therighttime | AU Milliways

It's hard to keep it up when he talks to her like that. Steph was never made much for pretty lies, fooling people into believing she felt one way when she really felt another. She had to learn that for the show, lessons sudden and demanding, now now now. And given the slightest opportunity, she'll drop the facade without warning.

So the fake smile is replaced with another, smaller if far more genuine.

And not only because she's sorry for teasing him, if he blushed like that for it.

"There's a lot more showing to do yet, I'd wager. But you..." She pauses, weighing the question in her mind, how she wants to phrase it. Her fingers play idly with a roughly cut pencil, pushing it back and forth between two stacks of paper. "You're all right?"

You know? After all this time, and everything he's been through, no one has asked him that. You're all right, Cap, and it was an order, not a question. Steve knows how to take an order far better than he knows when to stop, when to think, when to let it all settle, and so his gut reaction is to say yeah, of course.

He frowns. The soft lead of the pencil he was playing with has broken off between his fingers, and he rubs it into granuals of black powder.

"Do ... do you know Agent Peggy Carter? And ... Sergeant Bucky Barnes? James. James Barnes."

Steph blinks at him. The pencil rolls, back and forth, back and forth.

Does she know Agent Carter, good Lord, who doesn't? And she can feel herself start to blush, swearing in her mind, warding it off, such a tell, such a foolish thing. They're friends is all, good friends and colleagues, and if Peggy walked into the bar outside that door wearing a red dress that dropped every jaw in the building, that only means she's a friend with good style - and Steph knew that already, too, thank you.

So she answers the easier question with a soft laugh and a smile.

"Think he'd glare me mute if I tried to call him James. Bucky. Yeah, of course I know Bucky."

It's enough. The laugh, the smile, the teasing tone of her voice. Those aren't for a friend presumed dead; MIA. And those aren't for a friend she saw plummet to his death. It's stupid, Steve. Letting that burst of hope blossom in your chest, just at the possibility of a Bucky in another time and place who still—

"Yeah," he says, forcing a chuckle, looking askance. "When was the last time he answered to James? I think it was freshman year. He decked me one good after school, when I started teasing him about Susie Baker."

He rubs his chin, eyes fond. K-I-S-S-I-N-G...

"You, uh. You serving together?"

"Oh," Steph says, eyes dancing even as her nose wrinkles, a juvenile expression of disgust. "You knew her, too? Gosh, he made a good fool of himself over her. Not that he took a swing at me, but he tossed my school bag up a tree."

First comes love, then comes Susie regaining her senses and dumping you on your butt...

She grins, sudden and bright, relaxing a little more. "We are. The colonel's letting me put together a team and Bucky was first on that list- oh," she adds, smile all the wider for the waitrat who arrives, two glasses balanced on a tray. Steph digs into a pocket of her uniform and pulls out some bills. "Will this do?"

When the rat chirps and takes them, Steph beams and takes both glasses, handing one across the table to Steve. "Thank you."

"Jeez, you too?" He's laughing, and it's chasing some of the nerves away. "Bucky always said I was the one with the temper, but he wasn't exactly a saint. Did he ever stick a bottle rocket in your back pocket?"

Steve couldn't sit for a week.

It's ... good. Talking like this. Seeing Steph smile, and relax, and share fond memories with him. Even as unnerving as it is having the same memories. It's been a while since Steve's had a reason to laugh. "Ah, thanks. Yeah, this smells like the stuff."

Steph laughs at the thought, fingers curled around her glass, lifted but not sipped yet. "No," she admits, still grinning, "but probably only because I didn't have back pockets. Skirts and dresses," she adds, to explain.

He hasn't answered her question, hasn't said if he's all right or not. He asked about Peggy and he asked about Bucky and they both latched onto memories. Steph knows why she did, of course, she's still practically thrumming with relief. Freeing Bucky from that terrible place and the moment he was cleared for duty, healthy and fit - and crashing and burning, trying to cozy up to Agent Carter.

That's his business, Steve's, if he doesn't want to answer her. She's not going to press just yet.

"He did put a roman candle in my shoe once. I mean, I wasn't wearing it, but they were the only pair I had and boom!" She makes a motion with her hands of a shoe leaping into the air and doing a little spin. "Up it goes, right over the trees in Prospect."

When he laughs the bridge of his nose crinkles, and his eyes narrow until they almost disappear. He covers his mouth with a loose fist until the guffaws subside, shaking his head and rubbing the back of his neck. "Right, right. Some things would have to be different, wouldn't they?"

He doesn't think about it much, the chasm between men and women. Some people would say he's purposely oblivious, growing up as the only male child in his household. The truth is, sometimes thinking about it makes him so angry he could march into the oval office and deck the president himself. No one should ever be told they can't do the same things as the privileged, for something as dumb as physicality.

