodically, the way jigsaw pieces do. Everything became obvious after a few moments of deduction. Said deduction didn’t particularly put either of your minds or hearts at rest, however and so, when you finally answered him, your voice was a little shaky.

“Yeah,” you pulled the letter from your back pocket, “I did.”

“We don’t need to read them then,” Steve ventured, “do we?”

“I think they’re the same.”

“I think so too.”

You stared at each other, a wonder and fondness in your eyes that had previously been stored in the dark depths of your minds that you didn’t share with anyone. Neither of you said anything. You couldn’t. Words failed you, expression failed you. One thing that never failed you? Steve.

It was all you could seem to think about. Everything you liked - loved - about him. And for the first time, you knew that he was thinking all the same things about you. You could see it. The thought alone was enough to make you shiver.

The ping sounded yet again.

“Kiss, fucking kiss!”

“Shuri!”

The second ping was the indicator that you and Steve needed to laugh, to break out of the reverie you’d placed each other under. You shuffled closer to him, using your hands seeing as you were still sat down. When you were close enough, you placed a hand on his chest, experimental, testing, brave.

He placed his own on your neck almost instantly, finding his own bravery in yours. His fingers traced your jaw lightly and you felt light-headed already.

“We should give them what they want,” you whispered, still leaning closer, so much closer, your other hand weaving up his chest and onto his shoulder, holding you up and him down all at once, “They did work hard for this to happen.”

“And I’ve been making puppy dog eyes at you for months,” Steve whispered back, his other hand resting firmly on your thigh, a little squeeze that sent electricity jolting through your very being, “So I think I deserve a show too.” “Oh you are such an-”

You couldn’t finish your sentence, even if you wanted to.

(eventually, Tony had to shut down the security cameras to the training room, as soon as the show you two put on became less sweet and more...scarring - Peter later told you it was like watching his mom and dad make out and while the two of you nearly died of embarrassment Tony laughed more than he should have)