Author's note: Hey, kids, how are you all doing? I hope you are all taking very good care of yourselves.
I'm still kind of on track with (hopefully) posting the rest of this story before WW84 is released. A million thanks to all of you again for your support and not giving up on me or this story! (And yes, something else is already very much in the works, so... ;))
A couple of things:
1. I kind of forgot that there is also an epilogue in this fic so, technically, you'll be getting 26 chapters, #26 being said epilogue. I hope that's good news :) I promise it's not crazy long, just wrapping up some things.
2. There is a pretty lengthy love scene in the chapter because I gotta send them off with a bang, literally speaking - excuse my immature sense of humour. I hope I kept it tasteful, but those of you who are not comfortable with adult/explicit content please skim/skip the first scene.
Okay, you've been warned. Proceed at your own risk, and enjoy!
Paris, 2017
When Diana and Steve reached her apartment it was late, and cold, angry rain was pattering against the roof and windows, making the entire city gleam in the light of the streetlights scattered along the street.
She unlocked the door and pushed it open, reaching habitually for the switch to turn on the hallway light, and Steve followed suit. He set his bag down next to Diana's suitcase and closed the door behind them, locking it. It was a relief to be back. A relief the kind of which he could no longer recall. He had a key, he remembered. His very own key to the only place in the past hundred years that he had allowed himself to call home.
Steve didn't expect to miss it - they had been gone for only a little over a week, after all. But, to his surprise, he did. Missed the smell of the furniture polish and the wax candles on the mantelpiece in the living room, that spot near the kitchen door where the parquet floor creaked a little, the unfinished book he had left on the dining table, and what he had mentally claimed as his spot on the couch. Small things that marked this place as somewhere he belonged.
It was, Steve realized, the closest thing to normalcy he had had in so long that he was almost scared to breathe for fear of chasing it away.
Diana turned to him. He watched her drop her keys into the bowl sitting on the cabinet by the door and move to him. One step, and then another. She reached for him without hesitation, stroking his cheek with her fingertips, her eyes moving over his features, looking at him like she couldn't quite believe what she was seeing.
"Are you okay?" Steve whispered, watching her in the dim light of the hallway lamp that somehow only made the darkness outside so much thicker.
"It's good to be back," Diana breathed.
She pushed his hair back from his forehead, and he leaned into her touch, turning his head to kiss the palm of her hand, wonderfully warm against his skin.
"Diana…"
He watched her swallow hard, her throat moving, before she closed what little distance was still left between them, her arms winding around his neck. Steve felt her let out a shaky exhale, her whole body shuddering with it as he wrapped his good arm around her and bowed his head, tucking his face into the hollow of her neck. She smelled of leather and rain and, somehow, the sea, and he breathed in deeply until his heart found its pace again.
There was something about her voice, the edge in it when she spoke, the way it caught just enough for him to hear the difference. He could feel that very edge now as he held her against him, his injured arm hanging at his side. That feeling like they had been suspended in the air ever since the night when it all went down with Lex, holding their breaths. Like this was the moment when they could finally exhale, and it hurt to do it, their lungs crumpled from a lack of proper use.
On the plane, they ended up talking about the League and about the Louvre and the things that were waiting for her upon her return — a collection that she needed to take care of, paperwork piling up on her desk, the messages that she only half paid attention to and a million other small things that managed to fill the space between them. Yet, neither had mentioned the elephant in the room, the reality of needing to heal from something that had left the invisible scars on them both.
He wasn't scared for her the way she was scared for him, but it didn't mean that he wasn't scared at all.
"It's over," Steve murmured into her neck, feeling her fingers thread through his hair, her breath hot on his skin. "It's really over."
After a moment, Diana leaned back from him and nodded. Her hand skittered down his arm and over the brace still wrapped around his wrist; Steve watched her teeth dig into her lip, a faint frown creasing the skin between her eyebrows. He tilted his head, resting his forehead against hers, his good hand anchored on the small of her back under her jacket.
Her palm moved to press over his chest. Steve watched her eyes drop shut as his heart thudded in earnest against her touch. She had done this on their first night together, back in 1918, after they had made love, listening to his heartbeat like it spoke to her in ways that were beyond Steve's comprehension. And he had let her, placing his own hand atop of hers.
It was different now, like she was still reliving the loss of him over and over again. And suddenly, he couldn't stand it anymore, couldn't bear being so close and not—
His nose bumped against hers, nudging her face up, and then once more when she smiled a little as their lips met. Steve kissed her like he wanted to kiss her on the plane. How he wanted to keep kissing her for as long as they both breathed.
Diana sighed against his mouth, kissing him back, her fingers curling over a fistful of his hair, and a spark of desire shuddered through him so immediate and strong that he nearly keeled over under the force of it. A low groan rose in the back of his throat. Underneath her jacket, he traced his hand up Diana's spine, and then back down, his fingers slipping under the hem of her shirt, searching for her skin.
He felt it then, the small change that made her body stiffen when he tried to pull her closer, and the heat in his veins turned instantly to ice.
Steve broke the kiss and pulled away, dropping his hand from the small of her back and looked away.
"Steve?"
Diana's chest was heaving against his, her fingers flexing on his sides, but all he could think of were the nights when he would fall asleep with her body folded into his and then wake up a few hours later with her curled on the edge of the bed, as far away from him as the mattress allowed without her actually toppling to the floor in her sleep. Of all the kisses that she had stopped before they even started. Of all the moments when she stepped subtly out of his embrace and the distance that had made him stop reaching for her.
In the days after the showdown with Lex Luthor, Steve had yet to wake up with Diana still in the room.
He huffed a breath through his nose, feeling his face burn and unable to so much as look at her.
His gaze moved to their luggage sitting at their feet, the box with the gauntlet, safely locked for good measure, resting on top of her suitcase, as he tried—desperately—to focus on something else. Anything else. Anything but the hollow feeling in the pit of his stomach.
"It's been a long day," he murmured. "Maybe we should…"
Was that how it was going to be between them now? Averted gazes and unsaid words and dancing around one another lest they accidentally touch? Pretences in order to avoid conversations that neither one wanted to have. He couldn't bear the thought of living with the wall between them that had been growing taller with each passing day now. Couldn't bear second-guessing everything they had said to one another and turning each word inside out in search of hidden meaning that he had missed the first time around.
Was he a fool to believe that their relationship would never change? That the past several weeks were setting up a pattern?
How many times would she have to save his sorry ass before she got tired of it? Before she realized that he was too much bother?
Steve pushed the thought away and drew back, desperate to put some space between them while he could still stand to do it. She was his home, the only home he had known in over a hundred years.
"Steve," Diana said again.
He shook his head and tried to step around her and further into the apartment, uncertain in that moment if they were still going to share a bedroom, or if maybe he could be a gentleman and offer to take the couch in her office and spare Diana the need to have to bring it up. It was so easy to imagine her being relieved with his offer—
What the hell was he supposed to do if he lost her?
"We should probably unpack," he muttered.
She moved to stand before him, blocking his way, her fingers curling over the lapels of his jacket like they had on the streets of London a hundred years ago when he was oh so adamant to deliver the notebook with Maru's secrets to his superiors and time was running out and the tale of the God of War trying to corrupt mankind was just that — a tale.
She was holding him now like she had held him them, her grip tight, and all Steve could think of was how little had changed since then, after all that time. So much and yet so little, he amended in his mind.
"What's wrong?" Diana asked quietly, moving closer to him. She traced her thumb over his chin and along his jaw; he could feel her trying to find his gaze. "Steve. Tell me."
His shoulders slumped. He dragged his eyes away from their bags and bowed his head, choosing to focus on her hand still clutching his jacket, lean fingers curled over the black leather. So much for subtlety; some spy he was. Steve grimaced inwardly.
"Just tired," he muttered.
"Liar," she whispered, smoothing her thumb over his cheek.
There was a smile in her voice that made his chest expand, so much so that it almost hurt. They were long past the point of lying to one another, but her accusation, however light and half-joking, felt like a sucker punch that rendered him unable to inhale properly, filling him with deep shame.
Steve took an unsteady breath.
"Tell me," Diana repeated quietly.
His hand flexed where it was still resting on her side.
"I don't want you to think that we have to…" He faltered and swallowed uneasily. "Not if you—if you don't want...I never presumed…"
"I don't understand."
She was shaking her head now. If he had actually found it in him to stop being such a coward and look at her, he was certain that he would find her frowning.
"You've barely touched me since—" Steve's eyes flicked down to his brace before he forced himself to look up at her, her expression confused for a second, before his words registered in her mind. "Not that you have to," he added quickly. "I mean, I swear to god—"
"You are injured," Diana interjected softly.
