MCU Kissing Fest, 2015 edition!

[such_heights]

So in 2012 I ran a kissing comment fest and everyone seemed to have a good time. (And yes, lol, I did at that time believe I'd stop caring about superheroes by the end of the summer.) Let's try again!

Everything in the Marvel Cinematic Universe applies, so that's all 11 films as well as Agents of SHIELD, Agent Carter and Daredevil. Assume that comments may contain spoilers for everything.

THE RULES:

01. Leave a comment with two or more characters from the MCU who you'd like to see kiss. You can include a prompt if you like as an optional extra for the prompt-filler.
02. Reply to the comment with a fanwork in which those characters kiss. The kissing can be platonic or romantic, on the mouth or the cheek or the forehead or the shoulder or anywhere else that you like.
03. All fanworks welcome, including art/podfic/vids/icons/recs/meta/fic etc. Multiple fills for the same prompt are fine. Replying to your own prompt is fine. Anon commenting is fine. Coming back and posting a fill two months later is fine. Posting your fanwork elsewhere is fine.

I will link to fills in this post as they come in.

Fills:

Angie/Peggy
Angie/Peggy, home by strix_alba
Angie/Peggy, a good cup of tea by frith_in_thorns

Bruce/Natasha
Bruce/Natasha, hold by jamaillith

Bruce/Natasha/Steve
Natasha/Bruce/Steve, family by thebonesofferalletters
Bruce/Natasha, running by celeste9

Bucky/Peggy
Bucky/Peggy, test by gwyn

Bucky/Steve
Steve/Bucky, baseball by alafaye
Steve/Bucky, baseball #2 by gwyn
Steve/Bucky, soft by thebonesofferalletters
Steve/Bucky, candles by applegnat
Steve/Bucky, candles #2 by recessional
Steve/Bucky, heart by recessional
Steve/Bucky, rooftops by thebonesofferalletters
Steve/Bucky, soft #2 by recessional
Steve/Bucky, shower by recessional

Claire/Matt
Matt/Claire, daylight by pearwaldorf

Clint/Darcy
Clint/Darcy, milkshakes by topaz119

Clint/Laura
Clint Barton/Laura Barton, unexpected by kayim

Clint/Natasha
Clint/Natasha, perfunctory by recessional

Daniel/Jack/Peggy
Peggy/Daniel/Jack, drowning by sholio

Foggy/Marci
Foggy/Marci - alcohol and bad choices by sholio (TW: aftermath of an off-camera attempted assault)

Foggy/Matt
Foggy/Matt, hospital by sholio
Matt Murdock/Foggy Nelson, spin the bottle by devilc

Helen/Sif
Helen Cho/Sif, teamwork by longwhitecoats

Maria/Sam
Sam/Maria Hill, coffee by recessional

Maria/Wanda
Maria/Wand, broken by x_dark_siren_x

Natasha/Pepper
Pepper/Natasha, suits by isagel

Natasha/Rhodey/Sam/Steve/Vision/Wanda
Natasha/Rhodey/Sam/Steve/Vision/Wanda, team building by sholio

Natasha/Steve
Natasha/Steve, home by thebonesofferalletters

Pepper/Tony
Tony/Pepper, party by igrockspock

Pepper/Vision
Vision/Pepper, genderfluidity by jamaillith

Peter/Rocket
Peter Quill/Rocket, drunk by longwhitecoats

Sam/Steve
Sam/Steve, return by longwhitecoats
Sam/Steve, commanding by astolat
Sam/Steve, pool table by gwyn
Sam/Steve, bedtime story by gwyn
Sam/Steve, breakfast by monanotlisa
Sam/Steve, sharing a bed by raanve

status: Updated through page 16 on ?view=flat.

Comments

[igrockspock]

Matt Murdock + Karen Page - platonic forehead kiss

[strix_alba]

(cw: sick-fic, and associated unpleasant smells/textures)

Matt arrives at her apartment in the evening, after reassuring Foggy that yes, he would be able to tell exactly how sick she was and then report back. (“Heat, sweat … there’s a, different diseases sometimes have different smells. Don’t worry.”) He hears slow, shuffling footsteps approaching the door.

