I loved my bisexual boyfriend.
Oh, holy shit. Steve was bisexual, not unattracted to me and I hadn't been making a fool of myself with the sexual gymnastics I put myself through to impress him in bed. His affection for me hadn't been an act, he hadn't used me. He genuinely loved me. I felt so stupid that I had jumped to the conclusion that he was fucking every gay man in New York City when we were apart.
And we weren't breaking up just yet.
I was enough for him, too, apparently. But I didn't feel like it right now.
"You still want to be with me?" I asked. He said we were going to be okay, but I didn't feel it, yet. "Even now?"
"I told you, I'm going to do my best to stick it out with you because I love you. I'm not gonna just call it quits because we had a fight. Are you?"
"No," I admitted, my voice tiny. I was surprised he even asked. If the positions had been switched, I realized I would have tried to work it out, too. "I'm not going to stop loving you just because you're bi."
"So we can work this out," he admitted. "This has been a hellish twenty-four hours for me, too."
"Yeah," I agreed, dabbing at my eyes with the sheet.
"Will you stop crying?"
"I don't know," I admitted. "There's a part of me that always felt like I didn't deserve you."
"What?"
"Yeah. I you seemed too good to be real and… I didn't think you could be, sometimes. And I was so worried you were seeing other women."
"You think I didn't worry about those things with you? That you'd find out about how I wasn't… straight? I wasn't born a super soldier? And reject me? All those successful politicians around DC and college professors who didn't work in dangerous warzones all the time being around you?"
"I'm sorry."
"I really thought if I loved you enough, it would never come up."
I curled up in the bed, my torso aching.
"It did. It changed everything."
I looked at him sitting in the chair, staring at the floor. He looked tired. So tired.
He was still my boyfriend. And despite my reaction, he still wanted to give our relationship a go. He was still my Stevie. Our relationship was not just an act. "It didn't," I said. "You're still the same man, just… I know something new about you."
There was a knock on the door.
"Dani?" Daddy asked.
"Hi, Daddy," I sighed in relief.
My father looked haggard in the low light as he came over to me and bent down to kiss me, since I hardly had the energy to lift my arms to hug him.
"I am so relieved you are in recovery," Daddy said. He looked up. "Steve." He remarked curtly.
"Curtis," Steve replied in the same tone, standing up. "I wish I could say it's good to see you, but this is not the situation."
"Definitely not," Daddy agreed.
"I um… you know, I haven't really thought about how I was going to face you, my first thoughts were about Dani. My only thoughts have been about her since I got the call, but I am deeply, deeply sorry I put your daughter in this position-"
"Son, no," Daddy said, sounding almost annoyed. "These things happen, and there's no rhyme or reason sometimes."
"Sir," he said. "I'll make this right. I can marry Dani once her doctor says she can have clergy come up-"
"Hold up!" I cried.
"Wait a second!" Daddy cried. "Steven, hold your horses-"
"I will make her an honest woman-" Steve continued.
"Steve, I'm not going to marry you just because we got pregnant," I cried. "That's not a good reason to get married and I don't want to enter a marriage out of guilt about how other people see us."
"People know, Dani," he said, looking dejected. "What good am I if I put you in this condition and didn't-"
"This is way too early to talk about. Let's not jump the gun on anything," Daddy said.
"Baby," I start gently. "Lots of people get pregnant outside of marriage these days. It's not the scandal is used to be in the forties. People have babies together and raise them without ever getting married anymore."
"The pregnancy never had a chance to survive anyway," Daddy said. "It doesn't really count."
Steve rubbed his face with both his hands and then up into his hair, turning towards the window, groaning softly.
"What happened?" Daddy asked me.
"I was at Alissa's and she called an Uber for me, and I collapsed when we got out of the building. And she took me to the hospital, and the ER doc had me take a pregnancy test."
"You never took one before now?"
"Not since we got back from Monaco," I admitted. "They said I was like six weeks along. They sent me to ultrasound to see if they could save my fallopian tube, they told me they couldn't, and they rushed me into emergency surgery. I didn't even have to chance to call anybody."
"Thank God for Alissa and Joel," Daddy said.
"Yeah," Steve muttered, still looking out the window. "A part of me asks how this could have happened, but then again, I know. Look, I'm to going anywhere until Dani's fully recovered."