"Just barely," he argued.
"There's nothing barely about nearly dying."
She was watching him with a mixture of concern and exasperation.
"I beg to differ. In fact, I should tell you sometime about that day in Brussels in 1917 when Charlie—" Steve stopped when he realized that he was babbling. A corner of his mouth curled upward. He cleared his throat, feeling the colour rise up his cheeks for a different reason. "So, it wasn't because…"
"I couldn't bear to hurt you," she breathed, eyes searching his.
"You haven't," he said.
"Oh, but I have," Diana reminded him, her eyebrow lifting.
Steve blinked. She pressed her lips together, trying not to smile as she watched the realization dawn on him.
He remembered it then. Of course, he did. Small half-moons from her nails on his skin, that bite mark that he had worn quite proudly once on the inside of his thigh for at least a week until it faded away, the imprints of her fingers on his flesh where she couldn't hold him close enough, her strength not as tamped down with him as it would be with someone not aware of it. Everything that spoke of the trust and openness between them. He never minded, knowing that she would never really hurt him, and he had worn those marks as badges of honour.
Did she not remember how gentle she could be, though? How careful her touch was sometimes, making him feel like she expected him to shatter under her fingertips. How easily she allowed him to make her feel cherished, yielding her power and giving him full control without hesitation.
The back of his neck grew hot.
"I… uh, do not mind that," he said, tugging her closer still until there was no space left between them and they were breathing the same air, the relief of her revelation so damn overwhelming Steve all but felt weak in his knees.
It had never occurred to him that this was something that bothered her.
"I do," Diana murmured. Her fingers skimmed along his brace. "Not with this."
There was uncertainty in her eyes now. She didn't trust herself. All this time, Steve had feared that he might not be enough for her. It had never, not once, crossed his mind that maybe she thought she was too much.
"You could never, ever hurt me, Diana," he said quietly, earnestly. She didn't look convinced, a slight frown forming two faint lines between her eyebrows, making him want to smooth it out, chase her worries away. He swallowed, giving her a small shake of his head. "We don't have to—"
She leaned forward, cutting him off with a hand on his jaw and her lips brushing against his.
"Silly man," Diana murmured, kissing the corner of his mouth.
Steve's breath stuttered out of his chest, caught somewhere in his throat. "And yet you still like me," he murmured, his fingers digging into her hip.
"And yet, I do." She didn't argue, instead nuzzling into the prickly stubble on his cheek. "I cannot believe you don't know how much I always want you, Steve."
He turned his head then, finding her mouth with his and kissing her properly. There was no hesitation to her now as she surged forward with an urgency that surprised and pleased him in equal measure. Her tongue slid past his teeth and into his mouth, a noise of appreciation rising in her throat when he pulled her even closer. Diana combed her fingers through his hair, and Steve was so focused on the taste of her and the feel of her that he didn't even notice her other hand moving purposely over his back and down his shoulders with fervent desperation, sliding between them to run over the front of him—
He broke the kiss, inhaling sharply when a jolt of white-hot need shot through him and squirming away from her touch.
"Diana…"
"Too much?" she murmured, removing her hand but making no attempt to step away from him, the palm of her other hand still resting on the back of his neck and their heads bent close.
He chuckled, which came out shaky, and exhaled slowly, trying to stop his blood from rushing south too soon, too fast. He closed his eyes for a moment and then opened them again to find her watching him, waiting.
"I guess you now know how much I want you," he confessed, a little self-conscious, even though he had no reason to be. They had done this before, more times than he could count.
Maybe she had been right when she had said he was better at making love to her than at talking about it, after all.
And still…
Diana hummed, smiling. "Lucky me." She drew back, her hands sliding under his jacket that was merely draped over his shoulders and pushing it off. She caught it before it hit the floor and then reached for Steve's hand, the heat in her eyes almost too much to bear. And suddenly, nothing was funny anymore. "Come with me."
He followed her to the bedroom, dark, save for the pale light of the streetlamps filtering through the sheer curtains. She let go of his hand and walked over to the bed. Steve watched her arrange the pillows against the headboard for him. She straightened up, eyeing the result with a slightly critical frown, her head tilted. He expected her to turn on the reading lamp on the nightstand, but she didn't, and he used her momentary distraction to close the distance between them, his good arm sliding around her waist.
Desire was simmering in his veins and throbbing through his body with every hollow heartbeat. He thought of the fire burning in the grate in Diana's tiny room in Veld. It was like he had spent a century carrying it within him and it was still blazing in his blood, as bright as it was all-consuming.
"I have never wanted you more," Steve murmured into her hair, brushing a kiss to the back of her head.
Her fingers wrapped over his wrist. She half-turned her head, and he caught a glimpse of her smile. "More than that time, with the Lasso…?" She trailed off when he ducked his head and pressed his mouth to the spot behind her ear, her hand flexing around a fistful of his shirt sleeve.
"More and more each time," he said.
She turned around then, leaning toward him.
"We don't have to do anything you don't want to do," he said softly.
"I know."
Diana's fingers unclasped the straps holding his brace in place, removing it carefully, although if Steve had to rip it off, he probably would have. Her hands curled over the hem of his shirt next.
"It's okay," Steve murmured when she hesitated.
He lifted his arms and she pulled it off, fumbling a little when it got caught on his chin, making her laugh.
"You know, this is the least sexy thing ever," he noted, chuckling under his breath.
Once free, she let go of the shirt, allowing it to fall to the floor. Her lips twitched at the corners, her fingers running idly back and forth along the scar under his collarbone, her touch feather-light, making him yearn for more.
"I beg to differ."
"Flatterer," Steve muttered.
Diana pressed her lips around a smile and reached for his belt. She unbuckled it swiftly and unzipped his jeans, pushing them down his hips and over his legs. He stepped out of them and she reached for his boxers next before she was standing before him again, her eyes moving over his body, not in blatant curiosity like she had done in the cave below the palace on Themyscira, but with a purpose that turned his blood white-hot.
Steve ducked his head close to her, his mouth finding hers, kissing her with a fervour he couldn't recall feeling in so long, it felt like a spark of fire born in his belly and spreading over every nerve of his body.
Her hand on his hip, Diana pushed against him gently without breaking the kiss, and he took a step back, and then another one, and then another until his calves brushed against the edge of the mattress. Breathless, she drew back, turning the kiss into something chaste. He could feel her smile against his lips. Wanted to make a joke about the unfairness of being naked when she wasn't, too, but when she drew back, he could only stare.
Diana picked up his brace again. "Should this go back on?" She looked up at him. "So we won't…" she trailed off.
Get distracted, Steve thought. She had a point, perhaps. He was already finding it hard to think straight. It was only going to get worse from there on, he suspected.
He looked down at his left hand and flexed his fingers as he rolled his wrist a little, testing it. There was tightness in his muscles that hadn't been used in days, but the swelling was gone, and truth be told, he would prefer to have both of his hands at his disposal. At least for the next little while.
He shook his head. "No, it's alright."
"Are you sure?" She didn't appear to be convinced, her lips caught between her teeth.
He touched his thumb to her chin as the fingers of his good hand curled around a fistful of her shirt, tugging at it. "Yeah, I am."
Diana smiled and pulled it off dutifully, dropping it to the floor without care.
Steve felt his mouth go dry. He lifted his hand, tracing the strap of her bra, allowing his fingertips to skim over her shoulder and across her chest. It didn't bother him that she was wearing more clothes than him. It bothered him that she was still wearing any.
He lowered down on the edge of the bed and wrapped his good arm around his thighs, pulling her to him. Diana didn't resist. He leaned forward and pressed a kiss to her belly. "This is not going to work if you're so overdressed," he muttered into her silky-smooth skin, brushing another kiss to her sternum.
Diana laughed quietly and pushed her hand through his hair, tugging at it until he looked up at her. He raised an eyebrow expectantly, trying to bite back his own smile.
"Very well," she conceded, moving out of his grasp. He opened his mouth to protest, his brows furrowed from the sudden lack of contact, but she only shook her head, confused. "I will do it."
It was faster when she did it herself, Steve could admit that much. Not that time was the problem. He watched her clothes fall to the floor, landing on top of his, his eyes devouring every inch of exposed skin. They could live for ten thousand more years, and he would still never, ever, tire of looking at her, touching her, kissing her.
As the final touch, Diana reached for her hair-tie and pulled it off, allowing her hair to spill over her shoulders. She ran her hand through it, and he found himself itching to do just that, as well. Steve felt his jaw go slack as he drank her up with his eyes, aware of his rather undignified gawking and not caring one way or the other. She moved toward the bed and he scooted back against the pillows as she climbed onto the mattress next to him, the bed dipping under the weight of her body.
