Chapter 23
“Seriously, if you had called me saying you couldn’t make it because of some other crazy scientist bullshit or another alien god invading, I was going to quite likely smack you.” Juan’s dire threat was undercut by his brilliant smile and the giant hug he greeted Peggy with. “Though, you might just break me in half for even touching you. I get it, girl, you are a badass.”
Peggy chuckled, pulling away, but not before brushing a fond kiss against Juan’s cheek. “Thank you for my Christmas! It looked gorgeous!”
“I don’t know of whence you speak. Must have been one of Santa’s elves!” He waved a hand airly before taking Steve’s arm. “Did she love it?”
“Every bit of it,” Steve assured him. “And Santa said to tell his elf thank you for the last minute work.”
“I am sure that the elf would say it was nothing,” he replied, magnanimously. “I mean, when it comes to a pair of super heroes out saving the world a little Christmas cheer is a small pittance to pay to make them happy.”
“I’m hardly a superhero,” Peggy replied, instinctively. The tightening of Steve’s arm around her waist as he pulled her close told her he had a very different opinion on the matter.
“My dear,” Juan eyed her with the sort of fierce glare she was sure he reserved for the young and inexperienced apprentices in his costume shop. “You just got publicly thanked and commended by the President of the United States for helping to save his life. You run around the world with your super soldier boyfriend and your super rich, armored up bestie with nothing but a gun and your amazing looks and fight villains. And you want to tell me you aren’t a superhero? I mean, I get up of a day and manage to pull myself into work, and I think I am a superhero.”
“Well, when you put it like that…” Peggy drawled, grinning up at Steve, who merely shrugged, mischief in his eyes.
“You think I will argue with his logic? I’ve been saying it since you hauled off and punched Gilmore Hodge in the face!”
Juan’s eyes went round with delight and surprise. “Oh, now this is a story I need to hear!”
And just like that, he detached her from Steve’s side, dragging her off into the crowd of friends, mutual acquaintances between himself and Julio, and several family members, a dizzying blur of people whom Peggy had no hope of ever remembering. He pressed a drink of something alcoholic in her hand and sat her down on one of the high bar stools at the counter of their kitchen. “Now, spill everything, who was Gilmore Hodge and why did he clearly deserve the broken nose you gave him?”
Peggy was so glad she came clean to both Juan and Julio about her past the year before.
The night was a haze of such little moments, connections with those Peggy had come to know and love in her new life decades in the future. Juan peppered her for details of the latest escapades of the Avengers, all the while managing a ridiculous number of conversations with any number of party guests, and providing a running commentary on nearly everyone at the party, a veritable treasure trove of information, if Peggy was ever so inclined to need high level intelligence on the lives of people in the theater district. She was finally relieved by Julio, who had been caught up talking to Steve for some time, before shooing Juan to go and visit their other guests, allowing Julio to talk shop with her for nearly an hour, before he was caught out by his partner, who berated him for discussing work at a holiday party. Cassandra and David made their appearance during the night, with hugs and greetings for their hosts, for Peggy, and Steve. It was the first moment Peggy had seen her right-hand woman since the night Pepper had called her in tears, and Cassandra had wanted details, but Peggy deflected, choosing instead to tease them both on holiday visits with their families and the ongoing wedding plans they had.
It was a quarter till midnight when she finally found Steve, pinned at the counter of drinks by several of Juan’s theater friends, two of whom were regarding Steve with awe and wonder. As he stood half-a-head over most of them, he saw her coming, and while not one muscle of his otherwise stoic expression shifted, his eyes begged her to come and rescue him.
“Peggy!” Too late, Juan had spotted her and broken away from the group to loop an arm in hers. “You have to come meet my friend Marc and his partner, Louis!”
The pair who were peppering Steve with questions and conversation turned at Juan’s introduction, the one Juan had named as Marc holding out his hand. “It’s a pleasure to meet you!”
“Marc here is a composer, has done all sorts of TV and film, has worked with Bette Midler and Mariah Carey, if you can believe it.” None of those names had any relevance to Peggy, but she nodded as if they did as Juan continued. ‘And Louis is US Navy, which of course when I told him that Captain America was at this party, he had to get an introduction.”
“He was a hero of mine when I was a kid,” Louis shook Peggy’s hand heartily as well. “Juan has been talking him up to Marc for months.”
“I have,” Juan admitted, clearly proud of himself. “Remember what I told you Peggy, about friends of mine who were very interested in Steve’s story?”
She did, and she suspected that was the cause of some of the panic lurking under Steve’s otherwise stoic expression. “I do recall that, vaguely.”
“It’s an incredible tale, you have to admit,” Marc offered, cheerfully. “The little guy, a kid from Brooklyn, becomes an American hero and sacrifices himself only to come back in the twenty-first century to continue the fight. I mean, it’s a modern day King Authur meets Uncle Sam.”
“And yet, he’s still just regular Steve to me; takes out the trash, washes dishes, puts up with my scattered mess,” Peggy quipped, seeing Steve wilt under the hyperbole of this Marc’s over-the-top praise. “Speaking of, darling, Julio says that if we go up to the roof we can see all of the fireworks from across the city at midnight. Fancy heading up?”
Steve feigned an apologetic look to the group around him. “When duty calls!”
