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ciarawritesmarvel · 5 years

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wanderlust [1] - steve rogers

Pairing: Steve Rogers x Reader

Word Count: 4.2k (yayyyy)

Warnings: Mutual pining to the max? Lots of secretly loving Steve. Minimal language.

A/N: Eeeee I know I know, I have a Bucky series ongoing what am I doing but I’m in such a Steve mood at the moment, and I have to do this! A little mini series following Steve and the reader’s trip around the world, just a little one, full of pining and love and fluff and sunsets and intimacy but not smut. This has really sparked something in me and I can’t stop writing it. I love you guys and please do let me know what you think of this if you have time! <3

Summary: Your best friend and colleague Steve Rogers only really wants to make you happy, even if that means taking you around the world to do so. Will you satisfy your wanderlust or somehow wander into love?

Prompt: I love you. And I’m sorry if that scares you but it won’t change. I love you. I have for a while now. [written for Attie’s 4K Challenge Challenge! @barnesrogersvstheworld]

I’m going to start tagging in reblogs and my masterlist is in my bio if you want to find it! Enjoy!

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new york city - usa

Your bright smile and smart dress were the only thing keeping the fact that you were sleep-deprived and exhausted a secret. The black skirt suit was too hot and you felt yourself pulling at your neckerchief whenever you thought no one was looking.

“Hello and welcome to Gaia Airlines! Could you place your luggage on the conveyor belt for me?”

Over and over and over, that sentence was seared onto your mind like a brand, so natural were the words that fell from your lips that it felt as if you were on autopilot, not really thinking about anything as you asked the typical questions and ripped tickets with the mechanical movements of a bored human being.

You cast a glance down the line of people on the night shift alongside you and saw the similar subtle signs that lack of sleep adds to your features. Sam was rubbing his face, Bucky’s shoulders had sagged, Nat’s heels lay strewn on the floor under the desk and Steve beside you had dark circles under his eyes and a slightly more worn smile than usual.

He’d caught you stealing a glance at him between customers and inclined his head towards you just slightly with a small tilt as if to ask if you were doing okay. You gave him a soft smile and a tiny, almost imperceptible nod that you knew he would pick up on. Not only was he good at reading others in the first place, but you two had gotten to know each other rather well over the past five and a half years. Calling him a best friend, calling all four of them best friends, didn’t feel out of place.

He turned back to his next customer, satisfied with your answer, and began to serve them, you continuing with your own line. Why people couldn’t just get flights in the daytime like a normal person would baffled you. But not really.

You’d take any flight you could get if it meant you’d get to go out and see the world.

Working at an airport and watching people flying away on magical adventures every single night whilst also being someone who had never left the United States and had a serious case of wanderlust was an interesting situation to say the least. The irony was certainly not lost on you.

Almost a whole night of the same old, same old checking in had gone by and if it was even possible, everyone appeared to be flagging so much more. You’d lost your own heels a few hours previous, secretly reaching down to massage your aching feet every couple of minutes. It wasn’t as if you even got a decent break in your 12 hour shift, just two half hour ones that were just used for a much needed sit down, a run to the bathroom and a quick snack.

With just an hour left, it was Steve’s turn for a break and as soon as the clock struck the hour he put a rope across his station and stepped back from the podium with a stretched out sigh. He walked behind you to make his way to the break room and squeezed your shoulder on the way past with a pitying smile and you brought your hand up to cover his for only a second, meeting his glance with grateful eyes.

“I’ll grab you a coffee,” he whispered on his way.

“Thank you!” you mumbled, even though he was already gone and you could hear his shoes clicking on the floor, quieter and quieter as he travelled down the corridor.

There was a part of you, your heart most likely, that seemed to warm at the thought of Steve offering to get you a coffee and none of the others, however selfish it may have sounded. But in reality, it reaffirmed your belief that the relationship the two of you held went a little beyond the rest of your work relationships. Steve was a little more than that to you than a mere best friend and it was nice to know that feeling was reciprocated.

