Natasha's nonsense calm assasin routine was easy enough to ignore, as was the way her calling him James seemed strange and foreign and something he'd need to get used to. Even her describing her own death didn't get to him, because Steve knew what that was like, could tell her about breathing ice water right into his lungs and the long moments of pain and terror before it ended. But when she got to her point, that somehow she thought all of this meant she didn't matter? It took the fire out of him and his arms slackened from where they'd been tense across his chest, like he was building a wall.
A long silence passed between them before he slowly shook his head. "Burn down the world, break the law sure, but not burn down you, break you," Steve said quietly. "You're a fool if you think that I'm angry at you because he loves you, I'm angry at you because you love him and you didn't tell me," he said as he pushed forward to cross the distance between them.
"And before I was ready to deal with being angry with you, I needed some time to hurt, because you don't understand, you can't ever understand what we went through." Because he knew that he and Bucky were the only ones who could really grasp that, the only two people to ever live anything like what they had. It was impossible to relate and there was no instruction manual on how to deal with it and with all things Steve had needed time and space to work it through.
"I'm going to forgive you for entertaining the idea that you might not matter to me because you hit your head and because I was a selfish jerk, but that's the last time I want to hear it, my Natasha," he told her as he reached her, grasping her firmly by the shoulders. "You are everything to me. Everything."