All This Time

elysian calling

Summary: Diana gets injured on a Justice League mission and Steve's only a little panicked, really.

It is not often that Steve wakes up before her, but on the mornings after a particularly late night or when Diana knows she can push back her alarm another ten minutes, Steve gets to spend a few extra minutes admiring her without getting caught. He'll wake up to the feeling of her wrapped around him like a vice and know that he gets to spend precious time just watching her sleep.

He knows everything there is to know about her at this point, but the light fluttering of her eyelids and the way her brow furrows right before she opens her eyes still makes him giddy. He's smiling like an idiot by the time she finally wakes up enough to register him staring at her, but he's well past becoming embarrassed.

Pressing a feather light kiss to one of her eyelids, he murmurs, "Good morning, angel."

In reply, Diana hums and pulls herself impossibly closer.

Steve knows better than to try and extricate himself from her grip, but there's really no place he'd rather be than in bed with her, so why even try? The moments where Diana will allow herself to sleep in and neither of them have anything calling them away are few and hard to come by, so Steve is happy to take what he can get, when he can get it.

Unfortunately, Bruce doesn't get the memo and Diana's phone rings too loudly, too suddenly to mean anything but work.

With a groan and the least majestic roll Steve has ever seen her do, Diana turns to grab her phone and answers without opening her eyes. She's curled back around Steve a second later even as she grumbles into the phone.

"What?"

The silence of the room permits Steve to hear Bruce's reply and he sighs in time with Diana.

"You're needed in London." A pause. "Someone's leaking Wayne technology, and not the good kind."

"It's never the good kind," Diana mutters, but she's sitting up and Steve knows their quiet morning is nothing more than a wish now. "I can be there in an hour."

She wanders into the bathroom so Steve doesn't hear the end of the phone call, but he's fairly certain he'd rather not anyway. Sometimes Justice League missions are a little out of his depth and Steve can rest easier not knowing what Diana is about to run into.

He waits until she's out of the bathroom to climb out of bed himself and only because he refuses to let her leave for London without kissing him first.

"I'll call," she promises, already in full combat gear. Steve's still not entirely sure where she keeps it, but the bathroom has been on his list of suspicious rooms for a while now. "Bruce seemed optimistic."

Steve reads between the lines.

"You're going alone?"

"Clark is on stand-by," she assures him, though Steve has met Clark all of two times and isn't too sure having him on stand-by means the mission she's leaving for will be on the easy side of things.

"Don't be afraid to call him," Steve tells her. Diana just smiles and presses her lips to his. When she pulls away, Steve pulls her back in and murmurs, "I'll miss you."

Diana grins and pulls away from him fully to stand by the open balcony window.

"I love you too."

And suddenly she's gone, soaring off towards London to face some threat while Steve is left to make himself a lonely breakfast and try not to worry.

* * * * *

He stays by his phone all day, his own personal protocol for when Diana's away and he can't be with her. Instead of visiting the little cafe across the street like he usually does on Saturdays, he sits in front of the balcony window and reads in the sunlight. It's rare that Paris is sunny even if it is October, so he'll take what he can get.