There were other feelings in the back of your mind for Steve, ones that used to be right at the forefront, begging to be set free, but it had been a long time since you had properly listened to those. They just happened to lurk there, completely unwanted and unreciprocated, of that you were sure, and so you cast them away in fear that they may one day interfere in the best friendship of your adult life.

You heard a mini beep from your computer screen that indicated a chat message. You continued to talk through the protocol safety questions with the customer you were currently serving but clicked on the little bell icon to open up the chat window at the same time. Sam had set up the chat about a year ago, installed it on the five workstation computers only and done it in a certain way you didn’t quite understand to ensure that the airline wouldn’t see it and that the day shifters couldn’t access it either.

You were added to a chat with Badass, Princess and Birdman.

Nat: Sorry, am I mistaken or did somebody just offer just one singular person a coffee?

Bucky: No Nat, I’m pretty sure that’s exactly what just happened.

Sam: What would possibly cause such unabashed favouritism?

Your brow furrowed at the messages but you ignored them for a second as you ripped the tickets you’d just printed from the mini printer and handed them to the customer in front of you as you told them to have a wonderful flight. There was no one left in the queue for the time being, though you knew it wouldn’t last, so you turned your attention back to the messages.

Y/N: If you guys ever want to stop being children, just let me know.

Bucky: Someone’s tetchy. It’s as if we haven’t all just done 11 hours of a 12 hour shift.

Y/N: Less of the sass, Barnes.

Nat: You’re willingly blind, Y/N.

Sam: Willingly ignorant, blind isn’t a strong enough word.

You have left the chat.

You could feel a couple of glances at the side of your head as the others noticed your exit but you ignored them, focusing on the person that had arrived in front of you to be checked in. Your colleagues, as you currently felt compelled to call them just colleagues, had been alluding to a crush from a certain other colleague for a good few months now, but it was something you wouldn’t even consider a possibility. It wasn’t up for discussion. Not anymore. Not when you’d had to spend months locking away every thought of Steve that you couldn’t have, months boxing up every inappropriate feeling you found in your brain.

Steve returned and you felt his arm just brush your side lightly as he placed a steaming hot mug on your desk, not stopping to talk to you but just returning to his station. You glanced at him and he was already looking at you, a weird glimmer in his eye and a grin adorning his features. You shot him a quick puzzled look but he shook his head lightly, the grin only growing.

And then he did something completely new. He winked at you.

It was playful and excitable and he was like a puppy that had just been given a new home. He looked revitalised, a different man to the one that had trudged away to the break room half an hour ago. Completely bewildered, and just slightly more flustered than you’d like to admit, you hurriedly dropped your gaze away from him and towards your work instead, silently wracking your brain for anything that could have happened to him to have made him so cheerful so suddenly. The others were looking confused too, with Bucky and Sam shaking their heads at each other and rolling their eyes and Nat mouthing expletives at you. You resolved to ask him about it as soon as your shift ended.

You had never seen such a sudden change in Steve’s mood. And he had never sent you a wink that made you shiver.

30 minutes earlier

Steve struggled through the corridor, desperately trying to keep his feet moving, one after the other, even though it was difficult to keep it going. He was so tired. He’d taken the early and late break this evening, so that the others could have the middle ones that they really needed. Especially you, since you’d been secretly signing yourself up for the early and late breaks for the past week in order to help the others.

He’d now signed himself up for the coming week. It was the absolute least he could do.

As was grabbing you a coffee.

In the break room, there were a myriad of other airport employees, flight attendants, duty free salespersons and even a few pilots scattered around. Steve’s ears automatically tuned in to a familiar voice and his lips turned up in a knowing smile.

“...so I told him, look Rhodey, just because you’re my co-pilot doesn’t mean I’ll hesitate to send you out the door with a parachute!”

A few of his colleagues laughed at his clearly exaggerated tale as Steve walked over and tapped him on the shoulder, watching his face break into a grin when he turned around.

“Steve Rogers!” he exclaimed, cupping his face with both hands and planting a kiss on each cheek, something Steve had grown somewhat accustomed to.

“Tony Stark,” he replied, clapping a hand on his arm, “It’s been a little while. How was South Korea?”

“Wonderful. How’s Y/N?”