He caught her hand when she was close enough and pulled her into his lap, her thighs bracketing his and her palms flat on his ribs.
"Hi," Steve smiled.
"Hi."
God, he loved her voice. He loved it when she was looking at him like this, like there was no one else left in this word. Steve had no idea what it was that she was seeing on his face, but she appeared to like it well enough.
"Is this alright?" Diana whispered, her hand smoothing over his ribs still splotched with purple bruises.
"Yeah. Yeah, more than," he promised, his hands sliding up her thighs and around her back. "In fact, I'd be happy to tell you how alright it is, in great detail," he added, his voice dropping. "Just… in a little while, okay?"
Diana smirked. "Hopefully not too little."
Steve swallowed, his throat suddenly dry. "No, definitely not."
She leaned forward, and so did he, meeting her mouth halfway for a lingering kiss. He pushed his hand into her hair, bringing her closer still, his fingers combing through thick waves, hungry for the taste and feel of her, skin pressed to skin. He traced his fingertips along the length of her spine from the base of her neck and down the curve of her back, and Diana arched into him, a noise of approval rising low in her throat. He felt her teeth graze along his lip, her hands moving through his hair, over his shoulders, down his chest—
Steve broke the kiss, breathless, his hand darting to catch her wrist before she reached any further. He drew it away, lifting it up to his mouth. His gaze locked with hers, he pressed his lips to her palm, moving to the inside of her wrist where her pulse was thrumming madly.
"Not yet," he murmured, in response to the silent question in her eyes.
If she touched him, he was going to lose his mind. God, the way she was looking at him—no one had ever looked at him like that. Her eyes were dark with want and so consuming he felt like he was drowning.
He watched her gaze drop to his mouth. She dragged it back up, although not without effort, and nodded. She pulled her hand from his grasp and reached over to frame his face with her palms, turning it up to hers.
"Diana," Steve breathed, her name falling from his lips on its own volition.
She smiled that majestic smile of hers, and the heat that had been building up inside of him turned into a blaze.
"I love you," Diana breathed into his skin, his lips moving from his temple to his cheek to the corner of his mouth, her touch feather-light and almost too much to bear, making him want to beg for more.
Steve smiled, curving his neck to press a kiss to the side of her throat, his hand sliding over her back and along her thigh and between them. She gasped quietly, the sound of it turning into a moan when his fingers reached their destination, running slowly over the sweet spot, a shiver shooting down her body and ricocheting into him.
"Steve…"
"Don't move," he pressed another kiss under her jaw, his other hand anchored on the base of her spine holding her where he needed her. "I just want to—I want—"
A shuddered breath stuttered out of her chest, her hand curling around the back of his neck. He slid his fingers over her again, earning another soft moan in response, her eyes fluttering closed. It was an effort, he knew that much. She wanted more, yearned for more. But she trusted him to do it right, to get her where she wanted to be.
Steve ducked his head, kissing her shoulder, his touch slow and deliberate. There wasn't much he could give her tonight – less than he wanted to, for certain. But he would give her all he had, and pray to all gods, hers and his own, that it would be enough.
His hand started to move with deliberate purpose, his thumb circling slowly over her while his fingers searched, set on a quest of their own. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw her fingers graze over the wall near his head until she found the headboard, gripping it so tightly that her knuckles turned white. A string of quiet curses in Greek fell from her lips, her breathing shallow and ragged against his cheek.
"Language, Princess," he smiled into her skin.
She choked out a laugh that morphed into a low whimper when he brushed against a sensitive spot, her breath catching once more.
"Steve—"
"Let go," he said, moving his fingers just right. "Let go, Diana."
She did.
A shudder ran down her body, taut muscles spasming as she arched into him, her fingers digging almost painfully into his shoulder, moving down his arm to hold on to him as her world kept spiralling. Steve removed his hand, earning a small noise of protest in response, and wrapped his arms around her. He kissed the slope of her shoulder, his mouth moving toward the hollow of her neck and up to the underside of her jaw, a soothing hand moving over the expanse of her back as he waited for the aftershocks of her release to subside.
Eventually, Diana's breathing slowed down, her body relaxing against his. She drew back to look at him, dazed and sated and happy, her cheeks flushed, and something inside of him constricted at the thought of being the reason for it.
Steve lifted his hand to tuck a strand of hair behind her ear. "God, you're so beautiful."
She smiled, her chest still rising and falling rapidly and leaned down to rest her forehead against his. Her fingers were trembling when she touched his face, smoothing them through his hair, around his neck, her whisper drowned by his own heartbeat. He wasn't even sure if whatever she said was in English. Not that it mattered.
When she kissed him again, tilting his face up to hers, he responded eagerly, his lips parting for her, his body wound tight with desire. This time, when Diana reached between them to stroke her fingers over the length of him, Steve groaned against her mouth but didn't stop her. Couldn't even if he had wanted to—not that he wanted to. His hand twitched on the small of her back, pressing into her flesh, heat rising inside of him in tidal waves.
She broke the kiss and said something to him, but the blood hammering in his ears stole her voice away. His eyes fluttered open when she shifted against him, bracing herself against his good shoulder and the headboard, rising above him.
"Diana…"
"Okay?" She paused, giving him a cautious cursory glance, and he panicked, thinking that she was going to leave, to walk away when they—when he—
He nodded, and then nodded once more, a little frantic. She smiled, almost delirious, and slid down, taking him in in one slide. His hips snapped up, bucking against her, a jolt of sharp pleasure searing down his spine. His fingers were still tangled in her hair, and he tightened his arm around her waist, bringing her closer still as he tried to stay focused, somehow—for a little while—
Diana brushed his hair back from his face, and he looked up, marvelling in the sensation of her body against his—sweet weight and slick heat, each touch searing into his skin.
"I'm yours," she whispered, and he didn't even realize at first that she said it in Greek, and that he understood it without having to think about it. A spark of recognition flared up in his mind, triumphant, but then she started to move above him, slowly, and he lost the ability to think.
The relief of being with her was almost entirely all-consuming. Steve tucked his face into the curve of her neck, his hands now anchored on her hips, guiding her measured pace as he whispered words of love into her skin, her name falling from his lips like a curse and a plea. She craned her neck to press a kiss to his hair, her breath hot against his scalp, making him shiver. Making his fingers dig deep into her flesh because he needed to feel all of her, now.
"Don't stop," he uttered hoarsely, the tight heat inside of him making it hard to breathe, to think. "Diana, please—"
He couldn't hold off any longer, he couldn't—
He buried his face in the curve of her shoulder, barely coherent as the waves of pleasure washed over him. In the back of his mind, he registered the shudder of Diana's body in his arms as she reached her own release, her fingers digging into his sweat-slick skin as she tried to hold on.
Her pace slowed down to a lazy rock as he clutched her tight against him, bringing them both to stillness as they spiralled back down, caught in the haze of aftershocks. She turned her head and kissed his temple, her fingers carding idly through the damp hair at the nape of his neck. He smiled against her collarbone at the slight tremor of her muscles under his touch, kissing his way along the heated skin and then looked up to find her eyes with his.
"What did you say? Earlier, when we—" he trailed off. Relaxed now that the tension was gone, Steve leaned back against the headboard, sinking into the pillows and taking her with him. "I didn't—I don't think I got it."
Diana bit her lip, trying to hold back a smile. She framed his face with her hands, thumbs stroking his cheeks, tracing idly along her jaw. "I said that I love you, more than anything. That I will love you for as long as my heart beats." She paused, and then a smile so bright that it hurt to look sprung across her face, her eyes crinkling at the corners. "And that you're a ridiculous, ridiculous man, Steve Trevor."
Steve's jaw dropped. He blinked at her, momentarily confused. "What—Why?"
She laughed a little then, shaking her head as if his question only proved her point.
xoox
It started to snow.
It started sometime between Diana untangling herself from Steve's grasp to use the bathroom and then finding something to eat, and them both getting promptly distracted from the late-night dinner in favour of something far more exciting. The drizzle that had greeted them when they had landed in Paris several hours ago had turned into dime-sized snowflakes falling from heavy, thick clouds and landing on rain-slick roofs and windowsills.
She had lived through a hundred winters since the first one that had caught her by surprise amidst the carnage and fighting, but the snowfall never failed to take Diana back to that small town in the middle of a war-torn land where her heart had learned to beat at a different pace. Part of her hoped it never would.
Now, lying on her stomach across her bed, she was watching Steve who was stretched out on his back beside her, his chest rising and falling slowly. His good arm was tucked under his head, and he had his eyes trained on the ceiling streaked with shadows. Her gaze drifted idly over his face, taking in the faint laugh lines at the corners of his eyes and his slightly parted lips as she willed herself to capture this moment of complete and utter contentment, pleased to note that the frown that she had longed to chase away earlier was nowhere to be found anymore.