"He always was a wiseguy. Liked to grandstand every chance he got." He lifts his glass, but pauses. "Agent Carter — she, uh. How is she? You wouldn't mind telling me about her, would you?"

Edited 2012-11-07 05:40 (UTC)

Steph laughs with him, just as hard. An observer would see the similarities in a second, the shape of her mouth in a wide smile, the crinkle of her nose, eyes narrowed until she can barely see. Her hand comes up almost the moment his does, a loose cup to cover her mouth in a slightly more ladylike gesture. Giggles subside with her lips pressed together, fingertips against her chin as she nods. Some things would have to be different. Bucky hasn't punched her since they were little, little kids, when she was really asking for it and their parents weren't around to tell them to act like a gentleman and a lady.

Steph's punched him a few times since, but a gentleman he remained. To Steph, it's insulting more than anything, the way even her best friend refused to see them as equal.

"Oh, he still is," Steph replies about Bucky and his wiseguy status, grinning as she lifts her glass to his. There's a pause, a flicker in her eyes as she focuses on him again. Always was. Liked to. Past tense. Steph opens her mouth to question that.

Before all her attention goes to reacting carefully, controlled regarding Agent Carter.

"...of course not," she assures him after a moment, smiling. "I'm... not sure what to tell you, though. If you've got her and she's an agent, that's... well, she makes an impression, doesn't she?"

But what sort, for a captain named Steve?

He's quiet. Not so much shy, as he was before. Not embarrassed. Not nervous. Well, maybe a little nervous. He's passing a no. 4 lead pencil between thumb and middle finger in quick motions, the wood making soft sounds as it rolls across the table. His eyes are on what he's doing, and the shot, almost forgotten, is casually tipped down his gullet. It's good. He wonders if it's as good as Dr. Erskine's was. He wonders if it matters.

He almost shrugs and then changes his mind, glances at Steph and then back down again, his smile so threadbare it could be hard to translate if he were talking to anyone else. But it is so unsubtly Steve. Steve in love, or the closest he's ever got to it.

"Yeah, she does. One hell of an impression." He rubs the back of his neck, taps his empty shot glass twice on the table, just a tic. "But it's been a long time since I've seen her. We got separated on a mission and I, uh. I got reassigned." His smile is a tight pursing of the lips. "I guess if we're living almost the same lives you know about as much as I do, but it still feels like, I don't know. Seeing about an old friend."

Steph watches him, close. The quiet, unsure air about him. The way he hesitates and fiddles with the pencil, tips back the shot like it's nothing. Which reminds Steph that she has one of her own.

So unsubtly in love.

She shoots the schnapps back herself, swallowing it down with ease and reaching for a stick of charcoal, laid out on fresh paper. He hadn't protested when she'd touched his things earlier, Steph won't mind a smack to her hand if she's overstepping her bounds right now.

The first strike across the paper is stark and roughly textured.

"Couldn't have been that similar, surely," she says, quiet. And if she's not shy or embarrassed, there are most certainly nerves there. Unsubtly Steph, on the defense. "Our lives are awfully similar in a lot of different ways, but they don't seem to be identical. And Agent Carter and I, we- there hasn't been a lot of time to chat or anything. We've been pretty busy on our own."

"Yeah, I wasn't trying to ... I didn't mean to presume, I just. I guess I, uh. Don't really know what to do in this kind of situation." He glances at her, nervous this time for sure.

You give him a mission, and he's steady as a rock. Faced with himself? He's lost.

"I think I'm -- I mean, I know I'm from later. Down the road. From you. So things maybe are really different. For us," he says, stumbling through every word. He nods, reassuring himself more than anybody else. Eventually he lets his eyes rest on her hands, concentrating on what she's etching. "Agent Carter and I were pretty close, for example. I mean, we were both busy with our own things, but for a little while there ... there wasn't anyone I trusted more."

He can only say that because, by that time, Bucky was ... gone.

For Steph, there's still Bucky, her best friend. Peggy is- Agent Carter has been a blessing, professionally. A woman who understands, or comes closer to it than anyone else on base, blessing is exactly what Steph thinks of her as. But she's still Agent Carter, even while Steph has upgraded from Private to Captain Rogers. Steph trusts her, but more than Bucky?

Maybe just differently.

But Steve sounds so sure, sounds so certain, no one he'd trusted more than Agent Carter.

Steph draws a few more lines, sketched soft and sure against the paper. It takes a moment for her to realize where she's going with it and she stops before the fingers get too tapered, too elegant. Turns it into Bucky's wide, square palms instead.

