Saturday, 2nd March

One of the most annoying things about being pregnant, Lucy had decided, was her complete inability to get a full night's sleep without waking up at regular intervals to make use of the facilities. At almost 19 weeks, there was no way to pretend that she wasn't pregnant any longer, though she was still holding out against maternity wear outside work. It was amazing what a stubborn woman could do with clothes a size or two too big. As dawn began to lighten the sky on the morning of Olivia and Johnny's wedding, Lucy Rogers stretched slowly in the warm dip she held close at her husband's side, and yawned as quietly as she could. Blinking up at the ceiling, she sighed, recognizing why she'd woken up with resigned patience. "Bladder the size of a bloody peanut," she muttered, rolling to slide out of the bed reluctantly and pad toward the bathroom.

Steve reached for her in his sleep even as she slipped out of his grasp to stumble toward the bathroom. He'd become even more attentive and caring than usual since they'd gotten married, only partly because of the baby. He'd never felt quite so at peace and content as he did now that he was married to Lucy, though he still felt a little like a fish out of water, with few friends who could really relate to him or his situation. He was an old man in a young man's body, or at least, that's how he felt sometimes. A relic, old before his time. Lucy didn't seem to mind his old-fashioned ways, but he was a puzzle to most of the others around him. Different. He sometimes wondered if he'd ever learn to fit into the modern world around him.

She wasn't long, barely bothering to wake up properly in the process, soon returning to slide underneath the sheets with her super-human husband, hoping to reclaim some of the warmth she'd had to abandon to deal with a call of nature. She curled to him fondly, small in his arms, the gentle swell of her belly pressing into him. It was only a matter of weeks before he'd be able to feel their baby moving, a milestone that couldn't come fast enough. Lucy brushed a soft kiss to his temple as she settled beside him once more. "Shhh," she murmured tenderly. "Go back to sleep. We don't have to get up for another couple of hours, at least."

"What time is it?" he asked, prying one eye open to look at her in the dim gray light just before dawn. He exhaled a sigh of breath as he slid his arms around her to hold her close. He didn't need as much sleep as other people, able to stay awake for days on end without feeling weary, but he enjoyed these precious hours of quiet with Lucy, too few and far between when they were on duty in New York.

"Too bloody early." His wife chuckled quietly, nestling into his arms with easy comfort even as her eyes sought out the clock on the nightstand. "About half five," she relayed from the digital display, laying her cheek warm against him. She wouldn't be going back to sleep, she was fairly sure of that, despite the long day ahead of them. "Do you think the happy couple got any sleep, or am I going to have to cover my sister in make up?"

"I don't know. I could hardly sleep the night before our wedding, but I'm not....I'm not them." He remembered back to that night, to the dance lessons Olivia had given him, after they'd tucked Johnny and Lucy into their respective beds. "Johnny was pretty wound up last night." Steve paused a moment, his frown heard if not seen in the darkness before dawn. "I think I was boring him."

The frown she heard made her brow furrow in sympathetic concern. "I don't think you were boring him," Lucy told her husband softly. "I just think you and he don't have much common ground yet. Let me guess, you did manly things like drink beer and play bar games?" She tilted her head back to look up at him with a faint smile. "Which is something Johnny only does when he's at a complete loss, and you don't enjoy it at all. Maybe the two of you should put aside a boys' night once a week or something, get to know each other so you don't always walk on eggshells."

Steve didn't bother to answer that question, since she'd already answered it for herself. She knew him well enough to know his silence was answer enough. "Like what? Play Glenn Miller and reminisce about the war" Watch cartoons" Catch up on comic books?" He really was at a loss when it came to his friendship with the Human Torch. As much as he'd tried, they'd found little common ground to work off of. Despite that, they had things in common if they tried hard enough to find them. They both were from New York and they both liked baseball, for starters, but baseball season was still a few months away. They simply hadn't had much time to get to know each other.

She rolled her eyes, smiling at his groping quest for a solution. "I thought men were supposed to be all about fixing the problem, and women were the ones who needed validating?" she asked teasingly, knowing that this bit of psycho-babble was probably beyond him as well. Shifting about, she rolled onto her side to face him, propping her head onto her hand to look down at her perplexed husband. "What about that list of movies Liv wrote up for you?" she suggested. "Why not watch them with Johnny' I can guarantee he hasn't seen most of what?s on that list; my sister knows modern pop culture and its origins scarily well. It isn't as though it's hard to slip between Rhy'Din and Earth - we could swap spouses at the portal for a couple of hours on one night of the week easily enough. And you two wouldn't have to try and keep one another entertained, because you'd be engaging in watching entertainment together."