Steve’s whole face seemed to slump into one of a grumpy teenager although there was the faintest hint of a blush forming on his cheeks that told Tony his teasing wasn’t unwarranted. He’d been teasing him as such for about four years, however, so it was beginning to become tiresome.

“Wonderful,” Steve mumbled reluctantly, “But you could really ask her yourself.”

“Where would the fun be in that?”

Tony grinned and Steve glowered at him, but still he sat opposite him at one of the tables in the break room when Tony indicated to do so. Tony may have been a pain in the ass, but he was an old friend and one of the only people Steve would willingly endure such teasing from. The other was Bucky, and sometimes Nat but never Sam. He had his limits.

“Seriously, have you still not said anything to her? You know she-”

“Tony,” he warned, sounding exasperated, “Move on. Was Pepper on your flight to Korea?”

“No,” Tony grumbled, “They don’t let us on the same flights more than once a month now, something about not trusting us to keep the plane...sanitary.” Steve’s nose wrinkled in light disgust.

“You know how gross that is, right?”

“We most certainly do!”

“Pepper’s such a lucky woman,” Steve said sarcastically and Tony laughed, Steve congratulating himself on successfully changing the subject, even if it was just for now.

“That she is. She’s back from Thailand tomorrow so best to stay out of our way for at least 6 hours, then feel free to stop by the apartment and say hello!”

“I’ll give you 12 hours, but I will pop over, I haven’t seen Pep in such a long time!”

“Chief flight attendants don’t get too much free time.”

“Neither do pilots, Tony. How do you two manage it?” Steve asked, curious and a soft, genuine smile played with Tony’s lips as he shrugged lightly.

“We get by. Cherish the time we do spend together. It helps that we’ve known each other for ten years. Though five and a half is probably enough too.”

“Tony-”

“Oh come on Steve! It’s been four years of you being in love with this girl and four years of being too scared to anything about it. Do you realise how long that is? Four years!” he insisted and Steve felt a small anger building in his stomach.

“I’m not too scared to do anything about it, Stark,” Tony looked slightly taken aback by the bite in Steve’s words and knew that he was only referred to as Stark when he’d gone just a little too far, “I’m not doing anything about it because, above everything, I count myself lucky to have Y/N in my life and I refuse to do anything that might jeopardise that. Period.”

Tony blinked a couple of times.

“Okay, fine. That makes sense, I guess,” it almost sounded as if Tony was being serious but Steve knew him better than that, “Or at least, it would if I wasn’t 100% sure without a doubt that Y/N is head over heels for you.”

“She isn’t.”

“I’ve known her for just as long as you, Stevie, and I know that she does.”

“You don’t see her everyday like I do. We’re best friends; I would know. Drop it.”

Tony sat back in his chair with a heavy sigh. He couldn’t count how many times the two men had had this conversation. It was growing unbearably annoying. Steve was forthright about his feelings about you and had been for a very long time and whilst you wouldn’t dream of admitting anything to Tony, who was little more than a friendly face that you saw around sometimes, Tony had seen the way you looked at Steve. He knew that look. It was the look he got when Pepper was around.

It was that of a lovesick puppy.

And whilst you weren’t much of the puppy type and that was far more Steve’s game, he knew what he’d seen. You were smitten. Steve was smitten. Why neither of you were brave enough to take this further was beyond him. Though this was coming from the man who had showered his wife with bouquets upon bouquets of flowers and one ill-begotten batch of strawberries before she agreed to date him, so subtlety wasn’t exactly his strongest suit.

“She means that much to you, huh?”

A pause. Full of weight. Meaning.

“You know she does, Tony,” he said softly, looking down at his hands which had starting wringing together nervously without him even noticing, “I’d do pretty much anything for her. Which reminds me, I should really be getting her coffee so-”

Steve pushed himself up from the chair with his hands on his thighs, not noticing the look on Tony’s face and the clear fact that he’d just had what he thought was a genius idea. As Steve wandered over to the coffee machine in the kitchenette area, Tony bounded up from his chair and over to his friend, taking off his pilot cap and tugging it over Steve’s head.