And then he turned to her and smiled. And that one smile was all it took for the fire to flare up in her blood again, searing through her system with such intensity that it made her heart stutter madly in her chest, desire welling up in the pit of her stomach.
Hera help her, she loved him so much.
Diana felt her own lips curve up at the corners. She rose up on her elbows, leaning forward to brush a kiss to his shoulder.
"That was good, huh?" Steve breathed when her mouth moved to his collarbone.
She smiled against his skin. "Very good."
Her lips found his next, her palm curling over his jaw. They kissed slowly, lazily, his fingers tangled in her hair and the heat simmering just beneath the surface. She loved the way he tasted, the way he smelled like soap and sex, the way his skin felt beneath her touch.
Diana was the one who pulled back at last, with one final peck on his lips. She rolled onto her side next to him, propped up on her elbow, her head resting on the heel of her hand. For a few moments, she merely watched him, and he let her, as if he knew that she was still trying to find her balance.
After a couple of moments, Steve lifted his hand to stroke his knuckles over her cheek. "Let's never go again without doing some variation of what we just did for—" he faltered, his eyebrows knitting together. "How long has it been?"
"Five days," she informed him, trying to bite back her smile, his confusion comically adorable.
Steve's frown deepened. "Five days? Are you sure?" She nodded. "Felt longer," he noted, still dubious. "Did it not feel longer to you?"
Diana laughed. "It must have been your idle lying around."
"Tease," he huffed accusingly.
She reached her hand to let her fingers skitter along his ribs, over the bruising that had yet to fade, remembering, somewhat belatedly, that laughing together and making love and sharing the type of confessions that one only whispered when their hearts were open and their souls bare did not change the fact that something bad had happened only a few days ago. Something that had nearly taken this very moment away from her. That she nearly lost him again, his life slipping right through her fingers.
"Are you okay?" she asked with a small sigh when Steve caught the sight of her frown.
"Yeah." He nodded. "I am, I swear," he pressed when she didn't appear convinced.
Her fingers skittered over his bad wrist. "And this?"
Steve rolled it carefully, and without effort. It didn't appear that whatever they'd done had caused any further damage to it.
"All good," he said, as he looked up at her. "Diana…"
She raised her eyes to him, searching for something she couldn't quite put into words.
She could see him debating something in his mind.
"I'm not breakable," he said after a few moments, repeating his words from earlier, the making of a smile working its way to his lips. "Not that breakable."
Diana didn't push. This wasn't the end of it for them. It was easy to believe that nothing could go wrong in the world when he was close enough that she could feel the warmth of his skin and the beating of his heart without even touching him. And when her body still hummed with pleasure and her blood flowed in earnest, searing-hot in her veins, and when he looked at her the way he did right now.
But Diana knew better than that. There would be more missions. On the other side of this night, there would be things she knew she couldn't even begin to imagine, and if she allowed herself to venture into the wasteland of that sorrow now, she would never come back.
"I know," she agreed instead, and he grinned, a little self-indulgent – and rightfully so, making the heat stir in her belly once more. She brushed her thumb to his chin. "What are you thinking?"
His features softened. "That it's good to be home," Steve said, and she tried to ignore the wild flurry of hope in the place where she suspected her soul resided.
This place had been her home for a while now, long enough for her to feel like she was starting to grow roots. There was comfort to knowing that there was a small place in the world where she could be both Diana Prince and Diana of Themyscira, Princess of the Amazons without having to draw a line between those personas. Where she could be at peace with herself without putting effort into it. Her one safe haven.
Yet, until this moment, she hadn't even been able to imagine the delight of having someone to share that with, completely and without holding back.
"It is." She traced her fingertips along his jaw. "You should rest, it's been a long day."
"You sure?" His gaze trailed over the outline of her body under the sheet. "Because we could…" He left the sentence hanging suggestively between them. "You know, with jetlag and all that."
Diana laughed. She leaned closer and pressed a kiss to his brow. "I'm not going anywhere, Steve," she murmured into his skin. But by gods, was that one tempting offer. "Sleep."
Steve's forehead creased when she drew back, frowning at the half a foot of space between them as if confused to find it there.
He looked up at Diana. "I can't sleep like this," he said.
She arched her eyebrow at him, amused.
Steve sighed. "Have some mercy on an old and injured man, will you?"
She bit her lip, trying to keep a straight face. "Now you're old and injured?"
He flashed his boyish smile at her, the one that broke across his whole face. "Hey, a guy's gotta use what he's gotta use." He faltered, and she watched him swallow, his Adam's apple bobbing in his throat as the playfulness morphed into longing. "C'mere," he asked, his voice dropping to a murmur.
Zeus, the things he was doing to her…
She shifted closer to him and settled into his side, her leg draped over one of his and her head tucked under his chin. Steve wound his good arm around her, bringing her closer still until she couldn't tell where she ended and he began. Diana felt his lips press to her hair, soothed instantly by his closeness.
His skin was still splotched with fading bruises as he had not healed completely yet, but his breathing was deep, measured, and she allowed herself to relax into him. Earlier, he was wrong. Terribly wrong. She had never been trying to push him away, but she had always been aware that she could hurt him, and she knew that if she touched him, she would never want to stop.
Diana let out a breath, her fingers tracing absently over his chest. "Is this good?" she asked.
"Couldn't be better," Steve murmured, combing his hand idly through her hair.
"Sleep," she repeated, her eyes following the dance of snow outside the window.
He was right. It was good to be home.
xoox
When Steve woke up the next day, the world was so white outside the balcony door that it hurt to look. His body was sore, but not unpleasantly so, and his eyes felt like someone had rubbed sandpaper all over them – the delights of the jetlag that had finally caught up with him. He was decidedly getting too old for that, he mused, although that particular joke had started wearing thin some seventy years ago.
That, and their late-night exploits, which probably contributed quite a fair bit to his exhaustion, too. The memory made him smile and he made a mental note to try and talk Diana into doing something else equally exciting – as soon as his brain stopped feeling like a pile of scrambled eggs in his head. He blinked his eyes open, grimacing against the light. The clouds were still low, hanging close to the rooftops. From his spot, Steve couldn't tell if the snow had stopped, but if it did, there was more to come.
He ran his hand over his face and turned his head, half expecting the bed to be empty. Instead, his eyes landed on Diana who was sitting against the headboard, his shirt hanging loosely from her frame and her slim laptop resting on her thighs, her fingers moving swiftly over the keyboard. Her brows were furrowed slightly, although it was with concentration, not concern, and his heartbeat stuttered momentarily. The way it always did these days whenever he saw her.
Inadvertently, his gaze trailed over the length of her legs stretched before her atop the covers, his mind helpfully supplying the memory of them wrapped around him only several hours ago—
Steve looked up and found her looking at him, her fingers still and her expression amused. Unfazed about being caught staring, Steve grinned at her, and a smile broke across Diana's face, so brilliant it dimmed the brightness of the day spilling around them.
"Good morning," she said.
"Hey," he croaked, his throat tight from sleep. He rubbed his eyes. "What time is it?"
"Almost noon," she informed him.
Steve blinked at her, his mouth dropping a little. It had been years – decades – since he allowed himself to sleep half a day away. Or wanted to. Or even considered it, for that matter.
Diana smirked.
"I have exhausted you," she observed, running her hand through his hair to brush it face from his face.
Steve huffed. "No such thing," he argued, his chest puffing in half-pride and half-indignation even though both of them knew that she was right. Enthusiastic as he might be, she was still a goddess. His goddess, Steve reminded himself, and his heart unfurled in his chest at the thought. His eyes shifted down to her laptop. "You have to work today?"
Diana shook her head. "No. Just a few things I need to take care of…" She trailed off and tilted her head, studying him. "Are you hungry?"
He was. They had had breakfast at Bruce's yesterday and a snack on the plane, and then their attention got diverted to much more pressing matters that made them promptly forget about sustenance, the plate left untouched on the nightstand. However, now that she mentioned it, Steve realized that he was ravenous. In his hundred and thirty-six years on this Earth, there was nothing he could think of that was less appetizing than army rations, eaten fast so as not to taste them. But right now, the hollow tugging in his belly would have made one of those meals feel like the most exquisite feast.
The thought was amusing and dreadful in equal measure.
He nodded. "Yes."
Diana closed the laptop and set it on the bedside table before turning back to him. "Let's go eat then," she smiled.
xoox
The city was cold and still, as if frozen in time, as they walked back to her apartment from the museum one night a few days after Christmas. Diana's hand was pleasantly warm in his and their breaths were puffing out in small white clouds. It was then that Steve decided that the time had come to finally broach the subject that had been on his mind for weeks. Something that he couldn't stop thinking about ever since he and Bruce had had their conversation almost a month ago, no matter how hard he tried.