"Steve?" Daddy asked. "Son, turn around look at me. Listen: thank you for being here as soon as you could be while she gets better. Why don't you go to Dani's apartment and get some rest-"
"No, I said I'm going to be here. With Dani, I'm not leaving this hospital until she does."
"You're sure?"
"I'm sure."
Steve took the couch while Daddy took the chair. He insisted Steve try to rest for a few hours and get some sleep while he and I talked.
Daddy turned on CNN and we watched for a few minutes while Steve closed his eyes.
"I know you and Steve had a fight. A really bad one. He didn't… he didn't hurt you, did he?"
"It's private," I said.
"He didn't hurt you?"
"No, Daddy, he's never laid a finger on me."
"Did you find out what he's been hiding?"
"I've always known. He doesn't keep secrets from me. He can't tell me about things he does with special ops, but I trust he'll always tell me with what he can."
"So tell me… where did he really go to basic? I have friends in the Air Force still, they told me that they haven't been able to find a Steven Grant Rogers in the Army in the last thirty-five years that matches his description."
"Daddy-"
"I want to know who my daughter's boyfriend is, and he's not telling the truth about somethings."
"He's told me the truth."
"How do you know it's the truth?"
"Because I've met his special ops team and they're legit."
"How do you know that?"
I groaned. "Daddy, drop it."
"The day you were born, I held you, your little head fit into my hand and your little eyes wouldn't even open up, and I swore I would do everything in my power to protect you until the day I died, with my last living breath. You're in a serious relationship with a man I cannot trust."
"His military file is redacted," I said. "That's why your Air Force buddies couldn't find anything on him."
"Why?"
"He's not technically in the military any longer, but he does work for a branch of the government. He has been for a… a long time."
"Jesus Christ… Do you even know which branch?"
"Yeah, I do, I figured it out and he confirmed it. But I can't tell you which one."
Daddy sighed, and then sighed again. He got up and walked around the room for a moment, not looking at me. "I just want to protect my baby. I don't know this Steve person very well at all, this is only the second time I've met him face-to-Face and he just said he'd marry you to protect your reputation. If that doesn't sound suspicious, I don't know what does."
"You don't know him."
"If my Air Force friends could find records on him, I'd feel better. But something about him just doesn't add up, Danielle."
"Daddy-"
"I've called my friends on Metro-"
"Daddy!" I cried.
I saw Steve jump in the corner of my eye.
"You're not gonna find anything," I bluffed.
"I'm so sure. I don't hate him, but I'm suspicious, honey. He's not someone I'd want marrying you, he seemed awfully keen on it, though."
"He's old-fashioned, he didn't want me shamed. But wait a second, are you saying that you're not giving your blessing?"
"Not right now. No."
I sighed. "Daddy, don't do that to me."
"I can't go against my conscience, especially not with you. My job, my reason for living, is to protect you and your sister."
"Steve takes it as his job to protect me, too. And if you wouldn't give us your blessing, we'd just go against it. You'll see, he's not a creep and he's not a conman."
"Don't you dare-"
"I'm an adult woman, Daddy. Don't you dare put me in this position to have to go against your blessing."
"I wasn't as careful as I should have been when Lauren asked me for my blessing to marry Russell, and now they're struggling. I wish I hadn't done it so freely. I won't make that mistake with you."
"Steve and I almost got married in Monaco, if we had found a priest willing to do it for us, but the one thing that held me back was that our families wouldn't be there and we agreed we weren't going to even consider ourselves engaged until we went through the proper channels and did it the right way."
"I woulda killed you if you came back married to someone I had never met. And now you're fighting-"
"Steve's an honorable man. And yeah, we had a pretty big misunderstanding and disagreement, but we're working it out and it's private."
"You're not going to tell me what it was, are you?"
"No. Not yet. But I was the one in the wrong, not him."
Daddy didn't respond, but I could see his mind churning thoughts.
"Let's just leave it at that, okay? I can handle this."
"If you say so." Daddy's words didn't convince me.
Daddy went to get checked into a hotel for the night, since it was going to be Steve sleeping in the hospital room with me. He promised to come back with some breakfast biscuits and coffee first thing in the morning.
"Your Pops really does not trust me," Steve said, sitting up from the couch.
"I'm sorry you had to hear that."
"You really stood up for me, though."
I nodded.
"Thank you for not telling your father I'm…"
"It's not my secret to tell. But I am your girlfriend, and I'd be a really shitty one if I told something so personal about you to the rest of the world."
