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God, she still looks amazing in red.
Peggy’s not the only one in the color, not on Christmas Eve, but she’s glowing tonight, the rich crimson of her dress and lips perfectly matched and truly striking with her creamy skin and dark hair. Steve leans on the railing, holding a drink he'll never feel just for something to do with his hands, and smiles as he watches her flit around the SHIELD/Avengers holiday party.
He's got to admit, Stark sure knows how to throw a fancy shindig. The company tonight is much better than the rooms full of senators or rich donors they sometimes have to make nice with - because some things never change - but Steve still isn't good at parties. It never quite feels like he's supposed to be there, if he's honest. Captain America, sure, but not Steve from Brooklyn. Peggy though, she fits right in, smiling and laughing as she moves through the crowd, looking so at ease here in this glitzy future in a way he isn't, yet.
It’s been a few months since he'd woken up in 2012 and a few weeks less since he'd learned Peggy had beaten him here, when two little words had knocked him for a loop nearly as bad as discovering he'd missed almost 70 years.
“Hello, soldier.”
Stunned, Steve had dug a ten out of his billfold and wordlessly handed it to Fury. “Surprise” was putting it mildly - that was a voice he had never expected to hear again. But there she was, quirking an amused eyebrow at him on the bridge of a flying aircraft carrier as though this was precisely where they ought to be.
He had finally stammered out the question - how? She'd looked as fierce and as beautiful as he remembered, but modern (futuristic, his mind wanted to say) too, dressed in the same jumpsuit as the other SHIELD agents he'd met, her hair in a sleeker style than she'd worn it during the war. Her lips still sported her signature red, though, and the detail made him smile.
“Oh, nothing terribly exciting,” she'd replied, smiling back. Clearly she had been briefed on his arrival in the future; even Peggy wasn't that unflappable. “Fought the good fight, helped to found SHIELD, caught the wrong end of a spell from a bloody wizard, of all things, in ‘49 and blinked 60 years into the future. Fortunately for me, SHIELD had a lot of time to get used to weird while I was out.”
“Speaking of weird,” Fury had interjected, “I didn't exactly bring everyone here for you two to catch up, Cap. We've got a situation.”
After that, it was all aliens and portals for awhile.
And after that, Steve had time to realize the obvious fact her very abbreviated story was glossing over - it had been seven years, for her. Four then and three now to start a new life, twice, in which she had no expectation of ever seeing him again. She'd had time to mourn losing him, then to mourn losing everything, and somehow come through it all as brilliant and as blazingly alive as the woman he'd fallen for a lifetime ago. She seems happy here, and he's so proud of her for it. For all she made light of it, he knows firsthand that can't have come easy.
He is so grateful for her friendship, these days, to have someone who shares his bizarre life experience and understands all the little things that still trip him up. Working with Peggy again feels like slipping into a comfortable pair of shoes, when so much else in his life chafes and pinches in the places that don't quite fit right. He doesn't want to jeopardize that easy friendship for anything, and so he tries to ignore the stubborn parts of his heart that wish they could pick up where they left off as if there weren't seven or seventy years in between.
She's never indicated she feels the same way, after so much time, and he won't hold her to what she might have felt back then. Whatever else they might have almost been, she's his friend. One desperate last-minute kiss aside, they'd never made promises to each other, really, except the one for a dance, at the very end.
Well, he thinks, here's a band and a dance floor. And maybe it's sentimental of him, but it’s Christmas Eve, and that promise, at least, Steve can keep. He squares his shoulders and heads for the stairs.
God, she cannot keep her eyes off him.
Not for lack of spectacle to compete for her attention, mind. Tony's parties are - like his father's, though Peggy knows better these days than to draw the comparison - glittering and raucous things, full of beautiful people and just a bit too much of everything. Tasteful excess, she supposes you could call it, but somehow, to her, Steve is the brightest spot in the room. He's up on the balcony now, crisp dress shirt accenting those broad shoulders. He’s worn a lovely bottle green tonight, rather than one of his usual blues, presumably in honour of the holiday. He leans against the rail and watches the room with a slight smile, not quite removed from the festivities, just… apart.
She's reminded of that evening in London, right at the beginning of it all. Sure there was a war on, and perhaps it was foolish, but she'd put on her best dress and drawn seams up her legs and marched herself down to the pub. The men were exuberant and boisterous, toasting “the Captain” and their new team. They hadn't really known, any of them, just what they’d be getting into, but it had been a night of triumph and respite from the cruel slog of the war, and they'd grabbed hold of it with both hands. All except Steve, off to the side, having a quiet drink with the best friend he'd risked everything for. Not immune to the celebratory mood, to be sure, just reserved. He was pressed and polished and looked absolutely divine in his dress uniform, and she had thrilled at the way he lit up when she walked in and flirted back when they spoke. She left him with a smile and the idea of a dance, after. Later, much later, she would wish she'd just stayed and grabbed hold of something good that night herself.
