Re: Log, Paley Park: Peggy C & Steve R
It didn't feel almost 70 years late. It did. But the effect of being near Peggy's person, the crop-dust rising of every warm emotion, it spanned those decades—a timeline the both of them had missed, in a sense. For her, it had been but years; him, months. But, the gulf of time was a difficult one to trace, a puddle could have the depths of eternity splashing under your foot, if you weren't careful to hop over it, and even the greatest of oceans, salt-crested and sterile, could defy you and waste inches deep, a trifle of scum on soles of shoes, the suction of chewing gum that clung and tarred over time.—Steve had missed the woman with the force of all those years, but the kiss placed him firmly in the present. It didn't allow his mind to linger on anything that wasn't the press of her against him, the silly, very public smear of wax like waving bunting on their lips, and the way she stretched up for more leverage.
It was kissing. It was a sensation that went from head to toe, warm, the flush of blood and affection high in cut cheeks, down slope of neck. They were anchored there firmly to this new, terrifying century, but together again, and Steve let his grip tighten, he let one hand slide up the back of that dress, elbow tethered to the small of her back, with a senseless reach for pearling chestnut hair. His natural shyness was subsumed in adrenaline and the warm rush of blood in his ears. He opened his mouth on Peggy's, her pert red, him stained with her, and, maybe it didn't befit the idea of the ever-gallant Captain America, but there was a Depression-borne hungriness to it, something scrawny from the bricked streets of Brooklyn, and there was no hiding that.
He was lost in it. The kiss, the moment, her. His brain registered the fall of the purse, but he didn't stop it. The band kept playing, a song about love in dusty tenor. Of course, Steve Rogers was polite. As polite as one could be, entwined like this, in the manner of what he imagined V-E Day must have been like in the arteries of New York City, all glee, high-running emotions, and relief. He wasn't presumptuous, however. He didn't touch her in any way that was too untoward, just hips and hair and the gentle slant of her back, an earnest, careful grip of large hands..