"You are a good girlfriend," he admitted. "Now that I think about it, I don't blame you for reacting the way you did last night."
"I'm sorry-"
"Don't apologize. I know why you did what you did. I'm not sure if I was keeping something from you or I was lying to myself."
"You know, denial can be a pretty strong emotion."
Steve nodded. "Yeah. It can. I'm at fault here, too. I wish I had been brave enough to stand up like you just did to your father. We could have avoided this if I had…"
"But you did. You're brave. You face down enemies of the world every day, you're a superhero."
"But I haven't been brave enough to face down myself."
I realized the torso pain was fading just a little bit. "You weren't at fault, like you told your pops. Not completely. We're both at fault here."
"We still love each other," I said. "I'm just seeing a part of you that you guarded from the world, finally. You're letting your walls down with me, that's what relationships are all about. I do love you."
"I love you, too. And… I still want this to work."
"Me too."
"I feel like we've lost a lot," he admitted. "All in a moment."
"The… the idea of you being straight? Steve, I see you a little differently, but I don't love you any less."
"No, not that. We made a baby. Maybe by accident, but it was us, we created something. I don't know if this was an effect or problem with the super soldier serum or what, but… we could have been parents… I lost my own too soon. And I never thought I'd be a father. But I almost became one. For just a moment, when Alissa said you had an ectopic pregnancy, a little part of me hoped you could carry it to term, and then she said you were going into emergency surgery and I knew that was the end of it."
I felt a tear slide down my swollen cheek. After all my childhood had been so messed up with a crazy, alcoholic mother, I had always told myself I'd be a better mother to my children. And when I fantasized about Steve, I thought we'd have the perfect family together, we'd plan it and it would be the best little family and he'd be the best dad, especially after I saw how much he had taken to Matthew.
The loss hit me pretty hard, suddenly. "We did lose a lot," I admitted. "But this isn't the end. The doctor said I'll still be able to have a baby one day. That's promising, isn't it?"
"Yeah," Steve agree. "It is."
My mother showed up right as I was being discharged from the hospital the next day, with discharge orders to go to an OB GYN and a therapist and a few new prescriptions, including one for an antidepressant. I knew I'd need a lot of support to get over this fight Steve and I had had, and the loss of a pregnancy. I knew my hormones were going to be crazy and I felt some grief and guilt over this.
"Danielle, my baby!" she sobbed. "I can't believe this happened to you! How- what-" She turned, her over-exaggerated grief turning to rage, glaring at Steve. "How could you do this to my daughter?!" she shrieked. She charged at him, fists up and got one good strike in on his chest, and Steve caught her other wrist easily and she wailed, melodramatically. Security showed up in my room. Steve didn't show any expression. "My baby lost a pregnancy! You took advantage of her!" she bellowed.
"Ma'am," the security guard said.
"Steve?" I asked.
"How could you?" Momma shrieked.
I was horribly embarrassed. "Ma'am," the security guard repeated.
"I've got this under control," Steve promised the security guard. "She's not going to hurt me."
"Momma," I said. "Steve and I are okay with each other, we're mourning this together, he didn't do anything to me on purpose."
Momma sank to her knees, bawling.
"She's like this," Daddy whispered to the guard. "Ex-wife."
"Oooooh."
"Momma, get up," I commanded. "This is ridiculous."
"Don't tell me what's ridiculous!" she snapped. Steve was still holding her wrists and she hung there like a life-sized doll.
"Momma, he's coming back to my apartment with me, and he's going to stay there until the doctor says I'm recovered, so stop this," I snapped.
"Are you okay?" Alissa whispered. I was so thankful she had brought hemorrhoid cream and tea bags for my eyes to get the swelling out.
"I'm fine," I whispered back. "Momma, you're embarrassing me." Steve shot me a helpless look over Momma. I suppressed a laugh: my first laugh since the fight we had had.
"Rosalie," Daddy said, going over to her. "Get up. Steve, you can let go of her hands, we're leaving. You're welcome to come with us to Dani's apartment."
"Where will I stay?" Momma asked, as if she didn't have enough money to rent a hotel room. "I want to take care of my daughter."
I almost choked at that, laughing and screaming at the same time. This narcissistic woman, in my memory, had never cared for me without getting something in return from what other people thought or having an ulterior motive or how my reaction made her feel.
"Danielle," Daddy warned.
