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The long trek up the mountain would be over soon, or so the Captain said, but Hermione could swear its rocky peak kept moving away the more they walked. An optical illusion, she supposed, because it wasn’t like the American hero to be dishonest. In fact, she could swear that in the few weeks they had been working together, she had not once caught him in a lie. So, with that in mind, she refused to complain about the pace, the lack of breaks, or her terribly sore feet. The Captain had been kind enough to volunteer to lead her in the middle of nowhere, after all, so the least she could do was not be a whiny hindrance about it and do her best to keep up.
However, when he finally signalled a halt for the night, she was so relieved she took off her walking boots before setting up the magical tent. Steve gave her a strange look, but didn’t otherwise comment, bless him. However, her poor feet felt like they had swollen to about twice their size and they were throbbing with pain, but, thankfully, she had no more new blisters to make her life hell. New walking boots would go on her list of worse ideas, but since she had not owned a pair of old boots that had already been broken in, she'd had little choice about it.
The grass and clover in the little clearing tickled her naked feet as she walked around, casting spells at the tent. A better one than the tent she had borrowed from Mr Weasley during their war-time misadventures, mostly because it didn’t smell musty and had no forgotten Wizarding Wheezes lurking in the corners.
“All done,” Hermione told Steve, just as he returned from his walk around the perimeter. “Saw anything?”
“Just a bear.” Hermione blanched. American wildlife was as scary as the magical one in Scotland. “Don’t worry. It was going downstream.”
“I’ll just add a few more protective spells,” Hermione mumbled with a longing look at the interior of the tent, her favourite spot on the sofa just begging for her to sit down her weary body.
But she did her duty, then dragged her sore feet like a zombie to her seat and fell into it.
“I'm sorry,” the Captain said. “I would have stopped earlier but there were no good locations to set up camp.”
“It’s fine. A good night’s sleep and I’ll be right as rain. It’s my feet that are killing me. I don’t think I have ever walked this much before. Us magical folk are notoriously lazy, you know? It takes a really bad set of circumstances for a place not to be reachable by any magical means.”
“I could carry you,” Steve offered.
Hermione blushed at the thought. She would have to be blind not to have noticed his bulging muscles. She cleared her throat, forcing her eyes to linger elsewhere.
“I’m sure you could,” Hermione replied primly. “But I don’t think I could live down the embarrassment.”
Steve chuckled.
“Yeah, can’t blame you. I hated it when Bucky carried me around like a puppy. Let me help at least,” he said with a gesture of his hand towards her feet.
Hermione looked uncomprehendingly between them and him. His smile was lopsided and he shrugged.
“Used to do it all the time with the guys. We’d be stranded far behind enemy lines, just us in the middle of nowhere. A shoulder or foot rub could do wonders at the end of the day. I’ve gotten pretty good at it.”
Hermione tried to imagine Steve giving Dum-Dum Dugan a foot rub, but failed miserably. The image simply did not fit what she had read in history books.
“I’ll… uh… have to take your word for it.”
On the other hand, Steve massaging Bucky Barnes’ shoulders… she swallowed, feeling her cheeks heat up. Yeah, she could totally picture that. However, Steve must have mistaken her dubious answer for agreement, because he reached for her right foot, dropping it into his lap before he began massaging it between his warm hands. She should have protested, but it felt too good, the pain melting away with every stroke. All she could do was lean back in her seat and close her eyes, but don’t moan, oh Merlin, keep your mouth shut…
Her left foot soon joined the other, and if she didn’t quit moan, she sighed in relief, making him chuckle.
“Alright,” she admitted. “You are good at this. And now that I know your deepest, darkest secret, expect me to take advantage of it whenever I have to wear heels.”
“It’ll be my pleasure, Ma’am,” he replied easily.
