This chapter took exceptionally long to write. Not because I wanted it to, but because I have a job and college, and most of my writing as of late has been devoted to the analysis of Machiavelli. Anyway, have any of you looked at Scarlett Johansson's engagement ring? It's gorgeous. Take a look at it.

On another note, chapters now have names in the form of songs that inspired them.

Two days before Steve and Charlotte moved to Washington DC for the indefinite future, the couple found themselves at the small restaurant where they had their first date, and where they always seemed to come back to. They had spent the evening at a small, almost decrepit theatre that was playing The Wizard of Oz, a movie that Steve had watched once upon a time, and Charlotte had never seen, commenting on the fact that she could not stand the thought of the movie being black and white. Steve had stared at her in disbelief for a moment before he made up his mind that, yes, that was going to be how they were going to spend their last true, free night in New York.

He'd had other plans, maybe more romantic, more intricate ones that required reservations, and planning, and him getting down on one knee at just the right moment, but they'd been scrapped in favor of the moldy theatre and the heavy nostalgia that the movie had brought on. He had been excited at first, telling Charlotte about how there was no way she would not like it while she smiled up at him, holding onto his hand as they walked around the city before their showing.

And then the movie had begun and he was breathless with the realization that the last time he had seen the movie was in a theatre very much like the one he was sitting in (perhaps less moldy and shady looking, but the same), with Bucky next to him and a small bag of popcorn that they had both chipped in to buy. And it felt like that had been only a few years, like he was still small and sickly, and not at all like over 70 years of cold had passed and gone without him noticing until Charlotte laid her head against his shoulder, murmuring about how he was hogging the popcorn, and he could breathe again.

"I mean, it wasn't bad. But it wasn't great, or mediocre. It was just…eh," Charlotte made the sound, with a shrug as she looked through the menu in front of her. She always read through it intently, as if she would order something different ever single time, even when they both knew she'd order the same rabbit cacciatore she always did.

"I'm pretty sure that sound is mediocre," Steve replied, taking a sip of his water.

"Eh." Charlotte responded with a grin, briefly looking up at him before she went back to reading the menu.

"And you just insulted one of the best pieces of cinematography ever made," Steve went on. "I'm not even sure I can still be with you if you can't like it as much as I do. It's kind of a deal breaker for me."

Charlotte sighed in a resigned sort of way but the twinkle in her eye gave away her amusement at the situation, "Can you at least break up with me after dinner? I'm trying to at least get free rabbit out of this whole mess of a date."

"How dare you! It was a good date." Steve huffed, not at all offended, and very much amused.

"Are you kidding me? You hogged all the popcorn, and we didn't even make out during the movie! It's only a successful date when you get kicked out of a theatre for public disturbances involving some sort of depravity."

"I'm sorry I'm not Tony Stark." Steve deadpanned.

And Charlotte laughed at his response, and this is why Steve loved her. Because she laughed, even when there didn't seem to be anything to laugh at. She was happy, and Steve, by default, was happy in her presence. "I'm into blonds, anyway." She replied with a wink after her laugh had subsided.

Before Steve could respond, or even blush, a waiter, a lanky teenage boy, the same one as always, came by to take their orders.

"The usual, miss?" He asked with a polite smile.

Charlotte blushed to the roots of her hair, and Steve grinned. "It's so sad when people know what you're going to get." She said, but sheepishly added a confirmation to the order.

The boy laughed, quickly jotting down Steve's ever changing order before disappearing into the kitchen.

There was a lapse in conversation, where both just stared at each other, with Charlotte's smile getting wider and more mischievous by the second, and Steve eyebrows raising higher.

"What?" Steve finally caved, smiling.

And Charlotte just shrugged, seeming to think about her answer before she responded. "You're going to propose tonight. Or were. Are? Maybe?"

"Do you want me to?" Steve asked, because he knew by now she knew him enough to read him like a book.

She shrugged again. "You're not going to ask how I know?"

"You always seem to know everything. I don't even question it anymore."

They stared at each other for a bit more before Charlotte broke the silence. "Well, if you must know-"

"I wasn't asking." Steve grinned.

"You were. I could feel it in my liver-"

"What does that even mean?"

"Stop interrupting!"

Steve raised his arms as if to call a truce, smiling innocently at Charlotte's mock glare.

"As I was saying, my mother called me some time ago..." Charlotte looked at him expectantly, believing that he would finish off the conversation for her. Steve wasn't; this was to much fun.

"I'm not interrupting." And Steve knew he had an ear splitting grin on his face. He was happy with just the idea of being able to banter back and forth with Charlotte and knowing that she could take it all and give it back even harder was refreshing. He looked forward to the day he could tease her for the rest of their lives.