"Validating?" Steve echoed, sounding puzzled as she quoted modern psychology at him. He was lucky if he understood Freud, much less modern psychology. "You really think he'd want to watch movies with me when he could be spending time with Olivia?" he asked, frowning back at her as she turned to face him. His best friend in all the world was dead. He'd known Bucky all his life, and while he wasn't looking to replace him, it would be nice to have at least one friend who wasn't his wife or his boss to spend time with.

"Men fix the problem, women acknowledge the way the problem makes a person feel and justify it for them," Lucy clarified with a smile, stroking her thumb over the crease in his brow to smooth away the frown. "That's a pretty basic run down of the difference between male and female brains." She leaned down, touching her lips to his fondly. "And yes, I think Johnny would jump at the chance to spend some more time with you. He's kinda stuck on the whole Captain America thing; he hasn't really had much of a chance to work out that Steve Rogers is a fantastic guy in his own right. And, darling, you really need to learn how to relax a bit more around other people. He can teach you that."

He arched a brow, unsure about her explanation about the difference in men and women, but then he'd never been very interested in psychology. "It doesn't matter anyway. They're going back to Rhy'Din, and we're staying here." Baseball season was coming. Did Lucy like baseball" Steve couldn't really see himself hanging out with Tony or Fury. As much as he loved Lucy, as happy as he was to be with her, he didn't want to admit that he was still grieving Bucky's death. Despite that, he did smile a little at Lucy's suggestion. "Somehow I don't think the word relax is part of Johnny's vocabulary."

She laughed quietly, cuddling in close to him. "I would suggest a massage, but I don't think either of you want to get that close to each other," she teased fondly, brushing a kiss to the smooth swathe of his chest. "The portal is barely ten minutes' walk from our apartment," she reminded him softly. "Less than twenty from theirs. It would not be difficult to arrange something like that, unless you made it so, baby."

"I just need some time, Luce. That's all," he insisted, his eyes following her as she snuggled closer and kissed his chest. He liked Johnny and in time, he thought they could be friends, but right now, Steve was having enough trouble just wrapping his head around the twenty-first century and the fact that nearly everyone he'd known in his own time had died. He slipped an arm around her to draw her close, not really wanting to talk about all that. This was supposed to be a happy occasion, and he was, for the most part happy, but there were still a few ghosts haunting him that needed to be put to rest. "How's the baby?" he asked, changing the subject.

She smiled softly, enjoying as always the comforting wrap of his arms around her. Whenever Steve had her enveloped in his embrace, Lucy felt as though she could take on anything and win without trying. "Quiet," she answered his query softly. "After spending the night holding a wild party on my bladder, that is." A gentle laugh escaped her lips as she looked up at him. "Not long now, and you'll be able to feel it, too."

"You're in for a few good surprises this weekend, then," she grinned, looking forward to seeing his reaction to just how far thrill rides had come in seventy years. "It's a colloquialism," she added in explanation, "built around a genre of music that I think originated not long after you saved the world, though I could be wrong. Rock and roll, which is often shortened to rock'n'roll. Remind me to introduce you to Elvis Presley sometime. He was a fantastic singer."

"Elvis Presley?" Steve echoed curiously. The name sounded vaguely familiar, like he'd heard it mentioned at one time or another, though he couldn't quite remember where. He'd been slowly working on catching up, but he still had a long way to go. "I saw Snow White once," he said, wondering if that counted. Most of pop culture was a blur. Things had changed a lot in seventy years, and yet, some things never changed.

Lucy smiled again, nuzzling to his jaw for a moment. "Disney's got a lot bigger since Snow White came out," she warned him. "There are a lot of movies, animated and live action. Some better than others, of course." She chuckled, tilting her head to look up at the ceiling, as a cheeky thought wandered through her mind. "I wonder what you'll make of The Little Mermaid" I don't suppose you're used to the idea of a half-naked woman as a child's hero, are you?"

There went that eyebrow again. He knew what a mermaid was. He had even heard of that story from somewhere. A fairy tale or something, he thought, though he'd never really been into fairy tales. "A half naked woman?" he echoed. "I know what a mermaid is. Did they make a movie about one?" he asked, trying to follow but with little references to go by, it was harder than it seemed.

"You know, The Little Mermaid?" Lucy queried. "The fairytale" Disney made their own version of it about thirty years ago, or something like that. Anyway, I loved it. I was completely obsessed - I wanted to be Ariel." She laughed, shaking her head. "I think she was Disney's first redheaded princess, too, actually." She looked up at her husband, knowing she wasn't exactly explaining much here. "I'm sorry, baby, there's just so much wrapped up in the word "Disney" these days. But, you know, there's a baby on the way. You have a real excuse for watching all the films."

