Articulations of Aspen

You are standing on the roof of the White House, above the Truman balcony, wanting to kick your shoes off, but needing to play the host for just a little longer. This is your second Fourth of July in the White House and you thought you knew what to expect, but you are happy to be wrong, because the fireworks are impossibly brighter and more wonderful this year, the celebrations more grand, and you’re shoulder to shoulder with your husband, hands entwined as the dazzling show plays out before you over the South Lawn.

It’s breathtaking.

And so is he. Still. Always.

The grand finale erupts overhead, a cascading symphony of red, white, and blue that paints the night sky in impossible, starburst glory. You can feel the percussion in your chest, reverberating through the soles of your shoes, and you tip your head back to watch the last brilliant volley streak upward and burst into a thousand glittering silver and gold tendrils that drift lazily toward the earth.

Then jubilant cheers and applause and the faint, sweet smell of smoke and the distant roar of the crowd on the lawn below, cheering, waving, singing.

You turn to Steve, a smile already blooming on your lips, ready to say something about how beautiful it was, but he's already looking at you, and his eyes are doing that thing—that thing they've done since the very first kiss you shared, the real one, in Kansas City, that thing where the whole world seems to narrow to the blue of his gaze and the impossible softness of his mouth.

He pulls you close.

One hand slides to the small of your back, warm and certain through the fabric of your dress, and the other rises to cradle your jaw, his thumb brushing the apple of your cheek as if he can't quite believe you're real, as if he needs to check. And you have to admit there are moments you still can’t quite believe yourself that this is your life, these moments, and him. The night air is still thick with the scent of gunpowder and summer heat, and the last of the silver sparks are drifting down behind him like slow, glittering rain, and you have just enough time to think oh before his mouth finds yours.

It's quick. It has to be quick—you're standing on the roof of the White House, surrounded by friends and aides and a few dignitaries, Secret Service agents with their earpieces. But it's enough. It's always enough. His lips are warm and a little dry from the evening air, and he kisses you the way he kisses you when he's happy, which is to say with his whole heart, like there's nothing else in the world worth his attention, like the presidency and the country and the fireworks are all very nice, but they are not this.

You kiss him back. Of course, you kiss him back, placing your hand over his heart.

When he pulls away, it's only an inch, his forehead resting against yours, and you can feel him smiling. You can feel the shape of it against your mouth before you see it, and your own smile is bursting for him, too.

"Happy Fourth, Mrs. Rogers," he murmurs, and his voice is low and rough in that way that it has no business being right at this moment.

"Happy birthday, Mr. President," you whisper back, and he laughs, a quiet, rumble before the two of you break apart and turn to face the small crowd with you on the roof.

And there they are—the faces you've come to know so well, the ones that make this house feel less like a museum and more like a home, or at least as close to one as you can get here. Ambassador Chen from Taiwan, laughing with the German trade minister. Sophia, sharp as ever in her midnight blue, already catching your eye with that knowing, slightly smug look she gets whenever she catches the two of you being soft with each other. Senator Nakamura, who flew in from Honolulu just for this. Colonel Rhodes, grinning like he's about to make a joke he absolutely should not make in mixed company.

You move through them like water, because you've gotten good at this—good at the handshake that lingers just long enough, the murmured thank you for coming that sounds like you mean it, because you do. You mean all of them. Steve is circulating as well, but you’re both being led by your aides toward the exit, aiming to get you into the Residence as quickly as possible because you both have packed days tomorrow (as ever).

Back inside, you kick off your heels in the elevator and breathe, sinking into Steve’s side as your small phalanx of staffers peels away, each murmuring quick good-nights and peeling off down the Residential Corridor, exhausted and slightly tipsy.

He bumps your shoulder with his, sly and crooked in a way that tells you he’s been waiting all night to be alone with you. He reaches for your heels, and you let him take them for the short walk down the hall and into your borrowed home.

The next minutes are a tangle of hands and laughter, breathless and urgent, your dress falling to the carpet with a sound like wings beating, his tie left hanging somewhere between the elevator and the bedroom. You are giddy and graceless, all eager to be together, just the two of you.

He kisses you until your knees go watery, but never letting you falter, guiding you backwards until the back of your thighs catch on the edge of the mattress. You tumble together, the bedspread starched and crisp beneath your palms and knees, and then the world narrows down to calloused hands and the hush of his laughter and the feeling, always, that you are safe. The dim lamplight gilds the curve of his shoulders, the roughness that’s come into his voice as he pulls your name from the space between your mouths. He tastes like bourbon and wild honey from the refreshments at the party, just enough to loosen the lines of his day.

You drag him closer by the lapels, hungry for the taste of him. You pull him down and roll, greedy, pinning him beneath you. His tie is gone; you’re not sure when, but you feel the press of his hands at your waist, guiding you in a slow, grinding circle that makes you gasp. You forget to breathe as you tangle your hands in his hair and let him kiss you dizzy. He’s already undone the buttons of his shirt one-handed, and you help him push it off his shoulders, so you have the skin of his arms beneath your palms. He’s golden and warm, his heart beating under your fingers like a secret. There’s a lightning-bolt thrill each time he murmurs your name. You want to bottle this, this slice of private time in a life where you so rarely get to keep anything for yourselves, and you want to uncork it every time the day-to-day feels a little too heavy.

He traces the line of your jaw, thumbing your chin up and examining you. "You've been different all day," he says, quietly, not accusing, just curious. "Not off, just…something on your mind?"

He’s not wrong. You laugh, because you can’t help it, because how could he possibly have noticed, because you’ve tried to be so careful. But of course he did. “Yes, there’s something.”

He sits up, pulls you into his lap, and you tangle your knees around his waist, greedy for the press of his body. You take a breath, not to arm yourself, but to gather him in. This is a moment you’ve waited for all day, and it’s a moment you know the two of you will remember for the rest of your lives.

“It’s Independence Day and your birthday, and so, so much of today was about everyone else, but I wanted to save one thing for just us.” You run your hands up his chest, and you can feel the way his muscles tense, just a little, the way he always does when he senses something is about to change. His hands go still at your waist. He looks at you the way he looked at you on your wedding day—that same unguarded, ungoverned look, the one that has no presidential composure in it whatsoever.

You swallow, suddenly giddy with nerves, but you try to keep your voice steady as you tell him, “We’re going to have a baby.”

For a moment he’s silent, holding you so tightly you are certain he’s the only thing keeping you from flying off this bed and straight through the window into the dark and dazzling sky now that your stomach is completely aflutter with butterflies - your whole chest really. Steve opens his mouth, then closes it, startled as you’ve ever seen him, caught utterly off guard, and the surge of joy in his eyes is so bright you almost have to look away.

He laughs, choked and astonished, and cups your face with both hands, searching you for the truth even as he repeats your words back to you, as if you’ve cast an unbreakable spell. “We’re—are you—are you sure?” he whispers, and you nod, and in less than a heartbeat he is kissing you everywhere—your forehead, your cheeks, your jaw, the tip of your nose, your lips, your collarbone, drawing your fingers to his lips.

“I wasn’t sure at first. The first test I took was negative. But then I took four more—yesterday being the most recent—and all the rest have been positive. I’ll need to have an official one from our medical team, but this is how normal people try to figure it out, and I wanted to at least start that way.”

“Say it again,” he whispers, and there’s something raw and vulnerable in it that makes your own eyes sting.

You say it again, just for him, and its warmer and easier the second time. “We’re going to have a baby.”

He tugs you close, a long, slow drag of his palms up your spine, and his mouth finds you again, velvet and open and as gentle as if you’re already breakable. You can feel the words he isn’t saying in every touch, every line of his body, every hush of breath against your lips. The rest of the world can wait awhile longer. The future, the headlines, the meetings and luncheons and the never-ending security briefings—they’re so far away. Tonight, it’s just the two of you.

You’re still in his lap and you want to stay there, anchored by his arms, held in place by the gravity of him. Just Steve, the curve of his neck under your hands, the soft light making gold of his hair and blue fire of his eyes and the clean, clean taste of his mouth.

He slides his palms up your thighs, slow and reverent. You feel the calluses catch on the delicate skin behind your knees, then up the slopes of your thighs. Your whole body is tuned to the gentle sweep of his hands, the warmth of his breath against the hollow of your throat.

Steve shifts you in his lap, sliding his cock into your warm and waiting cunt, and your legs find their place around him, heel pressed to the hard muscle of his lower back, hips flush.

You rock together, slow and steady, as if this new knowledge has rewired the both of you, as if every part of Steve that has ever belonged to you is suddenly magnified, gifted back to you in triplicate. He moves inside you as if your bodies are completing unfinished sentences.

You clutch his shoulders and ride him, slow and deep and close, the sounds of your bodies punctuating the quiet as you move together, breath and heartbeat and the little desperate noises you can never hold back from him. His hands travel the length of your back, every unhurried pass softening the landscape of you. The window is open just a crack and summer air pulses in, humid and electric, thick with city sounds and the far-off echo of festivities still unfolding for a thousand strangers. But here, in this room, everything is slow, thick, sweet, nothing but devotion.

He groans, burying his face in your shoulder, and you feel the shape of his smile against your skin, the press of his teeth where he bites back a more urgent moan. You want to laugh, to cry, to collapse and never move again. He moves his hands to your hips, slowing you even more, keeping you close while his mouth traces up along your jaw, kissing the corner of your mouth, your ear.

“I love you,” he says, a promise and a benediction. “I love you so much.”

You clutch him even closer, saying as much back, pouring it into his big heart, and time doubles back on itself, collecting all the nights that led you here: sprawled on a mattress in a St. Louis walk-up, or in Colorado Springs when you were snowed in during the state’s Clean Energy initiative tour, and even sometimes in the backseat of an electric SUV of a Secret Service motor pool. You could have lived a thousand lives and never guessed at this particular happiness, this improbable ending: you and Steve, knotted together in the gleam of a presidential bedroom, a future unspooling inside you, somehow as terrifying and bright as fireworks.

You spend the rest of the night lying together on the sheets, his arm curled around your waist, your hands splayed together with each other over your stomach; his full chest pressed tight to your back, the long, slow breathing of him on a slow, rising tide of emotion you aren’t sure you understand, or ever want to. There’s a secret, quiet sense of being at the exact center of the world that’s only the two of you and the baby on the way. At least for a while.

You drift in and out of sleep, and each time you wake, Steve’s hand is where it left off, thumb brushing circles low on your belly, as if by touch alone he could will the newness of what you told him into the marrow of himself.

As dawn slips in, painting the suite with the faintest gold, you shift slightly, and Steve murmurs, “You awake?” against your neck.

“Mm. Barely.”

He nuzzles in deeper, his beard tickling your neck, and you squirm and turn around to face him. “Did you even sleep?” you ask.

He shakes his head. “Not really,” he admits, voice gone hoarse and quiet. “Kept worrying I’d wake up and it wouldn’t be real. You’re here, though.”

“Mhmm, you’re stuck with me.”