“Don’t come in,” she says. “If I get you sick, that’s more than half the company out of work.” But she moves to the side, and Matt taps his cane around to make sure that he doesn’t step on whatever enormous quantity of wool she appears to have wrapped herself in before he walks into the stale warm air (body heat and fever sweat, vomit and subsequent sink-washing) in her apartment.

“I’ll take my chances,” he says. “Besides, I brought soup.”

“Thank you.” Karen shuffles towards the living area, strange and listless compared to her usual deliberate stride. It’s unsettling; even at her worst, Matt has never found her to be lacking energy. “Seriously, thank you so much.”

“We’re still a new firm; it would be bad for business if we let our only employee die of a mysterious illness,” he says with a smile, because she’s obviously miserable enough without having to deal with attempts at sympathy.

She huffs weakly as she lowers herself down onto the couch with the belabored movements of the mildly feverish. Matt frowns at that. “How are you holding up?” He recalls the kitchen on the left, and makes his way to the counter by echo and the click of his cane, sets down the paper bag that he’s been carrying for the last five-odd blocks.

“Well, it’s been eleven hours since I last threw up, so I’ve got that going for me,” she croaks from the other room, “but I don’t think I can take much more reality TV.”

“Can’t say I know much about television, but I’ve got the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy on tape, if you want. For a change of pace.” He finds his way to the cabinets and opens them, running his hands delicately over their contents until he finds a bowl into which he can pour the soup.

“No thanks. I keep dreaming about shadows at the windows. Fever dreams. I don’t want to know how weird they would get with that,” she admits. “Oh, are you — you don’t have to…”

“I have at least an eighty percent success rate at pouring liquids,” he assures her, lying through his teeth. “Though it would help if you could tell me where you keep your spoons.”

It takes her a couple of tries to accurately describe which drawer they are in — it would probably have been easier just go hunting himself — but in the end, he is able to bring her a carefully balanced bowl of chicken and rice soup that he bought from the cleanest and least greasy-feeling kitchen he could find in the neighborhood. Karen rearranges the rasping wool of her blanket around herself, pushing up against the cushions until she appears to be upright and facing him.

“Can I feel your forehead?” he asks.

There is a pause. “I nodded. Sorry. It’s … everything’s fuzzy up here. In my brain.”

He reaches in the direction of her voice, and a little up; she tilts her head into the path of his hand. Her hair is greasy, and damp at the roots. Matt touches the back of his palm to her forehead, although this close to her, its easy to feel both the unnaturally concentrated heat radiating off her body and the way that she shivers every once in a while despite her cocoon of blankets.

“What’s the prognosis, doc?” she asks.

“You’re not the hottest person I’ve ever felt,” he tells her, and realizes how that sounds as soon as the words leave his mouth.

“Gosh, thanks Matt. You sure know how to charm ‘em.” She laughs, which turns into a phlegm-filled cough whose reverberations in the air are partially absorbed by something that sounds like a cardboard cube on the floor next to the couch — tissues, he reasons, and reaches down to hand her the box. She sneezes loudly and Matt winces in sympathy with her sinuses.

He sits down next to Karen while she alternately drinks soup, blows her nose, and tries to complain about Dancing With the Stars until she inevitably gets too passionate in her irritation and starts to cough. Matt half-listens to her voice, half-listens to her body, feeling slightly guilty about it in the way that had crept up on him… lately. Her heart beats just a little faster than normal, keeping up with the demands of her immune system. When she breathes in, he can hear the pull in her lungs, air going through wet, mucus-y passageways, but it’s a sound that he hears frequently enough as he goes around the city that it’s probably just one of the many variations on winter illnesses from living in close proximity to four million other people. It doesn’t sound pleasant, but Matt has never had a particularly good self-preservation instinct, so he folds his hands in his lap and lets her lean against him.

“You don’t have to stay,” she says, when she has finished her soup and he can only hear the occasional clink of spoon against bowl. “I promise not to die.”