He had spent the past few weeks going meticulously through Diana's extensive library in an attempt to stop his frustration over his temporary physical limitations from getting to him. He had rearranged her spice rack, too. He had tracked auction items for her and once, during a particularly lazy afternoon, he had even polished her shield – something that amused Diana more than she was willing to let on when she had come back home that evening to find him with cleaning cloths, baking soda, and vinegar. Steve chose not to take it too close to his heart, finding solace in the fact that her shield had never looked better before. Probably. Chose not to tell her that he was planning on doing her sword next. There was only so much daytime TV a person could endure before they got sick of it.
He had been shot before – twice during the first war, and once during the second… Hell, he had been dead before, but somehow a couple of cracked bones and some bruises were driving him up the wall more than anything else that he had experienced before. The irony was a cruel thing indeed.
Steve Trevor was decidedly not a man who enjoyed being idle. It was like an itch under his skin that he couldn't quite get rid of. Objectively, Steve had known that sooner or later he would get sick of doing nothing. He had just never thought it would happen that soon.
The investigation in Gotham regarding Lex Luthor's escape was as good as finished, as far as Steve was aware. Amanda Waller was far from forthcoming about the details but with Bruce's extensive connections and high-class technology combined with Victor's abilities, they had managed to stay on top of it as best they could.
If the Director of A.R.G.U.S. had any questions regarding what actually went down between Lex and the League that night, she had wisely decided to keep them to herself. None of the official reports submitted to Amanda Waller's superiors contained anything about the gauntlet or the real reasons for Lex Luthor's wrath. To everyone else, he was merely an unstable man who had gone after the people who had put him behind bars with his bare hands (and half a dozen hired henchmen). If nothing else, Steve was certain she didn't want to stir any need for more paperwork. In the weeks following that incident, she hadn't tried to contact Bruce or anyone else in the League, but if Steve was honest with himself, it felt more like the calm before the storm than anything else.
However, after mulling over this mess for a few days, he decided not to think of it until they had to.
With the Claw of Horus labelled as a 'restricted artifact' and safely locked away in one of the vaults in the basement of the Louvre, it didn't seem likely that anyone would use it against humanity any time soon. He had to give it to Diana – she certainly knew how to keep things hidden. Had it not been for Selina Kyle, the gauntlet would have most likely never seen the light of day for decades to come.
Steve had also learned that Diana tried to keep an eye on things like that, objects that were more than what they appeared to be at first sight. Artifacts containing magic beyond anything that people could understand. Keeping peace at all cost, Diana had told him half-jokingly, but once he had a chance to ponder her answer, he saw more truth to it than she probably knew there was.
"I was thinking…" Steve started one night, a couple of days before New Years, keeping his voice as nonchalant as possible as he scanned the spines of the books lining shelf after shelf of the bookcase in the living room.
He had not known, but he wasn't surprised, that her literary tastes were as sophisticated as the rest of her. No, she was well familiar with popular media and could easily pick up references about any film or book that had come out in the past half-century, but her own collection consisted primarily of classics and highly acclaimed novels, the controversial works of the present and past centuries sitting side by side with volumes written by Greek and Roman philosophers, most in their original language.
"Have you read them all?" Steve had asked her once, when she had found him debating between Kipling and Salinger.
His heart had given a little twinge when he had spotted quite a number of novels by Edgar Rice Burroughs sitting on one of the shelves. Nearly the entire collection bought, Steve suspected, because he used to be so fond of him.
"Most," Diana had said before he had managed to find words to comment on that discovery. Her arm slipping around his waist as she traced the spine of some smart-sounding novel in Italian.
He had glanced at her out of the corner of his eye. "Snob," he scoffed, and she had laughed.
He had settled on Dickens then.
Now, he was staring unseeingly at the same row of books, a little askew now that one was still missing, sitting half-finished on his bedside table.
"Should I be worried?" Diana asked, smiling.
Crouched by the fireplace, she was poking at the logs, waiting for the spark to catch, to disperse the chill of the evening that had settled upon them in the past few hours. It was snowing again, had been since the late afternoon, the angry wind whistling in the chimney and rattling the windows in their panes. Winter was finally starting to feel like it was there to stay.
Not that he minded. Half the time, when the weather was as foul as it was right now, it took him no effort at all to talk her into spending the whole day in bed.
Steve traced the book title etched into its cover without registering the words. He cleared his throat.
"I spoke with Bruce," he said, turning around to her.
"Okay, now I'm worried." The fire finally caught, and Diana added another log to it. When she glanced at him, there was humour in her eyes.
"A few weeks ago, actually. Back in Gotham." He grimaced, aware that he was starting to sound like a moron, and rubbed the back of his neck.
When he fell silent, she turned to him properly, her brow pulling together.
"Steve, what is it?
He kind of hated bringing this up but—
He took a breath. "It's about Amanda Waller."
Diana's lips flattened into a thin line, her expression turning into one of utter disgust.
"What about her?"
"She's not going to give up, Diana," he said simply, watching her frown deepen, a million protests forming on her lips. "She is not going to keep coming after the League, not when the stakes are that high. You and I both know that." A pause. "But I don't believe that she will hold her end of the bargain, regardless of what Bruce says or does."
Diana stood up and leaned the iron poker against the wall, not really caring much about the fire anymore.
"What are you saying?"
Steve let out a breath. He looked at her, the gaze of her black eyes uncompromising. There was a stillness to her that spoke of the intensity of the storm raging inside of her. The sheer force behind her when she was like this was the one most terrifying thing he had ever seen.
"I know that all of this is smoke and mirrors now, this deal with her," he went on, trying to unscramble the thoughts that had been bumping around his head for a while now into something more or less coherent. "But maybe I could—"
"No."
"Diana…."
"No," she repeated, shaking her head.
"Just—just listen to me for a second, okay?" Steve pressed on. He ran a frustrated hand through his hair, letting out a long breath. "The government wants control over the League, that is not going to change. If it is not Amanda Waller, then it will be someone else. Next week, or next month, or two years from now, someone else will come and god only knows what they'll do. You know that," he repeated, and she looked away from him as if she couldn't stand seeing his face anymore.
"It's better to deal with someone we already know," he went on. "Waller wants oversight. She wants an illusion of control because it's what the people above her demand. We all know damn well that illusion is all it can be, but if we go with a proposal of our own, it'll give us the upper hand…"
"Don't," she warned him, raising her palm.
"The League needs a government liaison, Diana," Steve insisted. "And sooner or later, it'll get one, whether you guys want it or not. It's either that, or they'll come for you, one by one, deeming you a threat to national security. If I did it, if I actually worked with her—"
"You can't be serious, Steve," she cut him off, her voice strained.
It wasn't the anger that he had mistaken the edge in her voice for, but fear he realized, mixed with something like barely contained panic. Unaccustomed to it, he could hardly tell one from the other.
He swallowed, his eyes moving past her and along the intricate carvings running along the edge of the mantel over the fireplace, trying to unravel the story they were telling; delicate ornaments that reminded him of something that he couldn't quite place his finger on. Somehow, it was easier to focus on something that wasn't Diana and her ever-inquisitive gaze.
"If I was…" he began, struggling to carefully choose the words. "I can do it. I know how. I know all the ins and outs of the system. If I became one of her operatives, I would have a chance eventually—" He cut off, his jaw working for a few moments. "If we had some leverage on her, if we had one foot in the door, she would leave the League alone. No more ambush meetings, no more threats."
Diana was staring at him like he was speaking a tongue she couldn't understand, her forehead creased in confusion. The fire had picked up alright, ablaze in the hearth, but Steve still felt a trickle of chill run down his spine.
"Did Bruce come up with this asinine plan?" she asked after a moment, clearly angry now.
"It was a… mutual idea," Steve conceded, sliding his hands into the pockets of his pants. The way she was looking at him, he was starting to feel like a kid who got caught eating cookies before dinner.
She shook her head. "I don't believe this."
"Diana."
"You cannot be serious," she repeated.
"I'm offering you a solution that could actually help the League," Steve surged forward. "I want to help."
"You will be helping," she pressed. "You are."
He didn't say anything.
"If Amanda Waller wants to scheme with Bruce, it's her business. If Bruce wants to
play games with her, it's his choice. But I can't lose you again. I won't lose you again, not to that woman. I don't want her to so much as breathe in your
direction, let alone make decisions for you—"
"She won't make decisions for me," he shook his head. "I won't let her." He
huffed out a breath of frustration through his nose. "You think I don't know
all this? You think I don't understand that she will try to take advantage of us all
the first chance she gets?"
