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The war is loud, but the nights are quiet. Shockingly so, if Steve is honest. There’s so much war that no matter where they are he should hear the percussive shelling of bombs on the countryside, the rapid gunfire that he barely notices anymore, the yelling and screaming of people caught in the crossfire, but it’s silent. He hears the echoes, it’s impossible not to, but underneath that it’s nearly calm. When he lies awake when the rest of the group is asleep—the super-soldier procedure also makes it so he doesn’t tire as easily as a normal person, so he goes to sleep last and wakes up first even on normal nights—there’s almost nothing. Almost like home.
Almost, but not quite. Never close enough that he forgets, but close enough that thoughts of home fester like open wounds.
Peggy is on watch right now, at the front of the warehouse, and he could use the company, so he gets up and creeps down the hallway. No one wakes, and it feels like trust, both a gift and a curse.
She’s in the front room, like she said she would be, but she’s not at attention like he expected, or halfway asleep like most of them are during watch. Instead, she’s sitting in front of a mirror that is miraculously unbroken, positioned to watch the only door so that he sees her in profile.
Peggy is beautiful. There’s no other way to put it, no less respectful word that he has to push out of his mind instead. Just… beautiful. The way that the shadows dapple in her curves and the planes of her face, the fire in her eyes when she’s in the mission, the elegant and powerful way that she strides upon the battlefield, her voice when she calls a plan or commands respect, all of it. All of it together, when one piece by itself would be enough to make a normal man swoon, is damn unfair. If one of these days he gets himself killed staring at her, it will be a good way to go.
He must move, because in a second she spins around, hand going towards her waist where he knows there’s a handgun; they freeze at the same time. He feels much closer to her than he is and much further away at the same time, as if she’s already a photograph and he got caught looking at it.
But photographs don’t compare to the real thing, when she softens and her hand moves back to her lap. “Did I wake you up?”
He shakes his head and walks towards her so they can talk easier. “Couldn’t sleep anyways.” He doesn’t do it a lot of the time, these days, with Bucky gone, but she doesn’t know that.
She doesn’t need to, it turns out, from the small but sympathetic smile she gives him before she shifts back to her mirror. She doesn’t pay him any more attention when he comes up to stand next to her, where he can see what she’s actually doing. There’s more on the table than he expected: all kinds of makeup, a brush, bobby pins and ribbons, a couple more mirrors, some scissors he can’t guess what she needs for.
And bandages. He tries to be casual when he looks her over for the shrapnel cuts that size of bandage would be for, since she didn’t bring it up for a reason. It takes him a minute to find them: a couple angry red scratches at the base of her neck and shoulder. He can’t remember if he’s ever seen that part of Peggy uncovered and it kind of stalls his thought in its tracks for a good second.
“Something wrong, Captain?” Peggy says, a little sharper than usual.
“You didn’t say you got caught in that grenade.” Thank God his tongue still works. His brain didn’t come up with that.
“It’s just a few scratches. Not anything I need a medic for.” Peggy gives him a look he recognizes well, the mind-yourself look that says she doesn’t really believe him. Or that he’s overstepping his bounds. It’s usually one of the two.
But this is Peggy, and he wants to help. He wants to be near her, for a little bit longer, when he can pretend there isn’t a war going on to stop them. So before she can grab them herself, he does. “At least let me help you with them. It’s a hard spot to reach.”
Peggy gives him another disbelieving look, but it’s paired with the wry smile that gives him butterflies in his stomach. “Fine.” She adjusts herself in her seat—he sees the shadows in the hollows of her throat move as she swallows—and pulls her hair back from her neck so he can see clearer. “I guess it’s better if they don’t get infected.”
“Nasty business, infections,” Steve agrees, pressing one down on her shoulder as gently as he can. “I can’t tell you how many I got when I was a kid.”
“Did your bullies throw you in the river?”
“Not quite. Buck got to them before they got that far. But there was plenty of dirt in my bruised knees anyways.”
“Now why doesn’t that surprise me?” Peggy stops talking, seems to hold her breath, when he presses one onto her skin further up, on her throat. When he presses against it, he thinks for a second he can feel her pulse there, and only the knowledge that Peggy is holding her breath makes him pull back. She exhales heavily, eyes meeting his, and he’s not sure he’s breathing anymore for a second… and then she ducks her head. “Thank you. That… would’ve been difficult to reach.”
