Chapter Text
You looked out to the dance floor, eyes scanning the multicoloured sea for a pair of glimmering, glittering golden shells. Their scaled, silken armour fitted them like a second skin – hers, a delightful warm rosewood, and his, a delectable blueberry wrapped in a coat of caramel – and, for once, their masks fell away, revealing wide smiles that let in and released the poisonous salt water.
Beneath your bold red currant coat, your stomach squirmed, acid lashing at your walls for every gulp of venom you swallowed. You had never been one for salty snacks, your sweet tooth a fatal weakness your host liked to exploit at every given opportunity, but the drink in your hand, the liquid that sailed down your throat like wet cement, settling like concrete – heavy and hard and unyielding – tasted bitterly sour. You fought the urge to retch, to dry heave, but the shells took another twirl around the dance floor, darting in and out among the clumps of coral, splashes of seaweed, and shoals of sharks unperturbed. They span into one another, waves drawing them apart only to crash them back together. There was a moment, a second’s hesitation, your life hanging on a fish hook until their lips opened, met, engulfed, and that hook turned into a harpoon. It pierced your skin, your lungs, your heart. You crashed through the waves, salt blurring your eyes, heedless of the sharks, the seaweed, the colourful skeletons, mindless of the world around you until, finally, you felt the cold embrace of dry ground beneath your burning feet. You lost a shoe, a wine-red kitten you bought especially for this occasion, but you could not bring yourself to care, could not bring yourself to dive back down to the depths after a lost cause.
Tugging the second free, you stumbled, careening into a door that only opened – Thank you, JARVIS! – once you were standing on your own two feet. You gasped for breath between broken sobs, gagging before you reached the bathroom, vomiting your choice of venom and flushing it out of sight. You plastered your face with water, washing away the mask you made for the evening’s entertainment, scrubbing the salt from your skin, tearing off your armour one layer at a time. Your electric toothbrush sat innocuously on the side, and the toothpaste was such a rich mint it took three attempts to erase the evidence.
It is not, you know, your room, but it will suffice for now. Pepper insisted you prepared for the party with her. Natasha joined you not long after, followed by Jane, and Darcy brought up the rear, looking for all the world that Christmas had come early. Buying a dress, and a pair of shoes was, it seemed, more than enough reason to celebrate, especially when it was you. They knew why you bought it. They knew who you hoped to impress, who you were emerging from your shell for, but it was their sacred duty to tease you, to help style your hair, to discuss accessories, to play with cosmetics until you could not recognise your own reflection. Their touch was light, their confidence inspiring, and you thought that tonight would be… different.
The lights are off, but you prefer the dark, prefer the fact that, unless anyone presses their faces against the glass, you are invisible to the world representatives Tony invited to the Tower. Your legs shake with every step and, too weak to reach the bed, you collapse on the window seat, sprawling across the cushions until, by some twist of fate, you realise that you have a dreadfully perfect view of the party. Your eyes search for him without your permission. Perhaps he saw you leave. Perhaps he was concerned for you. Perhaps he followed you. Perhaps… But no. No, you can still see him, plain as day, dancing with her, and that spiteful twist of your heart hurts. It is not your place to judge, you should have kept your opinions to yourself, but you could not keep quiet. You did not think it real, their relationship, if you could even call it that.
You spoke with her – your first mistake – and she spoke with him, with Steve. She told him who she was, why she joined S.H.I.E.L.D., and it took some time, but he did not resent her nearly much as he could have, did not object when she asked to move into the Tower. To help him train, to better educate him, to help him acclimatise to the 21st century. They work together, depend on one another. Is it right for them to get involved like this? Since when does merging business and pleasure ever work? Maybe there is something there, something genuine, but is it healthy to cling to that? Steve still loves her, his dancing partner from 1945, and Sharon is… Is that kind of relationship healthy? What does he see when he looks are her? What does he see when he looks at you? How can you compare to a ghost, a memory, a fantasy?
