"Stop fidgeting with your clothes. Let's go." Steve froze and dropped his hands, giving Alba a sheepish look. He was going to be spending time with her family today for the first time since the last time they had met. Hopefully this time, he would manage to make a better impression than the previous time. He needed her family to like him, for some particular reason he couldn't shake.
He plucked the flowers he'd gotten for Alba's mom and looked at them nervously.
"Are you sure these aren't too much? She doesn't really like me, you know."
Alba snorted. "Mom likes handsome men, and she loves flowers. Trust me, you're good." She giggled as the tips of his ears turned pink.
"The most beautiful flowers in the world won't help if she doesn't like me." He muttered. Alba stopped short and tugged on his arm, fixing his collar so he looked perfect. He wore dark pants with a navy hued shirt tucked into them, the white of his undershirt just peeking through. She saw the nervous look on his face and tried to ease the lines etched into his face with her hands.
"It's going to be fine, Steve. She knows I like you, so she'll like you too. Trust me. She already likes you better than Marcus, and I was with him for almost ten years. You got this."
They completed the short walk up the driveway and knocked on the doorbell. Alba had to pry Steve's hand out of his hair as he adjusted it for the thousandth time. Quiet footsteps neared the door and a moment later, it swung open to reveal Alba's mother.
"Hi Mami. I hope we're not too late. There was some roadwork leaving New York. You know how it gets." Steve let Alba trail ahead and greet the older woman. Now that he saw them next to each other he noticed the resemblance. Alba looked like a slightly taller, lighter version of her mother. Steve gulped before reminding himself that he had fought actual aliens before walking through the doorway.
It didn't make him feel much better.
The two women talked quietly in the foyer, no doubt about Alba's pregnancy. Her mother placed a hand over her daughter's bump and looked at it in awe, reaching up and caressing her daughter's face. She really couldn't believe it was happening.
Marlena's eyes dropped to the nervous man standing by the doorway and stared at him, expressionless.
"Can you please be nice to him?" Alba murmured quietly, sure that Steve could probably hear her if he tried. "He's trying to make up for last time."
Alba's mom took in the pinched look on Steve's face and the flowers in his hand and walked forward with a grin on her face.
"Are those for me?" The man nodded stiffly and held out the flowers like an offering. She plucked the bouquet out of his hands and smiled.
"Thank you. It's been years since anyone has gotten me flowers. They're beautiful. Don't just stand there. Come, come in!" Alba gave Steve a thumbs up as her mother dragged him into the kitchen, resisting the urge to laugh until he was out of sight. The man had fought everything for aliens to international criminals, and he still looked more scared of a woman half his weight.
She caught bits and pieces of their conversation through the doorway.
"Alba tells me you were in the army. Not an easy career."
In the other room, Steve cleared his throat for what felt like a thousandth time.
"No, ma'am." He jumped in his seat when the woman chuckled. She didn't even spare him a glance as she rummaged her kitchen for a vase to put the flowers in.
"Just call me Marlena. Or Marly. That's what everyone else calls me." He hesitated for a moment before nodding. This was a new experience for him. He had never met the parents of any girl he dated. Before Alba there was only been Peggy, but still. He had no idea what people did during these things. For a split second, he almost wished Bucky was a phone call away. He would have known exactly what to say…
"Steve?"
His head snapped to attention. "Yes?"
Marly motioned at the stove across the room. "You hungry?" Steve hesitated before nodding slowly. Given that his metabolism was set up the way it was, he was ready to eat at all times.
His mouth watered as the older woman served him a heaping plate of fluffy white rice topped off with beef stew. He took a bite of the meal and groaned into his plate.
"This is the best food I've ever had." He muttered, gulping down the food in his mouth before shoveling another spoonful of rice down the hatch. He gave Alba a wayward glance as she scraped back a chair and joined him at the table, giving his plate an annoyed look.
"How does he get to eat beef stew first if I'm the one who's craving it?" Her complaints were silenced as soon as her mother slipped her plate of food in front of her. The couple ate in silence. Alba wasn't surprised that Steve practically inhaled his food. It seemed like Steve had developed a soft spot for Caribbean food.
"So, what are kids going to do next month?"
Steve paused and glanced at Alba for clarification. "What's next month?"
"Nothing." She said quickly, digging into her food and fixing her mother with a cautionary glance.
Which she ignored, of course.
"Next month is Alba's birthday. Yep. June nineteenth. She's got a habit of pretending her birthday doesn't matter, which is a silly."
Steve turned to look at Alba with renewed interest. "It is silly. How come you don't want anyone knowing it's your birthday?" Now that he thought about it, birthdays were just one of those things that hadn't come up yet. And if Marlena was telling him was true, it would never come up.
"Marcus and I never really celebrated them. We were always too busy in law school to worry about anything else. Besides…he was never really good at…" She trailed off and thought better of what she was about to say. It was really dumb, she told herself.
"He was never really good at what?" Marlena watched the interaction between the couple carefully. Whereas her daughter's ex used to be assertive to the point of bulldozing her daughter, Steve looked at her Alba differently. He was patient, giving her daughter all of the space in the world to speak and be herself without feeling judged.
