NOTES: 30 Days of OTP Challenge - Day 3 - 'Watching A Movie'.

Diane, yes, I am writing Steve/Maria for the entire challenge. It's going to be a progressive fic series, charting the development and variations of their relationship through various situations and circumstances. I hope you enjoy!

The Negotiator

If they hadn't told him he had a concussion and he needed to rest, Steve wouldn't be watching movies in the rec room.

Watching a movie by himself just doesn't seem right. Watching with the other members of the Avengers is a little bit better, but Steve prefers the darkness and the flickering screen, the sense of people all around him and the ability to completely lose himself in the story, if only for a couple of hours.

Clint recommended this movie series. "Classic mindless action," he said, patting the DVDs. "You might find the third one...interesting. And whatever you do, don't talk about the fourth one to Stark. Unless you want to listen to a forty-minute screed on the problem with technology in movies."

Steve's in one of the first few scenes of the third movie in when JARVIS rings the 'doorbell' to indicate the Avengers have a visitor.

"Captain Rogers, Lieutenant Hill is here to see you."

Steve pauses the movie with the roughly unshaven lines of the main character shown in grim close-up. "Show her in, please, JARVIS. And bring up the lights."

He doesn't have to stand when a woman enters the room anymore, but it's instinctive. A gesture of respect that means something to him, even if others no longer observe it. And this is Maria.

He owes her an apology.

She walks in with a tablet under her arm, the quick brisk step that has places to go and things to do and makes Steve feel like her time is valuable and she's only got so much of it to spare for someone like him. It makes him feel a little better that she seems to have no time for anyone else, either.

"Captain."

"Lieutenant."

"Bored yet?"

"I think I was bored two movies ago. Do you have work for me?"

"Not yet. I...came to see how you were doing." Her gaze doesn't drop away from him, but there's something about the way she's standing, the angle of her body, the hitch in her words, as though there's a new reticence there.

"Other than bored?" Steve asks, keeping his voice light. "I'm fine. Except..."

"Except?"

He lifts his chin. "I think I owe you an apology."

"For?" The question is cool and incurious, but her cheeks betray her - bright spots of colour flaming up beneath her cheekbones.

"For whatever it was I said or did after the explosion at the warehouses the other day." Steve's memories after the explosion are mostly blurry - he remembers her and Tony helping him along a walkway, and also... Her face. Close to his. Surprised - or maybe shocked - her eyes wide open, her lips parted. He also remembers watching her stalk away afterwards.

If she'd been a cat, she'd have lashed her tail.

"You didn't do anything."

"Could you not lie to me. Please?"

Her mouth compresses briefly and she looks away. "You didn't do anything that I can't overlook as being a result of the concussion."

Steve grimaces. "I think that's actually worse."

"Then maybe you should have stuck with the lie." Frustration trembles beneath the rigid control of her voice. "Do you want a blow-by-blow?"

"No."

"I helped you out of the damage zone, you were vague and...not yourself. At one stage, I stumbled and you caught us both. And you...weren't willing to let me go until Stark turned up."

"I'm sorry."

"Apology accepted. Now can we just let it go?"

"Did I... Did I kiss you?"

"No, we can't let it go," she mutters in answer to her own question. "No, you didn't kiss me. Satisfied?"

Sort of. On one hand, it would have been nice to know he could get this far under her skin. On the other, there's the issue of pushing his attentions on someone who isn't interested in him as anything but a tool for SHIELD's work. And then, if he'd kissed her, there'd be the general unfairness of Steve not actually remembering it.

If Steve ever gets to kiss Maria Hill, he'd like to get to keep the memory.

Not that it's likely - not the way she's standing, looking at him right now, exasperation all over her face like a playbill on a wall, as her hands take their familiar positions on her hips...

And it hits Steve that she's standing here, looking at him right now.

She's standing here, right now.

"Why'd you come here today?"

Her gaze is blank and puzzled. "To check up on you."

"You could have done that by making a phone call, not coming all the way out here." But she took the time to come out here and check on him. Something pushes at Steve's chest as the bright spots of pink mark her cheeks again. He thinks it might be hope. "Why did you come?"

There's a split-second when Steve thinks she's going to say something cutting and brutal, and that'll be the end of it.

Then Maria exhales, frustrated, exasperated, and confused. "I wish I knew."

Steve doesn't have any experience with women, but he knows when manna from heaven falls in his lap. "Would you like to find out?"

Awkwardness churns in his gut. Is she going to say 'no'? And what is he going to do if she does?

"What are you proposing?"

Steve hadn't really thought about it in that much depth. "You could stay and watch the movie with me."

"And you'd be content with that?"

"Will you?"

A reluctant smile tilts her mouth. "You don't get to ask the questions, Captain."

"It's Steve."

"It's easier to keep my distance if I call you 'Captain.'"

"That's why I'd prefer you didn't. Maria."

She looks at her tablet, then at the television screen with the frozen frame of the man reaching for the coffee cup. "I'll stay for the rest of the movie."

But she doesn't move, prompting Steve to ask, "And afterwards?"

"I suppose we'll negotiate."

"Do you always conduct relationships like this?"

"Do you really want the answer to that?" She moves towards the couch. "I'll stay and watch the movie - if only to see your reaction in five minutes' time. After that..."

"We'll negotiate." Steve thinks he can do that. He's already negotating living out of his time, in a world that he no longer recognises, with a mindset that he struggles to grasp.

At least this negotiation has a goal Steve can get behind.

As she puts the tablet down on the coffee table, and he gets her a glass of water, one more thing nags at him. "What happens in five minutes' time?"

Maria accepts the glass from his hand and the corner of her mouth tilts as he sits back down beside her. "Just watch."

Less than five minutes later, Steve turns to her. "That's not-?"

"It's not," she assures him. "But everyone in SHIELD is very careful not to talk about it."

"I wonder why."

When Nick Fury discovers Steve's been watching the Die Hard movie series, he turns and gives Barton a very stern, very hard, very direct look to which the other man returns a steady, innocent gaze.

And Steve lets his eyes drift towards the woman standing at the bridge control panel, and catches the corner of her smile as she half-turns towards the briefing table.

- fin -

NOTES: Yes, 'The Negotiator' is the name of another Samuel L Jackson movie. It's quite deliberate.