Take a leap of faith
The dressers left after they unlaced the corsets so that we could get back into our street clothes. I rubbed my ribs. Long-term corset wearing is something you have to do consistently, I suspected, if you don't want to ache. Scarcely had the door closed when Natasha and Wanda pounced.
"That was so romantic," Wanda said, fanning herself with her hand. "You need to sleep with him."
Natasha smirked at me. "He wasn't that good when I kissed him," she said provokingly.
I sighed in relief as I took the mask off. "Does anybody know how to get these crystal things off?" I asked, then pried the first one off my lash line. "All this crap on my eyes, my eyelids are exhausted with the strain of lifting the weight."
"When did you kiss Steve?" Wanda asked, since I wasn't going to.
"Well, we were on the run from HYDRA," she admitted, tossing her head. "Public displays of affection make people nervous. I thought he had promise, but he needed experience."
"OK, well, perhaps it wasn't technically the best kiss in the history of the world, if you're going to grade him, with metrics and everything, but I don't know if I could handle him getting any better. He is a super soldier," I fired back, and the girls guffawed.
On the way back to the quinjet, I noticed Steve's ears were still red, so he must have gotten his share of the teasing from the guys. Hawkeye put the jet on autopilot, then we started combing through the data we'd recovered in Vienna. About two hours in, Sam suddenly spoke up. "I think we've done something stupid."
Everybody looked up from their pads. "What do you mean?" Steve asked.
"By default, we've been thinking Smith is a man."
"Crap," I said, sitting up.
"Some of the references we've intercepted would make a lot more sense if the boss was a woman," Tony said tensely, and hit the button to bring down the three big see-through screens that jet was equipped with. We started pulling data up, flicking data from our pads to the screens, organizing and reorganizing, talking things through. We stopped in New York to refuel and get a bite to eat in the small airfield's restaurant--the rations we had on board had no expiration date and was to be avoided if possible--but by the time we landed at the compound we had some likely candidates for "Smith" to be further investigated. Nick wanted time to play with the intelligence, so we all hung out in the rec room for awhile, got a late dinner, then I headed for home through a light rain. Sigurd and Torburn were glad to see me, and after some barking and up-tempo tail wagging and hugs, they sacked out in the living room on the sofa. It was chillier here than in France, so I built a small fire and looked through the mail until I heard someone outside.
I got up, tossing the throw aside. I checked the door--one person, male, 6'2", broad shoulders, shifting nervously. I smiled and opened the door to Steve. I took his leather jacket and shook off the raindrops, then went to the half bath under the stairs and brought him a towel for his hair. "Thanks," he said, rubbing his head briskly. "I didn't realize it was raining this hard when I left." I took the towel from him when he held it out, and leaned against the newel post of the stair railing, looking at him.
"Um, I wanted to talk to you about what happened earlier," he said, stuffing his hands in his pockets to still them. His hair stood up all over the place. It was adorable. Geeze.
"Would you like to come in?" I offered, waving toward the living room. He nodded, smiling tensely, and the dogs looked at him, yawned, and wagged their tails on the way out of the room, heading upstairs. We sat down on the sofa, which seemed to ratchet up his tension. I bet if I flicked him with my fingernail, he'd vibrate like a piano wire.
"Ok," I said, curling up on the chaise part, watching him in the corner of the sofa. He was sitting upright, which believe me, is not easy to do on that piece of furniture. It's built for slouching and relaxing.
"Did you mean it, when you said you could fall in love with me?" he blurted out. "I know it was an unusual situation, and I'm not holding you to it--"
"Yes," I said bluntly, throwing caution to the wind. He stuttered to a stop and looked at me. "Yes," I repeated, hoping I wasn't torching a friendship. "I like you a whole lot. You're wonderful, and I don't think it would be difficult to love you as more than a friend." Almost effortless, in fact. "If you wanted."
I bit my lip and looked for his reaction, kind of expecting him to give me a list of reasons, delivered very kindly, about why this would be a bad idea. He reached out and took my hand, pressing a kiss to the back, then turning it, stroking my palm once, and kissed that too.