You kiss his brow and let your hand run through the gold of his hair, musing at what a child of his might look like. You picture the bright blue of his eyes, the stubborn set of his jaw, and, despite yourself, the impossible hope that the world you’re building together will be even marginally kind to someone so new and small.

Steve pulls you into his chest, folding your whole body into his, and you melt.

"When I woke up in this century," he begins, his voice low and intimate, "I thought I'd lost my chance at this kind of happiness. I resigned myself to being a man out of time, always looking back at what might have been." His thumb traces gentle over your stomach, soft whispers of his hope.

“I felt untethered, but you are the anchor my soul needed.”

Your throat aches, and you’re not sure what to say because your heart is so full. As much as he’s clear about his devotion to you, it’s reciprocated note for note from your heart. Everything you two have built—the relationship, the purpose, the passion, the drive, the community of people around you—moved your post-blip return from average to a life of vibrancy you also thought you’d never find again.

“I only ever told Bucky I was considering it, but since we figured out time travel to bring everyone back, there was a time I weighed going back to the forties or fifties, but now I thank everything in my bones that I didn’t. I would have missed so much. Even the hard parts, even the hurt, I’d choose all of it to find us.”

It’s a strange, buoyant sadness that washes through you, an ache for the lives you both were supposed to have and the astonishing joy of the one you’re building now, brick by brick, night by night, and dream by dream.

You thread your hand through his, squeezing, letting the gravity of his words swirl through your psyche. “Good, because there’s no one else I would ever want to do this with—not just this,” you gesture to the presidential trappings you live in, “but this,” and you let your hands rest together, gentle on your belly, both of you quietly marveling at the shift in your world.

“I’ll never be able to say it enough, but I love you, Steve. Always.”

Instead of more words, he says it back with another searing kiss.

Once dawn has broken and the two of you are side by side in the bathroom, brushing your teeth, moving through your morning routines, Steve frowns, and you catch the knit of his brow in the mirror. “What’s that consternation for all of a sudden?”

“How did you get not just one, but multiple pregnancy tests smuggled in without a soul finding out?”

You grin. “Sophia.”

Steve scoffs and shakes his head, his scowl turning sarcastic. “She’s supposed to be my personal secretary.”

“And she staffed me on the campaign first,” you remind him. “I’m convinced she only accepted your offer so she could keep you in line and spy on you for me.”

“She doesn’t even pretend to have plausible deniability,” he mutters, rinsing his mouth. “Busted me on a whole security briefing last week when she caught me stashing Reese’s in my desk. I’m the President—” he says this with faux outrage, like he still doesn’t quite believe it, “yet she controls the candy flow and now, apparently, the pharmacy.”

You spit your own minty mouthful. “A First Lady’s job is never done, and I can’t help it if I’ve got the best co-conspirator.” The two of you share a look in the mirror—a look that says God, what have we gotten into—and then there is a knock at the bedroom door, sharp and brisk.

Steve’s head drops with a groan. “Five minutes,” you call, and trade glance with your husband, resignation and amusement in equal measure.

It’s Jake calling into the master suite, “Sir, the British Prime Minister’s advance team just arrived and we have a briefing with the Joint Chiefs at 09:15 but we will need to move your security detail to accommodate the updated press pool, and—”

“Roger that,” Steve calls back.

You holler “Thanks, Jake,” into the hallway, and before you can even turn back to Steve and finish rinsing your mouth, he’s close behind you, arms caging you between the counter and his chest, both of you reflected twice in the gilded mirror.

His chin hooks your shoulder, his lips finding the sensitive skin just below your ear, and you nearly drop your the hairbrush you’ve reached for into the sink. “Come here,” he says, as if you aren’t bodily pressed against him, as if he could ever actually want you closer.

You smile at him in the mirror because you can’t not, and the whole reflection is so absurdly domestic—yesterday’s confetti still in your hair, his shirt unbuttoned just below the collar, the two of you framed by White House marble and gilt. “We are going to be late for your entire country,” you warn, but you let him wrap you up anyway.

“Let them wait,” he says, but he steps aside after a final, scandalous little nuzzle, letting you go. He’s a man who never shirks responsibility, and you know that to be true in every part of his life. You can’t wait to explore a new chapter with him.

I LOVE THEM, I LOVE THEM, I LOVE THEM! So soft and so fluffy here, but I still love this AU so much. 🥹 ❤️🤍💙

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"You always flirt when you're nervous?"

The completely out of pocket breaking of silence between you and Curtis has you sputtering, and you’re unable to string any type of real response together. "That's not—you—I—never flirting," you manage, the sentence falling apart in your mouth. Your face goes hot with embarrassment.

Curtis smiles, soft and warm. "Relax. I know. I just wanted to break the nerves." He nudges your shoulder with his.

The two of you had been sitting in silence in the waiting room before his teasing. In maybe any other circumstance your mind might have been racing with what to say and whether or not flirt with your stoic, thoughtful neighbor—the man you’d slowly begun to call a friend, but who you were painfully aware could ruin your panties with one look. The man you’d been trying to keep things together around for the last year since moving in with your aunt down the hall from him.

You say, “I’m not nervous, just—" and then realize you’re not sure what else to be besides nervous. Afraid? Hopeful? Angry? All of the above? You settle for staring at the scuffed linoleum while Curtis watches you with a look that, if it were on anyone else, would probably be pity, but on Curtis registers closer to loyalty. “Tense. I know she’ll be fine, but I can’t help being tense.”

He leans in, elbows on his knees, and says, “Whatever comes next? I’ll be right here. Okay?”

You blink at him, surprised by the havoc this simple phrase generates in your chest. This is not the kind of comfort you’re used to. People have shown up in your life when they need to, but this isn’t necessarily one of those need to times. It’s just an outpatient surgery—knee replacement for your aunt.

You want to tell him it’s not a big deal, that you’ve done bigger surgeries and worse scares with family before, that stitches and staples and anesthesia are the stuffing of childhood summers and parents, aunts, uncles, and cousins getting older, but for some reason you don’t. Instead, you nod, and murmur a soft, “Thank you.” He leans back against the seat back of the chair next to you, close enough your jackets are flush together, and lets the silence hang again.

Your phone buzzes in your pocket. It’s a group text from the family, a cascade of prayer hands emojis and gifs of cats doing knee bends, as if the artificial cartilage will be charmed into behaving by the cuteness of calico kittens. You smile awkwardly into the glare of your screen and pocket the phone again.

Curtis watches your movements, then turns his gaze to the wall clock. He has this way of looking at things as if they’re always about five minutes away from letting him down, but he’s determined to be charitable until then. You wonder if he’s always been this patient, if there was ever a time where all the anger in him boiled over. You wonder if he feels anything on high intensity, if he ever loses control, because he never seems to crack or shout or stop being so frustratingly (and in this case blessedly) calm.

You’ve analyzed him too much lately, trying to get a bead on where you stand in the whorled grain of his attention, but he doesn’t give up much. He portrays himself as a lone wolf, and yet seems to know about and look after every tenant in your building. He doesn’t say, “You can lean on me,” but he sits here, all more than six feet of him, silent beacon of support.

After another moment, you ask, “Is this the most boring Wednesday you’ve ever had?”

He considers. “Not even the top five,” he says. “But the company helps.”

You snort. “Such a flatterer.”

He glances at you again, evidence of a suppressed smile in the twitch of his cheek. “You don’t have to be tough, you know.”

“But I am tough,” you say, and you mean it, but also the words feel like a dare, a plea, and an apology at the same time. He accepts all three without question or challenge or platitude, which might be the best thing. The only thing.

“Did you eat today?” he asks, which shouldn’t be as cute as it is but, God, he’s always sliding into caretaker mode when you least expect it. He’s nothing if not a fixer.

You want to lie, just to keep up. “Of course,” you say, but your stomach betrays you with a watery gurgle. You both pretend not to hear it.

“Coffee only doesn’t count. Conveniently, the cafeteria here is edible,” Curtis offers, rising in a controlled, economical motion that is all the more impressive for its unselfconsciousness. “I’ll be right back.”

You open your mouth to protest, to insist you’re fine or offer to go yourself, but he’s already two steps away, and you’re left to watch his big, hulking frame disappear around the corner, and you can’t help the small sigh watching him go.

You’re alone in the waiting room again, and the absence of Curtis, which you keep telling yourself should feel like a relief—because then you don’t have to perform, or talk, or keep yourself from staring at his hands—has the opposite effect. You miss the quiet, stabilizing force of him beside you. You count the number of times your phone buzzes. You scroll through the same three news articles, not retaining a single word, and then stare at the hospital’s “Our Mission” poster with a resolve that feels like penance.

This is inconvenient. You’re not supposed to get attached. He’s your neighbor and friend, someone who has been so good to everyone, had practically adopted your aunt as his own.

You’ve survived this long by keeping ties loose and laces untied, but Curtis has a way of making himself necessary without being intrusive, leaving an impression just by existing nearby. The way he leans into you—not quite touching, but always within reach. The way he remembers your Thursday sandwich order, the way he brings up stories from three months ago like they just happened. The way he says your name when it matters. Small things, but dammit, they add up.

Even now, he’s probably making a spreadsheet of hospital food options in his head, for your benefit, and this makes you want to laugh and throw up at the same time because you are not supposed to fall for someone who makes it so easy. You’re not supposed to fall at all, because you are the one who knows how to manage risk, how to keep your heart sheathed in bubble wrap and sarcasm and the practiced art of staying unbothered. You are not supposed to crave the constancy of a man like Curtis, and yet here you are, sitting in this goddamn hospital, waiting for him to get back from the cafeteria like a dog at the front door.

Mostly you’re not supposed to fall because this is just him being nice, the same way he helps Mrs. Noyes from 4B with her recycling and walks the blind dog for the guy on 3 when he works a night shift.

You’re still chewing on this, gnawing at that impossible mental cuticle, when Curtis returns with a paper cup and a small brown bag. He offers them to you like a treaty, or maybe a dare. “They were out of blueberry,” he says, “so you’re getting banana. You’ll live.”

Your hand comes up for the bag, and the tips of his fingers graze yours, almost theatrically gentle, as if he’s afraid you might startle and bolt. You do not, but you do clock the hitch in your own pulse, the way your body catalogues the warmth and weight of his touch in the useless hope of replaying it later.

He sits down next to you again, his knee bumping yours and staying there. It’s such a nothing, such a casual point of contact, but you feel it in your teeth. He’s just big and tall and his legs have to fall where they may. And if you don’t move your leg away, that’s no one’s business whatsoever.

And if this is a prequel to the prologue for the Curtis we met in His Law would any one have any objections? (This then would have happened BEFORE the events that lead to the post-apocalyptic landscape of that entire AU.)

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"If I win this bet, you owe me a date."

“Uh-huh.” You roll your eyes. If Lloyd Hansen has made an agreement with you once, he’s made it a thousand times: bets, predictions, whether or not he makes a specific mark, terms for anything from a coffee order to the next Nobel Prize winner. And yet, for all Lloyd’s talk, he’s never once tried to collect. Not that you have much to fear—he’s the type who’d rather make you squirm in anticipation. You know he likes the idea of a date more than the date itself.

