Day 7 - Surprise Us: Awakening
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He came back to consciousness slowly.
The day before, he had reacted when a doctor peeled up his eyelids and shone a light into his pupils. That evening, a baseball game played on the radio made his heartbeat quicken slightly. During the night, his eyes began moving behind their lids, and he displayed every symptom of a man who was dreaming.
Not nightmares, thankfully. Peggy wasn't sure she could have stood it if he'd had nightmares.
And now the sun was rising - and as the first rays of light filled the room, Steve Rogers' eyes very quietly opened for the first time in over a year.
The moment felt as though it ought to be accompanied by some sort of momentous music or applause, but the only sound was of the morning New York traffic driving by, far below.
Peggy held her breath. Her heart felt as though it would beat its way up into her throat and choke her. She must have made some aborted movement - or perhaps he sensed her presence, because after blinking sleepily at the ceiling for a moment, his eyebrows drew together in a vaguely puzzled expression. Then he turned his head and looked directly at her.
The lines around his eyes deepened momentarily, and then faded as his face brightened.
"Peggy."
His voice was hoarse, hardly stronger than a whisper. She tried to smile, felt as though it got mixed up with a sob at some point, and wound the whole performance up with a sort of hiccuping gulp.
"How are you feeling?" she heard herself ask, though it was the sort of question one asked a friend who had been sick; not the sort of question one asked the man who held one's heart and then had been lost and presumed dead for thirteen and a half months.
Steve frowned again, as though something was out of place. "Not bad," he said - and then stopped. He looked at her again. Then he looked around the room slowly, taking his time. When his eyes came back to hers, she could see a spark of realization, almost panic.
"I went down," he said. His eyes fluttered to her hair - longer now than it had been - and stayed there for a moment. He looked slightly ill when he swallowed hard and asked "How long have I been out?"
She told him.
It was a long story, though she tried to shorten it. At the end of it all, he nodded, looking more than a little overwhelmed. His hands shook slightly as he set down the cup of water she'd given him; she wasn't sure if was from exhaustion or shock.
"The men?" he asked quietly.
"They're fine," Peggy promised.
"And you?"
She hadn't expected that - and she had forgotten how it felt to be the sole focus of his direct, searching gaze. It warmed her, touched her somewhere at the center of her soul in a way she'd missed terribly. She tried to smile, and felt it quiver at the edges, all her walls coming down with an unexpected suddenness.
"I'm quite all right as well. Though I'm afraid you missed our dance."
She thought he would smile at that, but he didn't. Instead, he moved his head on the pillow uneasily, fingers flexing in the sheets, as though he very much wanted to hold something. If he had been stronger, she was sure he would have tried to sit up.
"I know - I know I'm late," he admitted, voice very low, breaking off every now and then as he fumbled for words. The creases around his eyes deepened, as though in pain. "You made that date with a dead man - we both knew I wasn't coming home. And it's been - a year, and things - change. If you - I mean, if…" He caught his breath, and forged on earnestly. "What I'm trying to say is that if our - if you've changed your mind, then it's okay. It's okay."
Peggy blinked at him, surprised, dismayed.
And that was when she realized that he didn't know. This was Steve Rogers, the man who'd never successfully gone dancing in his life, and who didn't want to press his claim with a girl who might have moved on. He didn't know that her heart was his for the taking - indeed, that he had already taken it so very long ago, simply by being himself.
So she leaned forward over the side of the bed and taught him, lips soft and true against his, her hand cupped lightly around the edge of his jaw.
He breathed her name when she finally broke the kiss. His eyes were closed when she drew back, but they flew open almost at once with such a look of mingled shock and adoration that she couldn't keep from dimpling.
"Um," he said, and stared at her, the color rising in his cheeks. "Um - thank you?" He sounded at a loss for what to say. "Did I miss something?"
"You did," Peggy answered, feeling heat bloom across her cheekbones. She felt almost giddy at the look in his eyes. They had wasted so much time, so nearly lost everything. "I believe you missed the part where I fell in love with you."
Steve's face went utterly blank in surprise for the briefest of moments, and then was swept with such a wave of hope and tentative joy that it made her heart beat faster. His eyes caught hers, tangling in a long, increasingly electric gaze - and then, suppressing a grunt, he fought his way up onto his elbows and pushed himself upright.
"Steve," she protested, putting her hands out to stop him, but he paid no attention to the gesture except to catch her hands in his and hold them carefully, as if he thought he might break her if he wasn't gentle enough.
"I - Peggy." He was taller than her when he sat up, looking down into her face as earnestly as if the fate of the entire world rested on her lips. "Did you mean that?"
Peggy straightened her spine, but didn't try to pull her hands away. "The doctor will have my head if he catches you sitting up like this," she pointed out warningly.
"Peggy - "
"Lie down, Steve," Peggy ordered, trying to cut him off, but he wouldn't be deterred.
"You're in love with me?"
He looked so astonished, so hopeful, his feelings written as plainly across his face as if they had been inscribed with indelible ink. Peggy raised her head, glad pride thrumming through her body at the thought that she was the one to make him look like that.
"I should have thought it was obvious, Captain," she told him archly. "After all, it's not every girl who will dash off to the North Pole on the slim chance of -"
He cut her off with another kiss, so exquisite in its untaught, tender sweetness that afterwards, in the sun-lit glory of their new morning, Peggy couldn't have found words if she'd tried.
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Um. Hi. A week late, but here's my last installment for Steggy Week 2018! This has been fun. I've enjoyed giving you some of the stuff kicking around on my drive, and your reactions have been very kind. Special thanks to all my guest reviewers! I am very grateful to you, though I can't reply individually.
Thanks so much! I'm more excited than ever to get back to my regular stories, and have some fun new ones that I can't wait to give you soon!
