If one of these is your Senator, YOU NEED TO CALL RIGHT NOW!
Script from Jessica Craven:
Hi, I'm a constituent calling from [zip]. My name is ______.
I understand the Senator still hasn't decided whether or not to support the Republican CR. I am telling them as a constituent that they must vote NO. Democrats need to use their leverage and hold the line for a government funding deal that includes ironclad protections to stop Trump and Musk from hijacking federal spending and gutting Social Security. The Senator will lose my support permanently if they vote yes on this bill. Thanks.
Series Summary: Steve Rogers is used to leaving once the crisis is over. But after Hurricane Cora devastates a small Texas town, recovery stretches into weeks of flooded roads, crowded shelters, and rebuilding beside someone who seems determined to hold the entire town together alone. Somewhere in the middle of it, staying in each other’s lives stops feeling temporary.
Chapter Summary: Weeks pass in deployments, reconstruction meetings, and late-night phone calls. Somewhere between checking in and staying connected, you and Steve become part of each other’s routines without ever meaning to.
Words: 5,179
A/N: Nobody thinks they're the villain—no one is. All of it is messy. Your author lives on feedback. All errors are mine.
Chapter warnings: Disasters. Mentions of the dead. Emotional infidelity.
Series warnings: Disaster Relief!Steve Rogers x Community Leader!fem!Reader; Steve Rogers x Peggy Carter; Slow Burn; Emotional Infidelity; Eventual Romance; Eventual SMUT
Disclaimer: I own nothing. No copyright infringement intended. This is not written for profit.
📖 AO3 | 💜 Tip Jar | 🦋 Thank you for reading!
Hold Fast Masterlist | Part One | Part Three
Steve’s flight touched down after dark. Natasha dropped him off outside an already dark house before heading home herself.
He did not expect Peggy to still be awake anyway. Her mornings started early.
When he stepped inside, cool air from the AC hit him immediately. After months of heat, floodwater, and humidity thick enough to breathe, the house almost felt cold.
He moved quietly down the hall and into the bedroom, setting his bag just inside the door. Peggy was already asleep. Her laptop sat half-closed on the nightstand beside an open planner and a stack of papers marked over in red ink.
A small smile crossed his face before he headed for the guest bathroom to shower. By the time he changed into clean clothes they already felt too soft against his skin. He slid carefully into bed beside Peggy and stared up at the ceiling for a long moment.
Something felt off. It took him a minute to realize the mattress was too soft.
After weeks of cots, shelter floors, and thin camp pillows, the bed dipped too easily beneath him.
With a quiet sigh Steve pushed himself back up and headed for the living room instead. He dropped onto the couch with one arm over his eyes. It was still softer than a cot, but the cramped space pressed against his shoulders enough that eventually exhaustion pulled him under.
He woke groggy and disoriented, the ceiling unfamiliar for half a second before Peggy’s voice drifted from the kitchen as she spoke to someone from the office. Steve sat up slowly and stretched the stiffness from his shoulders. The sleep had not been great, but it had helped.
He wandered into the kitchen and grabbed a mug from beside the coffee pot. When Peggy noticed him she smiled and held up one finger, still talking into her headset. He nodded and poured himself coffee.
The first sip made his nose wrinkle. Too smooth. Too hot. Missing the burnt bitterness of shelter coffee that sat too long in industrial pots.
Without thinking he poured it down the sink and grabbed an apple from the fruit bowl instead. At least fruit still tasted the same.
Peggy finished her call a minute later and pulled the headset free. “That deployment ran long,” she said. “How did Port Reyes go?”
Steve took another bite of the apple before answering. “The locals took a while to warm up to us.” He leaned back against the counter. “One of them ended up helping coordinate a lot of the relief effort though. Made things easier.”
Peggy nodded as she ate a few bites of oatmeal, still half-focused on the reports sitting open beside her laptop on the counter.
“Given the number of people who stayed behind, fatalities were lower than expected,” she said. “Most of the recovery projections estimated at least another month before stabilization.”