Scratch that, you know Lloyd is not the dating type. Hates and ridicules the colleagues who do go on dates.

He flashes a smile that should be illegal outside of toothpaste commercials. "I’m serious this time. Put it on the record."

You don’t even look up from your laptop. "You owe me more dates than you can count.”

“Ninety-nine.”

You jerk your head up to look at him. “What?”

“You heard me: ninety-nine dates.”

You open your mouth only to close it again.

“Ninety-nine,” he repeats, smug as ever. “If I win today, that’s one hundred.” He laces his fingers behind his head, elbows angled with showoff laziness, leaning back in his seat on the chartered plane. “At that point, I’m cashing in. No more IOUs. You, me, three uninterrupted days. I take you to my place in the Bahamas, and we see how many times we can fuck before your brain completely short-circuits.”

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You are standing on the roof of the White House, above the Truman balcony, wanting to kick your shoes off, but needing to play the host for just a little longer. This is your second Fourth of July in the White House and you thought you knew what to expect, but you are happy to be wrong, because the fireworks are impossibly brighter and more wonderful this year, the celebrations more grand, and you’re shoulder to shoulder with your husband, hands entwined as the dazzling show plays out before you over the South Lawn.

It’s breathtaking.

And so is he. Still. Always.

The grand finale erupts overhead, a cascading symphony of red, white, and blue that paints the night sky in impossible, starburst glory. You can feel the percussion in your chest, reverberating through the soles of your shoes, and you tip your head back to watch the last brilliant volley streak upward and burst into a thousand glittering silver and gold tendrils that drift lazily toward the earth.

Then jubilant cheers and applause and the faint, sweet smell of smoke and the distant roar of the crowd on the lawn below, cheering, waving, singing.

You turn to Steve, a smile already blooming on your lips, ready to say something about how beautiful it was, but he's already looking at you, and his eyes are doing that thing—that thing they've done since the very first kiss you shared, the real one, in Kansas City, that thing where the whole world seems to narrow to the blue of his gaze and the impossible softness of his mouth.

He pulls you close.

One hand slides to the small of your back, warm and certain through the fabric of your dress, and the other rises to cradle your jaw, his thumb brushing the apple of your cheek as if he can't quite believe you're real, as if he needs to check. And you have to admit there are moments you still can’t quite believe yourself that this is your life, these moments, and him. The night air is still thick with the scent of gunpowder and summer heat, and the last of the silver sparks are drifting down behind him like slow, glittering rain, and you have just enough time to think oh before his mouth finds yours.

It's quick. It has to be quick—you're standing on the roof of the White House, surrounded by friends and aides and a few dignitaries, Secret Service agents with their earpieces. But it's enough. It's always enough. His lips are warm and a little dry from the evening air, and he kisses you the way he kisses you when he's happy, which is to say with his whole heart, like there's nothing else in the world worth his attention, like the presidency and the country and the fireworks are all very nice, but they are not this.

You kiss him back. Of course, you kiss him back, placing your hand over his heart.

When he pulls away, it's only an inch, his forehead resting against yours, and you can feel him smiling. You can feel the shape of it against your mouth before you see it, and your own smile is bursting for him, too.

"Happy Fourth, Mrs. Rogers," he murmurs, and his voice is low and rough in that way that it has no business being right at this moment.

"Happy birthday, Mr. President," you whisper back, and he laughs, a quiet, rumble before the two of you break apart and turn to face the small crowd with you on the roof.

And there they are—the faces you've come to know so well, the ones that make this house feel less like a museum and more like a home, or at least as close to one as you can get here. Ambassador Chen from Taiwan, laughing with the German trade minister. Sophia, sharp as ever in her midnight blue, already catching your eye with that knowing, slightly smug look she gets whenever she catches the two of you being soft with each other. Senator Nakamura, who flew in from Honolulu just for this. Colonel Rhodes, grinning like he's about to make a joke he absolutely should not make in mixed company.

You move through them like water, because you've gotten good at this—good at the handshake that lingers just long enough, the murmured thank you for coming that sounds like you mean it, because you do. You mean all of them. Steve is circulating as well, but you’re both being led by your aides toward the exit, aiming to get you into the Residence as quickly as possible because you both have packed days tomorrow (as ever).

Back inside, you kick off your heels in the elevator and breathe, sinking into Steve’s side as your small phalanx of staffers peels away, each murmuring quick good-nights and peeling off down the Residential Corridor, exhausted and slightly tipsy.

He bumps your shoulder with his, sly and crooked in a way that tells you he’s been waiting all night to be alone with you. He reaches for your heels, and you let him take them for the short walk down the hall and into your borrowed home.

The next minutes are a tangle of hands and laughter, breathless and urgent, your dress falling to the carpet with a sound like wings beating, his tie left hanging somewhere between the elevator and the bedroom. You are giddy and graceless, all eager to be together, just the two of you.

He kisses you until your knees go watery, but never letting you falter, guiding you backwards until the back of your thighs catch on the edge of the mattress. You tumble together, the bedspread starched and crisp beneath your palms and knees, and then the world narrows down to calloused hands and the hush of his laughter and the feeling, always, that you are safe. The dim lamplight gilds the curve of his shoulders, the roughness that’s come into his voice as he pulls your name from the space between your mouths. He tastes like bourbon and wild honey from the refreshments at the party, just enough to loosen the lines of his day.

You drag him closer by the lapels, hungry for the taste of him. You pull him down and roll, greedy, pinning him beneath you. His tie is gone; you’re not sure when, but you feel the press of his hands at your waist, guiding you in a slow, grinding circle that makes you gasp. You forget to breathe as you tangle your hands in his hair and let him kiss you dizzy. He’s already undone the buttons of his shirt one-handed, and you help him push it off his shoulders, so you have the skin of his arms beneath your palms. He’s golden and warm, his heart beating under your fingers like a secret. There’s a lightning-bolt thrill each time he murmurs your name. You want to bottle this, this slice of private time in a life where you so rarely get to keep anything for yourselves, and you want to uncork it every time the day-to-day feels a little too heavy.

He traces the line of your jaw, thumbing your chin up and examining you. "You've been different all day," he says, quietly, not accusing, just curious. "Not off, just…something on your mind?"

He’s not wrong. You laugh, because you can’t help it, because how could he possibly have noticed, because you’ve tried to be so careful. But of course he did. “Yes, there’s something.”

He sits up, pulls you into his lap, and you tangle your knees around his waist, greedy for the press of his body. You take a breath, not to arm yourself, but to gather him in. This is a moment you’ve waited for all day, and it’s a moment you know the two of you will remember for the rest of your lives.

“It’s Independence Day and your birthday, and so, so much of today was about everyone else, but I wanted to save one thing for just us.” You run your hands up his chest, and you can feel the way his muscles tense, just a little, the way he always does when he senses something is about to change. His hands go still at your waist. He looks at you the way he looked at you on your wedding day—that same unguarded, ungoverned look, the one that has no presidential composure in it whatsoever.

You swallow, suddenly giddy with nerves, but you try to keep your voice steady as you tell him, “We’re going to have a baby.”

For a moment he’s silent, holding you so tightly you are certain he’s the only thing keeping you from flying off this bed and straight through the window into the dark and dazzling sky now that your stomach is completely aflutter with butterflies - your whole chest really. Steve opens his mouth, then closes it, startled as you’ve ever seen him, caught utterly off guard, and the surge of joy in his eyes is so bright you almost have to look away.

He laughs, choked and astonished, and cups your face with both hands, searching you for the truth even as he repeats your words back to you, as if you’ve cast an unbreakable spell. “We’re—are you—are you sure?” he whispers, and you nod, and in less than a heartbeat he is kissing you everywhere—your forehead, your cheeks, your jaw, the tip of your nose, your lips, your collarbone, drawing your fingers to his lips.

“I wasn’t sure at first. The first test I took was negative. But then I took four more—yesterday being the most recent—and all the rest have been positive. I’ll need to have an official one from our medical team, but this is how normal people try to figure it out, and I wanted to at least start that way.”

“Say it again,” he whispers, and there’s something raw and vulnerable in it that makes your own eyes sting.

You say it again, just for him, and its warmer and easier the second time. “We’re going to have a baby.”

He tugs you close, a long, slow drag of his palms up your spine, and his mouth finds you again, velvet and open and as gentle as if you’re already breakable. You can feel the words he isn’t saying in every touch, every line of his body, every hush of breath against your lips. The rest of the world can wait awhile longer. The future, the headlines, the meetings and luncheons and the never-ending security briefings—they’re so far away. Tonight, it’s just the two of you.

You’re still in his lap and you want to stay there, anchored by his arms, held in place by the gravity of him. Just Steve, the curve of his neck under your hands, the soft light making gold of his hair and blue fire of his eyes and the clean, clean taste of his mouth.

He slides his palms up your thighs, slow and reverent. You feel the calluses catch on the delicate skin behind your knees, then up the slopes of your thighs. Your whole body is tuned to the gentle sweep of his hands, the warmth of his breath against the hollow of your throat.

Steve shifts you in his lap, sliding his cock into your warm and waiting cunt, and your legs find their place around him, heel pressed to the hard muscle of his lower back, hips flush.

You rock together, slow and steady, as if this new knowledge has rewired the both of you, as if every part of Steve that has ever belonged to you is suddenly magnified, gifted back to you in triplicate. He moves inside you as if your bodies are completing unfinished sentences.

You clutch his shoulders and ride him, slow and deep and close, the sounds of your bodies punctuating the quiet as you move together, breath and heartbeat and the little desperate noises you can never hold back from him. His hands travel the length of your back, every unhurried pass softening the landscape of you. The window is open just a crack and summer air pulses in, humid and electric, thick with city sounds and the far-off echo of festivities still unfolding for a thousand strangers. But here, in this room, everything is slow, thick, sweet, nothing but devotion.

He groans, burying his face in your shoulder, and you feel the shape of his smile against your skin, the press of his teeth where he bites back a more urgent moan. You want to laugh, to cry, to collapse and never move again. He moves his hands to your hips, slowing you even more, keeping you close while his mouth traces up along your jaw, kissing the corner of your mouth, your ear.

“I love you,” he says, a promise and a benediction. “I love you so much.”

You clutch him even closer, saying as much back, pouring it into his big heart, and time doubles back on itself, collecting all the nights that led you here: sprawled on a mattress in a St. Louis walk-up, or in Colorado Springs when you were snowed in during the state’s Clean Energy initiative tour, and even sometimes in the backseat of an electric SUV of a Secret Service motor pool. You could have lived a thousand lives and never guessed at this particular happiness, this improbable ending: you and Steve, knotted together in the gleam of a presidential bedroom, a future unspooling inside you, somehow as terrifying and bright as fireworks.

You spend the rest of the night lying together on the sheets, his arm curled around your waist, your hands splayed together with each other over your stomach; his full chest pressed tight to your back, the long, slow breathing of him on a slow, rising tide of emotion you aren’t sure you understand, or ever want to. There’s a secret, quiet sense of being at the exact center of the world that’s only the two of you and the baby on the way. At least for a while.