"Miss Conyers?" the transport tech asked from the doorway. "Are you ready to go?"
"Oh, I'm ready," I said, shuffling over to the wheelchair. "Get me out of here."
"Joel's waiting at the main entrance," Alissa said.
"Momma?" I asked.
Momma was still weeping on the floor.
"I guess we're just gonna leave her there," I said as the transport tech wheeled me out. Alissa snorted.
"Holy God…" Daddy muttered.
Joel was waiting in the Aztec, and Steve made sure I was carefully placed in the front passenger seat while Daddy and Alissa made sure my suitcase and backpack were in the cargo space in the back with Lourdes Marie, who was in her carrier, meowing at me.
Momma came running out of entrance. "Danielle, my baby!" she wailed.
"We're going home," Daddy said to her.
Momma reached for the back door, and Daddy stopped her.
"Momma, get your own ride," I said, exhausted.
I was tucked into my bed, and Alissa had put fresh sheets on it for me while I had been in the hospital. The were get-well-soon cards from our class, from my dance class, and from work waiting for me. Daddy had gone to the pharmacy to pick up my prescriptions. Lourdes Marie was curled up next to me on the bed, purring as I stroked her soft fur.
I was home.
Momma had come by briefly, and said she was going to give me my first bath in four days (I had nothing but sponge baths since surgery, which weren't nearly as sexy as they sounded and I wasn't nearly as clean as I wanted to be). She cried out in shock when she went into my tiny bathroom and discovered my tiny shower stall, then decided she was going to rearrange my kitchen, which stressed me out so badly, Daddy basically kicked her out, and she had gone into a rage, saying no one was allowing her to take care of her sick daughter. When she finally got into the Uber and left, all five of us just sat there in silence, relieved.
Right now, Steve, Alissa, and Joel were playing cards at my breakfast nook table, and I kept hearing Joel remark, stunned, how was Steve winning every round? I had the feeling they were playing blackjack and Steve was counting cards.
My front door opened, and Daddy walked into the tiny apartment. I had never had this many people in it at once before, and I was a little ashamed of the pile of laundry that was spilling out of the closet that Alissa had throw into the basket haphazardly.
"I got every prescription. Dani, how ya feeling?" he asked.
"Calm," I replied. "It still hurts to move my torso."
"I think we're going to head home," Alissa said. "I'll come by in the morning."
"I've got another shift starting at six," Joel admitted. "I need to get some shut-eye."
"I think that's a good idea," Steve agreed.
"Liss? Joel? I love you," I said. They both came over and gave me an abbreviated hug and kiss before they went out the door. Daddy and Steve made sure I had my first dose of prescriptions with a glass of water and Daddy gave me a kiss good-bye to go to the hotel to get some sleep.
That left Steve and me alone in my apartment.
"I'm going to be honest with you, Dani," Steve said. "Your ma's completely insane."
"Now you understand why I've got such a strained relationship with her?" I asked.
"She was acting like she was in a Hollywood picture show! Real people don't act that way!"
"Yeah, imagine growing up with a mother like that."
"I get why you went to live with your dad."
I nodded. "Yeah," I agreed.
"Listen… you need a shower."
"I know," I agreed, and reached for the covers to toss them off without disturbed Lourdes Marie. I didn't have the motility to toss them. Steve reached for them and pulled them back for me and then took my hand to get me up.
"Come on," he said.
"Steve-" I panicked. My calves were like sandpaper, and I had managed to hide them from him so far. I shaved my legs religiously when he was in town, and I did not want him seeing the gross side of my hairy body.
"I've seen you naked before, remember?" he reminded me, pushing my yoga pants off my hips.
"Steven-" I pressed my knees together to hold my yoga pants in place.
"What are you freaking out about?" he asked, gently.
"I… Steve, I haven't had a chance to shave my legs since we went out to dinner with Nia and Creighton!" I shouted.
"I know," he said, shrugging.
"Don't look at me!"
"I'm looking at you right now!"
"No, don't look at my legs!"
"Dani, you're being ridiculous."
"I have worked so hard to hide this from you," I said, cringing. "But Steve… I have to shave my legs almost constantly when you're around."
"Dani," he repeated, an easy smile crossing his face, finally. "I know."
"What?"
"I know you've got more body hair than I do if you stopped shaving," he laughed.
My cheeks burned red and I started laughing too. This was so stupid to be embarrassed about, but I was. I pressed my hand to my face, too embarrassed, but I was laughing.