"I want," he said, and I stroked his cheek before scooting forward and kind of hesitantly leaned in for a kiss. It was long and so much more than friendly.
"So what's this I hear about you and Natasha making out?" I asked politely when we came up for air. His eyes got a little panicked and he assured me very earnestly that it had been a diversion. "And it was just a little kiss. I was very concerned about HYDRA catching up to us," he said anxiously.
"I'm sorry," I said, starting to laugh. "She was trying to needle me after the photo shoot." He let out a big breath and dropped his head back to the top of the sofa cushion, pressing his hand to his chest.
"You'll be the death of me," he said to the ceiling, but quickly refocused his attention.
He didn't stay the night; as I'd heard from the gossip, he didn't have a lot of experience with women, so I was fine with taking it at a pace he was comfortable with. "Although I would prefer to make it to bed in under a year," I told him. "A year is the target date." He smiled and stroked his hand down my back.
"That's generous," he said, pausing to brush his lips over mine. "I think I can beat that." I snuggled into him, just enjoying the physical contact, hearing the beating of his heart.
The next week, the Vanity Fair reporter came out and interviewed us, separately and as a group. I frustrated the reporter with my refusal to talk about my background or the status of my relationship with Captain America, but I tried hard to be candid in response to her other questions about what I thought about superheroes and whether we should register with the government. It was the issue that wouldn't die. I stated my reservations without coming out and saying I thought it was a crappy idea.
As Steve and I eased into our new relationship, the others noticed, of course, but nobody said much about it. Relationships were pretty much off limits; nobody had teased Natasha and Bruce or Wanda and Vision, either.
The article came out in the December issue of the magazine; we were sent advanced copies. When Marketing dropped a stack on the table, we all grabbed for a copy and opened to the article. It was titled "In the Halls of the Gods," which made me roll my eyes. That was just the one of us. The pictures were extraordinary, though. One of the photos from the Hall of Mirrors covered the first two pages, and we looked relaxed, and powerful, and just this side of decadent. I was a little worried that this would be a strike against our upright image. Well, upright except for Tony. A few photographs of us in the smaller photo shoots were used in the article, and we all received a packet of the photos that had been shot for each of us. "Although Paladin was usually engaged and passionate when talking about the Avengers and their goals, she became cool while refusing to discuss the status of her relationship with Captain America, her mask making it impossible to read her reaction. The Captain enjoyed no such advantage. Although he continued to be polite and stated that he had no comment about Paladin other than as a teammate, the mere mention of her code name seemed to brighten his demeanor and relax him. The reader can interpret that however they'd like," I read. It was the best we could have done. The final image in the article was one of us in the garden; the photographer might have been a class one ass, but he was very gifted. He caught us just as I dropped my mask, and you could see Steve's fingers playing with the corset lacings at my waist. We were framed perfectly by the gardens, with the pool and building as the background. It was spectacularly romantic. A larger copy of the photograph was in the packet I got, and I wanted immediately to frame that. The final photograph in the packet was one where he was whispering to me, and there was kind of an electricity to the image, an anticipation. We all passed our photos around so everybody could see.
"Guy was a jackass, but he was good," Sam said, shaking his head.
"He brought out something special in all of us," Scott agreed.
"Don't supposed you'd like to tell the group what you were saying," Tony said brightly to Steve, who smiled.
"Don't tell me you're needing help with the ladies?" Steve said, grinning broadly, and Tony sputtered to the amusement of the table.
Overall, the article was fair and balanced, and highlighted the points that I thought were critical that we get across: that we worked hard to prepare for times when we had to act, that we cared about people, and that we tried our hardest to protect people when we tried to keep the baddies from harming them. Because the next time something went badly, the criticism would be fierce, and I wanted people to have something they could look at and think, 'well, I'm sure they did their best.' When the issue hit the stands, it was one of their highest selling issues and generated a lot of buzz.
Then we woke up one morning to find that Bruce was gone.