Maybe he wasn't so bad.
Alba finally broke under Steve's withering stare. "He was never good at planning stuff, ok? It was all kind of…disappointing. Even when he did manage to remember it was my birthday. I just don't want you to feel like you have something to prove."
Steve smirked. "If he was as bad as you say, it won't hard to be beat." Alba rolled her eyes but cracked a smile anyway. He was unbelievably adorable with his mouth kicked up like that.
Marly swung in front of the man and noticed his cleaned off plate with gleeful eyes. "Want seconds?"
"Yes, please. It was so good." Alba laughed quietly as her mom practically danced back to the stove.
"My mom has this thing about feeding people. It's a Spanish mom thing. Anyway, you just earned yourself some serious brownie points."
The couple continued to eat in silence before gathering all their things and heading to their destination for the day.
Once they arrived, the tone of their trip became a lot more somber.
The State Veteran Cemetery was busy on a day like today. Steve trailed quietly after the two ladies on the warm Memorial Day afternoon as families honored their fallen loved ones.
The ladies stopped in front of a small, simply carved headstone. It was well kept, as it was clear that someone had already stopped by earlier that day to leave flowers. No doubt it was Alba's older sister. His girl dropped to her knees and sat in front of the headstone for a long moment.
Steve maintained his distance, knowing from experience how difficult this moment was. He remembered going with his own mother to visit his father's gravestone as a young man.
Marlena placed her hand on the gravestone and murmured a few words, giving her daughter a squeeze on the shoulder and coming to stand next to Steve. She inspected the young man out of the corner of her eye and liked what she saw. His eyes were trained on Alba's back like she was the only person in the world. The only person he saw.
"Alba was always a little bit closer to her dad than her sister. She took his death really hard, poor thing. This day is always so hard for her, but she insists on coming each year to honor her father."
Steve understood. He peered at the headstone curiously. "What happened to him?"
"Lung cancer." Sighed Marlena. "He picked up a smoking habit in basic training, and never stopped. All soldiers have their vices. Alba always blamed his death on his military career."
"She's never told me that." Marlena hummed.
"Alba thinks Rick would've still been alive if he had called it after the first tour. But he decided to reenlist. Again and again and again. Said the job wasn't finished. His men were still out there. But what about our girls? They grew up with a father that was always halfway around the world somewhere, missing every single thing that mattered. And the war, it changed him. He never knew when to quit. Came back a different man. We divorced within a year of him coming back home."
Steve thought about his future child. From the sounds of it, he didn't sound too different from Alba's father. What kind of father would he be if he was always lost somewhere completing missions? How would that affect his child's future?
A few paces from the pair, Alba whispered quietly, all of the things she wished her Dad was still around to hear.
"Hi Daddy. So much has happened the last time I was here. I'm pregnant. Really pregnant this time. We're both doing really well." She stopped to swipe at the tears clouding her vision. She wished more than anything that her father was still around to meet his grandchild.
"I promise that we'll visit once I give birth. It's going to be our first outing." She paused before continuing. "Would you be happy if I told you Marcus wasn't with me anymore? There's someone else in my life. His name is Steve. He saves people's lives for a living. He's kind and gentle…I think you would've liked him. I think…I think he's the real deal, Daddy. Maybe we didn't start off on the right foot, but we're walking in the right direction." She glanced over her shoulder and gave Steve a shaky grin when she spotted him chatting with her mother.
It was time to rejoin the living.
"I'll always miss you, Dad. I love you." She pressed a hand to her lips and then on the headstone.
Alba came to her feet shakily and turned to face the two people standing off in the distance together. Steve waited along her mother with a patient, small smile on his face. Just seeing him there…waiting to be there for her, made her collapse into his arms.
Steve kissed the top of her head and held her close for a long moment, knowing exactly what it felt like to say goodbye to his ghosts.
In the distance, two men watched the exchange with a calculating glance.
"So that's her." The man in the suit wasn't really expecting an answer from his employee. He glanced at the file in his lap again and stared at the photo stapled to the front of it.
"Alba Herrera."
His employee looked at the file and then at the woman in the distance.
"Should we do it now?"
The suited man turned to look at him with a startling glare. "Are you insane? She's standing in Steve Rogers' arms. You would die before you even lay a finger on her. No. Do not engage." He looked at the couple again.
"We will bide our time. We have to make sure any threats to her safety are taken care of swiftly. We need the Avengers to let their guard down…believe that no one knows this little secret. Then, when they are least expecting it, we will strike."
"Yes, sir. Hail HYDRA." The suited man turned to give his underling a crooked, unhinged smile.
"Yes, yes. Hail HYDRA."
Hey guys! Another one day early upload! What did y'all think of this chapter? Got a little taste of the future there at the end of the chapter.
Not to worry though, Steve and Alba are definitely going to get some time to themselves these next few chapters. I'm actually really looking forward to writing what's coming up next :)
Has anyone seen Captain Marvel yet?! I went with one of my best friends and we loved it. The Stan Lee tribute almost made me cry, it was amazing. Did you guys like it? I really need someone to geek out over this movie with!! And did anyone catch sight of that first end credit?!?! Hubba hubba lol