Steve pushed a hand through his hair. “Yeah.”
The answer sat there between them for a second. Almost absently, Steve checked his phone.
Nothing yet. Not from the team. Not from you.
Peggy set her bowl in the sink before stepping closer and kissing him lightly. “I should head into the office.”
Steve gave her a small nod. “Yeah. Drive safe.”
A few days later Peggy sat at the dining table working from home, her laptop open beside a spread of reports, policy briefings, deployment projections, and movement logs marked over in sharp blue ink.
In the kitchen Steve had his head shoved beneath the sink, one shoulder pressed awkwardly against the cabinet wall as he fought with the leaking pipe for the third time that afternoon.
The wrench slipped again. “Damn it.”
Metal cracked sharply against the pipe. Water dripped steadily somewhere near his knee.
Steve blew out a frustrated breath and sat back carefully before he cracked his head against the underside of the sink. After scrubbing a hand over his face, he pulled his phone from his pocket, seriously considering calling a plumber.
Instead, almost without thinking, he opened your contact. His thumb hovered for half a second before he typed.
How’s the center holding up?
He stared at the message after it sent, the delivered notification appearing almost immediately. Steve blinked at the screen. Then rolled his eyes at himself and shoved the phone back into his pocket before leaning under the sink again.
By the time you checked your phone it was nearly dark outside.
Most of the afternoon had been spent arguing with a reconstruction crew about the community center roof while standing in ninety-degree heat surrounded by drywall dust and men who apparently believed rebuilding meant changing everything that already worked.
You dropped into a folding chair inside the half-repaired office and finally pulled your phone free.
Weather alerts. Three missed calls from Mari. A text from Steve.
You opened it and snorted softly to yourself before typing back.
Kids stole donated snacks again.
Steve sat stretched across one end of the couch later that evening pretending to read while Peggy flipped through a magazine at the opposite end. The apartment was quiet except for the occasional rustle of paper and the low hum of the dishwasher running in the kitchen.
His phone buzzed against his leg. Without thinking he reached for it immediately. The corner of his mouth twitched as he read the message.
Of course they did. He could practically hear the dry irritation in your voice. Odds were good you had caught them halfway through it and still handed out the snacks afterward anyway.
Across the couch Peggy glanced over at him. It was the first fully relaxed smile she had seen on his face since he came home from Port Reyes.
Two weeks after coming home from Port Reyes, Steve got pulled into a local deployment. Just him, Natasha, and Cal were needed for this one.
Two towns over, a four-story apartment building had caught fire and burned through the structure fast enough to gut most of it before crews got control of the flames. Most of the residents made it out, but not all of them. There were trapped families still inside and bodies to recover once the fire was finally contained.
Because the deployment was close, Steve came home at night instead of staying on site. He was still sleeping on the couch. The bed still felt too soft.
By the time he got home that night the smell of smoke clung stubbornly to his skin beneath the soot and sweat from the day. After showering he moved quietly through the dark house and stepped out onto the back porch, not wanting to wake Peggy.
The night air sat heavy with late summer heat as Steve dropped into one of the porch chairs and pulled out his phone. He scrolled through local coverage of the apartment fire for a few minutes before somehow ending up checking the weather in Port Reyes instead.
Thunderstorms. Possible flooding.
Shaking his head at himself, he pulled up the short text thread between you. Most of the conversations were brief and scattered. A few texts every couple days at best, but eventually one of you always answered.
His fingers started typing before he stopped and stared at the screen for a second. Then he hit call instead.
It rang three times before you picked up. “What’s up?”
A small smirk crossed Steve’s face at the familiar straight-to-the-point tone in your voice. “Just checking in.”
There was a muffled sound on your end before your voice came back farther away, like you had dropped the phone onto speaker while still moving around. “It rained today. Flooded part of the east lot again, but it drained after a few hours.”