"You don't know what she's capable of," Diana muttered, wrapping her arms around
herself and looking away, her lips pursed into a thin line.
"You don't know that, either," he interjected firmly, his voice uncompromising. "I have done this before. I had been doing just that for years before I even met you. Does it count for nothing?"
Diana pressed her lips together. "That is not what I meant."
He rubbed his eyes. "And in the time when we were apart—I was not sitting behind a steel door, waiting for someone to come and rescue me, Diana." He was shaking his head, more than a little chagrined by her lack of trust in him. "Would you be okay with this idea if it was about someone else? Would it make more sense to you if I wasn't volunteering to take on that role? Because if it's me you doubt..."
"Don't," she stopped him, her voice rising a notch. She let out a long breath and rubbed her temples. "Don't twist my words. You know full well—"
"I know full well that I ran across No Man's Land after you," Steve said. "Because I trusted you, even though, at the time, it felt more like a death wish. I know that I stood by you when you needed me to even when it didn't make sense to me." He paused, and when their eyes met, his voice dropped. "I know that some of the biggest mistakes in my life were not believing you when I should have, and I don't want to be holding on to those regrets moving forward."
Admittedly, he was not the one who had to watch her life drain out of her eyes, and the mere thought made him sick to his stomach, but the simple truth was—
"If you don't agree with this plan simply on account of my involvement, then it's not the plan you have a problem with," he finished.
She looked taken aback, stricken even, and for a moment, he almost wished that he could take his words back.
"You really think my opinion of you is so low?" Diana whispered.
He flinched. "Look, I can't fly or dodge bullets or heal in five minutes flat, but this is something I know I'm good at." He scrubbed his hand over his face, feeling the fight drain out of him. "You're right, I don't know Amanda Waller but I know myself."
He stepped towards her, suddenly very aware of the ticking of the clock on the wall and someone laughing outside, the silence around them so thick that the crackling of the fire was almost thunderous.
"She's done nothing but use and manipulate us all from the start." When Diana spoke, her voice was even, but he didn't miss the undercurrent of fury beneath her words. At Waller more than him, perhaps, although it was hard to say for sure. "She knew about us – about you and me – and she used it to her advantage. She is insane, greedy and drunk on her own power, and you want to march right into another trap of hers."
He dropped his gaze, studying the ornate carpet as he tried to come up with an explanation that didn't distill to a very real and very terrifying truth – he had so very little to offer them. He wasn't super fast or super strong and he couldn't lift cars or shoot lasers out of his eyes. On that night when the League went to deal with the incident in S.T.A.R. Labs and he had to stay behind before they were far more capable of dealing with the issue, he had felt so useless that it was laughable.
The contrast between what he remembered of working with her and what it was right now couldn't be more drastic, and it left him at a loss. Apparently, the one thing that he could do was bounce back to life because a goddess loved him so fiercely that she couldn't let go. He had money but not Bruce's kind of wealth, and as resourceful and experienced as he was, he doubted that he could ever measure up to anyone else on the team. Not in the physical sense, at least, which often was the one thing that mattered.
There was so very little that he could offer them already, but this was something. This could actually snap the ties holding their hands behind their backs, bureaucratically speaking.
Steve wanted, almost desperately so, to be more than just Wonder Woman's lover. And he had no bloody idea how to make Diana understand that, not when she was who she was. Not when she couldn't possibly know what it was like to be someone like him.
"I know you're capable. You don't need to prove anything," she said softly, as if reading his thoughts, and he winced a little. Was he really that transparent? "Not to me, not to anyone."
"I'm not trying to prove anything to anyone." He sighed. "I'm just—I'm trying to be my own person, and I want you to stop thinking that you have to fix my life for me."
A weak, watery smile touched her lips. "Far be it from me…"
"So, you believe that I could do it?" he asked, running the tips of his fingers up and down her shoulders.
"Of course I do, Steve. You know, I do," she whispered, her mind still trying to work this all out. "It's not you," she shook her head. "It's… This woman will stop at nothing, and you want to work with her—"
"Well, not with her, strictly speaking," he admitted.
She snapped her head up when his words clicked. "You want to spy on her."
Steve allowed his lips to quirk ever so slightly, without much humour to it. "Rumour has it, I used to be good."
She cursed under her breath, and quite impressively, too. Charlie would have been proud.
"You're not thrilled, I gather," he murmured.
"How can I be?" She rubbed her forehead. "I can barely stand having you more than ten feet away from me, and you want to do something that could put you in danger. Real danger." Diana bit her lip, still looking in the general direction of his collar.
"It felt quite real during the war," he reminded her, and she flinched.
"And was it not enough?" She met his gaze at last, and the resignation in it was like a sucker punch.
What I do is not up to you.
It went both ways, he figured. Together they might be, but each of them still was their own person. She expected him to respect her boundaries, but knew that she would have to do the same in return. That she wouldn't have the right to ask for less than that, and he could see it was killing her. It wasn't even about his plan, but that he had thought to suggest it at all.
"She's got my files," he said quietly. "My real files that, right now, she can use against me as she pleases, and I need to know that she will not do it."
"There are other ways—"
"There are, but those other ways won't solve the issue between the government and the League," Steve pointed out, practically feeling another curse form on the tip of her tongue. "Diana."
Another half a step, and she leaned into him, quelling whatever frustration was still simmering within her with his touch and his arms around her.
"Look, we're either both in, or we're both out," he told her as she unfolded her arms that had been crossed over her chest and weaved them around him, tucking her face into the crook of his neck. "I'm not gonna go against you on this one. But can you…" he cleared his throat, his hand running absently up and down her back, and he didn't resist the urge to brush a kiss to her temple. "Can you think about it? It doesn't have to be tonight. Or even this week. Just… sometime, maybe."
"Maybe," she said, although Steve suspected it was less in agreement and more a way to get him to stop talking about it.
Diana pulled just far enough away to look at him, her hand smoothing over his chest before it moved to rest on the back of his neck.
"You can't lose me. You will never lose me," he sighed. "I just… I don't think I can do nothing. Not like this."
"I know."
There was already resignation behind her eyes, and if Steve had to guess, he had won this round. Shame that it didn't feel much like winning.
They'd been here before.
He thought she was going to add something, try to come up with another argument. Instead, she tipped her head and kissed him, slowly and deeply and like she was trying to pour the words she couldn't quite find into that kiss, urging him to see it her way, desperately wanting him to understand.
By the time she drew back for breath, Steve had forgotten about Amanda Waller.
xoox
They fell into their old routine with ease.
If bringing Steve to Paris for the first time felt surreal, almost too impossible to be true, having him there with her now brought Diana comfort beyond anything she had ever experienced. It was only now that she allowed herself to believe that he was back, that this was real, and that he was not likely to dissipate into thin air before her eyes.
A few days after their return from Gotham, she walked into the bathroom to find him standing in front of the fogged-up mirror, trying to dry his hair with a towel one-handed, another towel wrapped around his hips. And she wondered if there was a moment in the foreseeable future when the image of him in the world that she had considered to be only hers would ever stop bringing everything inside of her to a standstill. If she would ever not be surprised by the sound of his voice or his presence, that was seemingly taking up more space than he should.
Funny how she only realized just how much she had missed him all those years when she didn't need to anymore. When he was the first thing that she saw every morning when she woke up and her name on his lips was like music to her ears.
Steve paused when he saw her walk in, her reflection a barely distinguishable smudge. He looked up and lowered his hand, confused to see her staring at him without saying anything.
"What?" he asked.
But she only shook her head, pressing her lips together and trying very hard to keep on breathing past the burning lump in her throat.
Neither of them had remembered about Christmas until a brightly decorated tree appeared in the lobby downstairs, twinkling with colourful lights and adorned with an assortment of ornaments. It had made Steve pause in his tracks just long enough for Diana to catch a flash of surprise and something akin to wistfulness in his expression. She didn't ask, didn't push, but later that night she had suggested that maybe he would like to go somewhere for a few days, just the two of them. This close to holidays, her hectic pace at the museum had slowed down to a crawl. There was some paperwork and a few shipments left to be taken care of, and an annual staff event to attend in a couple of weeks. But afterwards, they could go to Italy, or Greece, or maybe Switzerland. She wouldn't have minded spending some time in a chalet, only leaving the bed to eat and stroll along the streets of some small town.
Steve declined though, smiling when he drew her to him, and said that he had yet to get sick of the first place in many, many years that he had the pleasure to call home. Not even for a beach, or the Swiss Alps.