Hermione chanced an eye open. Steve looked completely at ease, rubbing her feet absent-mindedly as he relaxed in the chair facing hers, although he couldn’t be completely at ease in his uniform. In fact, she rarely saw him relax at all. He was always on the lookout for trouble, always ready to spring into action, up early, needing little sleep… Honestly, working with him was kind of exhausting and she felt guilty for not being able to keep up, even with magic. She was half tempted to take a blood sample from him to see if she could replicate the serum that had given him peak physical abilities as a potion, but she also realized how dangerous it would be to give anyone that much power, so she shelved the thought in the very bad ideas section.
"You want me to make dinner?" Steve asked. "I don't mind."
Because on top of being physically perfect, the man had also insisted on a fair share of the chores, unlike what she'd had to do with Harry and Ron while they were in the run, which was just about everything.
"That's fine. I can do it from here."
She knew she was showing off, just a little, but she didn't want him to do more than he already was, and neither did she want him to stop his current foot massage. So potatoes began peeling themselves in the air, while pots and pans banged a few times against one another on their way to the stove. Soon, she had a stew simmering slowly on the fire. Had she chosen a long cooking dish on purpose?
Yep. She totally had, and she refused to feel guilty about it. Besides, it wasn't like the good Captain seemed to mind. He had been watching with awe the kitchen come alive, taking everything in as he continued to massage her feet, his fingers sometimes sliding higher up her ankle to her delight. She almost dropped the carrots when she imagined his hands exploring even higher.
"I'll… uhm… set up the table," Steve said , carefully setting aside her feet as if she was made of crystal.
Hermione stared at his retreating back. Had he sounded reluctant, or was that wishful thinking on her part? Should she even go down that path while they were on a mission? She shook her head and dismissed the idea. Him interested in someone like her ? No need to get her hopes up.
"You should make stew more often. It's really tasty," Steve said when he had emptied his third serving, cleaning off his plate with more bread.
"I think I should do more stew more often," she chuckled, sending the empty casserole to wash itself.
"I don't think I'll ever get tired of seeing magic. My mother used to tell me fairy tales from Ireland, of the tricks the fae and leprechauns would play on humans if you weren't careful. Those stories scared me so much, but I never told her because I just liked hearing her talk about her home country." He smiled, ducking his head a little as if he hadn't meant to share so much. "It's funny to think those stories might have been true."
"I have seen leprechauns," Hermione said. "They rained gold on a whole stadium, but it turned to mud later on."
Steve's former embarrassment melted, pure joy lighting his face.
"Sounds like something they would do. Is the creature you're looking for anything like that?"
"I'm not sure it's sentient, no. The reports that were recovered were incomplete and contradictory."
"Sounds dangerous. Are you sure you should be going there alone."
"I'm not alone," she said with a grin.
"You know what I mean. I don't have magic to help you."
"I'm pretty sure you could punch a Dementor into oblivion, so you're good."
"A Dementor?" he tilted his head. "I don't think I've ever heard of those."
"Soul sucking creatures. They're vile. Evil."
"And you faced one of those?"
"Several."
Her lips turned downwards at the memory. The mere thought of them was enough to suck out what happiness she was feeling, until Steve's warm hand covered her own across the table, his thumb lightly caressing her wrist, pulling her out of her grim thoughts.
"I'd say you're all set then. If you can stand against such creatures, you can face anything."
Hermione was momentarily lost for words. She blinked owlishly at the perfect man sitting in front of her. Now she knew how Ginny had felt all these years when confronted with the Boy-Who-Lived in the flesh, her childhood crush come to life. Hermione pulled her hand back and made some excuse of getting ready for bed. She refused to objectify Captain America in such a way. Since she had met him, and even more now that he had accepted to accompany her on this long expedition into the wilderness, Steve had been nothing but kind and gentlemanly. She really needed to stop drooling over his looks.