Steve leaned back in the chair, one hand dragging over his face. “Had an apartment fire today.”
Paper shuffled on your end. “The smell sticks with you after those,” you said after a second. “Smoke gets in everything.”
“Yeah.” He closed his eyes briefly. “Pretty sure my nose is permanently clogged now.”
You snorted softly at that. Then, almost absently, “You eat yet?”
“No. Still too wound up.”
A pause. “Okay, I’m hanging up. Go eat.”
That pulled a tired chuckle out of him. “I’ll eat if you sleep. And don’t pretend you are.”
An exasperated sigh drifted over the line. “I’ll sleep when these rebuilders stop trying to renovate my community center.”
Inside the house Peggy woke slowly and reached across the bed toward empty sheets. Steve’s side was cold.
She sat up, noticing his boots still beside the bedroom door, then headed down the hall expecting to find him asleep on the couch again. Instead she caught the low murmur of his voice drifting in through the cracked patio door. Peggy paused in the kitchen doorway.
Outside, Steve sat leaned back in the porch chair with his phone pressed to his ear, talking quietly into the darkness.
A few minutes later the call ended and Steve pushed himself to his feet. When he stepped back inside he smiled slightly when he saw her standing there.
Peggy leaned against the doorway. “Everything okay?”
He nodded as he crossed into the kitchen and opened the fridge. “Yeah. Just checking in with Port Reyes.”
“They okay?”
Steve pulled out bread and turkey before answering. “Yeah. Reconstruction’s underway.”
Peggy nodded once and wished him goodnight before heading back toward the bedroom while Steve stayed in the kitchen eating alone beneath the dim light over the stove.
Over the next few months Steve spent more time away than home. Deployments came in short stretches now. A week home. Five days gone. Three nights back before another call sent him somewhere else.
At a tornado site in Oklahoma he sent you a picture of coffee so dark it looked like motor oil.
This stuff is permanently ruining my taste buds.
A few hours later you replied with a picture of a brand new roof collapsed into itself where the main support beam had split clean in half.
Reconstruction team are lazy bastards.
At a wildfire deployment in northern California, Steve sent a quick late-night text during a break between shifts.
Still alive.
Half asleep at your desk in the community center office, you checked the weather in the city without really thinking about it first. High winds overnight.
You frowned and typed back immediately.
Wind’s supposed to shift east after midnight. Be careful.
Somewhere along the way the check-ins stopped being occasional. At first it was once a week. Then every few days. Then almost every night one of you would call or text without much reason beyond wanting to know the other person made it through the day.
You started carrying your phone with you instead of leaving it buried beneath paperwork somewhere in the community center. Steve stopped hesitating before calling.
Conversations stretched longer now. Complaints about volunteers. Arguments over bad food. Stories about cots, reconstruction crews, and terrible coffee. Questions about whether the other had slept yet or eaten anything besides protein bars and vending machine garbage.
One night neither of you talked about work at all.
Steve called while stretched out on a temporary cot somewhere in Missouri and somehow the conversation spiraled into a twenty minute argument over whether powdered eggs legally counted as food. You complained about a volunteer buying generic cereal that tasted like damp cardboard while Steve argued nothing on earth was worse than deployment coffee that could strip paint off walls.
At some point the conversation drifted completely off track and both of you ended up laughing for nearly ten straight minutes over absolutely nothing important.
After a particularly brutal deployment at a hotel collapse, Steve came home exhausted enough that even the quiet inside the house felt heavy.
Peggy stood in the kitchen making dinner when he walked in. The sharp smell of garlic and onions filled the room as she glanced up from the cutting board. “How was it?”
Steve dropped into one of the chairs at the table and dragged both hands down his face. “The families were worse than the recovery work.” His voice sounded rough even to himself. “Kids kept asking where their parents were.”
Peggy continued chopping vegetables. “Fatalities were lower than projected for a collapse that size.”
Steve looked at her for a second before leaning forward and covering his face with his hands. He did not answer.