“The only reason that Foggy didn’t skip his date to hover over you is because I told him I’d hover on his behalf,” he says. “Is there anything else I can get you?”

“No, thanks. I’m just going to go to sleep, I think.”

“Of course.” He takes the empty bowl from her and rinses it in the sink. Behind him, Karen settles back down along the couch, feverish body bright in his awareness and easy to bring into focus. She lets the blanket drape a little looser, less like a fuzzy straightjacket, so Matt thinks that soup may have been a good idea.

“I’ll lock the door on my way out,” he tells her, returning to the couch. “Once you’re asleep.”

She makes a small grumpy noise under her breath. “Can you check the windows?”

“And the windows.” He hesitates for a moment, before leaning down to touch the part of her face that is still exposed to the open air, and kisses the top of her head. “I won’t let anything get in.”

“Thanks,” she says, and he can hear the smile in her voice despite its roughness.

He balances himself on the arm of the couch, hand on her shoulder. She drifts restlessly for a few minutes before finally settling down, pulse slowing and breathing relatively even. Once she starts to snore, Matt gets up and stretches. He walks the perimeter of the apartment, double-checking all of the locks and drawing the blinds in the bedroom. There are three locks on the door: one built into the knob, one chain, and one deadbolt. There’s nothing he can do about the deadbolt, but he fiddles with the chain from the outside until he hears it catch on the frame, and pulls the door shut behind him. He hopes it will be enough.

[igrockspock]

Nick Fury/Maria Hill - is it possible to kiss someone sarcastically?

[igrockspock]

Natasha/Steve - what exactly is happening here?

[igrockspock]

Natasha/Steve - moving on

[igrockspock]

Natasha/Sam - why the hell not?

[igrockspock]

Foggy/Marci - alcohol and bad choices

[sholio]

TW: aftermath of an off-camera attempted assault

--

Foggy is a deep sleeper and it takes a lot to drag him out of it. He wakes bleary and dazed, not entirely sure why he's awake until there's a thump from the living room of his apartment.

His first thought is Matt. Matt's in trouble.

And his second thought is that Matt has made a lot of enemies, and some of those enemies could conceivably have learned who Daredevil is, and therefore who Daredevil's best friend is. Actually, Nelson & Murdock probably has some enemies of their own by now. Not to mention ordinary, run-of-the-mill burglars.

He fumbles for his phone on the nightstand, intending to first text Matt, and if it isn't Matt, to call 911. However, he's still only half awake, which is why instead of picking up the phone, he swats it with a clumsy hand and sends it sailing to the floor and skittering into some dark corner of the room.

"Shit," Foggy says aloud, and then claps his hand over his mouth.

Now he hears the sound of running water in the kitchen. A burglar who wants a drink of water? That improves the chances of it being Matt, but when Foggy cautiously sits up, there's a faint glow coming through his half-open bedroom door. Matt wouldn't turn the lights on. Back to Option B: for Burglar.

He fumbles his way out of bed and looks for the phone for a minute before realizing he's never going to find it in the dark, and if he turns on a light, the burglar, mob assassin, or whatever it is will know he's here and awake.

Maybe he could hide in the closet until they leave.

No, he tells himself firmly. Your best buddy goes out every night and beats up guys with guns, and he's BLIND. The least you can do is get rid of a burglar on your own.

Foggy gropes around for something to use as a weapon. He stumbles over a tennis racket, a relic of one of his brief and ill-advised attempts to get in shape, now propped against the bedroom wall for some reason and, apparently, being used to drape socks on. He shakes the socks off and picks it up. It seems very flimsy for anti-burglar protection. He trips over one of his dress shoes and picks that up too.

Thus armed, Foggy picks his way carefully to the bedroom door, flattens himself against the wall like an FBI agent about to stage a raid, psychs himself up with a few deep breaths, then throws himself through the door.

"Freeze!" he snaps, squinting against the glare of the living room lamp, blinding to his night-adapted eyes. All he can make out is a blur turning around from the counter of the attached open-plan kitchen. "Don't move! The police are on their way, and I'm not afraid to use this -- Marci?"