"Asshole," Charlotte coughed into her fist, and Steve's grin grew wider.

"I'm sorry, I didn't really catch that."

Charlotte grinned. "I said you called my mother to ask if her and my dad would like to meet you for dinner while you were in Phoenix for a couple of hours for a flight layover. Said you had some stuff to talk about."

"uh-huh." Steve nodded his head in confirmation, trying to act as innocently as he could while he took a sip of his water. The waiter came over to drop off their plates at that moment, so there was a bit of lapse in conversation as they traded bits from each other's plates for taste.

After they settled (there was a bit of fork wrestling when Charlotte discovered Steve's pasta had mushrooms and that she wanted them all), Charlotte turned brown eyes at him again, staring at him with a certain tilt of her chin that told Steve she wasn't planning on doing any more talking if he wasn't willing to share.

He caved, finally, after staring at her right back, knowing that he had lost that particular battle the moment she widened her eyes at him. And Steve was smart enough to know that, by now, Charlotte knew what those eyes did to him.

"We were coming back from Brazil two weeks ago, and I asked the team if it was alright if we made a pit stop in Arizona. I told you I wanted to do this the right way."

Charlotte smiled in triumph, and then her eyes shone in amusement. "My mom said my dad's got a crush on you now. And that if I say no, I should let you know that she's willing to divorce my dad if you'd take her. My dad approves only if you're willing to take him as a husband too. I hung up then because the call started getting weird and there was too much giggling going on from their side."

Steve blushed, and Charlotte suddenly grabbed the hand he had resting by his plate. She ran her thumb over the knuckles and smiled shyly at him. Charlotte didn't initiate touching a lot of times, especially in the public sphere, so the tender touch made him smile shyly right back at her. And he was suddenly struck with the realization that they could be so close, so in love, and still make each other have the fluttering of butterflies in their stomach.

"You said that you weren't asking for my hand because that was all mine to give."

"Feminist dad, remember?" Steve reminded her. "Independent you. Your yours to give."

"And that you loved me." Charlotte continued, her eyes suddenly brighter than before.

"I love you." Steve said with earnest.

"I know." Charlotte responded with a smile and Steve smiled because he understood that reference. She loved him, but she didn't need to say it.

Charlotte let go of his hand then, taking a bite of her rabbit and Steve began to eat again.

There was more silence for a bit, but it was welcomed. Charlotte could be a chatterbox sometimes, giving Tony a run for his money if she tried hard enough, but also treasured silence as much as Steve sometimes did. The familiarity of having a meal with each other, not saying much but just in each other's presence, was something they'd long ago accomplished. And he knew to an outsider they might sometimes look boring, even disengaged with each other, but Steve didn't think this was a fair assessment. Silence meant, at least to them as a couple, that they were content in each other's presence. That inane small talk didn't need to be made. Besides, half the time, Charlotte's keen ear was tuning into someone else's conversation around them, and she would entertain Steve's with other people's problems when they took a stroll afterwards.

And silence also meant that Steve could think while Charlotte tried to sneakily and unsuccessfully steal some more of his mushrooms.

Steve had spent quite a bit of time rehearsing a speech in which he declared, in no uncertain terms, how much Charlotte meant to him. The words were cheesy, as if they were from a bad romantic comedy. But Steve was a man from the '40's and while he was more attuned to feelings than perhaps some other men from that era had been (he'd been raised by a strong female, after all), declarations of love from his part usually came in the form of flowers, or a handmade pocket journal he would pick up during a mission in India. He liked holding hands, enjoyed the fact that Charlotte let him lead her with a soft hand on her lower back, but "I love you's" were scarce from both parties.

Charlotte communicated with blunt statements like, "have fun," which meant, "take care," when he was going away for a mission. Or, "You're alive," which translated to, "I'm glad you're home." In fact, her phone calls ended with a customary, "bye," for everyone, her family included, but Steve knew she loved him, and her family, but that saying the actual words were for special circumstances. In fact, her love declarations usually came in the form of a light hearted comment on something they loved about each other, like when Steve called her, "doll," and she would scoff but laugh afterwards, telling him she loved his '40's lingo.

As for their actual, "I love you's," they usually came when they were truly needed. When Steve was hurt, when Charlotte needed to be reminded that it wasn't just her. The declarations were scarce, but sacred to them.

So he made the decision then and there that his rehearsed speech, his love declarations, were synthetic to their relationship. They operated on a level that did not need constant reassurance, but one where promises (like not ending their relationship on the premise of simply being the noble hero) were not made lightly. And Charlotte never asked for promises, or for Steve to swear that he would come home safe, and not in a body bag. She was a realist in that she knew that Steve was a promise keeper, and that she could never ask him to make a promise on something like coming back home alive when she knew that could be broken.