By the time the sun disappeared he was sitting out on the back patio again. The porch light buzzed softly above him as he pulled out his phone and hit your contact without really thinking about it first.
You answered on the second ring. “What’s up?”
Steve leaned back in the chair and scrubbed a hand over his face. “Hotel collapse,” he said tiredly. “Too many kids lost their parents.”
There was no pause on your end. “They start asking where the parents are and you can’t bring yourself to answer honestly.”
Some of the tension loosened slightly from Steve’s shoulders. “Exactly.” He stared out into the darkness beyond the porch railing. “How do you explain that to a three-year-old?”
“I’m still trying to figure that one out myself.” Paper shuffled faintly on your end before your voice came back again. “Did the sewage lines rupture?”
Steve let out a groan. “God, yes. It got into everything. I scrubbed my hands raw and I can still smell it.”
A noise of disgust crackled through the phone. “That smell stays with you forever.”
“Thanks,” Steve muttered.
A faint laugh drifted through the line. “Happy to help. I’ll be here all week.”
Peggy rubbed at her eyes and leaned back in her office chair, letting them close for a moment as the numbers on the reports in front of her started to blur together. Most of the building had gone quiet hours ago. Somewhere farther down the hall a copier hummed before falling silent again.
Steve was home. At least technically.
Lately, even when he was there, Peggy found herself staying later at the office more often than not.
Soft footsteps crossed the carpet outside her cubicle before a cup of coffee appeared beside her elbow. Peggy looked up.
Jack Thompson leaned against the partition around her desk, sleeves rolled to his forearms and tie loosened like everyone else still trapped in the office after dark.
When she first transferred from field operations into logistics, Jack had made every meeting feel like a territorial dispute. Years later the sharp edges between them had worn down into something closer to reluctant trust. Steve, of course, still disliked him.
“Thanks, Jack.” Peggy took a sip while Jack glanced over the scattered reports covering her desk.
“Didn’t think supply chain projections were enough to keep you here when Rogers is actually home for once.”
Peggy shrugged lightly and flipped another page in the report. “He’s still settling back in after deployment.” She stared at a line of numbers without really reading them. “Takes him time to unpack things.”
Jack’s eyebrows lifted slightly. Even to him that sounded thin. He tilted his head, watching her for a second longer before speaking. “You know you sound lonely when you talk about him now?”
Peggy looked up sharply. “You know how these jobs are.”
“Mmhmm.” Jack pushed off the partition and headed back toward his own desk without another word.
Peggy watched him go for a moment before muttering under her breath about nosy coworkers and pulling the reports back toward herself again.
You were at your wits end. The reconstruction crew working on the community center had slowed almost to a crawl over the last two weeks. You knew part of it was funding delays and permit approvals tangled somewhere in relief bureaucracy, but it still grated every time you walked through half-finished rooms covered in plastic sheeting and exposed wiring.
By evening the building sat mostly empty. Generators hummed somewhere outside while the smell of sawdust and drywall dust still lingered in the air. Your boots echoed against the concrete floor as you moved through the darkened hallway, irritation building with every unfinished section you passed. Half the building was still unusable.
Dropping onto a pallet of boxed supplies near the gym entrance, you dragged a hand down your face before pulling out your phone. Without really thinking about it, you hit Steve’s contact.
He answered after one ring. “Everything okay?”
By the time the words left his mouth he was already off the couch and heading toward the back patio. Inside the apartment Peggy glanced up briefly from her laptop as he slid the glass door shut behind him before returning to her work.
You let out a frustrated breath. “No. Everything is not okay.” Your voice bounced slightly through the mostly empty room around you. “The reconstruction team is dragging this out because the funding stalled again.”
Steve dropped into the porch chair and leaned back. “What caused the delay?”
You rolled your eyes even though he could not see it. “Relief fund paperwork. The money’s there. Supposedly. Everything’s just stuck waiting on approvals.”
A pause. Then, completely out of sequence. “When’s the last time you went home and actually slept?”