"Foggy," Marci says. She has a glass of water in one hand, and she's dressed to kill in an emerald-green, off-the-shoulder number. "What are you doing?"

"Defending myself," Foggy retorts defiantly. He drops the shoe and holds the tennis racket in front of himself protectively, having become aware that he's wearing nothing but a T-shirt and boxers. On the other hand, it's nothing she hasn't seen before. "What are you doing? Here, I mean. Doing here. How did you get in? Do you realize it's two a.m.?"

"I still have your key," Marci says. "I never gave it back."

Great. Apparently he's as bad at breaking up with women as he is at catching their eye in the first place. "Yes, but why are you here now?"

"Because ..." she says. "Because your apartment was close, and I couldn't think where else to go."

And now he starts taking in more of the details he'd missed at first: the way her stylish updo is coming down, and her mascara is tracked down her cheeks like she's been crying, and one of her nylons has fallen down and she hasn't bothered to pull it up again.

"Marci!" He drops the tennis racket and crosses the room in a hurry. "What -- did someone hurt you? They won't get away with that! I've knocked out goons, you know. I'm actually kind of good at it. Well, I did it once. And I was lying about calling the police, because I'm not sure where my phone is, but if I can borrow your phone, we can totally call --"

She stops the flow of words by touching his mouth. "It's okay, Foggy. I'm not hurt -- well, not like you're thinking. You don't need to call anyone."

She's not crying, at least, but she still doesn't look okay by a long shot. "Do you want to sit down?"

"I think I'd like that," she says, with a shaky laugh.

Foggy leads her to the couch. She smells like expensive perfume and alcohol. She's not falling-down drunk, but she's definitely had a few. When he sits her gently down on the couch, she goes willingly, which is very un-Marci-like of her.

She's still holding the now-empty water glass, like she doesn't know where to put it. "Would you like some more water?" he asks. She nods.

By the time he brings her the glass back, she's pulled herself together somewhat. He didn't realize how much she'd resembled the old Marci, the one he knew in college, until that girl was tucked up once again behind the mature Marci's armor. He misses it as soon as he recognizes it's gone.

He hands her the glass and she takes it with a slight brush of her fingers over his. It's reflexive, like she hardly knows she's doing it. Her hands are very cold and shaking a little.

Marci is, has always been, his favorite mistake. It's not really a matter of not being able to walk away, so much as it's nice knowing someone he can call up for a night of hot, no-strings-attached sex. Well, only a few strings attached. Old strings. Frayed strings. But ... still there. For both of them, it seems, because she's here at two a.m. when she could have called a cab and gone anywhere.

"Do you want to talk about it?"

She starts to nod, then shakes her head, then sighs. "It's not even a good story. It's just a stupid, drunk story. I went on a blind date. We both had a few. He -- it's just -- he turned out to be a jerk, and it ended badly. Nothing happened," she adds, at whatever she's seeing on his face. "Not for lack of trying on his part, but ... nothing, really."

"I hope you kicked the shit out of him," Foggy says, with feeling.

This gets a smile out of her -- small, but genuine. "Trust me, he'll be patching stiletto heel holes for awhile."

"Good."

Her smile falls away, and she drops her gaze to her hands, which are still trembling slightly on the water glass. "It shouldn't be getting to me this badly. I don't even remember coming here. It's like I was in a haze."

Foggy leans forward to take the half-empty glass, and curls his hands over her cold ones. "Look, Matt and I deal with crime victims all the time, okay? Everybody reacts like this when something bad happens, unless they have stone-cold nerves of steel, but most people don't. Heck, I'd be a lot more of a mess than you are right now. Trust me."

She heaves a sigh, and offers him a little smile.

"And if you want to press charges, or sue, I happen to know a couple of excellent lawyers."

"So do I," she says, a bit pointedly.

"Oh. Yes. Right."

"Ugh." Marci detaches her hands gently, and rubs her face. "Two a.m., you said?"