So he made promises.

"I fell in love with you the day you yelled at Hill and told off Fury and then proceeded to tell me I was stuck with you." Steve began. "And I knew I wanted to marry you on the day of your graduation. And I discovered just how selfish I could be if I was willing to stay with you even if it meant certain organizations knew about you."

"Steve…" Charlotte sighed, but he barreled on.

"And I can't promise you that I'll grow old with you because my job doesn't guarantee that. But I can promise you that I will try so damn hard to come to you every time I'm gone. I can promise that I will be your number one fan in everything you want to do, and that I won't ask you to do anything more than love me. I can't promise that I'll remember to put the toilet seat down, or that I won't get the sudden urge to trip you up just so that I can catch you and lift you like you hate so much. But I can promise to love you so dang much that you won't even know what to do with all of the corniness."

He took the little velvet box he'd been carrying with him every time they had time for a date in hopes of finally proposing. He opened it, holding the box in one hand and her hand with the other, their eyes (hers a little brighter than normal) never leaving each others.

"I would love to be able to call you my wife. If you'll have me as your husband."

"I'd like that." Charlotte breathed, and he was suddenly out of his seat, and Charlotte out of hers, and then they were hugging and Steve was peppering her face with kisses, and Charlotte was laughing.

"The ring!" Steve suddenly exclaimed, reclaiming it from the table and taking it out of the decorative box. He got down on one knee, even if it was a few minutes too late, and took her left hand in his to place the ring on her finger.

Charlotte looked panicked for a bit before she lowered to her knees in front of him with a shake of her head, taking his head in between her hands to whisper a, "you don't hafta," into his lips. He slipped the ring onto her finger as they slowly kissed, and Steve could vaguely hear a few cheers and the sound of clapping from the other people in the restaurant.

Steve smiled, standing up and grabbing Charlotte's hands to help her up, inclining his head towards the other patrons in the small restaurant before his eyes found their way to Charlotte again, who was looking right back at him.

"You haven't even looked at it," Steve said, squeezing her left fingers. And Steve was nervous because Charlotte wasn't very big on jewelry, but he'd wanted something beautiful, and, to be honest, something that reminded him of old times.

"Haven't looked at-right. Yeah. Ring."

It had been an (almost) impulse buy. He had passed by a small local vintage (and that term seemed laughable to him) store in Brooklyn when the ring had caught his eyes from the window display. The salesman had told him it was a ring from the 1920's, art deco, he had called it. It was perhaps a bit flashier than he should have looked for, with a larger diamond in the center, and two smaller one (one north and the other south of the center one) surrounded by maybe twenty even smaller ones on a thin white band. He'd called Tony, whom he knew might know much more about these things, and the man quickly met up with him, exclaiming in the background that he had important Avengers business, and that "no, Pepper, of course I am not going to go to the meeting. Captain's orders," and before he could protest that this could wait for when Tony wasn't busy, the man was telling him he was suiting up and on his way.

When he arrived, and after a brief tangent on marriage and exactly why Tony didn't believe in it as an institution, the billionaire had quickly moved on to rattle off a list of facts that Steve could not have cared less about, only truly listening in until Tony declared the diamonds good, and the platinum good, before the billionaire began haggling back and forth with the salesman. Steve ended up paying a lot more than he thought a ring should cost, but he'd known it had to be the one.

And he knew that Charlotte wasn't much into jewelry (she wore a watch, and earrings, not much else), and even less into things that sparkle, but the ring, for whatever reason, had Charlotte's name written all over it. He could picture her wearing it, the one piece of jewelry that would stand out amongst everything else. The one thing that screamed that she was very much loved by someone else, and, perhaps if he were truthful to himself, the one thing that would scream that she was his, and his alone. It was a man thing, he supposed, knowing that his girl had a piece of jewelry that meant she was taken to any other man out there, and that the size and even the shine of it meant that he was capable of taking care of her.

Of course, he would never, not even under the penalty of death and torture, admit this out loud because he knew Charlotte enough to know that she would not share in this sentiment. Besides, Steve figured, she knew everything. He was sure she was smart enough to infer all of this by herself, but he hoped she was in love with him enough to overlook the sentimentality of proprietary behind the ring.

"Oh, it's gorgeous," Charlotte mumbled, looking at the ring before she looked up at Steve with the slight hint of a frown forming. "This is too mu-"

"No. Don't. You like it, I like it. We're getting married." Steve stopped her because, no, the ring wasn't too much for her. In fact , if she'd let him, he'd give her more than the ring.

Charlotte grinned. "We're getting married."