They all felt invincible in those days, taking on the world and winning against the odds, but they were also too superstitious to talk much about what might come in that after. It had all been so rushed and heady, emotions heightened by the uncertainty of it all, that making promises aloud felt like it might jinx it. Maybe that's why there had only ever been the one kiss, right at the end, and his too-late promise of that dance before she lost him forever.
But fate had laughed at forever and hurtled them both into the future. After he'd been brought back - to her, a part of her mind insisted - she found in herself a fervent hope that they might pick up where they left off. Now she wonders if perhaps she had romanticized those heady days in her memory after all. Working with him again feels as effortless as it ever did. In the last few months Steve has become, once more, a brilliant ally and dear friend, but he has never brought up that first and final kiss or what they might have been to each other, once upon a time. She suspects he never will, but she's decided to grab hold of an opportunity herself. It’s been years since the war, and perhaps it's foolish, but tonight she's put on her best dress again and come to collect on a very old promise.
She darts her gaze up to the balcony again, but he's no longer there. If she's missed her chance in reminiscing, she will kick herself with these dreadfully expensive shoes. Steady on, Carter, she thinks, you came this far, now go and find him.
She never gets the chance.
“I know it's not the Stork Club,” says that lovely baritone she could never mistake, “but believe I once promised you a dance.”
Peggy replies without conscious thought as she turns, “you're late.” She instantly recalls having said that before, and knows he remembers too when chagrin flashes over his face. Couldn't call my ride, he'd said then, with something like a challenge dancing in his eyes.
“Let me make it up to you?” he asks now, with a wistful little smile, and that won't do at all. She reaches out to grab hold of his hand, echoing her past self deliberately this time.
“What are you waiting for?”
For the right partner, he'd told her back then.
For you, he thinks now.
Dancing with Peggy, he finds, is as natural as falling into step with her in the field or the training room. He's always been captivated by the way she moves, all soft curves over steel, and perfectly in control of herself. Now all that purposeful grace is in his arms, moving in perfect response to his tentative lead. Backwards and in heels, he thinks, impressed and so, so glad to finally find himself here. He could do this all night.
He feels himself growing steadier the longer they move together. The band plays on as they glide together across the dance floor, and Steve never wants this moment to end. He almost forgets the rest of the party until he hears a whine above the music and looks up. One of Stark’s little robots is hovering overhead, blinking red and green lights and dangling -
“Is that mistletoe?” asks Peggy. He looks down to answer… something, probably, but when he meets her eyes, his mind blanks out and his heart skips a beat at some emotion he can't quite read sparkling there. She licks her lips. He knows he's staring. “Well. Wouldn't want to risk more bad luck now, would we, Steve?”
And he's told himself not to assume and tried not to overstep, but it's Christmas Eve and they're finally dancing, seventy years in the future and a hundred stories over Manhattan, under Tony Stark’s flying mistletoe, so he does what he's been aching to do since that first moment on the helicarrier and closes the distance between his lips and hers.
The kiss is soft and chaste and almost bittersweet, but then Peggy parts her lips and presses in and he opens with a little gasp as it turns deep and hungry. Never mind dancing, he could do this forever. Peggy tastes like champagne and kisses like a wildfire, and his head spins with the wild hope that maybe, maybe he'll get a second chance at this too. They finally break the kiss off and just stand there wrapped in one another for a long moment, only a breath apart and the air between them charged.
They both jump when someone nearby whoops.
Steve feels his face heat at the realization that they've just locked lips in front of most of their friends and colleagues, when another thought occurs to him. “Do I have…?” he gestures at his mouth, but Peggy just laughs.
“Lipstick's better in this century,” she informs him. “This one claims to be kiss-proof, though I’ll admit I hadn't tested it before now.” Steve doesn't know what to do with that. He hardly knows what to do at all. She gives him that soft sparkling look again, though, and this time he thinks he might know what it means. “Darling, why didn't you ever say?”
“It’s been so long for you,” he admits, “so I didn't want to assume… and besides, we never really said before, either, so...”
She brings a hand to his cheek, and he cuts off his rambling explanation to press a tender kiss to the base of her palm. “We were fools back then,” she declares, with her usual, wonderful, bluntness, “and we've been fools now, but we needn't be foolish any longer.”
“Peggy, I'm so sorry I was late,” he tells her, overcome with just how lucky he is to be here, now, with her, after everything.
Peggy's smile is brilliant, and fond, and exactly the Christmas gift he hadn't dared hope for. “No matter, darling. No time like the present - dance with me again?”
The band plays something slow.
He doesn't step on her toes.