"In Monaco, when we went to the beach, you were laying on your stomach, reading a book on your phone, and I saw this strip of leg hair you had missed on the back of your thigh, and it was so long, I could have braided it!" He laughed even harder.
I laughed too, horrified and hysterical at myself all at once. "Oh my God…"
"I didn't say anything because I noticed how you'd lock yourself in the bathroom so often and I'd find pink, used shaving cream in the sink and the bathtub, and I thought, why the hell do you shave everything? Even the places normal people don't shave?"
"I don't know," I mumbled between embarrassed giggles.
"It's the Greek part of you, isn't it?"
"Yeah," I giggled, burying my face into his chest. He hugged me.
"That strip of leg hair you missed, it was cute. It was endearing. I still love you…. sasquatch."
"Hey!" We were laughing and giggling again. It felt like we were Steve and Dani again.
We were going to be fine.
Steve helped me into the shower, and we were both naked, although he didn't fit in the shower stall with me, he washed me off and washed my hair. I felt like a new woman. He even helped me shave my legs by wrapping me up in a towel and setting me down on the closed toilet seat.
"I'm not shaving anything else for you," he said, wiping my leg off with a wet washcloth. "You're just going to have to go au-naturale until you can do this for yourself."
"You can't even shave me above the knee?"
"Nope." He got up off the floor and kissed me on the lips, quickly. It still had the same effect only a little better. I was sad we couldn't make love for the next six weeks as he exited my tiny bathroom in his cotton pajama pants hanging off that perfect ass. "Sorry, Sasquatch."
"Hey!" I cried, giggling. "It hurts to laugh, damnit!"
"Then stop laughing, I'm getting your pajamas! The unicorn ones!"
We giggled about it for the rest of the night, too wound up to sleep.
It was nice to be loved, regardless of the things I thought were disgusting about myself. I knew Steve felt that way, even more intensely than I did about his sexuality all this time. This kind of shame was ridiculous and he didn't need to carry it. I hoped it hadn't become a schema for him, though, part of what he believed about himself. It was freeing to not have to carry a secret, usually. I hoped he felt that way, too.
"Did I ever tell you I kissed a girl once?" I asked as we got into bed, resting my head on his chest so I could look up at him.
"Yeah, you did, come to think of it. You didn't like it?"
"It just felt… wrong. When I kiss you, it's fireworks. My pulse races and my skin tingles. It wasn't that with her. That's how I knew I wasn't a closeted lesbian."
"That's where I suspected…"
"You've kissed other men?"
"Yeah. In the forties."
My insecurities started bubbling in my stomach.
"Did you have sex with them?"
"Dani-"
"Well, did you?"
"No. Of course not. I told you that!"
"Sex with a man is different than sex with a woman," I pointed out. "But it's still sex."
"Okay, fine: I went home with a man I met in 1942 when I braved the gay bar after Bucky left for basic, and we kissed but…"
"You backed out?" I asked, hopefully.
"Yeah. The fear of stigma got me. But… It was kind of like when I first kissed you. Fireworks."
"Oh."
"But kissing you has gotten better and better."
"Come to think of it, it has," I agreed.
"Do you want to know why I moved to Brooklyn when I turned eighteen and Ma died?"
"Did it have to do with…"
"Yeah. DUMBO was the notoriously gay neighborhood in New York at that time. And since I was a five-foot wimp that a gust of wind could have knocked over, I thought I had no chance with the girls. I thought… art school… I can't tell you how many times I tripped over two gay fellas going at it in back alleys."
"Are you kidding me, that's-"
"Well, they couldn't bring each other home to their families, could they?"
"I guess not. It's almost funny."
"It is funny," Steve said, chortling. "I didn't think I'd meet Bucky in Brooklyn, but…"
I felt a brick in my stomach as he shrugged. "But?" I coaxed.
"But what?"
"Steve, was he…"
"Okay… I had feelings towards him. He never seemed to return them, I thought, but one night, he got really drunk, like black-out swacked and ended up outside my window at the boarding house, throwing pebbles from the alley. I went down to meet him, and he just started flappin' his jaw, not really making sense. He kissed me in that alley. Backed me up against a wall and just laid one on me. I was shaken up, it was like he felt the same way about me that I did for him. It was amazing, it was like… like our first kiss. And he backed off, and told me he had to go home, and left me there in that alley. In the morning on my way to class, he came into school, all hungover, we talked, he didn't remember even coming to my place. I guess that's why I thought of him as my best friend. I hoped one day, it would happen again."
