To spy my shadow in the sun;

Rogers is not as good at this game as Romanoff. He is a man who lives the whole of his life in the open and has little knowledge of shadows, little use for subterfuge. Sometimes, his attention will find the right spot a moment too late. More often, Rogers doesn't know to look at all.

This should not be admirable, yet it is.

Nearly three weeks he's been trailing Rogers, quietly watching him, trying to find the footing he so thoroughly lost in Washington. He's less secure than he wants to be, the very sight of the man a perpetual punch to the gut, but curiosity eats at him, fed by an emotion beneath that he can't give a name to.

(lovelovelovelove)

In the long, late afternoon shadows of the gardens, he waits. Watches the figure jog through stands of trees, hurdling effortlessly over bushes, a distant smear of white on green growing rapidly closer. Predictable. Easily avoided.

This isn't how he intended this to go. He hadn't intended anything at all. Yet his right hand pulls the hood down from the stringy mess of his hair, and he takes one deliberate step from behind the pale and spindly trunk of a birch. Not line of sight, just on the periphery.

It'll be enough.

He doesn't realize he's holding his breath.