therighttime | AU Milliways

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?"

Steph isn't anything like the USO girls, and Steve's rather glad about that. Not that they weren't ... nice. That is, they had really nice attributes. And he means more than just the outfits that showed off their great curves and shapely gams, because he still can't admire a woman without turning pink and feeling the need to apologize for himself. Steph's from the neighborhood, like Peggy. Despite Steve's ability to be a complete heel in the company of remarkable women, it's inescapably comforting.

He bobs his head. "It's only been a few months for me. I thought it was, uh. Normal." That one's hard to explain without getting into the seventy-year nap that landed him in the future. "Part of my new station. Guess that tells you something, huh?"

His lips screw up in a hapless grin. He watches her muss her curls. Even that is strangely comforting, but for different reasons. "I was walking through a revolving door, and suddenly: bar."

"Normal, huh?" Steph echoes, and looks over at the bar, teeming with all sorts of folks, all sorts of clothing and unfamiliar items strewn everywhere.

A waitrat passes and chirps cheerfully at them both. Steph quirks a smile and waves.

When she looks at Steve again, it's with a grin. "Sounds like life just gets more and more interesting for you."

He's amused. It's not the flash of perfectly straight white teeth and crinkled eyes of earlier, caught in a laugh over a great memory, but something distinctly more intimate. That slightly crooked, slightly deprecating cock of his mouth, the way his eyebrows arch, his head tilts.

"Uh, yeah," he chuffs. "I don't think of this place as normal, I think of my assignment as really, really weird. It's, uh. Someplace we've never been. Or I've never been, anyway. It's almost like another world."

He shrugs, nodding toward the Window. It's not on the level of The End of the Universe; this genuinely is another world, far away from the Brooklyn of nineteen-thirty-nine. "Decent assignment, though. Still fighting for freedom. Uh, sometimes it's nice to take off the cowl and wear a pair of sneakers, though. Nobody here looks at Captain America twice."

Steph smiles back. Mouth closed and lips quirked, the crinkling of her eyes showing true amusement, but far from nostalgic laughter. His explanation is perfectly vague but Steph can see the wisdom in that, and no reason to push.

Someplace we've never been. 'Almost like another world' sums up how she felt running through the Italian forest while bombs were dropped around her, not a street lamp in sight. Not even Central Park ever got that dark.

She follows his gaze to the window but doesn't really look at it. Glad that in her future, even a strange possibly unlikely future, there are decent assignments. Glad that Steve smiles when he talks about his life.

Nobody here looks at Captain America twice.

Steve is a handsome man. Stephanie thinks about that for a moment while planets explode before her eyes.

"What's your uniform look like?" she blurts - and there's a flutter of her hands, pink staining her cheeks as her brain catches up with her mouth. That flutter of hands might have been to snatch the words out of the air as much as just politely covering her mouth.

"I'm sorry, I just meant - it made sense in my head, really."

Edited 2013-10-10 21:06 (UTC)

His attention snaps back to her, but he doesn't look alarmed. Just curious.

"No, it's okay. It's ... I mean, you know what it's like to wear it," he says, waving his hand to make up for the words he can't quite put in order. A you get it, you understand, it's not really prying when you've been there. He doesn't know Steph, but then he knows her far too well. His normal discomfort with the pomp and circumstance of his given title, his stage name, isn't present. "It's, um. Well, it's a kind of rubber, I guess. And like a ... spandex." He breathes a laugh, and rubs the back of his head. "I've got a star on my chest, it's all red, white, and blue. Belt, shield."

Coming from 21st century New York, anything less than constant attention feels like anonymity. He might be exaggerating when he says no one here recognizes him, but nobody's calling him on the phone looking for interviews, following him up and down the street with cameras, asking for autographs ... well, there was that one time. And when it comes to the attention he gets from the ladies ... that's still all over strange.

Steph is still red in the face, mortified more by the rudeness of her phrasing than the question itself. Her hand stays up, palm against her chin and fingertips at her lips, listening to what he says. She listens to the description and her response might be a little strange.

She blinks and looks at him, frowning thoughtfully. Rubber and spandex?

"So it's..."

There's really no way to ask this politely.

She hesitates for a moment, then folds her hands on top of the table between them, hesitant. "I kind of feel like if we're going to talk about the uniform," Steph begins, quiet, "I should really buy you more schnapps."

He barks with laughter, and it sort of ... feels good. It feels lighter than he's felt in months.

"Good idea," he says with a bob of his head, waving over the waitrat that walked past a few moments ago. "I've got a feeling if I ask you the same question, you're going to want some alcohol in your system -- oh, hey, could we have two more of these?"

The last sentence is directed at the rat as Steve picks up the empty shot glass. Its whiskers twitch, and then it chitters affirmatively and takes their empty glasses.

AU Milliways

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