You drift in and out of sleep, and each time you wake, Steve’s hand is where it left off, thumb brushing circles low on your belly, as if by touch alone he could will the newness of what you told him into the marrow of himself.

As dawn slips in, painting the suite with the faintest gold, you shift slightly, and Steve murmurs, “You awake?” against your neck.

“Mm. Barely.”

He nuzzles in deeper, his beard tickling your neck, and you squirm and turn around to face him. “Did you even sleep?” you ask.

He shakes his head. “Not really,” he admits, voice gone hoarse and quiet. “Kept worrying I’d wake up and it wouldn’t be real. You’re here, though.”

“Mhmm, you’re stuck with me.”

You kiss his brow and let your hand run through the gold of his hair, musing at what a child of his might look like. You picture the bright blue of his eyes, the stubborn set of his jaw, and, despite yourself, the impossible hope that the world you’re building together will be even marginally kind to someone so new and small.

Steve pulls you into his chest, folding your whole body into his, and you melt.

"When I woke up in this century," he begins, his voice low and intimate, "I thought I'd lost my chance at this kind of happiness. I resigned myself to being a man out of time, always looking back at what might have been." His thumb traces gentle over your stomach, soft whispers of his hope.

“I felt untethered, but you are the anchor my soul needed.”

Your throat aches, and you’re not sure what to say because your heart is so full. As much as he’s clear about his devotion to you, it’s reciprocated note for note from your heart. Everything you two have built—the relationship, the purpose, the passion, the drive, the community of people around you—moved your post-blip return from average to a life of vibrancy you also thought you’d never find again.

“I only ever told Bucky I was considering it, but since we figured out time travel to bring everyone back, there was a time I weighed going back to the forties or fifties, but now I thank everything in my bones that I didn’t. I would have missed so much. Even the hard parts, even the hurt, I’d choose all of it to find us.”

It’s a strange, buoyant sadness that washes through you, an ache for the lives you both were supposed to have and the astonishing joy of the one you’re building now, brick by brick, night by night, and dream by dream.

You thread your hand through his, squeezing, letting the gravity of his words swirl through your psyche. “Good, because there’s no one else I would ever want to do this with—not just this,” you gesture to the presidential trappings you live in, “but this,” and you let your hands rest together, gentle on your belly, both of you quietly marveling at the shift in your world.

“I’ll never be able to say it enough, but I love you, Steve. Always.”

Instead of more words, he says it back with another searing kiss.

Once dawn has broken and the two of you are side by side in the bathroom, brushing your teeth, moving through your morning routines, Steve frowns, and you catch the knit of his brow in the mirror. “What’s that consternation for all of a sudden?”

“How did you get not just one, but multiple pregnancy tests smuggled in without a soul finding out?”

You grin. “Sophia.”

Steve scoffs and shakes his head, his scowl turning sarcastic. “She’s supposed to be my personal secretary.”

“And she staffed me on the campaign first,” you remind him. “I’m convinced she only accepted your offer so she could keep you in line and spy on you for me.”

“She doesn’t even pretend to have plausible deniability,” he mutters, rinsing his mouth. “Busted me on a whole security briefing last week when she caught me stashing Reese’s in my desk. I’m the President—” he says this with faux outrage, like he still doesn’t quite believe it, “yet she controls the candy flow and now, apparently, the pharmacy.”

You spit your own minty mouthful. “A First Lady’s job is never done, and I can’t help it if I’ve got the best co-conspirator.” The two of you share a look in the mirror—a look that says God, what have we gotten into—and then there is a knock at the bedroom door, sharp and brisk.

Steve’s head drops with a groan. “Five minutes,” you call, and trade glance with your husband, resignation and amusement in equal measure.

It’s Jake calling into the master suite, “Sir, the British Prime Minister’s advance team just arrived and we have a briefing with the Joint Chiefs at 09:15 but we will need to move your security detail to accommodate the updated press pool, and—”

“Roger that,” Steve calls back.

You holler “Thanks, Jake,” into the hallway, and before you can even turn back to Steve and finish rinsing your mouth, he’s close behind you, arms caging you between the counter and his chest, both of you reflected twice in the gilded mirror.

His chin hooks your shoulder, his lips finding the sensitive skin just below your ear, and you nearly drop your the hairbrush you’ve reached for into the sink. “Come here,” he says, as if you aren’t bodily pressed against him, as if he could ever actually want you closer.

You smile at him in the mirror because you can’t not, and the whole reflection is so absurdly domestic—yesterday’s confetti still in your hair, his shirt unbuttoned just below the collar, the two of you framed by White House marble and gilt. “We are going to be late for your entire country,” you warn, but you let him wrap you up anyway.

“Let them wait,” he says, but he steps aside after a final, scandalous little nuzzle, letting you go. He’s a man who never shirks responsibility, and you know that to be true in every part of his life. You can’t wait to explore a new chapter with him.

I LOVE THEM, I LOVE THEM, I LOVE THEM! So soft and so fluffy here, but I still love this AU so much. 🥹 ❤️🤍💙

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"Are you always this charming?"

Steve laughs—a short, flustered thing that moves through the air between you and is snatched away by the wind. In the orange lamplight, he scratches the back of his neck, a gesture so boyish you’re charmed twice over. “I don’t know about that,” he says. “I mean, I’m not really a—”

He shrugs, letting the rest hang there. Whatever he thinks he isn’t, it doesn’t matter. What matters is how close you’re standing, and how his eyes keep flicking to your mouth and then away, as if he’s daring himself to cross the invisible line.

You tilt your chin up for him.

And that does it. He closes the space, a shy warmth in the way he grips your forearms, as if grounding himself in the sheer fact of your existence.

When he kisses you, it’s hesitant but hungry, the kind of awkward that’s so real it surprises you into smiling mid-way through. He pulls back, a little stunned, and you watch, hardly believing that this man who is Captain freaking America to the world has any doubt about his standing with you, when all you want from him is the man behind the shield. Steven Grant Rogers and his good heart and his nervous hands, and his unguarded laugh.

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You consider abandoning the mission, leaving the damn thing in the trunk overnight and feigning all knowledge in the morning, but you didn’t want to trap sapling so long in stale air and uncontrolled temperature. So, clutching the pot to your chest like a newborn, you brace yourself and walk up to your home.

You make it three steps up the walkway before the front door swings open and your alpha crosses his arms and stares at you. He doesn’t speak, just stands there, managing a sigh that’s both resigned and affectionate.

“Is there some sort of arboretum plan I’m unaware of?” he asks, voice flat but eyes bright.

You walk past him, gently nudging him out of the way with your hip.

“It was going to be composted,” you state, as if that explained everything. “I couldn’t just leave it.”

He trails you, looming, the scent of his aftershave mingling with skepticism and amusement. “We agreed on twelve,” he says, gaze flicking from the lopsided little trunk to the living-room jungle already bulging from every surface. “There are so many more than twelve in this room alone.”

You set the pot down in the corner by the window, the only sliver of space unclaimed by trailing pothos, pepperomias, monsterras, and a zz plant. It’s an ugly duckling—spindly, a little brown at the edges, the kind you adopt out of misplaced mercy—but you have faith.

You kick off your sandals and leave them sprawled beneath the ficus. You make a show of stretching, arms overhead so your shirt rides up and exposes a sliver of your belly, then turn and meet Bucky’s gaze. With deliberate slowness, unbutton your jeans and let them slither to the floor.

“What are you doing?” Bucky drawls, arms still crossed.

You smirk, peeling off your t-shirt so you’re standing in just your bra and underwear. “Distracting you,” you say, “so you forget about the new plant.”

His exhale is half laugh, half groan. He uncrosses his arms. You don’t have time to brace yourself before he’s advancing, the low warning rumble in his throat belying the fondness at the corners of his mouth. His hand curls around your waist just above the hip, thumb pressed into the divot where your skin is always warm, always his.

“You better get to work distracting,” he mutters, but when you reach for his shirt he doesn’t resist, letting you tug the fabric up and over his head in one rough motion. The look he gives you is equal parts exasperation and reverence.

“This is the last one,” you say, which is a lie, and both of you know it. It’s the understood game, the way you get away with your foundling plants, and the way he gets to pretend you might one day stop.

He lifts you easily, sets you on the arm of the sofa where the spider plant arches around your shoulders like a crown. “Liar,” he whispers, and you grin.

His hands find your thighs, fingertips kneading at the soft flesh, prying you open as if you were another of your stubborn orchids, roots tangled and in need of gentle untangling.

He crooks two fingers and tugs your underwear aside, the pads of his fingertips brushing against the slick heat of you, at once clinical and devastating. You clench around nothing, already pulsing, and he huffs out a laugh at your impatience.

“Terrible liar,” he murmurs, catching your mouth with his as he works a rhythm with two fingers, slow and deep. You gasp, legs falling open, toes curling. The spider plant dips a leaf into your hair as you tilt your head back, and he grins, eyes crinkling at the edges, delighted at how easy you make it for him.

You reach for his belt, and he lets you. You unfasten it, then the button of his jeans, then pull down the zipper. He kicks free one leg, never breaking rhythm with his fingers on you, and the heat of his body soaks into your bare inner thighs.

You barely get his cock out before he’s sliding into you, one slow, ruthless thrust. His cutting blue eyes hold yours, the way they always do, as if daring you to squirrel your attention away, but you can’t—never would, not when he’s inside you, coaxing you open, making your world collapse to the moment of his hips fitted to your own.

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You are standing on the roof of the White House, above the Truman balcony, wanting to kick your shoes off, but needing to play the host for just a little longer. This is your second Fourth of July in the White House and you thought you knew what to expect, but you are happy to be wrong, because the fireworks are impossibly brighter and more wonderful this year, the celebrations more grand, and you’re shoulder to shoulder with your husband, hands entwined as the dazzling show plays out before you over the South Lawn.

It’s breathtaking.

And so is he. Still. Always.

The grand finale erupts overhead, a cascading symphony of red, white, and blue that paints the night sky in impossible, starburst glory. You can feel the percussion in your chest, reverberating through the soles of your shoes, and you tip your head back to watch the last brilliant volley streak upward and burst into a thousand glittering silver and gold tendrils that drift lazily toward the earth.

Then jubilant cheers and applause and the faint, sweet smell of smoke and the distant roar of the crowd on the lawn below, cheering, waving, singing.

You turn to Steve, a smile already blooming on your lips, ready to say something about how beautiful it was, but he's already looking at you, and his eyes are doing that thing—that thing they've done since the very first kiss you shared, the real one, in Kansas City, that thing where the whole world seems to narrow to the blue of his gaze and the impossible softness of his mouth.

He pulls you close.

One hand slides to the small of your back, warm and certain through the fabric of your dress, and the other rises to cradle your jaw, his thumb brushing the apple of your cheek as if he can't quite believe you're real, as if he needs to check. And you have to admit there are moments you still can’t quite believe yourself that this is your life, these moments, and him. The night air is still thick with the scent of gunpowder and summer heat, and the last of the silver sparks are drifting down behind him like slow, glittering rain, and you have just enough time to think oh before his mouth finds yours.

