The way he’s holding her is so possessive too. His hand is splayed across her back, his fingers spread wide, and look at their combined hands; his is wrapped entirely over hers, very much actually holding her.
When looking at this in a gif you can see how he’s pulling her in entirely.
He also leans in, pressing himself in closer to her face. He wants her in his space, he wants to keep her close. Maybe because he didn’t get to keep anyone close to him last time, so now he’s unwilling to give it up again now he has the chance.
(There’s also the thing with him flinching away from camera flashes, thinking there’s a brawl when there’s not, spilled wine looking like blood, a popping cork sounds like a gunshot, which is all show-don’t-tell done to perfection)
I’ve seen people say his nightmare was unfitting and odd, but his nightmare was perfect. See, he gets what he wants. He gets his dance, he gets Peggy, he gets it all. His brain works faster than a super computer (according to Nick Fury himself), so he’s assessed this entire situation even when he’s half out of it. If Peggy is here, and the other soldiers are here, that means the Howlies are too. That means his friends are here. That means he’s back. So for a moment it all looks perfect, he has what he wants.
His fear isn’t dancing with Peggy or being back, his fear is losing it all again. His fear is to be all alone, to have nothing. When he’s dancing he’s smiling, he likes it, he wants it, and then he’s brutally reminded that he doesn’t have it, and will never have it. That it’s gone.
“The war is over, Steve, we can go home,” Peggy tells him, but he can’t. He can’t go home because it’s gone. And that’s what scares him. He’s scared he’ll never have anything like it again, which is how you could interpret Steve’s later line:
“The guy who wanted all that went in the ice seventy-five years ago. I think someone else came out.”
He could very easily be lying to himself, a lot of Marvel characters do that. He’s telling himself, “I don’t want it” because what’s the point of saying you long for something that’s gone anyway? He doesn’t want to cry over spilled milk, so he’s forced to move on even though he never got over it. Maybe one day he’ll actually believe it.
Another thing is that in the vision he wasn’t wearing his Captain America suit; just ordinary military garb like everyone else in the scene. He looks like any other soldier, just like he always wanted to be. He never signed up to be Captain America or super (as the project was secret), he signed up because he was offered a chance to do something right.
In the vision he isn’t special, he’s not a legend, he’s just Steve the soldier. The only one who sees him is Peggy, because Peggy is the only one who matters. Peggy knew him before the serum, she saw him jump on that grenade and take that flag pole down. He wants her to see him, because she always has seen him, even before the bells and whistles.
Maybe Age of Ultron wasn’t a popular movie but I could talk about Steve’s vision all day, it’s amazing.
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