Author's note: I didn't mean to let this lie fallow for two years. It's just that the next chapter kept tripping me up. Finally, I've decided to skip it and move on. I'll come back, some day, and write the heist scene where she steals the equipment, but I wanted to move on. I hope you enjoy it.

In a car in the countryside to the East of Berlin

"That did not go as planned," Sharon muttered to herself, again, as she mentally reviewed the ambiguous situation she'd left behind. She thought she'd gotten away clean, but Romanov's little surprise appearance still made her doubt. Had the spy gotten close enough to plant a tracker on the equipment? Sharon had checked it over thoroughly — the shield was easy enough, but she didn't know anything at all about the suit.

If Romanov had talked to Stark, he might have given her some sort of app on her phone that could have remotely hacked into the suit's OS and turned the whole damned thing into a tracker. Sharon just didn't know enough to know. Usually she'd tap the CIA's wonks for tech back up, but this was a wildcat operation.

Life in the big leagues was not easy.

Her car was one she'd kept stashed in a safe house, recent-but-not-new standard model with
spotless papers that were utterly untraceable to her. She drove with Germanic precision — scrupulously obeying all laws, two hands on the wheel, and her back straight, despite her overwhelming desire to gently bang her head on the steering wheel when she thought of everything that had gone wrong back at the inventory room. She'd had a plan and Pierre was faultless but had Natasha—

Her mind was skittering in circles — not good. At a stoplight she paused and took a deep breath, clearing her thoughts. It was the end of her fourth circuit and she'd confirmed, again that she didn't have a physical tail. She didn't know if Natasha had planted a tracker, but she needed to decide one way or the other — see the boys or abort?

With a sigh, she mentally shifted her calculations and then put the issue out of her head as she turned towards the meet spot. She needed to focus on this conversation with Steve.

This was a pivotal interaction that would set the tone for their whole relationship afterwards. If she was right and he was slotting her into Peggy's role in his head, he'd expect a dramatic kiss. If she was actually her own person to him, he still might expect a dramatic kiss — he was a romantic raised on pulp serials and 1930s war movies and the hero always got a kiss before he left.

Nonetheless, if he kissed her, that moved the assignment firmly into honeypot territory, which meant she needed know to know what sort of footing she was on. That meant she'd need to prompt him somehow.

Ideally, all of this was moot and he'd accept her assistance as a gift from equal and not relegate her to the girlfriend-slash-sidekick role.

Sharon snorted out loud.

"A woman and a spy," she repeated Romanov's earlier comment, and was proud that her voice was only a little bitter.

The meeting place was under a Soviet-era overpass to the east of the city, forest of pillars that would be scrawled with graffiti in any other country. They were already there … three ridiculously attractive American men in too-small t-shirts and baseball caps, all crammed into a vintage VW Bug.

"I'm not sure you understand the concept of a getaway car," she couldn't help but snark as she got out of the car.

"It's low profile," he said, he voice completely undefensive.

"Good, 'cause this stuff tends to draw draw a crowd," Sharon popped the trunk and the star from the shield gleamed, even in the shadows of the overpass.

"I owe you again."

"I'm keeping a list." Was he finally taking a second to wonder why she helped him? She glanced over at the Bug, where Barnes was scowled in the back seat as he inched away from Sam.

"You know, he kinda tried to kill me." Would he make excuses?

"Sorry, I'll put him on the list."

She let out a gentle snort; at least he didn't try to placate her. She looked down and licked her lips, suddenly nervous.

"They're gonna come looking for you."

Only if Natasha had put a tracker on her. But maybe a little debt-guilt would help her get a leash on him. "I know."

"Thank you, Sharon," he said, his face open and kind and sincere.

She nodded and waited. He looked at her with those sad, sweet blue eyes and there was a sudden shift in his demeanor. She knew what was coming: The Kiss.

His hand slipped up behind her waist, wide and warm even through her shirt. He stepped in, but not too close, his hips held slightly back from her, ever the gentleman. She closed the distance between then, sliding her hand around the back of his his neck, feeling the soft skin at his hairline.

He kissed very well as he did everything very well. Pressed against the long strength of his body, feeling the muscles of his back under the thin cotton of his t-shirt, she thought that she wouldn't mind so much being in the honeypot position. He was gloriously beautiful, kind and considerate, thoughtful and smart. As long as he saw her as herself.

It was a cinematically informed kiss, just long enough to not trigger the Hays Code. He pulled back and gave her a slightly rueful, almost apologetic smile that broke her heart a little. He looked so damned young.

Nonetheless, she needed to know. So, as they stood close enough to still breathe each other's air, she said, leadingly, "That was…."

"Late."

Her heart sank even as she smiled and breathed, "Damn right." She stayed close, her hand spread over his broad chest. But, with his damnably good intuition, he seemed to sense he'd said the wrong thing and stepped back.

With a last lingering caress over his bicep, she let him disengage and said "I should go," and walked away.

She wanted to glance at the boys in the Bug but Barnes, at least, might recognize that as recon. Also, it would screw up her exit. Instead, she stuck to her movie-assigned role and walked away from the hero without a look back. Letting him go to fight the good fight.

As she climbed into the car, she hoped he wasn't so spun by the kiss that he forgot to take the damned equipment out of the trunk. It would screw up the big kiss scene if she had to get out of the car and run after him.

She did watch Wilson and Barnes in the side mirror. They both grinned at Steve, like 12 year olds and Sharon let her jaw clench because no one could see her.

The kiss had, in fact, not spun him at all. As she climbed into the driver's seat, Steve hoisted the equipment out and shut the trunk all in one smooth motion. How he did it, she couldn't imagine — it had taken her five trips.

As she drove away, she took on last glance out the window. He was loading the suit into the Bug's front trunk, the shield across his back already. She could hear Wilson and Barnes bickering and Steve's resigned voice moderating. None of them so much as glanced at her — they'd dismissed her from their mind. She'd delivered the goods, given Steve the script-required kiss and they'd moved back to the important plotline.