"Probably closer to three by now."

"God," she moans. "Morning is going to suck so, so badly. I could take a cab home, but I just want to crash. Foggy, do you mind if I sleep on your couch tonight? I'll be gone by the time you wake up."

"Forget the couch," he says firmly. "There's a perfectly good bed. Which you just slept in last week, if I remember right."

This time her sigh is small and sad. "Foggy, I don't want --"

"Sex? Great! Me neither. Because I have to be up at six-thirty, same as you. C'mon." He holds out a hand and helps her up. "You can wear one of my T-shirts. I'll be a perfect gentleman, I swear. Actually, I don't think I have much choice, since I'm gonna be asleep as soon as my head hits that pillow."

She manages to laugh a little.

Foggy stumbles back to the bed and falls into it. Marci is busy for a little while in the bathroom, and his eyes are closed when he hears her bare footsteps come into the bedroom. The other side of the bed dips; the covers twitch as she pulls them over her.

"Night," Foggy says softly.

"Oh! I thought you were asleep. Good night, Foggy." There's a little more rustling and readjusting of the bedcovers. Then he feels the dimpling in the mattress as she rolls towards him in the dark bedroom (is this what it's like to be Matt? an irrelevant part of his sleepy brain wonders) and her lips brush his cheek, gentle and soft in the dark.

[pearwaldorf]

Helen Cho/Thor, admiration

[veleda_k]

Wanda/Vision, New

[margalo_streussal]

Foggy/Matt, why do I even hang out with you

[margalo_streussal]

Fisk/Vanessa, art

[margalo_streussal]

Claire/Matt, bad ideas

[killabeez]

Melinda May/Bobbi Morse, woods

[killabeez]

Fitz/Mackenzie, penance

[such_heights]

Tony/Pepper, party

[igrockspock]

The first time Tony Stark calls Pepper after midnight, flip phones still exist.

He says, “Hey! There’s a party! Wanna join?”

Pepper strains her ears for the sound of music and laughter. The other end of the line is silent.

“Is it a party in your pants?” she asks.

“Yeah, how’d you know? You interested?” Tony’s voice is slurred.

“No.” Pepper rolls over and looks at the glowing red numbers of her alarm clock. 2:54 a.m. “And since you’ve awakened me at an ungodly hour of the night, I’ll be coming in tomorrow at nine instead of eight.”

She snaps her phone shut and switches it to silent. Then she does something almost unthinkable: she sleeps until 7:30 a.m.

***

Tony strolls into the office around eleven, wearing frayed jeans, a rumpled t-shirt, and dark glasses.

“Could you turn that off?” he rasps, gesturing vaguely at the radio on Pepper’s desk.

“Is it bothering you?” she asks innocently. She twists the volume knob all the way up, then back down again.

“Also, could you stop with the typing? And the talking? You know, just till I’m – well, gone.”

“So no typing or talking for the next hour?” she asks.

Tony winces. “I’ll have you know that I – well, no, that was totally fair. But I do actually work here, and I’m staying till five today, so…”

“Then you’ll be listening to me type for the next six hours, sir,” Pepper says, pressing the ‘enter’ key with just a little too much emphasis.

To her surprise, Tony looks chagrined. “I, uh, invited you to a party last night, didn’t I?”

“No,” Pepper says, reaching toward the radio.

“In my pants,” Tony clarifies. “I invited you to a party in my pants.”

“You did,” Pepper says. “At 2:54 a.m., so technically not last night. It was this morning, actually.”

“You’ve got a thing for precision, I see. Good quality in secretary. Keep it up.” He clears his throat. “Here’s the thing though, I’m not really the apologizing type, so if that’s going to be an issue…”

“Oh, no, not an issue at all, sir,” Pepper says. She twists the volume knob, and the radio roars back to life. “When I work, I like to listen to techno music,” she says, spinning the dial. “Or gospel. I really do like gospel. I’m a good Midwestern girl, you know.”

“I’m sorry!” Tony blurts out.

Pepper dials the volume back to a more reasonable level and fixes Tony with a glare.