In the end, they got a small tree, just big enough to fit in the corner of the living room, and a string of fairy lights. And then Diana unearthed something that had been hidden for so long that she had almost forgotten about it – a box that Etta had left for her containing a collection of knick-knacks, a book of poetry and several handmade ornaments crafted by her mother when Etta was a little girl. Until now, Diana had no use for them, her chest growing tight each time she had thought of how easily things often outlived a person, but as she watched Steve go through the small collection of Etta's treasures, she wondered if somehow the other woman knew this day would come. Even then, years ago…
"I can't believe you kept all this," Steve muttered under his breath, his fingers gentle as they moved through the contents of the box. "It would've meant a lot to Etta… if she knew."
Diana's gaze drifted to his father's watch that had replaced the modern one he used to wear when he first came back, fastened around his wrist. She moved to stand close to him and rested her chin on his shoulder. "Of course, I did."
He opted out of the auction in Madrid that she had on her agenda, his memory of the last one they had attended together uncomfortably fresh in his mind – so much so that he had paled a little when she had brought it up, and Diana had tried very hard not to laugh, tempted to tease him.
"I prefer to think of it as the first time we kissed in this century," she noted matter-of-factly just to make him sputter a little. Which he did, and she grinned.
But for her, it was work, her own commitment non-negotiable, and the only reason she wanted him there was to hold his hand and feel him close. She suspected there wouldn't be a moment anytime soon when she wouldn't want either of those things. If ever.
She took him to the staff Christmas party though, and this time, Steve didn't protest, thrilled by the idea of the canape bar and being fawned over by the elderly curators. Diana tried to pretend that she didn't hear hushed whispers behind her back, words muttered in French about his eyes (so blue!) and her smile (so radiant!), a little amused and secretly pleased to feed them all some gossip, surprisingly not bothered by being the talk of the whole department for a reason other than her excellent translation skills (beyond brilliant!)
Steve made his way around the room, charming her colleagues without even trying, a flute of champagne in his hand and his eyes drifting to her across the room every few minutes, making it oh so very hard for Diana to stay focused on her conversation with head of the Restoration Department, his assistant and a visiting curator from Rome. All she could do was hope as hell that smiling and nodding every now and then was the right course of action, her skin prickling a little every time Steve's gaze landed on her.
When she finally managed to escape the urgent attention of someone or other an hour and a half later, he was hanging around the snack bar, looking almost unbearably delicious himself.
"You were right, this is fun," Steve popped an olive into his mouth and smiled when she approached him, switching to English for the first time that night, his voice low and his words meant just for her. He brushed his thumb to her cheek, his eyes searching hers. "It's—"
"What?"
"It's different. You are different." Before adding when Diana raised an eyebrow at him, "Good different." His gaze swept the room around them once more. "I'm glad you have this," he told her. "It suits you."
"You have been here before," Diana pointed out with a smile, palms smoothing over his chest, pleased by his comment, nonetheless.
He shook his head. "Not the same." A pause. "They really love you here."
It wasn't his words so much as the tone of his voice that made her chest constrict a little. It wasn't a mere observation, not when it was coming from Steve. Not when he could see for himself that she had a place in his world like he had always wanted her to.
Diana smirked. "You're quite a success yourself," she noted, struggling to keep a straight face. She glanced around. "They're positively charmed." She turned back to Steve and stepped closer, sliding her arms around him and tucking her hands into the back pockets of his pants to bring him against her, not oblivious to how his eyes darkened momentarily with want. "Maybe I should bring you in as one of the exhibits," she mused.
Steve tucked a piece of hair framing her face around her ear and then wound his arms around her as well, his fingers anchored on the small of her back, his touch warm through the silk of her dress.
His eyebrow crept up, a mischievous glint in his gaze. "You mean, pin me to the wall and—" He cut off suddenly, his face turning crimson.
She bit her lip and leaned close to his ear, enjoying every moment of this. "Don't give me ideas," she whispered.
"Diana," he started and faltered again. He swallowed hard when the picture formed fully in his mind, his hand twitching on her back and his breath nowhere to be found.
This was never not going to be delightful, she decided.
Steve gave her a reproachful look. "You're a terrible influence," he pointed out, not without accusation, his expression more than a little desperate.
And who could blame her when it was so easy?
She watched him struggle to regain his composure, undoubtedly hating each and every person in the room with a passion for keeping him from being able to touch her all over, if his flustered and flushed face was any indication. Quite frankly, at this moment she shared the sentiment wholeheartedly.
Steve licked his lips and bowed his head closer to hers. "Can I take you home yet?" He asked quietly, entirely and completely disinterested in socializing by this point.
She allowed her lips to stretch into a slow, lazy smile as she brushed a kiss to his jaw – an innocent touch to the onlookers that made his breath catch audibly, and she became acutely aware of every part of his body pressed to hers – and then stepped back.
"Soon," she promised, reaching around him to pick a canape from the plate.
With the way he was looking at her, they were not likely to make it to the car.
Diana walked away, aware of him watching her every step and feeling his gaze on her with every inch of her skin as she vowed silently to never miss another staff event, not for the world. Provided she had a date.
xoox
Diana hated the idea—somewhat because the mere thought of Steve being anywhere near Amanda Waller, working by her side and under her command, was making her sick to her stomach, but mostly because she had no arguments against it that weren't deeply and unapologetically personal. When they had spoken of it two nights ago, going over every aspect of the plan that Steve wanted to pitch to the other members of the League, he had deflected her objections artfully, his reasoning solid and compelling, his voice unwavering.
At the time, she had agreed with them all. He had clearly thought it through, had considered every possible outcome and every bend of the road.
It had calmed her then, made her see his point and accept his justifications. If Amanda Waller wanted to control the League, there was no better way to do it than through someone they could trust. Someone who would be on their side instead of waiting for them to make a mistake so that fingers could be pointed and blame assigned. Someone who would be objective without being overbearing. And there was no one else in the entire creation who she trusted to do a better job than Steve.
His plan was good. Not only good but, knowing Steve, he would make the best of it in ways she knew she couldn't even begin to imagine. She had seen it before, more times than she could count. Diana didn't doubt for one moment that if anyone could make this work, it was him.
But that didn't mean that calling Bruce the following morning to lay out Steve's idea to him had been easy. Harder still was not blaming Bruce for apparently putting this thought into Steve's head in the first place, her voice measured and a little clipped, bordering on cold as she willed herself to bite back accusations.
If she had said no, if she had asked Steve to drop the subject and never bring it up again, he would have done it in a heartbeat. She saw it on his face and in his eyes as he had watched her while he spoke. One word from her, and he would never bring up this plan ever again, Diana knew that much. That was why she couldn't do it. That was why he was sitting before her laptop right now, in a group call with the League – everyone except Arthur who couldn't be reached on such short notice – while she paced restlessly behind him, unable to stay still.
The League might have been Bruce's child, but agreeing to something like this had to be a collective decision. A unanimous vote. Diana knew full well what they would do, though. As she listened to Steve repeat the same words he had said to her before, presenting the arguments that she had discussed with Bruce earlier, she knew that they would say yes.
Amanda Waller was dangerous in ways Diana wasn't willing to think of, and she doubted that her threat was enough to get that woman to back off. Someone had to give. Diana hated that it had to be them, and she was not subtle about that.
Twice, Steve looked up from the screen, trying to catch her eye. And twice, she pretended not to notice, fearful of losing her own reasoning if only their eyes met. If he looked at her the way he did, making the world fall away and reminding her of what exactly was at stake here, she wouldn't be able to stay impartial then, and she needed to be.
He had been right in his accusation, too. Had this been about anyone else, she would have gladly jumped at the chance to pacify the Director of A.R.G.U.S. and get her off their backs. However, with Steve's safety on the line, Diana felt like she could barely breathe, her hands curled into fists, nails digging into the soft flesh of her palms so she wouldn't reach over and slam the laptop shut and beg him to never put himself in danger again until he gave her every promise she wanted to hear.
"Are you out of your mind?" Barry was the first one to speak when Steve fell silent at last.
Diana exhaled.
She was not the only one who found his proposal insane, then. It was a small relief, but it eased the heavy tightness in her chest nonetheless, her lips curving ever so slightly. Trust Barry to jump straight to the point.
"Are you sure about this?" Clark asked, ignoring the speedster's comment.
Steve rubbed his forehead. "I don't think we have many options left," he noted, offering them a chance to object.
No one did.
"But that's working for Amanda Waller," Victor repeated as though the rest of them somehow missed that part, his human half of the face frowning.
His gaze moved past Steve's shoulder to where Diana was standing just behind him, arms folded over her chest, searching for her reaction. Steve glanced up, too, but she only dug her fingers deeper into her elbows.
She was not going to speak of her concerns.
