InsaneJournal

Tweak says, "Damn the man, save the Empire."

s (atrophy) wrote in rooms,
@ 2015-02-20 05:08:00

Entry tags:

!marvel comics, *log, peggy carter, steve rogers

Log, Paley Park: Peggy C & Steve R
Who: Peggy Carter & Steve Rogers
What: a wish come true
Where: Marvel; Paley Park, NYC
When: the 14th
Warnings/Rating: probably toothachey sweetness

Please dress nicely, the card had said. So he had. Distracted as anything, he didn't notice he'd missed a button or two on his (very) white button-down. After all, he'd just gotten off the phone with Peggy(!), but before he could meet her, he'd been tasked with helping with... well, whatever this was going to be. Maybe he would have bowed out—politely, of course—but as the clock approached eight, he felt like maybe he should just go—he felt it like it was germinated from his own gut, like he wanted it, instead of some strange compulsion. It would be an hour or so, and then it would be over, and he could wait at Stark Tower for Peggy.—Of course, his attendance didn't ensure that anything other a physical presence, because, even as he walked through the buffeting of February in New York, wind slicing through his heavy leather coat, through woolen mittens, through the inband of his newly-purchased, old-timey hat—even then, his mind was... not exactly elsewhere, but more elsewhen.

The cold climbed clammy, but Steve ignored it. He couldn't help but remember the last time he and Peggy had spoken, the upward rush of the arctic waters, a grave he dug for himself, as her voice made promises softly from the speakers. It made his heart feel like someone was wringing it between two ham-sized fists, pummeling it, bullying it, as he walked, chin down, through the wash of Manhattan crowds. And if the wind froze some small pearl of tears to thick, blond lashes, he pretended not to notice.

Nothing drew his gaze, not until he got to the place—and he realized where he was. It was some pocket of green(ish, given the snow), grown on the foundation of the Stork Club, and rather suddenly, Steve felt like maybe he wasn't walking into what he imagined he might be walking into. There was an array of heaters, no orange-curling coils, but too ...modern for that. There were lights on strings. A sweep of bricks, winding without yellow back to a band and the frozen strands of a waterfall.—He couldn't help it. Stomach twisting like a sheet in the wind and his throat closed tight, one of those fists having moved on from his heart and its useless chambers, cinched there—and he stared.

Ella Fitzgerald, remade into modernity like the heaters, crooned by a woman over the blues-soft notes of her ensemble, and his mouth was open, quite literally. Confusion grew, and after a minute, Steve pulled his hat from his head in a rather youthful display of nervous politeness, and approached the wish-made dais. He looked around, gray fabric mashed between his hands.

He tugged back his sleeve to look at his watch. 8:01, and his breathing slowed. It couldn't be Peggy. She wouldn't be late.

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Re: Log, Paley Park: Peggy C & Steve R

atrophy
2015-03-31 09:19 pm UTC (link)

There was a sharp, bottomless pang of hunger that listed in the belly of every man and woman and everyone else who came up during the Depression. It was hard-nosed need, scrubby, short nails, long soup lines, and the old, graying plaster crumbling onto your head in the morning when the middle-aged bachelor who lived upstairs started stomping around, tending to the laundry he took in, telling people his wife would do it—women were better at these things, was the idea. (He happened to do a good job and made almost a dollar a week.) When you lived formative years with nothing but gnawing hunger, that stayed with you, no matter how many years went by, no matter how much you consumed to fill it. It was need so long denied it became a part of you.

Steve felt it now, a rupture in him, deep, a low knot in his belly that had him leaning in, curling closer, practically lifting Peggy from her shoes a second time. The warmth of the earlier hug was fanned to smoky flames in the man and he blushed as much as she did, smoldering running high through him and burning against his skin where it touched her. It was good. She was good—at this. It was some spring of instinct, since it wasn't experience on his end that did much helping, and Steve moved into her touch gladly and into the sound of his name as it came from her pretty red lips.

—He didn't need breath like she did. Big lungs or something like that. So when she broke back, he blinked, a little jarred from the immediacy of the moment. Her hand was inside his coat, on his chest, and Steve's brain followed parallel to Peggy's. If only there weren't so many layers, this would be easier...

He dropped his gaze, standing stock and sturdy as the woman pulled away some, buffering the frenetic impulse that bound them together before. He smiled something bashful, and that poor cap got another work-over with hands that would much rather still be on the curve of Peggy's hips, and Steve cautiously looked up. He nervously wiped at the lipstick smeared on him, mingling with his flush, painting him all red, and he swallowed. He cleared his throat. And he offered her his hand.

The music was still playing. His eyelashes swept down long when he smiled a little giddily.

"I still owe you a dance."

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Re: Log, Paley Park: Peggy C & Steve R

ex_determine89
2015-04-01 04:05 pm UTC (link)

She caught her breath, shaking her head and smiling a little shakily. "It was like this, when everyone came home again. We couldn't get enough of being alive. I always felt a little apart, but now I know what they were feeling. Madness, it was. Ticker tape everywhere."

Peggy slid her hand in his, warm from the heat of his chest and smaller, but as tough as his own in places where the bones pressed against her skin. Oil of Olay only went so far, and Peggy had mannish hands, so she tried not to look down at them except to paint on color and pretend she didn't mind that particular failing. She squeezed his hand and laughed softly as he smeared her lipstick over the length of his face. How she loved them, but it was good not to be with the rest of the unit. They would tease him, and her, and she just wanted it to be the two of them, just as it was. Her eyes were dark and steady on his blue ones. The same eyes, he had. The serum did nothing to them, or his warm heart. How she loved him, all the way through her, and always would. "Yes, you do."

She reached up her free hand to touch his face and repair some of the damage her lipstick had made, not thinking to fix her own, which was missing some of its hard straight lines around the cupid's bow. Her hair was in some disarray and the smudge on her mouth made her look tousled. Her eyes sparkled with unconcealed mischief and plenty of things to look forward to, and she pulled him toward the stage, to catch that dance so long in coming.

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