“I’m sorry for inviting you to a party in my pants,” he says.

Pepper’s fingers twitch on the volume knob.

“It was inappropriate?” Tony asks, eying her warily. “And, uh, it won’t happen again?”

Pepper flicks the off switch. “Acceptable,” she says, crossing her arms over her chest and leaning back in her chair. “You should know, sir, that while I can tolerate a certain level of… drunken shenanigans, if you ever come in here and ask me not to do my job again, I will quit.”

She slides back behind her computer without sparing Tony Stark a second glance.

***

The next time Tony Stark calls Pepper after hours with a party invitation, she’s made the switch from a Razor to a Blackberry.

“You have got to come to this party!” he exclaims, and Pepper holds the phone away from her ear to escape the steady thump of the bass.

“Is this an emergency, Tony?” she asks. “Wait, don’t answer that. This is not an emergency and it is a violation of the terms of my contract.”

“This is totally an emergency,” Tony says around a mouthful of something. “You don’t know how to relax. We gotta fix that, Pepper.”

“Excellent plan, Mr. Stark. You stop relaxing every hour of every day, and then Stark Industries and I can afford for me to relax. Perhaps between five p.m. and eight a.m. every day, just as a start.”

“Better start, you come over now. Destiny’s Child is here.”

“What?” Pepper had been planning to hang up the phone. She really had been. “Why is Destiny’s Child at your house?”

“Gotta please the masses,” Tony says. The background music fades away suddenly, as if Tony had stepped outside. “I didn’t get to do this in college, you know. Party. Have fun.”

“That’s nice,” Pepper says. “Did you know it’s 1:46? At this time of the morning, I generally sleep. It’s traditional for my responsible, working adults.”

“MIT wouldn’t let me party,” Tony continues, oblivious to Pepper’s objections. “High-profile genius fourteen-year-old, kind of a legal liability. Like my dad was going to sue anyone for exposing me to alcohol, but –“

“I will be happy to assist you in finding a therapist to discuss these issues,” Pepper says firmly. “Good night.”

She switches the phone to silent and pulls the covers over her head.

***

Life gets more dangerous when Tony figures out what kind of parties she actually likes. Well, it could get more dangerous, if Pepper weren’t quite so good at enforcing boundaries.

Tony stops in front of her desk in the New York office. He looks…clean. Recently shaven. Maybe he’d even had his eyebrows done. She could check if she wanted to; she’s got access to his calendar. She won’t though, because she doesn’t care.

“You know, the Met is having a benefit tonight.”

“Mmm,” she murmurs, barely tearing her glance away from her computer screen. “Which Met? Ballet? Opera? Museum?”

“Ballet,” Tony says. “I’ve got a couple tickets.”

“Impressive,” Pepper says. “Did you book them yourself? Or do you have a secret new assistant?”

“I am capable of doing things on my own,” Tony says. “Occasionally, anyway. So, uh, I was wondering—“

“If I would like to supervise you in polite company after hours? Assist you in making inappropriate requests to ballerinas?”

The light dims in Tony’s eyes. Pepper doesn’t care. She does not.

He slips two tickets out of a pocket in his blazer. “Would I do that to you?
Actually, no, don’t answer that. These are for you, to make up for all the other times with the ballerinas and innuendos and midnight phone calls and –“

“Don’t remind me,” Pepper says, a smile tugging at the corners of her mouth. “I’m sure I will enjoy the party. Thank you, Mr. Stark.”

She calls an old friend from Columbia and lets him take her out to dinner beforehand. She absolutely, positively does not wish he were Tony Stark.

***

The first time Pepper dances with Tony at a party, he leaves her alone on the roof. She thanks the universe for reminding her who Tony Stark actually is.

***
The next time Pepper goes to a party with Tony, she has a StarkPhone prototype. It doesn’t work. Of course it doesn’t work. To be fair, it delivers on some of its promises: it weighs half as much as her old iPhone, for example. And the holographic display would be shatterproof. Assuming that it worked, of course.