"We're the only women on base. Not that that's all we talk about but... we were the only women at basic, too. I don't know what you talk about with her and we've got plenty of work to go over, but mostly we're just..." Steph trails off, shrugs. The booth feels too closed in suddenly, even if it's not a real interrogation. She puts a scar on the middle finger of her drawing and wonders if Steve will know who it is by that.

"It's a boys club, is all I mean. I think sometimes it's nice for us not to have to deal with that."

She's excited for the missions, excited to put a team together, damn near gleeful to be out there with Bucky and the rest, doing her part. There hasn't been time to worry or reflect, really, but this right here is reminding her those few sparse moments with Peggy, even with Elena, where they get to lower their shoulders and take off posturing are going to disappear for a long time.

He watches her draw. No, he doesn't really mind her touching his things. What's his is hers, in a way.

A weird way. "Agent Carter was the only acting soldier at basic. She made it pretty clear on the very first day that she was in charge, not by throwing her title around, but by showing that she was just as strong and capable as any of the privates lined up in front of her."

And he respected the hell out of her for it. A lot of them did. He'd be remiss to assume he was the only one who got a giddy sense of pleasure watching her deck Hodge, but he doesn't like to think about other men looking at her the way he looked at her. They couldn't have admired her any more than he did.

The hands come into focus, familiar scar blackened before his eyes.

"Yeah. Yeah, it's a boys' club. One I never would have gotten invited to without Dr. Erskine. I'm sorry, I can't imagine what it's like for you," he says, emanating genuineness. His mother suffered a lot providing for him after his dad died. It wasn't easy, sick kid, bills piling up. "Peggy's a good lady to have on your side, though. No, it's more than that. She's a good soldier to have on your side."

The gender makes no difference in the long run.

The charcoal pauses, Steph's blue eyes soft and unseeing on the sketch. She's seeing plenty without focusing on the paper, listening to words she could be saying herself, memories she has her own fair share of and more.

She darkens the line of that scar, just a touch, glances up and smiles at herself- himself - at Steve. "Thank you. For saying that, calling her a soldier and not a lady. Not that you're doing it for me, not that she ain't both. It's always nice to hear it, though."

Steph pauses, lips twitching, then taps the charcoal on stark white paper and lets her eyes sparkle. "Tell me you saw her punch a loudmouth in basic. Made my whole week."

His mouth edges into a grin, just barely there, when she thanks him. He looks at the table, absently scanning some of his discarded drawings. "She was always more than just a dame to me."

It's quiet, tinged not only with shyness but something else. Longing, maybe. Sadness. He remembers that awkward car trip to the lab, the one where he fell all over himself and she somehow resisted the urge to deck him. She was gorgeous, sure. But then she was smart, and tough, and capable, and Peggy Carter became a friend, and a neighbor, and a comrade.

He laughs, a quick guffaw that has him reaching to rub the back of his neck. "I did. Private Hodge. Sheesh, that guy made me miserable. I don't think a single eye at camp missed that swing. Damn."

Fond memories.

Fond enough to melt the bitterness away. Steph grins back at him, laughs quietly along with the man across from her, one hand pressed to her own cheek. "Hodge, yes, he was terrible at me, too. That swing just-"

caught her eye, made Carter shine, made Steph's heart pound

She stops herself, grins, tucks her hair behind her ear and privately curses fair skin. "It was a great hit, that's all."

The little piece of charcoal is settled down beside the line of Bucky's index finger and Steph lets her eyes wander over the drawings made from Steve's hands.

In among the mass of drawings he's done of the future, there are some he's done from memory. The old neighborhood. A baseball player at bat. His mother's hands. A woman in a red dress. Almond eyes.

He shifts a little in his seat to get comfortable, somewhere in the last few seconds letting his gaze drop with Steph's. He's good at reading a situation, reading people (even when he's terrible at understanding women), and there's something about Steph that makes him think it being a great hit isn't all for her. Like it wasn't all for him, either. She's drawing Bucky's hands, she's lighting up when they talk about Peggy, and it strikes him like a bean ball that the important people in his life are the important people in hers, too. Not that he didn't realize that before, but ... Bucky is his best friend, and Peggy is, well. Peggy.

He squeegees his index finger along the lip of his liqueur glass, and looks at Steph. Maybe Bucky ... maybe Bucky's her best guy, and she's closer friends with Peggy than she makes out like she is. Or maybe ... hell, it could be the other way around. Or maybe it's exactly like Steph says it is, and he's reading too much into things because of what? Nostalgia? Hubris? Or maybe that seed of jealousy he's trying to pretend isn't there, because somewhere out there Bucky and Peggy are just how he left them.

"Yeah. If Hodge had the guts to treat Peggy the way he did, I figure he could be pretty vicious to a lady private. Especially one going for the same assignment." He wets his bottom lip, and smiles crookedly. "I hope you gave him what for if he raised a stink."

