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“Rogers!” Colonel Phillips calls out as Steve passes the door of his office. “Get in here!”
“Sir!” Steve halts and turns, stepping inside.
The colonel is sitting behind his desk, but he isn’t alone. The chairs opposite him are occupied by Agent Carter and Dr Erskine, and Private Lorraine is perched on the corner of the desk, crossed legs dangling over the edge. There’s an opened bottle of scotch standing behind her, near empty, and they all have a glass in their hand, in various stages of drained. It’s gotten late while Steve’s been outside working on his drawings of the camp, trying to make the most of the daylight until he couldn’t make out the lines from his pencil on the paper anymore, and he gets the sense that this isn’t their first round of drinks, or even the second. They look relaxed, informal, ties loosened and jackets unbuttoned or thrown over the back of a chair. Unwinding.
He steps up to the desk, rounding the others to stand at the short end of it, so that he can face the colonel, tucking his sketch pad tightly to his side when he comes to attention.
“You disobeyed my order today, Rogers,” Colonel Phillips says.
“Yes, sir.” They talked about this already, immediately after the exercise, but Steve had a feeling they weren’t done with it. A few weeks ago, that would have scared him, he would have been afraid he’d blown his shot, that they’d send him home. It’s different now. It’s been different since he threw himself on that dud grenade and they chose him. The camp is almost empty now, all they’re doing is filling the time until everything is set up for Dr Erskine’s experiment with more training to make him a better soldier. If he fails an exercise, it doesn’t mean he’ll be kicked out, it means he’s learned something. He doesn’t think he failed this one, though—he’d seen the satisfied look on Dr Erskine’s face when he lowered his gun, the flash of warmth in Agent Carter’s eyes afterward. And regardless: “I wasn’t going to fire on civilians.”
“I didn’t say it wasn’t a crap order,” Phillips says. “But sometimes being a good soldier means you’ve got to follow bad commands.”
“And sometimes,” Agent Carter adds, her words slow, soft and precise, “it means accepting the consequences of disobeying them.”
Oh.
Steve’s fingers tighten on the pad in his hand, and he feels himself stand straighter, a prickling sensation rising along his spine.
“I’m not going to put you up on disciplinary charges, Rogers,” Phillips says, “but I can’t let you buck the chain of command without making sure you know your place in it.” He leans back in his chair, legs spread, thoughtfully swirling the scotch in his glass around as he regards Steve, for once looking up at his face, not down. “I think I’m gonna assign you to boot-shining duty, soldier. Get on your knees.”
That last is sharp, an unmistakable order, and Steve folds to the floor before his conscious mind has caught up to it. He drops the sketch pad on the rough floorboards beside him, then finds he isn’t sure how to proceed. He’s trying to decide if it would be appropriate to use the sleeve of his uniform for this, when Private Lorraine leans over and dangles a handkerchief in front of him, white, crisp cotton that must have come from her pocket. He turns his head to look up at her. The top buttons on her uniform blouse are undone, and the way she’s bent down, reaching across to him, the fabric falls away from her skin, revealing the soft curves of her breasts. He cuts his gaze away quickly, to meet her eyes, but her lips quirk, amused and confident, and he knows she’s caught him looking.
“You can use this, soldier,” she says, flicking the handkerchief in the air, something teasing in the movement, “but then I expect you’ll give my shoes just as thorough a rubbing as you do the colonel’s.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Steve agrees. His cheeks are flushing, surely visible to everyone in the room. “Thank you.”
He takes the handkerchief, turns back to the colonel, his head bent.
“Don’t worry, Lorraine,” Phillips says, “I imagine if someone as stubborn as Rogers is going to learn his lesson, he has to polish every pair of shoes in this room. I hope you have spit enough to go around, son.”
Steve flushes deeper, something hot and heavy twisting in his belly, sweat breaking out in the small of his back.
“Sir,” he says, eyes fixed on the floor. “I’ll do my best, sir.”
There is a small noise; someone—Agent Carter, somehow he knows it’s her—sucking in a sharp breath. Steve wets his lips. His heart is pounding.
“He always does work so hard,nicht wahr?” Dr Erskine says. He sounds, amused, pleased.
It’s near painful, how much Steve wants to please him, wants to please Peggy, please them all. He’s dizzy with it, like the shortage of oxygen to his head in an asthma attack. Except this feels right. His impulse isn’t to fight it, like he fights his body when it doesn’t want to breathe, his impulse is to sink deeper.
He brings the handkerchief to his mouth and spits into it. He’s aware of the others watching him, and the physicality of the act makes him feel exposed, reduced to the functions of his body, to what it can be used for. The colonel extends one foot closer to him, the heel of his heavy army boot scraping against the floorboards. Steve bends over it, lays the wet handkerchief against the leather and sets to work.
He feels the colonel relaxing, hears him take a drink from his glass.
“You heard anything from Stark, doc?” he says.
“He has all the equipment in place,” Dr Erskine says, “but he tells me it will take a few more days to have it all operational. Apparently he is concerned it will overload the power grid if he doesn’t rewire half the block.”
“As long as he makes sure it’s safe,” Agent Carter says. Steve hears her get up from her chair, the click of her heels on the floor coming closer. He glances up to see her stop by the window, rest her glass on the sill. He doesn’t want to lift his head as much as he would need to see her face, but he knows she can see him better from where she is now, without the desk obscuring her line of sight. And he can feel her, her presence standing over him.
“I will go down myself and make sure everything is in order before the procedure,” Erskine says.
“Good.” The tone of Peggy’s voice is fierce, protective. It’s like a warm shield held over him, guarding the exposed back of his neck as he bends lower, rubs hard at a stubborn spot of dirt on the colonel’s boot. All he needs to think about is the task he’s been given, doing it well, he can let everything else fall away. She’s going to keep him safe.