Steve clears his throat. “No problem. Glad there’s something I can help with.”
Peggy laughs like she finds the idea funny, opening up her makeup and looking in it for a second before selecting a shade that looks close to her natural color before powdering the brush. “I’ve done all of this by myself plenty of times, Steve. But thank you anyways.”
She definitely has. There’s a practiced, easy air to how she powders the brush and starts to lighten up one of the bruises on her neck, camouflaging the bandage he just applied. Maybe she’s been doing this the entire war, he realizes, less flashy than the girls at home but no less good at it. It seems an odd skill, in a warzone.
“I have a question I probably shouldn’t be asking,” he starts.
“Then ask it,” Peggy says, pausing what she’s doing for a second to inspect herself in the mirror to see if it looks natural. Steve nods to tell her that if he didn’t see her doing it he wouldn’t know it was makeup and she smiles slightly, tired but open. “I promise not to pull a gun on you this time.”
Steve laughs once before he remembers the others sleeping and stops himself. “Thanks. Um… I was just wondering why you’re doing… this.” He gestures to the makeup, unsure what to call it. Clearly it’s not just about beauty to her. Peggy is pragmatic to a fault.
She sighs, pulling out her eyeliner and carefully applying it. “Because if I don’t, I won’t look… put-together. Like I’m capable.” She pauses a second, pursing her lips, and then gives him a sour smile. “I’ll look like a girl.”
“You don’t think they’ll listen to a girl.”
“I think they barely listen to a woman,” Peggy says derisively, giving another careful line of black to her eyelids. Satisfied, she stops and lowers it, probably waiting for it to dry. “And I’m not about to cost us the war because someone questioned me at the wrong time.”
Steve snorts before he can stop himself. He regrets it when she glowers at him, formidable once more, and he puts his hands up. “I don’t think you’ve seen yourself when you’re on the job, Peggy. If someone questions you, they don’t do it twice.”
She looks taken aback, but the smile she gives him when she glances at him is worth it. “Thank you,” she says softly, “But… not everyone is like you, Steve.”
So many people look at him like he’s a miracle, or tell him that he’s special, but it’s different when Peggy says it. She’s not looking at his uniform when she does, but into his eyes—like almost no one did, before he took the serum. She says it as if she believes it, and when Peggy says something she makes it a fact. It makes him feel warm inside. It banishes the war a little further from his mind.
“Thanks,” he says back.
Peggy smiles to herself, pulling her hair back over her ears and starting to braid it. She does it by muscle memory, barely looking at the mirror, her deft fingers pulling the strands apart. He barely thought to admire her with her hair down, he realizes. A lost opportunity. She didn’t feel softer without it or anything else he heard in romances. She was just Peggy.
Maybe that’s better.
“Do you want help with that?” he offers on an impulse.
She pauses, a bit of confusion on her face, which he’s pretty sure means yes. Steve inches towards her so she can change her mind and carefully takes the strands from her. It’s been a while since he got to do something soft, he realizes with a pang. When was the last time he held a pencil instead of a gun?
It comes back to him, his own muscle memory, and he speeds up. Peggy wordlessly hands him a bobby pin when he pauses, as if they’re in sync in the silence. He can’t bear to look at her face when she watches him work or he’ll lose his nerve and he doesn’t want to break this peace.
“You’re better at this than I expected,” Peggy says, and now it sounds like she’s the one treading carefully. “Did you… do this for girls at home?”
“No girls at home,” Steve reminds her, focusing on the movements that his fingers are making so he doesn’t make a mistake. Easier to focus on that than on Peggy, sitting in front of him, staring at him in the mirror as if she’s memorizing him. “Just… my mom. She put her hair up before she went to work and sometimes I did it for her while she was working on something else.”
Peggy’s quiet for a moment. “You don’t talk about her.”
His throat burns. “Nothing to talk about,” he admits. “She was amazing, and… she’s gone now.”
“…I’m sorry to hear that.”
It’s easier to talk about than he expected, if he’s honest. The fresher pain of Bucky’s fall is closer, so the tears for his mother feel like a lifetime away. He was a different person, then—different but the same, no matter what the others say. Peggy would understand, if he said it out loud, but when he sees her shining eyes the words dissipate. He doesn’t need to say them for her to understand.