It's quick. It has to be quick—you're standing on the roof of the White House, surrounded by friends and aides and a few dignitaries, Secret Service agents with their earpieces. But it's enough. It's always enough. His lips are warm and a little dry from the evening air, and he kisses you the way he kisses you when he's happy, which is to say with his whole heart, like there's nothing else in the world worth his attention, like the presidency and the country and the fireworks are all very nice, but they are not this.

You kiss him back. Of course, you kiss him back, placing your hand over his heart.

When he pulls away, it's only an inch, his forehead resting against yours, and you can feel him smiling. You can feel the shape of it against your mouth before you see it, and your own smile is bursting for him, too.

"Happy Fourth, Mrs. Rogers," he murmurs, and his voice is low and rough in that way that it has no business being right at this moment.

"Happy birthday, Mr. President," you whisper back, and he laughs, a quiet, rumble before the two of you break apart and turn to face the small crowd with you on the roof.

And there they are—the faces you've come to know so well, the ones that make this house feel less like a museum and more like a home, or at least as close to one as you can get here. Ambassador Chen from Taiwan, laughing with the German trade minister. Sophia, sharp as ever in her midnight blue, already catching your eye with that knowing, slightly smug look she gets whenever she catches the two of you being soft with each other. Senator Nakamura, who flew in from Honolulu just for this. Colonel Rhodes, grinning like he's about to make a joke he absolutely should not make in mixed company.

You move through them like water, because you've gotten good at this—good at the handshake that lingers just long enough, the murmured thank you for coming that sounds like you mean it, because you do. You mean all of them. Steve is circulating as well, but you’re both being led by your aides toward the exit, aiming to get you into the Residence as quickly as possible because you both have packed days tomorrow (as ever).

Back inside, you kick off your heels in the elevator and breathe, sinking into Steve’s side as your small phalanx of staffers peels away, each murmuring quick good-nights and peeling off down the Residential Corridor, exhausted and slightly tipsy.

He bumps your shoulder with his, sly and crooked in a way that tells you he’s been waiting all night to be alone with you. He reaches for your heels, and you let him take them for the short walk down the hall and into your borrowed home.

The next minutes are a tangle of hands and laughter, breathless and urgent, your dress falling to the carpet with a sound like wings beating, his tie left hanging somewhere between the elevator and the bedroom. You are giddy and graceless, all eager to be together, just the two of you.

He kisses you until your knees go watery, but never letting you falter, guiding you backwards until the back of your thighs catch on the edge of the mattress. You tumble together, the bedspread starched and crisp beneath your palms and knees, and then the world narrows down to calloused hands and the hush of his laughter and the feeling, always, that you are safe. The dim lamplight gilds the curve of his shoulders, the roughness that’s come into his voice as he pulls your name from the space between your mouths. He tastes like bourbon and wild honey from the refreshments at the party, just enough to loosen the lines of his day.

You drag him closer by the lapels, hungry for the taste of him. You pull him down and roll, greedy, pinning him beneath you. His tie is gone; you’re not sure when, but you feel the press of his hands at your waist, guiding you in a slow, grinding circle that makes you gasp. You forget to breathe as you tangle your hands in his hair and let him kiss you dizzy. He’s already undone the buttons of his shirt one-handed, and you help him push it off his shoulders, so you have the skin of his arms beneath your palms. He’s golden and warm, his heart beating under your fingers like a secret. There’s a lightning-bolt thrill each time he murmurs your name. You want to bottle this, this slice of private time in a life where you so rarely get to keep anything for yourselves, and you want to uncork it every time the day-to-day feels a little too heavy.

He traces the line of your jaw, thumbing your chin up and examining you. "You've been different all day," he says, quietly, not accusing, just curious. "Not off, just…something on your mind?"

He’s not wrong. You laugh, because you can’t help it, because how could he possibly have noticed, because you’ve tried to be so careful. But of course he did. “Yes, there’s something.”

He sits up, pulls you into his lap, and you tangle your knees around his waist, greedy for the press of his body. You take a breath, not to arm yourself, but to gather him in. This is a moment you’ve waited for all day, and it’s a moment you know the two of you will remember for the rest of your lives.

“It’s Independence Day and your birthday, and so, so much of today was about everyone else, but I wanted to save one thing for just us.” You run your hands up his chest, and you can feel the way his muscles tense, just a little, the way he always does when he senses something is about to change. His hands go still at your waist. He looks at you the way he looked at you on your wedding day—that same unguarded, ungoverned look, the one that has no presidential composure in it whatsoever.

You swallow, suddenly giddy with nerves, but you try to keep your voice steady as you tell him, “We’re going to have a baby.”

For a moment he’s silent, holding you so tightly you are certain he’s the only thing keeping you from flying off this bed and straight through the window into the dark and dazzling sky now that your stomach is completely aflutter with butterflies - your whole chest really. Steve opens his mouth, then closes it, startled as you’ve ever seen him, caught utterly off guard, and the surge of joy in his eyes is so bright you almost have to look away.

He laughs, choked and astonished, and cups your face with both hands, searching you for the truth even as he repeats your words back to you, as if you’ve cast an unbreakable spell. “We’re—are you—are you sure?” he whispers, and you nod, and in less than a heartbeat he is kissing you everywhere—your forehead, your cheeks, your jaw, the tip of your nose, your lips, your collarbone, drawing your fingers to his lips.

“I wasn’t sure at first. The first test I took was negative. But then I took four more—yesterday being the most recent—and all the rest have been positive. I’ll need to have an official one from our medical team, but this is how normal people try to figure it out, and I wanted to at least start that way.”

“Say it again,” he whispers, and there’s something raw and vulnerable in it that makes your own eyes sting.

You say it again, just for him, and its warmer and easier the second time. “We’re going to have a baby.”

He tugs you close, a long, slow drag of his palms up your spine, and his mouth finds you again, velvet and open and as gentle as if you’re already breakable. You can feel the words he isn’t saying in every touch, every line of his body, every hush of breath against your lips. The rest of the world can wait awhile longer. The future, the headlines, the meetings and luncheons and the never-ending security briefings—they’re so far away. Tonight, it’s just the two of you.

You’re still in his lap and you want to stay there, anchored by his arms, held in place by the gravity of him. Just Steve, the curve of his neck under your hands, the soft light making gold of his hair and blue fire of his eyes and the clean, clean taste of his mouth.

He slides his palms up your thighs, slow and reverent. You feel the calluses catch on the delicate skin behind your knees, then up the slopes of your thighs. Your whole body is tuned to the gentle sweep of his hands, the warmth of his breath against the hollow of your throat.

Steve shifts you in his lap, sliding his cock into your warm and waiting cunt, and your legs find their place around him, heel pressed to the hard muscle of his lower back, hips flush.

You rock together, slow and steady, as if this new knowledge has rewired the both of you, as if every part of Steve that has ever belonged to you is suddenly magnified, gifted back to you in triplicate. He moves inside you as if your bodies are completing unfinished sentences.

You clutch his shoulders and ride him, slow and deep and close, the sounds of your bodies punctuating the quiet as you move together, breath and heartbeat and the little desperate noises you can never hold back from him. His hands travel the length of your back, every unhurried pass softening the landscape of you. The window is open just a crack and summer air pulses in, humid and electric, thick with city sounds and the far-off echo of festivities still unfolding for a thousand strangers. But here, in this room, everything is slow, thick, sweet, nothing but devotion.

He groans, burying his face in your shoulder, and you feel the shape of his smile against your skin, the press of his teeth where he bites back a more urgent moan. You want to laugh, to cry, to collapse and never move again. He moves his hands to your hips, slowing you even more, keeping you close while his mouth traces up along your jaw, kissing the corner of your mouth, your ear.

“I love you,” he says, a promise and a benediction. “I love you so much.”

You clutch him even closer, saying as much back, pouring it into his big heart, and time doubles back on itself, collecting all the nights that led you here: sprawled on a mattress in a St. Louis walk-up, or in Colorado Springs when you were snowed in during the state’s Clean Energy initiative tour, and even sometimes in the backseat of an electric SUV of a Secret Service motor pool. You could have lived a thousand lives and never guessed at this particular happiness, this improbable ending: you and Steve, knotted together in the gleam of a presidential bedroom, a future unspooling inside you, somehow as terrifying and bright as fireworks.

You spend the rest of the night lying together on the sheets, his arm curled around your waist, your hands splayed together with each other over your stomach; his full chest pressed tight to your back, the long, slow breathing of him on a slow, rising tide of emotion you aren’t sure you understand, or ever want to. There’s a secret, quiet sense of being at the exact center of the world that’s only the two of you and the baby on the way. At least for a while.

You drift in and out of sleep, and each time you wake, Steve’s hand is where it left off, thumb brushing circles low on your belly, as if by touch alone he could will the newness of what you told him into the marrow of himself.

As dawn slips in, painting the suite with the faintest gold, you shift slightly, and Steve murmurs, “You awake?” against your neck.

“Mm. Barely.”

He nuzzles in deeper, his beard tickling your neck, and you squirm and turn around to face him. “Did you even sleep?” you ask.

He shakes his head. “Not really,” he admits, voice gone hoarse and quiet. “Kept worrying I’d wake up and it wouldn’t be real. You’re here, though.”

“Mhmm, you’re stuck with me.”

You kiss his brow and let your hand run through the gold of his hair, musing at what a child of his might look like. You picture the bright blue of his eyes, the stubborn set of his jaw, and, despite yourself, the impossible hope that the world you’re building together will be even marginally kind to someone so new and small.

Steve pulls you into his chest, folding your whole body into his, and you melt.

"When I woke up in this century," he begins, his voice low and intimate, "I thought I'd lost my chance at this kind of happiness. I resigned myself to being a man out of time, always looking back at what might have been." His thumb traces gentle over your stomach, soft whispers of his hope.

“I felt untethered, but you are the anchor my soul needed.”

Your throat aches, and you’re not sure what to say because your heart is so full. As much as he’s clear about his devotion to you, it’s reciprocated note for note from your heart. Everything you two have built—the relationship, the purpose, the passion, the drive, the community of people around you—moved your post-blip return from average to a life of vibrancy you also thought you’d never find again.

“I only ever told Bucky I was considering it, but since we figured out time travel to bring everyone back, there was a time I weighed going back to the forties or fifties, but now I thank everything in my bones that I didn’t. I would have missed so much. Even the hard parts, even the hurt, I’d choose all of it to find us.”

It’s a strange, buoyant sadness that washes through you, an ache for the lives you both were supposed to have and the astonishing joy of the one you’re building now, brick by brick, night by night, and dream by dream.

You thread your hand through his, squeezing, letting the gravity of his words swirl through your psyche. “Good, because there’s no one else I would ever want to do this with—not just this,” you gesture to the presidential trappings you live in, “but this,” and you let your hands rest together, gentle on your belly, both of you quietly marveling at the shift in your world.