You tried to talk to him – your second mistake – but Steve would hear none of it, refused to put the past behind him, could not comprehend the fact that Peggy was dying, and that she might die without ever remembering he returned, that he had never forgotten her. You would not apologise for telling him the truth, for airing your concerns, for being honest with him. Could he not see that you cared? Could he not see that you had, when you accepted S.H.I.E.L.D.’s protection, been forced to leave everyone you knew, everyone you loved, behind? Could he not see that you understood what it was like to lose everything? Could he not appreciate what he still had? Could he not comprehend what you would give to say goodbye one – last – time?
Your legs are like spaghetti, your stomach has contorted into knots, and your lungs are filled with cobwebs, but you hack through the pain and drag yourself over to the bedroom dresser. It is still here, your iPod and Stark-approved speaker, sitting sedately next to Pepper’s ornate jewellery box. You stab it for a song, desperate for something, anything, to distract you, just for a few minutes.
The silence is deafening.
You drifted away, back to the window, but you storm back over, slapped it flat with your palm, prompting a soft piano to play “Glitter In the Air”.
Have you ever fed a lover… with just your hands?
You remember feeding Steve by hand, that time he came back from Mexico injured, his hands heavily bandaged, and you bribed him with breakfast in bed to get him to “talk”, to open up, to remove some of that weight settling on his shoulders. Much as he might believe it, he was not Atlas, and if you had to chop bacon into little itty bits to prevent that, you would gladly do so again.
Close your eyes and trusted, just trusted…?
You remember waiting for Natasha, learning she came back late from a mission and joined Steve in one of his training exercises. He picked up where Natasha left off, positioning your body just right, holding your body just so.
“You’re tense. Relax. You can trust me,” he whispered, and you did.
You trusted him with everything you had.
Have you ever thrown a fist full of glitter in the air?
Darcy spent days searching for a particular brand of body glitter, multicolour flakes that worked with foundation, highlighting natural colouring, or joined forces with eyeshadow to embolden any appearance. If she used a little extra on you, no one commented upon it, and Pepper did not even object to her throwing it over your heads and, consequently, across the room. It looked like JARVIS had sent one of those little vacuum cleaners around, though, because you could not see any evidence such a scene had ever occurred.
Have you ever looked fear in the face and said I just don’t care?
Did expressing your honest opinion count? Did looking him in the face, staring him in the eye, and refusing to back down count? Then why could you not ask the blasted man out on a date? How many chances had he given you? How many times had you chickened out?
It’s only half past the point of no return -
You still have time, right? You could go down there and take charge, tell him what you have wanted to share for so long. But… would you cause more harm than good? Would he take it the wrong way? Is he still waiting for that damn apology? If so, he will be waiting for a good long while.
The tip of the iceberg, the sun before the burn.
The thunder before the lightning, the breath before the phrase.
But you have to think of everyone else. Could Steve work effectively if you distracted him? Would your relationship with Sharon suffer if you tried to stake a claim? There was nothing wrong with the woman, you got along well with her, had even gone out to lunch together, but there was just something about their “relationship” that made your skin crawl. And yet, Sharon will forever be a part of his life that you can never know about. The Avengers, their work, Thor’s tireless efforts to track down the Chitauri Sceptre, Steve’s work with Natasha, with S.H.I.E.L.D., with Sharon… it all comes first. He can put her first. You would always come second. And, to add insult to injury, she was sporting a marvellous tan when she came back from Morocco. You, however, have always burned in the sun, never tanned, and you never thought that a failing before. It was just… part of who you are.
Have you ever felt this way?
No, you have not… but Steve has. He felt it for Peggy, probably feels it for Sharon. How can you hope to compare to his expectations? You are not a S.H.I.E.L.D. Agent or an Agent of any kind. You are a civilian, and Steve will always treat you like one.
Have you ever hated yourself for staring at the phone?
You remember the times – many, many, many times – Steve cancelled an appointment, asking to talk to you later or catch up tomorrow. Your face was glued to your phone, then, wondering when he would call, when he would text, where he was, what he was doing, and who he was doing it with. That was not – is not – any of your business, but you wondered all the same. And now you think you have your answer. Steve’s answer.
Your whole life waiting on the ring to prove you’re not alone.
He always lit up when she called. He would put that ring on Sharon’s finger. Maybe to honour Peggy, maybe to appease his own sense of guilt, maybe because he honestly loved the woman, maybe a combination of all three. You just knew, now – suddenly, it was all so very clear – that he would never put that ring on your finger. Was that why he always texted you instead of calling? Because he was afraid of what you would say?