“I’ve just had an incredible idea!”

“No.”

“You haven’t even heard it yet,” Tony pouted as Steve waiting for the coffee to brew, having put your favourite pod in the machine. He turned from the counter and leaned back against it, hands pressing into it on either side of him. He nodded reluctantly for Tony to continue, “Why don’t you and Y/N take a trip? All expenses paid by yours truly, a holiday from the night shift, a chance to spend some quality time together. It would be perfect!”

“Are you out of your mind?” Steve scoffed, shaking his head, “I am not going on a trip with Y/N.”

“Why not? You said it yourself, you’re best friends. Best friends go on vacations together.”

“Yeah but-” he floundered for some other excuse, “I can’t let you pay for it!”

Tony laughed at that. Steve could admit that was a pretty weak point. What with Tony’s air miles and his ridiculous amount inherited from his father, he wouldn’t even notice if somebody stole from him, Steve was sure. And he was a generous man at heart, so accepting such a huge gift, though difficult, wouldn’t be that hard to stomach.

“Forget the conversation we just had. Forget romance. You love her. That means something, even between best friends. And wouldn’t this make her happy?”

Steve paused. It would. There was no denying that this would make you happier than he’d probably ever seen you. Work was beating your ass lately, and there wasn’t a day, or night, that went by when you didn’t talk about some part of the world you wanted to see, or lamented about an incredible place that one of your flight attendant friends was flying out to that night. You’d always wanted to travel.

He could make it happen. He could make you happy.

Or, at least, the trip could.

“I don’t know, Tony-”

“You think too much, Rogers,” Tony pointed, accusatory, at Steve, a stern look overtaking his features, “For once in your life, just do something spontaneous. Invite Y/N to come around the world with you. Why not?”

There were so many reasons why not. Because it was ill advised for a man in love to go away with the object of his affections. Because he shouldn’t take a free trip from Tony Stark. Because you might say no, he might be crushed. Because you did not love him back and he should be distancing himself from you in order to deal with that fact and not throwing himself before you in some grand gesture that wouldn’t win your love or make him feel any better about his unreciprocated feelings.

“Okay. I’ll do it.”

Tony clapped him on the back in his excitement with a grin of glee on his face.

“Ask her tonight, ask her tonight!”

Steve chuckled, because, although it was clear that Tony was getting ahead of himself, he couldn’t deny that he was feeling a little lightheaded himself. A world trip? The only thing that made those three words exponentially better was the addition of another two words.

With you.

He picked up the coffee cup, the steam rising in a steady stream from it and disappearing into the air above. Smiling at Tony, he placed a firm hand on his shoulder for a second.

“Thank you.”

It was sincere and the look of happiness on Tony’s face, in the crinkles around his eyes, was evident enough. With that, and a final word that he would come visit him and Pepper in the coming week, Steve left the break room, fulling intending to arrive back to you a little earlier than was necessary and forgo some of his break.

You needed your coffee after all.

And so here he was, grinning unnaturally at anyone who arrived with tickets at his stations, messing up his perfectly practised lines and questions and, instead of stumbling and apologising profusely, simply chuckling with a light apology and a small shake of the head at himself. He had even winked at you and hadn’t thought twice about how ridiculous he must’ve looked. He was the epitome of giddy.

A beep brought him out of his reverie.

You have been added to a chat with Princess.

Bucky: What is going on with you, pal? You’ve been smiled manically at yourself for the past ten minutes.

Steve: Tell you later, Buck.

Bucky: Can you at least tell me how to change my damn name on this crap?

Steve has left the chat.

Princess suited him too well. He couldn’t rob the team of that chuckle every time he was added to a chat.

The shift finished quicker than ever for Steve and what felt like slower than ever for you. Steve’s change in mood was almost worrying, even if it seemed positive, and you cornered him in the staffroom as soon as you arrived there. You both had your lockers open, ridding yourselves of suit jackets that would be needed tomorrow night, Steve passing you your heels that he had carried back for you.

“Okay, come on Rogers. Spill.”