“I’ll never be able to say it enough, but I love you, Steve. Always.”

Instead of more words, he says it back with another searing kiss.

Once dawn has broken and the two of you are side by side in the bathroom, brushing your teeth, moving through your morning routines, Steve frowns, and you catch the knit of his brow in the mirror. “What’s that consternation for all of a sudden?”

“How did you get not just one, but multiple pregnancy tests smuggled in without a soul finding out?”

You grin. “Sophia.”

Steve scoffs and shakes his head, his scowl turning sarcastic. “She’s supposed to be my personal secretary.”

“And she staffed me on the campaign first,” you remind him. “I’m convinced she only accepted your offer so she could keep you in line and spy on you for me.”

“She doesn’t even pretend to have plausible deniability,” he mutters, rinsing his mouth. “Busted me on a whole security briefing last week when she caught me stashing Reese’s in my desk. I’m the President—” he says this with faux outrage, like he still doesn’t quite believe it, “yet she controls the candy flow and now, apparently, the pharmacy.”

You spit your own minty mouthful. “A First Lady’s job is never done, and I can’t help it if I’ve got the best co-conspirator.” The two of you share a look in the mirror—a look that says God, what have we gotten into—and then there is a knock at the bedroom door, sharp and brisk.

Steve’s head drops with a groan. “Five minutes,” you call, and trade glance with your husband, resignation and amusement in equal measure.

It’s Jake calling into the master suite, “Sir, the British Prime Minister’s advance team just arrived and we have a briefing with the Joint Chiefs at 09:15 but we will need to move your security detail to accommodate the updated press pool, and—”

“Roger that,” Steve calls back.

You holler “Thanks, Jake,” into the hallway, and before you can even turn back to Steve and finish rinsing your mouth, he’s close behind you, arms caging you between the counter and his chest, both of you reflected twice in the gilded mirror.

His chin hooks your shoulder, his lips finding the sensitive skin just below your ear, and you nearly drop your the hairbrush you’ve reached for into the sink. “Come here,” he says, as if you aren’t bodily pressed against him, as if he could ever actually want you closer.

You smile at him in the mirror because you can’t not, and the whole reflection is so absurdly domestic—yesterday’s confetti still in your hair, his shirt unbuttoned just below the collar, the two of you framed by White House marble and gilt. “We are going to be late for your entire country,” you warn, but you let him wrap you up anyway.

“Let them wait,” he says, but he steps aside after a final, scandalous little nuzzle, letting you go. He’s a man who never shirks responsibility, and you know that to be true in every part of his life. You can’t wait to explore a new chapter with him.

I LOVE THEM, I LOVE THEM, I LOVE THEM! So soft and so fluffy here, but I still love this AU so much. 🥹 ❤️🤍💙

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"You always flirt when you're nervous?"

The completely out of pocket breaking of silence between you and Curtis has you sputtering, and you’re unable to string any type of real response together. "That's not—you—I—never flirting," you manage, the sentence falling apart in your mouth. Your face goes hot with embarrassment.

Curtis smiles, soft and warm. "Relax. I know. I just wanted to break the nerves." He nudges your shoulder with his.

The two of you had been sitting in silence in the waiting room before his teasing. In maybe any other circumstance your mind might have been racing with what to say and whether or not flirt with your stoic, thoughtful neighbor—the man you’d slowly begun to call a friend, but who you were painfully aware could ruin your panties with one look. The man you’d been trying to keep things together around for the last year since moving in with your aunt down the hall from him.

You say, “I’m not nervous, just—" and then realize you’re not sure what else to be besides nervous. Afraid? Hopeful? Angry? All of the above? You settle for staring at the scuffed linoleum while Curtis watches you with a look that, if it were on anyone else, would probably be pity, but on Curtis registers closer to loyalty. “Tense. I know she’ll be fine, but I can’t help being tense.”

He leans in, elbows on his knees, and says, “Whatever comes next? I’ll be right here. Okay?”

You blink at him, surprised by the havoc this simple phrase generates in your chest. This is not the kind of comfort you’re used to. People have shown up in your life when they need to, but this isn’t necessarily one of those need to times. It’s just an outpatient surgery—knee replacement for your aunt.

You want to tell him it’s not a big deal, that you’ve done bigger surgeries and worse scares with family before, that stitches and staples and anesthesia are the stuffing of childhood summers and parents, aunts, uncles, and cousins getting older, but for some reason you don’t. Instead, you nod, and murmur a soft, “Thank you.” He leans back against the seat back of the chair next to you, close enough your jackets are flush together, and lets the silence hang again.

Your phone buzzes in your pocket. It’s a group text from the family, a cascade of prayer hands emojis and gifs of cats doing knee bends, as if the artificial cartilage will be charmed into behaving by the cuteness of calico kittens. You smile awkwardly into the glare of your screen and pocket the phone again.

Curtis watches your movements, then turns his gaze to the wall clock. He has this way of looking at things as if they’re always about five minutes away from letting him down, but he’s determined to be charitable until then. You wonder if he’s always been this patient, if there was ever a time where all the anger in him boiled over. You wonder if he feels anything on high intensity, if he ever loses control, because he never seems to crack or shout or stop being so frustratingly (and in this case blessedly) calm.

You’ve analyzed him too much lately, trying to get a bead on where you stand in the whorled grain of his attention, but he doesn’t give up much. He portrays himself as a lone wolf, and yet seems to know about and look after every tenant in your building. He doesn’t say, “You can lean on me,” but he sits here, all more than six feet of him, silent beacon of support.

After another moment, you ask, “Is this the most boring Wednesday you’ve ever had?”

He considers. “Not even the top five,” he says. “But the company helps.”

You snort. “Such a flatterer.”

He glances at you again, evidence of a suppressed smile in the twitch of his cheek. “You don’t have to be tough, you know.”

“But I am tough,” you say, and you mean it, but also the words feel like a dare, a plea, and an apology at the same time. He accepts all three without question or challenge or platitude, which might be the best thing. The only thing.

“Did you eat today?” he asks, which shouldn’t be as cute as it is but, God, he’s always sliding into caretaker mode when you least expect it. He’s nothing if not a fixer.

You want to lie, just to keep up. “Of course,” you say, but your stomach betrays you with a watery gurgle. You both pretend not to hear it.

“Coffee only doesn’t count. Conveniently, the cafeteria here is edible,” Curtis offers, rising in a controlled, economical motion that is all the more impressive for its unselfconsciousness. “I’ll be right back.”

You open your mouth to protest, to insist you’re fine or offer to go yourself, but he’s already two steps away, and you’re left to watch his big, hulking frame disappear around the corner, and you can’t help the small sigh watching him go.

You’re alone in the waiting room again, and the absence of Curtis, which you keep telling yourself should feel like a relief—because then you don’t have to perform, or talk, or keep yourself from staring at his hands—has the opposite effect. You miss the quiet, stabilizing force of him beside you. You count the number of times your phone buzzes. You scroll through the same three news articles, not retaining a single word, and then stare at the hospital’s “Our Mission” poster with a resolve that feels like penance.

This is inconvenient. You’re not supposed to get attached. He’s your neighbor and friend, someone who has been so good to everyone, had practically adopted your aunt as his own.

You’ve survived this long by keeping ties loose and laces untied, but Curtis has a way of making himself necessary without being intrusive, leaving an impression just by existing nearby. The way he leans into you—not quite touching, but always within reach. The way he remembers your Thursday sandwich order, the way he brings up stories from three months ago like they just happened. The way he says your name when it matters. Small things, but dammit, they add up.

Even now, he’s probably making a spreadsheet of hospital food options in his head, for your benefit, and this makes you want to laugh and throw up at the same time because you are not supposed to fall for someone who makes it so easy. You’re not supposed to fall at all, because you are the one who knows how to manage risk, how to keep your heart sheathed in bubble wrap and sarcasm and the practiced art of staying unbothered. You are not supposed to crave the constancy of a man like Curtis, and yet here you are, sitting in this goddamn hospital, waiting for him to get back from the cafeteria like a dog at the front door.

Mostly you’re not supposed to fall because this is just him being nice, the same way he helps Mrs. Noyes from 4B with her recycling and walks the blind dog for the guy on 3 when he works a night shift.

You’re still chewing on this, gnawing at that impossible mental cuticle, when Curtis returns with a paper cup and a small brown bag. He offers them to you like a treaty, or maybe a dare. “They were out of blueberry,” he says, “so you’re getting banana. You’ll live.”

Your hand comes up for the bag, and the tips of his fingers graze yours, almost theatrically gentle, as if he’s afraid you might startle and bolt. You do not, but you do clock the hitch in your own pulse, the way your body catalogues the warmth and weight of his touch in the useless hope of replaying it later.

He sits down next to you again, his knee bumping yours and staying there. It’s such a nothing, such a casual point of contact, but you feel it in your teeth. He’s just big and tall and his legs have to fall where they may. And if you don’t move your leg away, that’s no one’s business whatsoever.

And if this is a prequel to the prologue for the Curtis we met in His Law would any one have any objections? (This then would have happened BEFORE the events that lead to the post-apocalyptic landscape of that entire AU.)

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"If I win this bet, you owe me a date."

“Uh-huh.” You roll your eyes. If Lloyd Hansen has made an agreement with you once, he’s made it a thousand times: bets, predictions, whether or not he makes a specific mark, terms for anything from a coffee order to the next Nobel Prize winner. And yet, for all Lloyd’s talk, he’s never once tried to collect. Not that you have much to fear—he’s the type who’d rather make you squirm in anticipation. You know he likes the idea of a date more than the date itself.

Scratch that, you know Lloyd is not the dating type. Hates and ridicules the colleagues who do go on dates.

He flashes a smile that should be illegal outside of toothpaste commercials. "I’m serious this time. Put it on the record."

You don’t even look up from your laptop. "You owe me more dates than you can count.”

“Ninety-nine.”

You jerk your head up to look at him. “What?”

“You heard me: ninety-nine dates.”

You open your mouth only to close it again.

“Ninety-nine,” he repeats, smug as ever. “If I win today, that’s one hundred.” He laces his fingers behind his head, elbows angled with showoff laziness, leaning back in his seat on the chartered plane. “At that point, I’m cashing in. No more IOUs. You, me, three uninterrupted days. I take you to my place in the Bahamas, and we see how many times we can fuck before your brain completely short-circuits.”

↠ Main Masterlist | Aspen's Ask Box | Field Guide to the Forest

You are standing on the roof of the White House, above the Truman balcony, wanting to kick your shoes off, but needing to play the host for just a little longer. This is your second Fourth of July in the White House and you thought you knew what to expect, but you are happy to be wrong, because the fireworks are impossibly brighter and more wonderful this year, the celebrations more grand, and you’re shoulder to shoulder with your husband, hands entwined as the dazzling show plays out before you over the South Lawn.

It’s breathtaking.

And so is he. Still. Always.