The next morning, Steve was already up and about, as usual. She surmised he was doing a round of the perimeter again because his shield was absent. Hermione helped herself to the still warm coffee Steve had brewed and returned to her seat. She patted down the cushion when something hard poked her in the side, and she pulled out a notebook. She frowned as she examined it, because it wasn't one of hers, yet she hadn't seen it in Steve's hands either, so she flipped it open, only to realize it wasn't a notebook at all, but a sketchbook filled with beautiful, lively sketches.
Starting from page one, she turned the pages and realized it followed their trek up the mountain: the warning sign at the beginning of the trail with the claw marks, the tree that had looked like a seductive siren beckoning the hikers off the path, that first clearing by a stream they had stopped at, the magical tent from the outside and the inside, the squirrel which had wandered into the kitchen to beg for scraps of food and then her heart almost stopped when she flipped several more pages and saw her own face, then another sketch of her hand holding her wand, looking more elegant and graceful than she thought possible… Hermione skipped through the pages, noting that the more she progressed, the more she eclipsed the wildlife and mountainous scenery.
At the very end, she saw a drawing of her foot, of her lazily cooking by magic from her seat, of her hand once more, in his…
"You weren't supposed to see those."
The sketchbook flew in the air she was so startled, but she caught it on the way back down before it could get damaged.
"I'm sorry! I didn't mean to! I just wanted to know who it belonged to, but once I started looking… You're very talented. I...uhm…" she licked her lips, wondering how she could say she was a hell of a lot in said drawings without sounding either smug or suspicious.
Why did she appear so often? She didn't know any artists, so she didn't know if it was just an inspiration sort of thing, like a muse. It seemed like a rational explanation, but the blush creeping up Steve's neck told her it might be something else.
"Maybe it's for the best," he said, and there was no mistaking that, or the few steps he took to stand in front of her. "Do you know what I was doing?"
"Patrolling?" she guessed, confused where the conversation was going all of a sudden.
"No. Well, yes, but I was also trying to contact Nat," he said, pulling a telephone like device from his back pocket.
"Did you use that inside the protective wards?"
Steve bit back an impish smile.
"You fried it, didn't you? I'm sure I mentioned no technology in the enchanted areas."
"Probably. I'm sure we won't need it. What I meant to say is that I needed to contact Nat because I'm running out of ideas to woo you and it's driving me crazy."
"Woo me ?"
"Flirt? Seduce? Whatever people call it today."
"No, I know what wooing means," she laughed, then realization hit. "Oh, so that's what you were doing! I thought you were just being really, really nice. I mean, you've always been so nice, even when we just met."
"That's what I was afraid of."
"Well, to be fair, you are."
At that moment, she finally understood the enormity of what Steve was saying. Steve, Mr Perfect, the guy who could steal any woman's, or man's, heart with just a smile. Like he had with hers.
And there she was slouched in her armchair, in her pajamas, with her hair untamed and cuddling a lukewarm cup of coffee in one hand and what amounted to basically looking through his diary in the other. Not only was he mad, but Steve was blind, too.
"I- I'm not ready for this," she stuttered, standing abruptly.
"Oh," Steve replied, face falling as if she had just murdered a flock of Pigmy-puffs to summon the next dark lord.
"I mean, you can't just spring that on someone who just crawled out of bed. At least let me get a bra on before laying that kind of news on me."
Steve's gaze dropped down, then back up immediately. Hermione pushed the sketchbook into his hands and fled to her bedroom, doing quick work of making herself presentable. When she returned, Steve had not moved an inch
"Steve?" she called out, wondering if he had been petrified somehow, but when he shifted around, he had a goofy smile playing about his lips.
"That wasn't a no," he said.
Hermione scoffed. As if anyone would say no to him… although, she supposed that once upon a time, before the serum, people probably had, despite him being as beautiful on the inside as he was on the outside. Maybe he was actually as insecure as she was? The idea seemed preposterous, yet, it sure would explain a lot.
"So… what was the next step on your witch-wooing plan?" she asked.
"Thought you'd never ask," Steve replied, dropping his sketchbook as he advanced on her with predatory intent.