“What are you talking about?” he feigned nonchalance, but he was such a terrible liar and he was still smiling. He hadn’t stopped smiling since. It was unnerving.

“You. Your face. It’s weird,” you argued, pulling out a black duster coat from your locker and weaving your arms into it, pulling it tight around yourself as you hoisted your bag onto one shoulder and shut your locker, “So tell me what’s going on.”

“Okay, fine, there is something. Just, don’t freak out.”

“...Okay.”

You were beginning to get a little worried, but you tried not to let it show, not wanting to put Steve off telling you whatever was on his mind. He was easily spooked.

“I saw Tony on my break-“

“Oh my god! Tony! How is he? Still a little shit?” you said playfully as Steve closed his locker and you both began walking through the airport towards the staff car park.

“Still a little shit, yeah. But he’s good, Pep’s back tomorrow and they have a week off together so he’s naturally ecstatic,” you laughed slightly but looked genuinely happy for your pilot friend and his wife. Steve found himself falling for you just a millimetre more at the happiness you held for other people’s happiness, even those you didn’t know well. Little moments such as this could add millimetres and millimetres to his fall, “But anyway, he offered me a gift. And you.”

“Really?”

“Yes!” Steve could feel his voice getting more excited and his steps becoming bouncier as you walked through the huge rooms, arms bumping each other every few seconds, “What would you say if I told you he was going to pay for us to go on holiday?”

You stopped in your tracks and held out a hand to stop Steve too. You stared at him.

“Is this a joke? Because it’s not funny, you know how much I want to-“

“Travel, yes I do which is why I would never joke about this Y/N. It’s true.”

“Shut up,” you hit his arm then, not being able to process this, “Shut up! Wait, wait, we can’t let him pay, that’s ridiculous.”

“Do you know how rich Tony is?”

“...Fair point.”

“I would never usually accept such gifts from him either, trust me, but this? This is a once in a lifetime opportunity. Two weeks off work, a trip around the world, to the places you’ve always talked and dreamt about.”

There were tears in your eyes and whilst Steve was sure they were happy tears, he couldn’t help but be a little scared by them. You were still gripping his forearm tightly, to ground yourself, because your head was spinning. You couldn’t take this in. Steve wiped a tear that happened to fall onto your chin with the pad of his thumb with a shaky smile.

“And you’d be coming with me?” you asked quietly when you found your words.

“Yes, I mean, if you don’t mind-“

“‘Cause I don’t think I could do this without you.”

He breathed out a long breath. He was worried you wouldn’t want him but he should’ve known you would. Of course you would. You were best friends. He knew he was an important part of your life, even if not in the way he would like, just as you were an important part of his. He turned his forearm in your grip and held your own arm in his hand.

“I’d be there every step of the way, doll. We’d see the world together.”

His words were so comforting although they did a number on the locks of the boxes at the back of your mind and made your heart jump in its place. Together as friends, you reminded yourself, filling in the blank. You mulled over the proposition in your head. It was all too much.

“We need to talk about this properly.”

“Of course,” Steve replied readily, feeling you begin to waver.

“And I’ll need to talk to Tony.”

“I’m meeting him and Pepper sometime this week, you can come with me.”

“But if we can get it all sorted… well then I’m in buddy.”

“You are?” Steve was shocked and overwhelmed and felt like he was jumping over the moon.

“Of course I am! How could I say no? Oh Steve, this is amazing!”

There were a few tears falling now, happy tears that were actually rather unnoticeable, since your grin was taking up your entire face and there was a light in your eyes that Steve hadn’t seen in at least a year. He’d forgotten how beautiful true happiness looked on you.

All too soon he couldn’t see it anymore though, because you were clasping his shoulders and bringing him down for a hug, clutching at his back with a ferocity that was new. But this meant so much to you. More than you’d ever be able to tell him.

Tony might be paying for it, but Steve was going to take you around the world. That was everything.

“Thank you,” you mumbled into his shoulder, your chin resting on it as his arms melted into your back and he held you to him tightly.

“Tony’s paying-“

“Thank you.”

Your insistent tone told him not to argue and so he just squeezed you impossibly tighter.

You were happy. He’d done his job.

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