"It never did, did it?" I asked, feeling so sad for Steve. He spoke so lovingly of Bucky. I wished I had had a chance to meet him.
"No. Even when he was drunk."
I knew that feeling. I hated that feeling. I had had a few crushes do that to me in high school. "I'm sorry," I said softly. What would have happened to Steve and Bucky if he had returned Steve's feelings? I wasn't sure.
I realized how lucky I was and how close I was to him, now. He didn't let people in this closely. He had let down the wall for me, and me alone. "Steve?"
"Yeah, sweetheart?"
"Thank you for trusting me with this and letting me in."
"Thanks for showing me it's not a dealbreaker."
My phone rang as I carefully buttoned up my jeans while Steve was out on a run and picked up my backpack. This was the first time the torso pain felt like the occasional stiff muscle and Steve was going to take me to Abnormal Psych. I had caught up with the school work by the time Daddy had flown back to Nashville, and I needed to get back to regular life. Daddy insisted on replacing my lost income from the diner until I was healed completely, and Steve had gone out and bought me a new, light-weight MacBook Air, since my HP laptop was old, slow, and probably weighed fifteen pounds. I had tried to reject it, but Steve told me that there was no way I was going to carry that into a school building for class, and bought all my text books for my kindle app on my iPad. My backpack was so light now, it hardly felt like anything at all.
I checked my phone, and it was Natasha.
"Hey," I said.
"Hi," she said. "So, the last time we saw Steve, he said you were in emergency surgery, and he's not answering his phone, but then again, he's not on call for the next two months. How are you?"
"I'm doing a lot better," I admitted.
"That's good to hear. The team's pretty curious about what's going on, since Steve sent us a group email that he's going to stay in DC and take care of you, and won't answer texts. So we drew straws and I think the others cheated. So, what happened?"
"Okay, while Steve's out on a run, I'll tell you: I had an ectopic pregnancy and it ruptured my fallopian tube."
There was a long silence on Nat's end. "Yeah, we thought that was it."
"How'd you guess?"
"Tony would never hack a private, high-stakes conversation between you and Steve, but he could hear Alissa a little bit when she called him in the quinjet. I made them not agree not to assume anything or guess. I wanted to hear it directly from either one of you, not gossip."
"Well… thanks for stopping gossip. You're true fam."
Nat laughed. "I guess so. And men are just as bad as women about gossip."
"Yeah, they are," I agreed. "They just want to pretend they aren't."
"Are you okay with me telling them?" she asked. "It's okay if you say no."
"I am, Steve's ready to marry me so people won't call me a slut or something."
"He's a regular Boy Scout."
"Definitely," I agreed, thinking of him voluntarily changing someone's car tire at the gay bar. "Look, Nat… I know the night Steve and I met, we were in a gay bar, he said it was you that wanted to go to one."
"Technically, it was," Nat said. "We took Steve around the nightclubs in DC that night and he was too nervous to talk to any of the girls, when he did, he'd strike out. I thought they were all stuck up and expecting too much."
"Did you take him to the gay bar in hopes he'd hit it off with a man?" I asked directly.
Another long silence from Nat. "Yeah, I did. You know?"
"I didn't. For a long time. Until the night before I went to emergency surgery, I was completely oblivious to it and then, everything just became so obvious. I feel pretty stupid I didn't see the warning signs… not that it was dangerous, I didn't mean it that way."
"It's easy to miss those kinds of things in the people we love. We believe the things we want to hear."
"But you knew?"
"I'll be honest… we all suspected about him, although he's never said it and we'd never be so gauche to ask something so personal and private. And we all love him enough to just want him to be happy, regardless of if he's with a man or woman. And he's over the moon for you, and we all love you, too, even Tony, who's never met you. Oh, and you should know S.H.I.E.L.D. doesn't like it one bit, but we'll defend the two of you to the death to them."
"Thanks."
"But promise me you'll won't hurt him."
"I've already promised that."
"Are you okay with him being bi? You're not going to treat him like shit, right?"
It didn't surprise me that the Avengers knew he wasn't straight. "No, no way. The last couple of days have been tough, but we've come to terms. I'm okay with it. I kind of love him more than I ever did before. It's just a part of him. This is who Steve is. All that's going to happen is we might find Indiana Jones hot if we see him with shirt off in a movie. That's really the biggest concern I have right now about it."