She shot them all a coy grin and a wink as she snagged his hand, pulling him past them, ignoring Juan’s not-quite-whispered “that was so damn smooth” as she pulled him through. She stopped long enough to grab flutes of champagne to take with her, as Steve fetched their outerwear, and they both trooped upstairs to the roof of the building. The air was crisp outside, their breaths misting in the night. They were hardly alone. There were other tenants of the buildings, along with other guests from various gatherings, were also upstairs, drinking, chatting, some with children, others with friends or dates. One group gathered around a man who had a propane grill out, the smell of roasting meat and browning marshmallows filling the air.
“This takes me back,” Steve sighed, pulling Peggy along to one corner at the front of the building that had an optimal view south, towards the point where the East River and Hudson River met at the mouth of New York Harbor.
Peggy eyed the crowd gathered on the roof with a bemused eye. “To your childhood?”
“Yeah,” he laughed, settling a hip against the high wall they leaned against. “Every Fourth of July and New Years, gathered somewhere to watch. Bucky and I had an apartment once that was so rickety, we were afraid to go up to the roof, but we got drunk one New Years and he dared me to do it, and once I did it, he came up, too, because he didn’t want me showing him up in front of the girl he was with.”
“And how did that go with the girl?”
“Ehh, she got cold and left and went home.” Steve smirked at the memory, laughing at Barnes’ long-ago misfortunes. It made her happy to see him smiling over those memories, of finding the happiness there, not just the sadness.
“I can imagine she likely got tired of the pair of you off your face and doing ridiculous antics.”
“Well, that too.” He chuckled, regarding the glass in his hand. “Pity, I can’t do that anymore.”
“Was it ever much fun when we used to do it in our younger days?”
“Eeuuph, Peggy, talking as if we were old!”
“Well, technically I am now ninety-one years old, which makes you…”
“All right, all right,” he held up a hand in surrender. “I’m ninety-four, not dead.”
“Oh, that’s good to hear, because after this, I was thinking that we could…”
Whatever Peggy was about to suggest got rudely cut off. “Just when I was getting him excited in the whole thing, you two got to interrupt it to canoodle!”
Peggy turned, unapologetically, to Juan, who was only mildly disgruntled, and more than likely wanted to just give Peggy grief. “Canoodling was an old fashioned term even in our time.”
“Yeah, well, I make everything old new again!” He waved an expansive hand around Steve. “Like this fellow, who I was just discussing with several very important people, before you so rudely stole him to sneak off to make out with. You know, Marc is pretty interested in your life story. He’s already thinking of meeting with you to work shop ideas.”
“For,” Steve asked, knowing full well what for, but clearly looking like he dreaded the answer anyway.
“A musical,” Juan offered, as if it were the most natural thing in the world to turn Steve Rogers' life into one. “Your story would be perfect for it! Especially right now, lots of World War II nostalgia, and then with the aliens last spring, there is interest for it. And Julio suggested we could donate part of the proceeds to relief from last spring's little visit from an alien army…”
“I’ll think about it,” Steve said, committing to nothing, but already Peggy could tell he was not thrilled with the idea. It was one thing being “Captain America”, a symbol to the nation, another when it was about him, Steve Rogers.
Juan turned suspicious eyes to Peggy. “Does that mean yes or…”
“It means he will think about it,” she said, looping her arm in Steve’s, her smile a calm reassurance that whatever he decided, she’d back up. “Till then, let’s just watch fireworks.”
The gentle pressure Steve placed on her hand was all the thanks he gave, as around the rooftop of the building a countdown had begun.
“You two are no fun, and also ridiculously cute,” Juan rolled his eyes, even as Julio appeared out of nowhere beside him, fondly sliding an arm around Juan’s shoulders and pressing a kiss to the side of his head. Peggy said nothing, only giving Juan an eloquent look.
“I know, look who is talking, right,” Juan muttered, grinning giddily up at the man that he loved.
“Three…two…one…”
The chant ended as lights began to pop off here and there in the frosty distance. Blossoms of color lit up the night sky all over the city, not just in Time Square, where the entire country now watched the lightbulb covered ball drop. The shrieking, popping sound of explosions boomed from New Jersey in the west to Queens and Brooklyn in the east, and even north towards Harlem, all pushing out the old year in preparation for the new.
As always, it made Peggy think of another New Year’s Eve three years ago, of another lifetime, standing at the top of another building, and a different choice. Had she said yes to Daniel so long ago, had agreed to marry him, she’d have never left Howard’s party early, would not have run into Scott Lang, would not have agreed to his ridiculous scheme, and would not be here, with Steve. As fond as she was of Daniel, as mad as her new life in the twenty-first century was, given the same variables she didn’t think she would ever make any other choice but the one that she did.
She turned to look up at the man beside her, the impossibly stubborn kid from Brooklyn who made all of this worth it. She was unsurprised to see him staring back at her, watching her in the glittering of sparkling lights, as if she somehow hung the moon in the sky.
“What are you thinking, Captain Rogers?” Her voice caught as she whispered her question into the chill night.
His summer blue eyes met hers with his quiet intensity, the only window into the deep stirrings under the otherwise calm exterior he placed before the world. “I think, Agent Carter, that it is time we called a cab and headed home.”
Her smile was all the agreement she gave as he leaned in to kiss her, as around them the various couples, families, and friends let their voices drift into the night, carrying with them the last of the auld lang syne.