Steve's leg bounces, and the pen in his hand is being tapped on the desk. His face is pulled tight into a stressed-out expression. Subconsciously, he knows that someone's nearby. His brain doesn't let that stop him from feeling like the entire world is crashing in on him, though. It doesn't stop the elephant from sitting on his chest and compressing his breathing. It doesn't stop his eyes from reddening. His leg bounces harder.
The figure in the distance keeps her space, watching with empathetic curiosity as Steve's persona falls apart. She's seen this before, even if he doesn't know it. Her heart aches as she watches the man who everyone believes to be perfect fall apart in front of her eyes. She eyes Steve's bouncing leg, his hunched back, the pen in his hand. She hurts for him, but she keeps her distance still. Natasha keeps her distance even as she can pick up on Steve's breathing growing quick and laboured. Even as she watches him bring his hands to his ears, and hang his head between his arms. Part of her knows he's crying. She can feel it.
Steve's tears come before he can stop them, they're silent as they make their way down his face. He covers his ears with his hands, not being able to bear the noise. It's too much. Everything is too much. His eyes squeeze shut, and he can swear that he hears screams of people he once knew echoing in his ears. He chokes and he sobs, a gut-wrenching noise ripping through his throat and leaving it bloody and raw. Part of him thinks that the blade in his desk's drawer—so enticingly close—would look better stabbed directly into his aorta. Not even he could survive that. He'd tried once, and it hadn't worked—he crashed an entire plane and it didn't work. An arterial wound surely could do the trick, though. He knows he won't go through with it, but the thought always lingers in his brain. It never leaves. When he's on a mission, he thinks about purposefully throwing himself into danger. If he died that way, it'd be honourable. And he'd be done. He's been done. He can't deal with this; not the stress of "Captain America" and not the stress of the people he's hurt and not the stress of the loved one's he's watched die and certainly not the stress of having committed suicide and nobody having known. He knows he's "not okay." Believe him, he knows. There's not a waking moment that he has where his entire brain doesn't scream at him that he's being pathetic, acting like a child, and if anyone else knew what he's really like, they'd hate him. That's why the figure he knows is watching him is so scary. He hunches into himself further, coughing pathetically as he cries. The tears burn his cheeks. He's bright red and choking on every other tear. If he screams, then, he wasn't paying enough attention to know.
Natasha feels her heart breaking.
She loves Steve, and she knows Steve—so she knows what this means.
That if he doesn't accept help, he won't survive the year. So she cries, too. It's silent. Not even FRIDAY knows.
She can't lose him, too.