The grand finale erupts overhead, a cascading symphony of red, white, and blue that paints the night sky in impossible, starburst glory. You can feel the percussion in your chest, reverberating through the soles of your shoes, and you tip your head back to watch the last brilliant volley streak upward and burst into a thousand glittering silver and gold tendrils that drift lazily toward the earth.

Then jubilant cheers and applause and the faint, sweet smell of smoke and the distant roar of the crowd on the lawn below, cheering, waving, singing.

You turn to Steve, a smile already blooming on your lips, ready to say something about how beautiful it was, but he's already looking at you, and his eyes are doing that thing—that thing they've done since the very first kiss you shared, the real one, in Kansas City, that thing where the whole world seems to narrow to the blue of his gaze and the impossible softness of his mouth.

He pulls you close.

One hand slides to the small of your back, warm and certain through the fabric of your dress, and the other rises to cradle your jaw, his thumb brushing the apple of your cheek as if he can't quite believe you're real, as if he needs to check. And you have to admit there are moments you still can’t quite believe yourself that this is your life, these moments, and him. The night air is still thick with the scent of gunpowder and summer heat, and the last of the silver sparks are drifting down behind him like slow, glittering rain, and you have just enough time to think oh before his mouth finds yours.

It's quick. It has to be quick—you're standing on the roof of the White House, surrounded by friends and aides and a few dignitaries, Secret Service agents with their earpieces. But it's enough. It's always enough. His lips are warm and a little dry from the evening air, and he kisses you the way he kisses you when he's happy, which is to say with his whole heart, like there's nothing else in the world worth his attention, like the presidency and the country and the fireworks are all very nice, but they are not this.

You kiss him back. Of course, you kiss him back, placing your hand over his heart.

When he pulls away, it's only an inch, his forehead resting against yours, and you can feel him smiling. You can feel the shape of it against your mouth before you see it, and your own smile is bursting for him, too.

"Happy Fourth, Mrs. Rogers," he murmurs, and his voice is low and rough in that way that it has no business being right at this moment.

"Happy birthday, Mr. President," you whisper back, and he laughs, a quiet, rumble before the two of you break apart and turn to face the small crowd with you on the roof.

And there they are—the faces you've come to know so well, the ones that make this house feel less like a museum and more like a home, or at least as close to one as you can get here. Ambassador Chen from Taiwan, laughing with the German trade minister. Sophia, sharp as ever in her midnight blue, already catching your eye with that knowing, slightly smug look she gets whenever she catches the two of you being soft with each other. Senator Nakamura, who flew in from Honolulu just for this. Colonel Rhodes, grinning like he's about to make a joke he absolutely should not make in mixed company.

You move through them like water, because you've gotten good at this—good at the handshake that lingers just long enough, the murmured thank you for coming that sounds like you mean it, because you do. You mean all of them. Steve is circulating as well, but you’re both being led by your aides toward the exit, aiming to get you into the Residence as quickly as possible because you both have packed days tomorrow (as ever).

Back inside, you kick off your heels in the elevator and breathe, sinking into Steve’s side as your small phalanx of staffers peels away, each murmuring quick good-nights and peeling off down the Residential Corridor, exhausted and slightly tipsy.

He bumps your shoulder with his, sly and crooked in a way that tells you he’s been waiting all night to be alone with you. He reaches for your heels, and you let him take them for the short walk down the hall and into your borrowed home.

The next minutes are a tangle of hands and laughter, breathless and urgent, your dress falling to the carpet with a sound like wings beating, his tie left hanging somewhere between the elevator and the bedroom. You are giddy and graceless, all eager to be together, just the two of you.

He kisses you until your knees go watery, but never letting you falter, guiding you backwards until the back of your thighs catch on the edge of the mattress. You tumble together, the bedspread starched and crisp beneath your palms and knees, and then the world narrows down to calloused hands and the hush of his laughter and the feeling, always, that you are safe. The dim lamplight gilds the curve of his shoulders, the roughness that’s come into his voice as he pulls your name from the space between your mouths. He tastes like bourbon and wild honey from the refreshments at the party, just enough to loosen the lines of his day.

You drag him closer by the lapels, hungry for the taste of him. You pull him down and roll, greedy, pinning him beneath you. His tie is gone; you’re not sure when, but you feel the press of his hands at your waist, guiding you in a slow, grinding circle that makes you gasp. You forget to breathe as you tangle your hands in his hair and let him kiss you dizzy. He’s already undone the buttons of his shirt one-handed, and you help him push it off his shoulders, so you have the skin of his arms beneath your palms. He’s golden and warm, his heart beating under your fingers like a secret. There’s a lightning-bolt thrill each time he murmurs your name. You want to bottle this, this slice of private time in a life where you so rarely get to keep anything for yourselves, and you want to uncork it every time the day-to-day feels a little too heavy.

He traces the line of your jaw, thumbing your chin up and examining you. "You've been different all day," he says, quietly, not accusing, just curious. "Not off, just…something on your mind?"

He’s not wrong. You laugh, because you can’t help it, because how could he possibly have noticed, because you’ve tried to be so careful. But of course he did. “Yes, there’s something.”

He sits up, pulls you into his lap, and you tangle your knees around his waist, greedy for the press of his body. You take a breath, not to arm yourself, but to gather him in. This is a moment you’ve waited for all day, and it’s a moment you know the two of you will remember for the rest of your lives.

“It’s Independence Day and your birthday, and so, so much of today was about everyone else, but I wanted to save one thing for just us.” You run your hands up his chest, and you can feel the way his muscles tense, just a little, the way he always does when he senses something is about to change. His hands go still at your waist. He looks at you the way he looked at you on your wedding day—that same unguarded, ungoverned look, the one that has no presidential composure in it whatsoever.

You swallow, suddenly giddy with nerves, but you try to keep your voice steady as you tell him, “We’re going to have a baby.”

For a moment he’s silent, holding you so tightly you are certain he’s the only thing keeping you from flying off this bed and straight through the window into the dark and dazzling sky now that your stomach is completely aflutter with butterflies - your whole chest really. Steve opens his mouth, then closes it, startled as you’ve ever seen him, caught utterly off guard, and the surge of joy in his eyes is so bright you almost have to look away.

He laughs, choked and astonished, and cups your face with both hands, searching you for the truth even as he repeats your words back to you, as if you’ve cast an unbreakable spell. “We’re—are you—are you sure?” he whispers, and you nod, and in less than a heartbeat he is kissing you everywhere—your forehead, your cheeks, your jaw, the tip of your nose, your lips, your collarbone, drawing your fingers to his lips.

“I wasn’t sure at first. The first test I took was negative. But then I took four more—yesterday being the most recent—and all the rest have been positive. I’ll need to have an official one from our medical team, but this is how normal people try to figure it out, and I wanted to at least start that way.”

“Say it again,” he whispers, and there’s something raw and vulnerable in it that makes your own eyes sting.

You say it again, just for him, and its warmer and easier the second time. “We’re going to have a baby.”

He tugs you close, a long, slow drag of his palms up your spine, and his mouth finds you again, velvet and open and as gentle as if you’re already breakable. You can feel the words he isn’t saying in every touch, every line of his body, every hush of breath against your lips. The rest of the world can wait awhile longer. The future, the headlines, the meetings and luncheons and the never-ending security briefings—they’re so far away. Tonight, it’s just the two of you.

You’re still in his lap and you want to stay there, anchored by his arms, held in place by the gravity of him. Just Steve, the curve of his neck under your hands, the soft light making gold of his hair and blue fire of his eyes and the clean, clean taste of his mouth.

He slides his palms up your thighs, slow and reverent. You feel the calluses catch on the delicate skin behind your knees, then up the slopes of your thighs. Your whole body is tuned to the gentle sweep of his hands, the warmth of his breath against the hollow of your throat.

Steve shifts you in his lap, sliding his cock into your warm and waiting cunt, and your legs find their place around him, heel pressed to the hard muscle of his lower back, hips flush.

You rock together, slow and steady, as if this new knowledge has rewired the both of you, as if every part of Steve that has ever belonged to you is suddenly magnified, gifted back to you in triplicate. He moves inside you as if your bodies are completing unfinished sentences.

You clutch his shoulders and ride him, slow and deep and close, the sounds of your bodies punctuating the quiet as you move together, breath and heartbeat and the little desperate noises you can never hold back from him. His hands travel the length of your back, every unhurried pass softening the landscape of you. The window is open just a crack and summer air pulses in, humid and electric, thick with city sounds and the far-off echo of festivities still unfolding for a thousand strangers. But here, in this room, everything is slow, thick, sweet, nothing but devotion.

He groans, burying his face in your shoulder, and you feel the shape of his smile against your skin, the press of his teeth where he bites back a more urgent moan. You want to laugh, to cry, to collapse and never move again. He moves his hands to your hips, slowing you even more, keeping you close while his mouth traces up along your jaw, kissing the corner of your mouth, your ear.

“I love you,” he says, a promise and a benediction. “I love you so much.”

You clutch him even closer, saying as much back, pouring it into his big heart, and time doubles back on itself, collecting all the nights that led you here: sprawled on a mattress in a St. Louis walk-up, or in Colorado Springs when you were snowed in during the state’s Clean Energy initiative tour, and even sometimes in the backseat of an electric SUV of a Secret Service motor pool. You could have lived a thousand lives and never guessed at this particular happiness, this improbable ending: you and Steve, knotted together in the gleam of a presidential bedroom, a future unspooling inside you, somehow as terrifying and bright as fireworks.

You spend the rest of the night lying together on the sheets, his arm curled around your waist, your hands splayed together with each other over your stomach; his full chest pressed tight to your back, the long, slow breathing of him on a slow, rising tide of emotion you aren’t sure you understand, or ever want to. There’s a secret, quiet sense of being at the exact center of the world that’s only the two of you and the baby on the way. At least for a while.

You drift in and out of sleep, and each time you wake, Steve’s hand is where it left off, thumb brushing circles low on your belly, as if by touch alone he could will the newness of what you told him into the marrow of himself.

As dawn slips in, painting the suite with the faintest gold, you shift slightly, and Steve murmurs, “You awake?” against your neck.

“Mm. Barely.”

He nuzzles in deeper, his beard tickling your neck, and you squirm and turn around to face him. “Did you even sleep?” you ask.

He shakes his head. “Not really,” he admits, voice gone hoarse and quiet. “Kept worrying I’d wake up and it wouldn’t be real. You’re here, though.”

“Mhmm, you’re stuck with me.”

You kiss his brow and let your hand run through the gold of his hair, musing at what a child of his might look like. You picture the bright blue of his eyes, the stubborn set of his jaw, and, despite yourself, the impossible hope that the world you’re building together will be even marginally kind to someone so new and small.

Steve pulls you into his chest, folding your whole body into his, and you melt.

"When I woke up in this century," he begins, his voice low and intimate, "I thought I'd lost my chance at this kind of happiness. I resigned myself to being a man out of time, always looking back at what might have been." His thumb traces gentle over your stomach, soft whispers of his hope.

“I felt untethered, but you are the anchor my soul needed.”