Nothing terrible will happen if she misses her conference call in South Korea; Sun Kyeong is dying for a contract with SI, so they’ll forgive a ‘scheduling error.’

And it’s not the end of the world if she misses the email from the Bangkok office; the manufacturing schedule is hopelessly behind anyway, so a few hours’ delay won’t matter.

But if she can’t call 911 right now, she might die.

“This is your fault,” she hisses at Tony.

They’re crouched beneath a table of canapés. Bullets are flying overhead as terrorists shout for the blood of Tony Stark.

“Yes, possibly,” Tony says, whacking his own useless StarkPhone against a table leg.

“This is why superheroes have secret identities,” Pepper says. Needling Tony is the only thing keeping her from having a panic attack. “It’s so terrorists don’t come to their charity balls and try to kill them.”

Tony turns toward her, grinning. “You think I’m a super hero?”

“Maybe,” Pepper allows. “It doesn’t mean I don’t think you’re an idiot.”

“Acceptable compromise,” Tony says, his grin still electric.

The space under the table is small, almost claustrophobic. Their knees are touching; she can feel his body heat radiating through the silky fabric of her dress. Up this close, she can see the pulse jumping in his neck and the strands of gray in his temples, and if she looked down, she’d probably see that their hands are overlapping, their fingers half-entwined on the cold tile floor. Tony’s gone still and her heart is pounding, and if she turned her head just a fraction of an inch, their lips would press together. And that’s the sort of thing people do when they’re in danger, right? It’s not like she hasn’t always wondered, and if she’s about to die, well, maybe –

“911, what is your emergency?” The StarkPhone, clutched in her sweaty hand, is finally alive. She’s on the phone begging for police, while shouts for Jarvis to deploy the emergency suit.

“Were we in the middle of something?” Tony asks, and Pepper shifts backward, disentangling her hand from his.

“I’m not your Lois Lane,” she says, listening to the suit scream toward them.

***

Their first date is not a party. It’s not a plane, not a yacht, not some ridiculous helicopter trip to a resort in the mountains. It’s her favorite seafood restaurant and three hours of Tony’s undivided attention.

He wants to know who she’d invite to a dinner party if she could pick anyone in the world (her grandmother, Michelangelo, and Gandhi), if she would want to be famous (only for her business acumen and maybe her sense of style), if she ever rehearses phone conversations (only the really important ones), and what would constitute her perfect day (and she doesn’t even know how to answer that, because perfect things are so often boring, and nothing is perfect past the surface anyway).

She pretends not to know these are the first four questions of a New York Times article called “36 Questions to Fall in Love;” the thought makes her feel strangely breathless, and she wouldn’t know what to say anyway.

By the end of the night, she’s half drunk on champagne and the intensity of Tony’s undivided attention, and she’s thinking of asking him to stay the night, or at least grabbing a fistful of his shirt and making him press her against her front door.
Instead he leans forward and kisses her gently on the lips. His stubble presses into her chin, his fingers trail through her hair, and he pulls away just when she’s about to ask for more.

“Same time next week?” he asks.

Pepper swallows and tries to slow her breathing. “Same time tomorrow,” she says, trying to keep her voice level. (It doesn’t work, but she doesn’t care.)

“I’ll pick you up at seven,” he says.

He kisses her once more on the cheek. When he turns back toward the car, Pepper sags against her front door and watches him drive off into the darkness. Just this once, she lets herself count down the hours till their next date.

[sunrayravine]

Brett/Foggy, bribery

[(Anonymous)]

Sam/Bucky, resolute

[ranalore]

Natasha/Sam, open

[ranalore]

Natasha/Bucky, sidearm

[ranalore]

Natasha/Steve, private displays of affection

[ranalore]

Steve/Bucky/Sam, entry wound

[ranalore]

Steve/Bucky, regulations

[alafaye]

Filled!

What Regulations

[jenab]

Clint/Steve, shield

[alafaye]

Filled!