Have you ever been touched so gently you had to cry?
Have you ever invited a stranger to come inside?
A hand on your shoulder, those hands steadying your waist, instructing you how to breathe as you flushed every shade of red in the universe. The door he left locked to you, but open for her. The door you left unlocked, opened, the door he walked passed every day.
It’s only half past the point of oblivion -
You want to forget, to pretend none of it ever happened, that you did not just buy a dress and your first pair of heeled shoes for no reason. You want to put it – her, him – out of your mind, but so long as you live here, so long as you exist in the same space as them, imprisoned in between, you cannot.
The hourglass on the table, the walk before the run -
You have to make a move, a decision, sometime soon. Better later than never, they say, but it is always better to be early than late, to act sooner rather than later? You are not getting any younger. But, if you did ask; if you went behind Sharon’s back after Steve had already committed himself to her… what kind of friend did that make you? Did Steve even consider you a friend at all anymore?
The breath before the kiss, and the fear before the flames -
Steve kissed Sharon, and he was, most certainly, not under any kind of compulsion or duress. He acted of his own free will, and you cannot fault him for that, even if you disagree with his decision. But you are not a neutral party. Will it ever seem like a good decision when you feel this way? And if you laid your heart bare before him, if you told him how you truly felt, and he rejected you… how would you bare that? Or worse: how would Sharon handle it if Steve chose you instead of her? Could you do that to her? Could you destroy your friendship over something so superficial as a crush?
Have you ever felt this way?
You find yourself thinking back, long ago, to that fateful day he laughed and cried over fondue, explaining his mistake through his tears. No, you have never done anything even half as spectacular as that, and you do not plan to. If Steve meant so much to you, you would have already acted on your feelings, fear be damned.
La, la, la, la, la, la, la, la.
You are not listening, you cannot hear. Not this, not that, not them –
There you are, sitting in the garden, clutching my coffee.
You hate coffee, despise it with a passion. Oh, it smells wonderful, but it tastes terribly bitter. Ten sugars later and it still tastes terrible. Steve laughed over that, said you should stick to tea as he stirred milk into his own, taking in how Bruce’s greenhouse had grown.
He said that Peggy preferred tea.
You still need five sugars in yours.
Calling me sugar.
You called me sugar!
He did call you “sugar”, but he did not mean it like that. It did not mean anything. Not to him. It was just a casual endearment to pair with that tight, tired smile. Who knew that Captain America was a caffeine fiend?
Have you ever wished for an endless night?
Lassoed the moon and the stars and pulled that rope tight.
You remember, one night, home alone, when you dug out all the old recordings of Steve’s Broadway show. Phil let you borrow them with the strictest of instructions on how to play them, how to store them, and how to contact him in the event of an emergency. You remember Steve joining you, unable to sleep, groaning deliriously at his legacy as The-Star-Spangled-Man-With-A-Plan. He even used an improved lariat to catch a spy in the theatre, once. He fell asleep on the couch beside you, vulnerable as a new-born baby, a real smile spread across his coffee-stained lips.
Have you ever held your breath and asked yourself will it ever get better than tonight?
Tonight…
He was perfectly content, then, and you had not thought it could get better than that. You should have known that it would only get worse, that he would never relax like that around you again. That he could never be seen as weak next to a weakling.
For reasons you cannot comprehend, the song starts playing again, but your head and eyes and throat and lungs and heart ache so from crying that you scramble over, feet dragging across the floor, devoid of all energy, to turn off the offending machine, but you cannot see the buttons clear enough to command it. Slapping does not work. Neither does smacking. Pink just simply starts singing the song again, and again, and again, and now you are hitting her, slamming your fist down atop the stupid thing, your cries for her to just “SHUT UP” muffled behind your brawling gasps for breath.
You heard nothing, felt nothing, sensed nothing, left yourself vulnerable, exposed, alone and unarmed. The hand that grabs your flaying arm is ice cold and it makes you start, makes you turn around, fear etched into your very being. With one arm captured, and the other holding the dresser, steadying yourself, you have no choice but to blink your vision clear.
You wish to the Gods that you had not.