Your throat aches, and you’re not sure what to say because your heart is so full. As much as he’s clear about his devotion to you, it’s reciprocated note for note from your heart. Everything you two have built—the relationship, the purpose, the passion, the drive, the community of people around you—moved your post-blip return from average to a life of vibrancy you also thought you’d never find again.

“I only ever told Bucky I was considering it, but since we figured out time travel to bring everyone back, there was a time I weighed going back to the forties or fifties, but now I thank everything in my bones that I didn’t. I would have missed so much. Even the hard parts, even the hurt, I’d choose all of it to find us.”

It’s a strange, buoyant sadness that washes through you, an ache for the lives you both were supposed to have and the astonishing joy of the one you’re building now, brick by brick, night by night, and dream by dream.

You thread your hand through his, squeezing, letting the gravity of his words swirl through your psyche. “Good, because there’s no one else I would ever want to do this with—not just this,” you gesture to the presidential trappings you live in, “but this,” and you let your hands rest together, gentle on your belly, both of you quietly marveling at the shift in your world.

“I’ll never be able to say it enough, but I love you, Steve. Always.”

Instead of more words, he says it back with another searing kiss.

Once dawn has broken and the two of you are side by side in the bathroom, brushing your teeth, moving through your morning routines, Steve frowns, and you catch the knit of his brow in the mirror. “What’s that consternation for all of a sudden?”

“How did you get not just one, but multiple pregnancy tests smuggled in without a soul finding out?”

You grin. “Sophia.”

Steve scoffs and shakes his head, his scowl turning sarcastic. “She’s supposed to be my personal secretary.”

“And she staffed me on the campaign first,” you remind him. “I’m convinced she only accepted your offer so she could keep you in line and spy on you for me.”

“She doesn’t even pretend to have plausible deniability,” he mutters, rinsing his mouth. “Busted me on a whole security briefing last week when she caught me stashing Reese’s in my desk. I’m the President—” he says this with faux outrage, like he still doesn’t quite believe it, “yet she controls the candy flow and now, apparently, the pharmacy.”

You spit your own minty mouthful. “A First Lady’s job is never done, and I can’t help it if I’ve got the best co-conspirator.” The two of you share a look in the mirror—a look that says God, what have we gotten into—and then there is a knock at the bedroom door, sharp and brisk.

Steve’s head drops with a groan. “Five minutes,” you call, and trade glance with your husband, resignation and amusement in equal measure.

It’s Jake calling into the master suite, “Sir, the British Prime Minister’s advance team just arrived and we have a briefing with the Joint Chiefs at 09:15 but we will need to move your security detail to accommodate the updated press pool, and—”

“Roger that,” Steve calls back.

You holler “Thanks, Jake,” into the hallway, and before you can even turn back to Steve and finish rinsing your mouth, he’s close behind you, arms caging you between the counter and his chest, both of you reflected twice in the gilded mirror.

His chin hooks your shoulder, his lips finding the sensitive skin just below your ear, and you nearly drop your the hairbrush you’ve reached for into the sink. “Come here,” he says, as if you aren’t bodily pressed against him, as if he could ever actually want you closer.

You smile at him in the mirror because you can’t not, and the whole reflection is so absurdly domestic—yesterday’s confetti still in your hair, his shirt unbuttoned just below the collar, the two of you framed by White House marble and gilt. “We are going to be late for your entire country,” you warn, but you let him wrap you up anyway.

“Let them wait,” he says, but he steps aside after a final, scandalous little nuzzle, letting you go. He’s a man who never shirks responsibility, and you know that to be true in every part of his life. You can’t wait to explore a new chapter with him.

I LOVE THEM, I LOVE THEM, I LOVE THEM! So soft and so fluffy here, but I still love this AU so much. 🥹 ❤️🤍💙

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"You always flirt when you're nervous?"

The completely out of pocket breaking of silence between you and Curtis has you sputtering, and you’re unable to string any type of real response together. "That's not—you—I—never flirting," you manage, the sentence falling apart in your mouth. Your face goes hot with embarrassment.

Curtis smiles, soft and warm. "Relax. I know. I just wanted to break the nerves." He nudges your shoulder with his.

The two of you had been sitting in silence in the waiting room before his teasing. In maybe any other circumstance your mind might have been racing with what to say and whether or not flirt with your stoic, thoughtful neighbor—the man you’d slowly begun to call a friend, but who you were painfully aware could ruin your panties with one look. The man you’d been trying to keep things together around for the last year since moving in with your aunt down the hall from him.

You say, “I’m not nervous, just—" and then realize you’re not sure what else to be besides nervous. Afraid? Hopeful? Angry? All of the above? You settle for staring at the scuffed linoleum while Curtis watches you with a look that, if it were on anyone else, would probably be pity, but on Curtis registers closer to loyalty. “Tense. I know she’ll be fine, but I can’t help being tense.”

He leans in, elbows on his knees, and says, “Whatever comes next? I’ll be right here. Okay?”

You blink at him, surprised by the havoc this simple phrase generates in your chest. This is not the kind of comfort you’re used to. People have shown up in your life when they need to, but this isn’t necessarily one of those need to times. It’s just an outpatient surgery—knee replacement for your aunt.

You want to tell him it’s not a big deal, that you’ve done bigger surgeries and worse scares with family before, that stitches and staples and anesthesia are the stuffing of childhood summers and parents, aunts, uncles, and cousins getting older, but for some reason you don’t. Instead, you nod, and murmur a soft, “Thank you.” He leans back against the seat back of the chair next to you, close enough your jackets are flush together, and lets the silence hang again.

Your phone buzzes in your pocket. It’s a group text from the family, a cascade of prayer hands emojis and gifs of cats doing knee bends, as if the artificial cartilage will be charmed into behaving by the cuteness of calico kittens. You smile awkwardly into the glare of your screen and pocket the phone again.

Curtis watches your movements, then turns his gaze to the wall clock. He has this way of looking at things as if they’re always about five minutes away from letting him down, but he’s determined to be charitable until then. You wonder if he’s always been this patient, if there was ever a time where all the anger in him boiled over. You wonder if he feels anything on high intensity, if he ever loses control, because he never seems to crack or shout or stop being so frustratingly (and in this case blessedly) calm.

You’ve analyzed him too much lately, trying to get a bead on where you stand in the whorled grain of his attention, but he doesn’t give up much. He portrays himself as a lone wolf, and yet seems to know about and look after every tenant in your building. He doesn’t say, “You can lean on me,” but he sits here, all more than six feet of him, silent beacon of support.

After another moment, you ask, “Is this the most boring Wednesday you’ve ever had?”

He considers. “Not even the top five,” he says. “But the company helps.”

You snort. “Such a flatterer.”

He glances at you again, evidence of a suppressed smile in the twitch of his cheek. “You don’t have to be tough, you know.”

“But I am tough,” you say, and you mean it, but also the words feel like a dare, a plea, and an apology at the same time. He accepts all three without question or challenge or platitude, which might be the best thing. The only thing.

“Did you eat today?” he asks, which shouldn’t be as cute as it is but, God, he’s always sliding into caretaker mode when you least expect it. He’s nothing if not a fixer.

You want to lie, just to keep up. “Of course,” you say, but your stomach betrays you with a watery gurgle. You both pretend not to hear it.

“Coffee only doesn’t count. Conveniently, the cafeteria here is edible,” Curtis offers, rising in a controlled, economical motion that is all the more impressive for its unselfconsciousness. “I’ll be right back.”

You open your mouth to protest, to insist you’re fine or offer to go yourself, but he’s already two steps away, and you’re left to watch his big, hulking frame disappear around the corner, and you can’t help the small sigh watching him go.

You’re alone in the waiting room again, and the absence of Curtis, which you keep telling yourself should feel like a relief—because then you don’t have to perform, or talk, or keep yourself from staring at his hands—has the opposite effect. You miss the quiet, stabilizing force of him beside you. You count the number of times your phone buzzes. You scroll through the same three news articles, not retaining a single word, and then stare at the hospital’s “Our Mission” poster with a resolve that feels like penance.

This is inconvenient. You’re not supposed to get attached. He’s your neighbor and friend, someone who has been so good to everyone, had practically adopted your aunt as his own.

You’ve survived this long by keeping ties loose and laces untied, but Curtis has a way of making himself necessary without being intrusive, leaving an impression just by existing nearby. The way he leans into you—not quite touching, but always within reach. The way he remembers your Thursday sandwich order, the way he brings up stories from three months ago like they just happened. The way he says your name when it matters. Small things, but dammit, they add up.

Even now, he’s probably making a spreadsheet of hospital food options in his head, for your benefit, and this makes you want to laugh and throw up at the same time because you are not supposed to fall for someone who makes it so easy. You’re not supposed to fall at all, because you are the one who knows how to manage risk, how to keep your heart sheathed in bubble wrap and sarcasm and the practiced art of staying unbothered. You are not supposed to crave the constancy of a man like Curtis, and yet here you are, sitting in this goddamn hospital, waiting for him to get back from the cafeteria like a dog at the front door.

Mostly you’re not supposed to fall because this is just him being nice, the same way he helps Mrs. Noyes from 4B with her recycling and walks the blind dog for the guy on 3 when he works a night shift.

You’re still chewing on this, gnawing at that impossible mental cuticle, when Curtis returns with a paper cup and a small brown bag. He offers them to you like a treaty, or maybe a dare. “They were out of blueberry,” he says, “so you’re getting banana. You’ll live.”

Your hand comes up for the bag, and the tips of his fingers graze yours, almost theatrically gentle, as if he’s afraid you might startle and bolt. You do not, but you do clock the hitch in your own pulse, the way your body catalogues the warmth and weight of his touch in the useless hope of replaying it later.

He sits down next to you again, his knee bumping yours and staying there. It’s such a nothing, such a casual point of contact, but you feel it in your teeth. He’s just big and tall and his legs have to fall where they may. And if you don’t move your leg away, that’s no one’s business whatsoever.

And if this is a prequel to the prologue for the Curtis we met in His Law would any one have any objections? (This then would have happened BEFORE the events that lead to the post-apocalyptic landscape of that entire AU.)

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"Are you always this charming?"

Steve laughs—a short, flustered thing that moves through the air between you and is snatched away by the wind. In the orange lamplight, he scratches the back of his neck, a gesture so boyish you’re charmed twice over. “I don’t know about that,” he says. “I mean, I’m not really a—”

He shrugs, letting the rest hang there. Whatever he thinks he isn’t, it doesn’t matter. What matters is how close you’re standing, and how his eyes keep flicking to your mouth and then away, as if he’s daring himself to cross the invisible line.

You tilt your chin up for him.

And that does it. He closes the space, a shy warmth in the way he grips your forearms, as if grounding himself in the sheer fact of your existence.

When he kisses you, it’s hesitant but hungry, the kind of awkward that’s so real it surprises you into smiling mid-way through. He pulls back, a little stunned, and you watch, hardly believing that this man who is Captain freaking America to the world has any doubt about his standing with you, when all you want from him is the man behind the shield. Steven Grant Rogers and his good heart and his nervous hands, and his unguarded laugh.

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