The conversation continues, moves on to other things, as though he isn’t even there. There’s a strange safety in that, too, in realizing that nothing is required of him but his physical service, that he doesn’t have to think or make decisions, only be. He wets the handkerchief again, moves on to Colonel Phillips’s other boot.
“That’s enough, Rogers,” Phillips says after a while. “You’re not gonna get a better shine than that, even if it’s not for lack of trying.”
Steve can see himself reflected in the polished leather, the pale blur of his thin face. He has done his best; he can hear beneath the gruffness of the colonel’s words that he sees that, too, that he values it. It makes his cheeks heat again, that sense of praise.
“My turn, then, soldier,” Lorraine says from her perch on the desk, and Steve snaps around, shuffles the short distance to her on his knees. He’s done well; the eagerness to keep doing well yanks him forward like a tug on a leash.
“Ma’am,” he says, bending his head, and she uncrosses her legs, extends one small foot towards him with an elegant stretch of her ankle. He knows without being told that he’s supposed to take it. He holds up his hand and lets her place the sole of her pump in his palm, curves his fingers around the leather to steady it. It feels dirty in a way that makes his balls clench, to bring up spit for a lady, but she doesn’t comment on it, simply goes back to her conversation with the colonel while Steve rubs the wetness from his body into the smooth leather of her shoe. His arm gets tired, being her footrest, but it’s a tiredness that is easy to embrace. When his hand is about to start shaking, he switches to her other foot. It’s strange to imagine that a week from now, if all goes well, he could do this without his muscles aching. He wonders if that will feel as right, to serve without hurting–it’s not something he’s ever done.
“Thank you,” Lorraine tells him when he’s done, and he feels that in his muscles, too, a different kind of tremor, leaving him loose, open. “Go on, show the good doctor what a good boy you can be.”
She pokes his shoulder with the tip of her toe, pushing him in the direction of Dr Erskine, and he goes. It’s only a few steps; it’s easier to not get up from the floor, to use his hands and knees. It feels more appropriate.
The doctor’s shoes are civilian, a pair of light brown Oxfords that look expensive, but years old now, worn and chaffed. Steve imagines they could be the shoes Erskine had on when he walked out of Germany, when he chose to walk away from evil. He bends to them with reverence, finds a clean corner of the handkerchief to use on their dusty wingtips. Works hard to get the grime of wear out of every crease and crack in the leather.
Erskine leans forward in his chair, leans over him, bends down to put his lips to Steve’s ear, his words hidden by the conversation of the others, only for Steve to hear.
“This is why it had to be you, Steve. Today you refused to carry out an order you found immoral, not bending an inch to strength or authority, yet here you are now, on your knees, giving your service to others with such heartfelt grace.” He lays his hand on the top of Steve’s head, strokes his fingers gently through his hair. “It couldn’t be anyone else, do you see?”
Steve shudders, his breath catching in his throat, a sound on the verge of being a sob. Dr Erskine squeezes the nape of his neck, a steady, warm reassurance.
“It’s all right, Steve,” he says. “It will be all right. You are going to do so well, you’ll see.”
They sit like that for a drawn-out moment, his hand heavy on Steve’s scrawny neck, weighing him down with faith and acceptance. Steve’s breath is coming quick, his shoulders shaking.
“Steve,” Agent Carter says from behind him, her voice soft but with a crack of command, pulling him back into focus. “Come here.”
“Go on,” Erskine says, encouraging, his hand falling away from Steve’s skin, and Steve goes, twisting around on the floor.
Carter is still at the window, yards away now. Somewhere in the back of his mind he recognizes that he could stand up, could take the steps across to her. But all he can think to do is crawl. On his hands and knees and his knees are hurting from the hardness of the floor, he can’t imagine there is grace in the way he’s moving, but he can feel the grace all the same, expanding in his chest, too large for his fragile body to contain. Then he’s there, in front of Peggy, and he’s laying it at her feet, the strength and weakness of what he is, the unknowable future he will give himself up to become.
She touches his cheek, tilts his chin up with firm fingers under his jawline. She has a glass in her hand, holds it to his lips. He’s suddenly aware how dry his mouth is. He parts his lips, let’s her help him drink.
He’s expecting the burn of the scotch he saw her holding before, but when the liquid pours down his throat it is water (from the pitcher on top of the filing cabinet in the corner, his mind supplies), another act of care and protection. He swallows it down, grateful and thirsty.
She smiles down at him, her face lit from below by the lamp on the colonel’s desk, her beauty fierce and solid, and he’s leaning into the strength of her touch. She takes the glass away, sets it down on the window sill she’s leaning back against. Steve licks his lips, wiping the dryness away, and her eyes follow the movement of his tongue.
“Go on, then, soldier,” Colonel Phillips says, and Steve realizes no one else is talking, that the room has fallen silent. “I gave you a job to do.”
“Yes, sir,” he says. His own voice sounds far away.
Agent Carter lets go of him, and he bends his head again. Looks down at the muscles of her calves in her fine nylon stockings, at her slender ankles in her sturdy uniform shoes. At the way her feet are planted a shoulder-width apart, standing steady, unshakable.
He has the handkerchief balled up in his fist still, but his mouth is wet for her, his body aching.
He bends his back, all the way to the floor, and puts his lips to the toe of her shoe, opens up and lets his tongue taste the leather.
She says his name, benediction like the taste of water. There is a murmur of reaction from the others, their attention sparking in his nerves.
A few days from now, he will give his body to Erskine’s serum, to the electric current running through Stark’s machines, to the war he knows has to be fought and won.
He can only hope that service will feel as simple as this.