"With her more than for her," Steve corrected. "She is as much an interested party here as we are. More so, even. She has been looking for a way to keep an eye on the Justice League ever since you all came together. Maybe even since before then. She wants to control metahumans. It's just her luck that you guys formed such a convenient alliance."
"I just don't see why she would be even interested in this offer," Victor said, "if she wanted you to be part of the team in the first place."
"She didn't," Steve shook his head. "I was meant to be a bargaining chip from the start. Something she wanted to use to rattle you—some of you—up."
He didn't look up again, but the pit of Diana's stomach went cold with fury regardless. That her life was toyed with so effortlessly was unforgivable.
"You mean—" Barry started.
Clark looked past him as well. "Diana."
She pressed her lips together. This was too personal, and she couldn't stand the thought of Waller being able to see this deep into her soul. From one photograph, at that. She might as well have stripped her heart bare.
"So, what's her gain then?" Barry piped up.
Steve shrugged. "Control." He grimaced a little. "Or at least some form of it."
Diana sighed. "Bruce?"
Batman leaned closer to the screen, elbows propped on the desk in the Batcave.
"Steve is right," he said. "Between the pressure from the public and the demands of her superiors, it won't be long before Waller is desperate. And desperate is dangerous." His eyes flicked to Diana. "I'm surprised she didn't offer something of this kind earlier, but if I have to guess, it wouldn't have been long before she came up with the idea of a liaison between the Justice League and A.R.G.U.S. herself. If we offer it first, it'll give us a chance to play out a surprise factor and thus gain better leverage."
Clark gave Steve a curious look, "And you're willing to do it? Work with her?"
Steve nodded. "I've done that before, sort of." He didn't go into the details, but they knew them. They had all read his file – a modified version of it, but still. "It won't be any different from how it would've been if I had joined the League, except that if Waller accepts our proposal, I will become a buffer between you and the US Government. I think I can handle some meetings and a couple of field reports a month."
"Are you cool with that, Di?" Barry inquired.
They all looked at her then.
"We all have to agree," Diana responded without actually answering the question.
Clark frowned a little, not fooled by her even voice. She looked away lest he spoke to her, her eyes finding Victor's face in the corner of the screen.
"What about Arthur?" Victor asked.
Bruce shook his head. "Couldn't reach him."
"He's gotta have a phone," Barry muttered, half-impressed and half-horrified.
"He lives at the bottom of the ocean, you genius," Victor scoffed.
"Waterproof cases, duh!"
"And he's supposed to charge it how, exactly?"
Barry blinked, at a loss for words.
"Are you done?" Bruce interjected impassively, and his mild tone nearly made Diane smile. It wasn't that long ago that this kind of conversation would have driven him up the wall.
"What makes you think Waller will even agree?" Clark asked as he rubbed his chin. "She's not stupid, she'll see right through it. By letting one of us be the link between A.R.G.U.S. and the League, she'll have her hands tied."
"Because she doesn't have many options left, either," Steve explained. "She should know by now that you would never let her oversee you on her terms. Right now, it's not about what's real and what's not. She needs to show the results or her own position at A.R.G.U.S. is at risk. She won't want to compromise it."
In the silence that settled then, Diana could hear the old clock ticking the seconds away on the mantel in the living room, the pause stretching as they allowed the information laid out before them to sink in.
And amidst it all, her chest constricted and then expanded with pride, her throat tight all of a sudden. The League had never worked with Steve before, not really. They merely trusted her judgement and their own blind faith when it came to his presence among them. Until now, they had perceived him as her partner more than anything else, she knew, but Diana could see it now. Could see them listening to him and assessing him on his own merit, looking at him as his own person.
And the feeling that filled her at the sight of it was all-consuming.
"I'm in," Barry said after a few moments. "I still think this plan is bonkers," he clarified, "but if it would take the mean lady off our backs, we should give it a go."
A mismatched choir of Yeah, me too followed suit.
"Diana?" Clark called.
This time, she turned to Steve and looked him in the eye, struggling to quell her fears. His gaze was warm, open, certain. He had never looked at her with anything less than adoration, even in moments of utter exasperation. But right now, she could see a purpose to him, too. Purpose and determination similar to what had once pushed him to defy the German army all on his own when no one else would know how.
You can either do nothing, or you can do something.
Who was she to try and defy his will?
"Yes," she said.
The tight lines around his mouth smoothed out, and it occurred to her then that all this time he was waiting for her to change her mind. A corner of his mouth lifted. For a second, she thought that he was going to say something, but in the end, he simply nodded.
"I will talk to Arthur," Bruce was saying meanwhile, his tone practical now that they had moved past the negotiation part and needed to keep soldiering on. "If he's game, we'll set up a meeting with Waller." He looked at Steve. "You might need to be here for that."
Diana walked over to the window. Outside, the street was grey and cold. She tuned out the voices behind her back as Steve and the rest of them made plans, discussed details, her eyes fixed on the people below huddled against the chill and the patches of ice on the sidewalk, her mind numb.
So much had changed since the day she had met Steve, but so little, too. She thought of him standing before her in the cave on the island, telling her that going back to the war wasn't about wanting, but about what needed to be done. She wondered, absently, if he had felt then as hollow as she was feeling now, powerless against something big, something that neither of them could control. She didn't see it that way back then. But there was no other way to look at it now.
So little had changed, indeed.
When she looked up a few minutes later, the call was over, the room around them quiet. The screen of her laptop was black, and Steve was standing by the desk, watching her, his hands tucked into the pockets of his pants, his blue eyes luminous in the pale afternoon light.
"Well, that went well," he noted, offering her a small smile.
A shuddered breath stuttered out of Diana's chest, catching somewhere in her throat.
"You know that Waller might not agree," Steve added, and she wondered what it was that he was seeing in her eyes.
She shook her head and sighed. "She will. You are right, she has no other choice. She could keep on the charade and try to force us into cooperation on her terms, or she could choose the easy path and say yes. I think she has done it the hard way for long enough."
He crossed the room, stopping right before her.
"Diana."
She looked up, feeling her shoulders slump forward as though her body deflated.
He moved closer, and, still feeling like a tightly wound spring, she welcomed the comfort of his presence. He reached for her, his hands running up and down Diana's arms as he bowed his head close to hers until they were breathing the same air.
"We can pull the plug any time," Steve said quietly, reaching to twist a piece of her hair around his finger. "I told you I wouldn't do anything that upsets you, and I meant it."
She smoothed her palms over his chest, her fingers closing over fistfuls of his shirt and her eyes trained on the hollow dip between his clavicles.
"I know." She swallowed. "I only just got you back," the words tumbled out of her mouth in a whoosh of breath.
"And I'm here to stay," he promised her, his voice earnest.
She watched his Adam's apple bob in his throat, the irony of how Steve was both their weakest link and their best hope to keep the conflict with Amanda Waller at bay not lost on her in the slightest. If there was a chance that she could keep him in a glass box, protected from the world, she would do so in a heartbeat. But the mere thought of him cooking dinners and twiddling thumbs as he waited for her to come home for the rest of their lives was laughable, impossible.
This was the man who was determined to single-handedly stop the German army if he had to, the man who had followed her into battle more times than she could count even when victory seemed impossible. He was a soldier through and through and it was not within her right to try and change that—much like she knew that he would never try to take her very essence away from her for his own comfort.
At last, Diana nodded, slowly. And then once more, and finally lifted her face up, her eyes finding his.
This was what she had wanted, wasn't it? When she dreamed of his return, this was what she had longed for—to be together, to work together, to fight side by side like they used to. She could not foresee Amanda Waller or the circumstances of his return, but those were details that changed nothing. Deep down, she still wished for nothing more.
"I know," she whispered.
A smile worked its way across Steve's features.
"Like the good old times," he told her. "Stir some feathers, cause some trouble. It'll be fun."
And this time, Diana smiled, rolling her eyes a little. And then laughed. And then kissed him, her palm curled over his jaw. He responded eagerly, kissing her for all he was worth until they were both breathless and dazed, and the edges of the day had smoothed out into nothing.
Her chest heaving against his, Diana rested her forehead to his.
"When do you need to go back?" she asked, playing idly with his hair at the nape of his neck.
Steve scrunched his face. "End of the week, probably. Bruce will call."
Her hand went still on the back of his neck, her thumb tracing the ridge of his jaw.
She sighed. "Well, I guess we better pack."
A/N: Boy oh boy, the closer we get to the magical words The End, the more emotional I get. (Or, it could be just this very long lockdown that's happening where I live)
As always, feedback is much appreciated, and I will love you forever. Also please feel free to share your thoughts/speculations/expectations from WW84 and/or Snyder's Justice League. I'm always here to talk about my faves. And thank you again for reading!