You pinched the bridge of your nose immediately recognizing what he was doing. “Maybe a week ago.”
Steve sighed softly. He said your name with quiet reproach threaded through it. “Go home. Shower. Eat something that didn’t come out of a vending machine and get real sleep.”
Some of the tension slipped out of your shoulders so fast it almost made you feel tired all over again. “Yeah,” you muttered after a second. “Okay. I can do that.”
A faint smile touched Steve’s face and you could hear it in his voice when he answered. “Night.”
“Night.”
The call ended. You pushed yourself upright immediately and started gathering your things before pausing halfway through stuffing paperwork into your bag. That was the first time you had called him first. The realization sat strangely in your chest for a second before you shook it off and headed for the exit.
Outside on the patio, Steve stared down at his dark phone screen for a moment longer with the same thought turning over in his mind. Then he let out a quiet breath and headed back inside.
After a full day spent pulling people from floodwaters in a town overwhelmed by flash flooding after weeks of nonstop rain, Steve walked the edge of the temporary staging area with his phone pressed to his ear. Floodlights reflected off standing water while generators rattled steadily somewhere behind him. His boots squelched with every step.
You picked up immediately. From the echo around your voice he could already tell you had him on speaker again. “How’s recovery going?” You were putting together medical kits for burn victims after a storefront fire tore through part of Port Reyes earlier that week.
“It’s going,” Steve said dryly. “Pretty sure there’s more water in my boots than on the ground now.”
You snorted softly. “Bet Cal loves that.”
Steve groaned. “If he says one more thing about dry socks I might strangle him.”
That earned a quiet laugh from you.
“How’s the rebuild going?” he asked.
A long sigh crackled through the phone. “It’s going.”
A few seconds passed before you added casually. “Luca moved his stuff out today.”
Steve slowed to a stop. “You okay?”
Your voice stayed steady. “He wanted someone who actually came home.”
Steve went quiet for a moment. He understood that sentence better than he wanted to. Before he could respond you moved right past it.
“Why aren’t you asleep right now?”
A tired laugh slipped out of him. “Cots are being rotated out. Not my turn yet.”
“You volunteered for last rotation, didn’t you.” There was smug certainty in your voice now.
“Shut up.”
Steve’s flight home landed late again. By now the routine had settled into muscle memory. Drop the bag in the bedroom. Shower in the guest bathroom. Try to sleep in the bed beside Peggy and fail anyway.
The mattress gave too easily beneath him. The room was too quiet. After days of radios crackling through command tents and people moving around at all hours, the stillness pressed against him harder than noise ever did.
With a frustrated sigh Steve pushed himself upright again. This time he skipped the couch entirely and headed for the patio instead, sliding the door shut quietly behind him before pulling out his phone.
You answered on the first ring. “Can’t sleep?”
Somewhere along the way you had started recognizing the timing of his calls after deployments.
Steve leaned back into the chair and looked out over the dark backyard beyond the porch light. “Bed’s too soft,” he muttered. “Never can the first few days back.”
You made a quiet sound of acknowledgment and let the subject drift away without pushing at it. “One of the kids broke his arm today trying to look cool jumping off the back of a supply truck.”
Despite himself Steve felt some of the tightness in his chest loosen. “Oh no,” he said already half amused. “Who?”
“Joey Lopez.”
A laugh escaped him immediately. “That tracks. Why was he even on a supply truck?”
Now you laughed too, the sound crackling softly through the speaker. “That’s the best part. He was showing off for some girls and climbed onto the tailgate. Driver didn’t even notice him and just started driving.”
Steve bent forward laughing under his breath.
From there the conversation wandered. You complained about volunteers who kept putting donated supplies in the wrong storage rooms. Steve told you about Cal nearly starting a fight over dry socks during the flood deployment. The two of you argued briefly over which emergency coffee tasted worse before shifting into weather updates and rebuilding delays and the kind of exhausted rambling neither of you would have admitted you enjoyed.