If Lucy was hoping to help Steve by explaining, she was unfortunately, only confusing him further. He was intelligent enough to sort out that Ariel must be the name of the mermaid and that she was the heroine of some Disney movie. And apparently, there were other movies based on fairy tales as Lucy was saying that this Ariel wasn't Disney's only princess. "It's okay, Lucy. I've got seventy years of catching up to do. It's just....It's a lot, and I haven't had time." Which seemed to be an ironic statement in itself. The task of catching up on seventy years of history and pop culture might not seem like much, but it often seemed like a daunting task. There wasn't anything that hadn't changed in some way, and he had not yet decided whether he liked this modern world better or not. There were things to be said for the past and the present; each had it good and bad points.

"I know, love." Shifting about once again, she propped her head onto her hand, walking fingertips up over his chest. "I still think Fury should cut you some slack until you're caught up on at least the major points of the last century, but you heard what happened last time I tried to talk to the man." Her jaw set with comical irritation. "I'm pregnant, not brain-dead, for god's sake."

He smiled a little at her remark about Fury. Lucy was one person who wasn't afraid to put the man in his place. He wondered what Tony would think of her once he got to know her better. It was a part of her personality that wasn't all that much different from her brother's. "He's not going to deny us a trip to England," he said, circling back around to that conversation again, as he rolled onto his side to face her and reached over to brush his fingers against the swell at her mid-section.

"He's not going to get the chance if I have anything to do with it." Which she would, that was pretty much guaranteed. She smiled, glad that Steve didn't mind the adversarial relationship she was developing with the Director of S.H.I.E.L.D. Her husband was a soldier, used to obeying orders even if he doubted their necessity if they were given with enough conviction. It must have come as a bit of a shock to Fury when he realized that Steve Rogers' wife had turned out to be as argumentative as her husband was helpful. Her hand covered Steve's on the gentle swell at her waist, selfishly enjoying the way he seemed at once so proud and so protective of the little life inside her, however unexpected it had been. "Which would you prefer first time around?" she asked him thoughtfully. "Boy or girl?"

Steve's smile warmed and widened as the conversation turned toward the little bundle of joy growing inside his wife. "Doesn't matter. So long as it's healthy." It was the response husbands had been giving wives for millenia. Both prospects were appealing to him, though if he was pressed for answer, he did have a preference. "I'd like one of each someday." A little boy to teach baseball to, and a little girl just like her mother.

"Oh, we're definitely having more than one," Lucy assured him. She was confident that, even if somehow his identity as Captain America leaked out, S.H.I.E.L.D. could be relied upon to keep his family safe, no matter what. She might not entirely approve of the organization, but she appreciated the work they put into their convictions. "But if you could choose," she added, teasingly prying into the preferences he'd been skirting around for a while, "which would it be?"

"Don't tell me you can choose whether it's a boy or a girl," he remarked with a smile. They might have come a long way in seventy years, but he doubted they'd been able to improve on Mother Nature. Maybe he was stalling or maybe he was just teasing; either way, he hadn't given her a straight answer yet, whenever she'd asked. "Which would you choose?" he asked, just as curious as her, his fingers gently, lovingly stroking the bump at her belly as his eyes met hers.

"Well, if you believe the old wives' tales, anything is possible," Lucy giggled quietly, drawing her hand through her hair as she held his gaze. Her expression softened as he asked; it wasn't really a question she had asked herself, but in this moment, she knew what her answer was. Her smile was just a little self-conscious as she answered him, her voice quiet with loving hope. "I'd like a little boy," she admitted quietly. "Not that I would love a girl any less. But a big brother for the ones that come after ....Maybe it's a little soppy, but I think I'd get on better with a son than a daughter."

His smile faded a little, but only because he was thinking of himself when he was a boy and wondering if their son - if the baby was a son, if they ever had a son - would inherit his father's sickly genes or the enhanced genes. It was something he'd been mulling ever since she'd gotten pregnant, but he hadn't mentioned it for fear of worrying her, though she was a doctor and knew how these things worked better than he did. "Would you be disappointed if it was a girl?" he asked, knowing he'd be happy either way, but was hoping they'd eventually have both.

"Honestly?" Lucy sighed softly, knowing her own faults better than anyone. She settled down onto her side facing him, her head pillowed on her arm as she kept her eyes on his with gentle regret. "I would be a little disappointed with a girl. I let Liv down so badly while we were growing up ....I think I need the practice of being a mum before I'm allowed to have a daughter. Or, you know, you could wear the skirt and a pair of false boobs?"

"Somehow I don't think that will work," he replied with a smile, lifting a hand to brush fingers against her cheek. There might have been a lot of advances since he'd taken his plunge in the icy waters, but he doubted science had discovered a way for a man to nurse a child, other than by using a bottle. "You think I'll be a good father?" he asked, letting a few of his own insecurities show in this quiet moment before dawn.