Steph laughs, soft, and shakes her head, eyes still roving over his drawings. "Not like Agent Carter did, that's for sure. I'd've loved to, but I was still pretty small at the time."

She pauses, smile soft in pride for the memories - tricks and subterfuge and blackmail when she lacked the necessary muscle.

It fades a little when she catches sight of the hands he's drawn.

Her own hand is large, palm square, but proportionally speaking, the fingers are still long and elegant. Yet Stephanie recognizes her own mother's hands immediately, the gentle strength and comforting warmth she remembers.

It takes her breath away at first, makes her forget Hodge entirely. Bucky and Peggy are in this man's past. It's overwhelming to look at those hands, hands no one else in the world would know well enough to sketch from memory, and realize even that does not belong only to her anymore.

A knowing smile is all the answer he gives to her comment. Steve wouldn't trade his new body back in -- after all, it's because of it he's been able to serve his country the way he has, it's because of Dr. Erskine's faith that he got a chance -- but he misses being small sometimes.

Not getting beat up in alleys. Not getting picked last for dodgeball. But because it was his, and he was comfortable with it, and no matter what the docs said there wasn't anything really wrong with it. His hands were more like his mother's before the serum. He still had his wits to rely on, and his wits were enough.

For a while.

He catches the change in her body language and follows the slant of her eyes. For a second, the hands take his breath away, too. He's already looked at them a million times, but now he's seeing them through her eyes. "Sorry. I should, uh. Probably straighten all these up."

He makes a stack on one side of the table, and runs his hand through his hair. "It's weird, isn't it? Us talking."

She almost protests when he takes them away and is struck by- yes, the weirdness of it. That she would ask for a longer look at a beautiful drawing of her mother's hands, when she's perfectly capable of making a duplicate.

When she'd sat at the table, she'd praised his skill. Something about that wars in her now, feels more like a brag than a compliment, even though she didn't draw them, even though nothing says they draw the same or with equal skill, but...

Steph's really a bit grateful when Steve speaks again and interrupts that line of thought.

"Guess so," she agrees, nodding. A hand lifts - but she catches his movement first, stops herself from touching her hair and curls her hand over her shoulder instead. "I don't really know what we should be talking about. Or shouldn't be."

He catches the movement out of the corner of his eye, instinctively knowing she was about to mimic his own gesture. Except it's not exactly mimicking when you're the same person, it's -- jeepers, it's just being yourself. His hand has stilled, but he stubbornly carries on like he hasn't noticed anything at all, because if they can't be themselves then ... well, what then?

"Should or shouldn't be are the questions I leave up to my superior officers, Captain. If we're ... who we are, family, whatever, then there aren't any secrets we can really keep from each other. Are there?" he says, like he's just thinking out loud. In a weird way, he sort of is. "Not that I'm digging for classified information. Just that ... "

That what?

He clenches his jaw, and lets out a slow breath. "I don't want to make you uncomfortable."

Make us uncomfortable.

Steph doesn't say that. Just thinks it. Looking quietly at the large, gentle man across from her, listening to him trip over his words, struggle with the thoughts and ideas she's struggling with.

What she finds herself saying instead is, "Call me Steph." Flashing a smile, feeling it settle on her lips, outside of the stage and show. "Please.

"I respect the chain of command. I just don't know how much of it counts here, with you already knowing so much that's already classified to me."

Yeah. Make us uncomfortable. He's thinking it, too.

It's a relief when she insists on her first name and flashes him a smile. Maybe for the first time tonight he lets himself relax, and eases into a smile of his own. "Call me Steve."

His hands flick, too subtle to be the old neighborhood gestures used by the Italians and the Jews, too low to the table, too brief, but probably learned from them all the same. Why not? is what they say. Not like there's any reason to stand on formality.

"Why don't we talk about something other than our current missions, then? Like, uh ... How did you find this place? How long have you been coming here?"

The set of her shoulders eases a little with his smile, relaxing out of perfect posture in her chair. He looks a little more real like that, a real person listening to her instead of a Captain or specifically a fella.

He gestures and she mimics the movement in an even briefer motion, in agreement of his meaning. But it takes a moment, a blink, for her to register what they've both done, why they've done.

Her shoulders come down even more, her smile set deep enough to nearly show a dimple. How long's it been since someone said anything with their hands and wasn't laughed at for showing off their borough? Before she went on tour with a bunch of girls from all over the country, that's for sure.

"Brand new, actually," Steph admits, letting the hand on her shoulder curl into her hair, fingers wrapped around a flattening curl of gold. "Just stepped in this morning, one bar to the next. And you?"

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