Saving the Shield

[metonymy]

Thor/Jane Foster, ladders

[alessandriana]

Peggy/Daniel/Jack, drowning

[sholio]

I suppose it's also possible to do this prompt in a figurative way, but, well ... I'm me. XD

--

Peggy is not quite certain, afterwards, how a fairly routine search for smuggled items on the docks turned into a free-for-all with a handful of burly smugglers. Fortunately both she and Daniel have the element of surprise on their side -- their opponents seem quite taken aback when Peggy kicks one of them in the groin while Daniel clotheslines another with his crutch. And Jack's adeptness at punching people is, for a change, proving useful.

She is beating a second burly gentleman into submission with a length of knotted rope when she sees, out of the corner of her eye, one of them swinging a wicked-looking iron rod with a hook at the end, straight at Daniel's head. Neither she nor Jack are close enough to do anything, and have their own problems besides. Still, she manages to shout his name, and he starts to turn, to dodge. Daniel has always been much faster than he looks.

But not fast enough. He manages to avoid being thoroughly brained as his opponent intended, but the length of iron glances off his head with a solid crack she can hear even from the other side of the dock.

"Daniel!" she screams again, as he goes suddenly, horribly limp, and slithers over the edge into the water.

Jack, whatever his other faults, is at least quick on the uptake. He delivers a solid uppercut to his opponent's jaw and then goes over the side after Daniel.

Unfortunately, so does the thug who'd managed to hit Daniel, and he's still got that bar of iron in his meaty fist.

Peggy finally manages to lay hers out with a good crack to the back of the skull. She scans quickly around to make sure no one looks like they'll be getting up anytime soon. Not a problem, she's fairly sure. Then she runs to the edge.

There's no sign of any of them. Just roiling dark water, glistening with the dock lights.

Her first urge is to jump in after them, followed by her calmer, more sensible self telling her that it would be more useful to have someone on the dock who can, say, throw in a rope or something.

But they are not ...

... not coming up.

Not both of them, she thinks. Not at once, not like this.

She can't simply stand here --

But even as she kicks off her shoes (because diving in without shoes is foolish and she needs every advantage she can have), a sleek water-dark head surfaces, and she throws herself full-length on the dock. She reaches down and Jack hands Daniel's limp body up to her. Jack is gasping and coughing himself, but she hasn't the hands to help, not until she's hauled Daniel up to the dock and then she can reach down and grip Jack's hand firmly, pulling him up after.

Jack half-sprawls on the wet dock planks, coughing. But Daniel -- Daniel is limp, unresponsive her attempts to smack his face, to rearrange his limbs, to make him react.

Jack struggles to his knees, wheezing and leaning heavily on his left hand, the right arm dangling limp. He shoulders Peggy out of the way. She slides back, because it seems like he knows what he is doing, and she does not know what to do.

Daniel's head lolls limply on the dock, his face slack. His hair drips water onto the dock planks when Jack repositions it with firm, efficient motions.

"What are you doing?" Peggy wants to know.

"Kiss of life," he tells her, hoarsely.

He was in the Navy. He knows how to deal with drowned men. He closes his lips over Daniel's slack ones, breathes for him. Again. Again.

Peggy can't not help, can't stand by and do nothing. One of her hands curls around Daniel's slack one; the other presses against Jack's wet back. She can feel the rise and fall of his ribs as he forces air into Daniel's lungs.

Daniel's hand, under hers, spasms suddenly. "Jack," she gasps, and she's not sure when she stopped breathing, but surely her lungs are as empty of air as either of theirs.

Daniel's spine arches. Jack rolls him onto his side and he coughs helplessly. Jack's head hangs; he's gasping for air himself, and she can feel the rise and fall of his ribcage under her palm.

"Jack," she says. He turns to look at her, dazed. She lunges forward and kisses him, aiming for his cheek but missing to hit just beneath his eye instead. "Jack," she says again, and presses her face against his, because Daniel's breathing is slow and steady now, his side pressed against her, and Jack raises a shaking arm to wrap around her -- and she can stay here forever, in the adrenaline crash, with both of them close and safe and hers.

[alessandriana]

Clint/Laura Barton/Natasha, safety