“Thanks.” He takes another bobby pin from her, holding it in his mouth when one of the strands falls so he can corral it back into place at the nape of her neck. His fingers brush skin, and he has to fight the irrational impulse to press against it. Just to feel her skin, for just a moment, what is wrong with him? He curls his hand into a fist for a second to get himself back into the present. “It’s… nice to be able to do this for somebody, actually.”
“Captain America the hairdresser,” Peggy says affectionately. “That would make a good business.”
Steve laughs in spite of himself. “People would come from miles around for a haircut.”
“They would come from across the country.” Peggy laughs, too, but it doesn’t last long. If Steve focuses, he thinks he could hear bombs, so he deliberately watches her and pushes it away. Peggy hears them, too, so her expression turns wistful, a little afraid. “Maybe after the war.”
After the war. He’s barely thought about an ‘after’, when it feels as if it consumes so much of him. If he’s honest, he didn’t know Peggy was thinking about an after, either. She just burns so bright that it’s difficult not to picture her on a battlefield—although that’s a cruel thought, too. No one wants to live their life in war. Certainly not him. There has to be an after.
“What do you want to do after the war?” he asks her quietly. It feels almost sacrilegious, saying the words in enemy territory, surrounded by soldiers who follow him as a symbol of the war. But he trusts Peggy. The door is open, now, and he can’t bear to close it.
She hums quietly, leaning back in her chair so he can reach her hair easier; his hands slow automatically. He doesn’t want to finish braiding now, if she’s relaxing, and he freezes altogether when she sighs. “I don’t know,” she admits. “Maybe… Maybe travel. See the free world, all the… the beauty in it.” She pauses, debates a second. “…Find some way to keep it that way, so this doesn’t happen again.”
It’s so noble, so Peggy, that it makes him smile. She doesn’t belong on a battlefield, but he should have expected that someone like Peggy wouldn’t be content stepping back just because the job was done. “You’d be good at that,” he says. “If someone can keep this from happening again… I think it would be you.”
Peggy closes her eyes for a second before meeting his gaze in the mirror, seeing if he means it; when he doesn’t falter—he doesn’t lie, and especially not to her—she gives a quiet, self-satisfied laugh. “Thank you,” she murmurs, passing him another bobby pin. The last one, Steve thinks a little mournfully, and she knows it too so she holds onto it so their fingers have to brush. She’s so damn warm, even that little bit of her. Like standing in the middle of a sunset.
“But before all of that,” she murmurs, “Don’t forget that you owe me a dance.”
She lets him have the bobby pin. He damn near drops it, but somehow keeps a hold and threads it carefully in to hold the end of the braid in place.
“I’d never forget,” he admits, and only realizes how vulnerable that sounds when his voice nearly cracks against his will. He clears his throat and makes himself let go of the last wisp of hair, stepping back from her. The possibilities are so bright they’re blinding, suddenly, as if the sun has risen while he’s been in the dark for so long he started to go blind. Not just the dance, all of it. Doing Peggy’s hair just like this before they go out to a dancefloor with no bombs on the horizon. Taking her hand without needing an excuse, holding it when they’re not running for their lives. Going to a place no one knows either of them, the world theirs for the taking, all of it beautiful and bright and free. He wants to draw her silhouetted against skylines he’s never seen before and not care if she sees him watching. All of it, all of it so close and yet so far.
“After the war,” he echoes, not sure why it comes out flat. He’s not a defeatist, they will win—but why does it feel so far away? He needs to make it real, give her something to hold onto too. “We’ll dance and pick a place on the map and go and… and I’ll show you my sketchbook I left at home.”
There’s a twist to Peggy’s lips that say she feels it, too. The bombs are louder, he thinks. That might be it, puncturing the fantasy, bracing them for the day ahead. “I’d like that,” she murmurs, and abruptly straightens in the chair again so they’re not touching anymore. “You… You should probably go get the others up.”
Steve gives her a last smile even though she’s not looking at him anymore. “Yes, ma’am,” he murmurs, getting a wisp of a chuckle from her, and turns back towards where the rest of the group is sleeping. If he brushes his fingers together, he can feel the warmth of her skin still.
Peggy watches him all the way down the hallway. As if she’s memorizing him. As if he’s fading away as the sun rises and the war comes back into frame.
After. After.