"Good. Because you know I can hurt you. Badly."
"I do," I admitted. "I remember that."
The door opened and my sweaty boyfriend burst through.
"Hey!" I cried.
"Hi, Sasquatch," he said, coming over to the kiss me. I stuck my tongue out at him.
"Hi, Steve," Natasha said.
"Is that Nat?"
"Yeah, it is," I said, turning it on to speaker. "She called to talk to me about what the surgery was. Why didn't you tell the team what happened?"
"It's none of their business!" Steve cried.
"Steve, we all know you have sex with your girlfriend " Nat called. "And nobody cares!"
Steve groaned. "Ugh, stop!"
I burst out laughing.
"We all know about the talk you and Clint had on the way back from Liberia in the back of the quinjet."
"I'm gonna take a shower so I can take you class," Steve said, cheeks turning red.
"You do that," I said.
"He knows I'm going to tell you regardless, he doesn't wanna hear it," she scoffed as the bathroom door slammed shut.
"Okay, what happened?"
"So that was the night Steve bet Tony for his Monaco vacation home," Nat said. "After he won, Clint sat down across from him in the back of the quinjet and they had a 'talk.'"
"A 'talk' huh?"
"Yeah. He thought I couldn't hear it. I hear everything on the quinjet, even over the engines."
"What did Clint say?" I asked, curious.
"Clint said, 'I know Dani's really special and you want to show her a good time, but women are really different from the 1940s,'" Nat said, taking a bite of something. "Steve protested for a moment, saying that you two didn't really have problems, but Clint said that women today had different expectations, and he just wanted to make sure, it was very big brother. He said, 'There are four things women expect today that they probably didn't back in World War II."
"Oh really?" I asked.
"Oh yes. Clint is an amazing man. All the men in the Avengers are, don't get me wrong, but I wish more men out there were like that. First, he said, 'you gotta get consent. Don't do anything unless she states she's okay with it, none of this 'no is yes' bullshit and if she freaks out, stop everything you're doing immediately.' Steve said that wasn't a problem. Second, it was always use protection, girls like it when men show them that kind of respect."
"Yeah, we kind of messed up a little in Monaco on that, but that was more my fault than anything."
"Well, it happens. Clint said it was a turn-on for women if you offered it. And then, he said, foreplay: if think you've done enough, you probably haven't and do twice that, don't just get down to business without it. I was thinking, oh, God, why don't men care about that? Why do they need to be reminded?"
"Oh my God," I said, thinking of how Steve's love-making technique had suddenly changed drastically when we went on vacation together. I had to find a non-creepy way to do something nice for Clint. Koulourakia seemed to be a hit.
"I know, right? And then, he said, 'And go down on her, goddamnit, just go down.'"
I burst out laughing. "He did?" I laughed.
"Yes. Men didn't like doing that until a few years ago, it was like a challenge to their masculinity."
"How do you know this?"
"I'm older than I look. Anyway, Steve got all squeamish about it, and then Clint said, 'if she does it for you, you need to be doing it back. It's not that bad, really, and they're more likely to do whatever you want if you do it right.' I could feel the embarrassment radiating off him all the way from the cockpit, and Tony was biting his fist, tears running down his cheeks, he was laughing so hard. And then Clint told him, the internet has a lot of advice, but don't click on any videos, read the articles instead."
I was cackling at this point.. "I bet he's wishing he could drown in the shower right now," I said.
"Me too. It's funny, but don't bust his chops about it... too much. The guys already do it enough. You don't know how many men I've dated that I wish had big brothers or best friends like Clint to give that kind of advice."
"I wish that, too," I admitted, thinking about shitty my sex life had been with Chad. It was obvious to the rest of Steve's team that I was his first, but Nat wasn't telling me that. They knew it was a sensitive subject for him, just as much as the bisexual part of his nature. And Nat did really care about him like a brother. If Steve's flesh-and-blood family hadn't survived to today, I understood, the Avengers were the next best thing to a family. If we made it to a wedding, my family would be there, and so would his.
Steve met me outside the building on the GWU campus after I finished classes. Kamika and Mia had hugged me and welcomed me back. It was nice to be back in the real world, out of the hospital and my little studio apartment.
"How was school?" he asked, taking my backpack, leaving my arms free.
"Good. The faculty is allowing me the missed class, since I did the work to make up for it," I said. "It was interesting, too. I can't wait for Advanced Abnormal Psych."
"What do you want me to try to make for dinner?" His attempts at cooking were improving slowly but surely. But most of his cooking left something to be desired and I had to coach him and we ordered take out. I was pretty sure I'd gain twenty pounds before the recovery date was up. I wrinkled my nose unintentionally. "You're not hungry?"
"I am a little bit, but I'm getting cabin fever. Can we walk for a few minutes? It's a beautiful day."
"Sure, if you're up to it."
"I am. The doctor says it's good for me to get some light cardio in," I said.
"The National Mall's not that far away," he said.
"Perfect."
Steve took my hand and we started the trek.
The spring blooms on the trees weren't even that bad. The constant sinus problems I had since Monaco were exaggerated allergies from my hormones and morning sickness. I had missed so many signs that I was pregnant because I had been spotting.
A group of kids, maybe fifth or sixth grade, walked past us, giggling and chatting, a school field trip, and I realized we were at the National Mall.
"Where do you want to go first?" I asked.
"If you're hungry, the American Indian Museum's cafeteria is said to be the best place to eat out here."
"I've never eaten there, and I've lived here almost a year."
"My treat," he said.
"I'm up for it," I said. I told Steve about the lecture from today as we walked. We went past a few memorials, and I realized we were in front of the World War II memorial. I stopped, mid sentence. Steve was silent. On our first date, I tried to get him to go to the memorial before I knew he was World War II soldier and he had declined. "We don't have to walk through here," I offered. "We can walk around."
"No. I think it's time I faced it. I think we've entered a new stage of our relationship: facing our fears."
And we had faced so many: the darkest parts of ourselves, our personal shames and embarrassments. I still had a lot more to face, personally, but they didn't seem to scary with Steve at my side. I realized how much of this we needed to do before even talking about a commitment like marriage. "You're scared of going to the memorial?" I asked.
"I'm afraid of remembering the Howling Commandos. We were brothers in arms and they're all dead. Here I am, walking around, just fine, like it happened a year ago, but it was a lot longer than that. I try not to think about them… but I do. I've spent my whole life looking a family."
"You have one. In the Avengers. And me."
He shook his head, but took a step forward, still holding hand. I stepped forward with him.
We entered the circular rotunda of the memorial, the beautiful fountain was going full-blast, the streams of water shooting up into the center. We were surrounded by the pillars that represented every state in the union that had contributed soldiers.
We took a seat on one of the benches to look around and watch the fountain.
"So, New York- that's me and Bucky, obviously," he said, pointing at the New York pillar. "And California, that's where Morita was from. Fresno, actually. He was a Nisei soldier, a Japanese American."
"I think I've heard of those," I said.
"And Massachusetts, that's where Dum-dum came from, Boston, actually. And then, there was Gabe Jones. He was the ladies' man. And so smart, too. He was our translator. He studied German and French at Howard University, his reasoning for transferring to French was the girls were cuter."
A peal of laughter escaped my lips, but I stopped.
"There was Falsworth, but he wasn't American, but British. We went on so many missions together. They were the first family I had after Ma died, not counting Bucky."
I threaded his fingers in mine, our digits laced together. "You always wanted a family," I muttered.
"Yeah. I could tell your family is close from our first date. Your father, he's… he's the best dad I ever saw. If I ever have a daughter, I don't know if I could be half the father he is. He loves you so much. The amount of love I have for you, it's… it's overwhelming to me sometimes. But the way he loves you… I aspire to love like that. I admire him so much for all that he's made for himself."
"You admire my father?"
"He probably hates my guts, but yeah. I wish I could be like him. And have the family he has. I think I love you the most I ever could, but I realized that love can go a lot deeper than that when I see how your father loves you. And I want that. I didn't know love could be so exponential. Not just with you, but with a family."
I squeezed his hand. "I forget how much I'm loved, sometimes," I admitted. My heart ached for him. He hadn't been loved very much, not like I had. Yet he loved me. I wanted to give him that love and security. We almost had it when I was pregnant, but it didn't work. "And I feel that way about how much I love you, too. Love can go so much deeper than what we have already."
"It can," he agreed. He lifted my hand in his to his lips, kissing my knuckles.
There's still an epilogue! Thank you for reading!
XOXO,
Blue