The night stretched around him warm and quiet while your voice drifted steadily through the phone.
At some point Steve glanced through the patio door toward the clock glowing faintly in the living room and realized more than an hour had passed.
He scrubbed a hand over his face. “I should probably try sleeping again.”
You hummed softly. “Okay. Sleep well.”
A small smile crossed his face before he answered. “You too.” Then the line went quiet.
After a week home without a single deployment call coming in, Peggy suggested they get away for the weekend. “Just us,” she had said while sorting through emails at the kitchen counter. “Before the next disaster steals you again.”
Steve shrugged and agreed easily enough.
The bed and breakfast sat a few hours outside the city tucked into rolling hills that should have felt peaceful. The place smelled faintly of cedarwood and fresh coffee, soft music drifting through the lobby while couples wandered the grounds with wine glasses in hand.
It should have been relaxing. Instead Steve felt restless almost from the moment they arrived. His thoughts kept pulling elsewhere.
The apartment collapse from two weeks ago. Floodwater rising through another town three states over. The reconstruction delays in Port Reyes. You arguing with contractors over the phone while half the community center still sat under scaffolding.
Even when he tried to focus, his attention drifted.
Peggy noticed it.
Over breakfast she carried most of the conversation herself while Steve stared out across the fog rolling over the hills beyond the dining room windows. At a bookstore downtown she caught him looking absently out the front window while she talked about work. Later, walking the gardens behind the inn, his responses came a beat too late and too short whenever she asked him something.
As they walked along the stone path between flower beds, Steve pulled out his phone before realizing there had not been a text from you all day. The realization sat oddly with him for a moment. He locked the screen again and shoved the phone back into his pocket.
None of it felt intentional. If anything, that almost made it worse.
That evening Peggy changed into a dark dress Steve had not seen in months and made reservations at a small restaurant overlooking the water a few miles from the inn.
Candles flickered softly between tables while low conversation and piano music filled the room around them. Peggy looked beautiful. Steve knew that.
He listened while she talked about a new federal coordination project her office was taking over and tried to stay present in the conversation.
Then his phone buzzed against the table beside his glass. Your notification tone.
At some point over the last month he had changed it without really thinking about it.
Steve’s eyes flicked down automatically. A small hesitation. Barely there. Then he picked up the phone and opened the message.
Peggy watched the shift happen in real time. The slight easing in his shoulders. The small smile that crossed his face before he even finished reading. Across the table she lifted her wine glass and took a slow sip without saying a word.
Once again Peggy found herself still at the office long after most of the building had gone quiet. Rain battered softly against the windows while fluorescent lights hummed overhead and somewhere down the hall a copier whirred endlessly through another stack of reports.
What had started as the occasional late night was slowly becoming routine.
Peggy pushed back from her desk with a tired sigh and rubbed at the tension building behind her eyes before heading toward the printer down the hall to collect the newest round of documents. The sharp smell of warm toner lingered in the air by the machine.
Jack was already standing there waiting for his own reports to finish printing, one hand braced against the wall beside the copier while he flipped through the first pages of a report. Without looking up he held her stack out toward her the second they finished printing.
Peggy took them with a quiet thanks.
Jack glanced over then paused. “You doing okay?” he asked. “You look stressed.”
Peggy let out a dry breath and shifted the papers against her hip. “This damn weather burst has everything tangled up.” She glanced down at the reports already covered in notes and highlighted sections. “I’m trying to get supplies moved before roads close again and half the response teams are already stretched thin.”
Jack nodded knowingly as the printer spat out the last few pages of his own report. “I’m almost done with the projections analysis for the east sector.” He gathered the papers together neatly before looking back at her. “If you want, I can grab takeout and help you sort through the logistics mess.”
For the first time all night some of the strain eased from Peggy’s shoulders. “That would actually be amazing.”
A crooked smirk pulled at Jack’s mouth. “Give me thirty minutes.”
Peggy smiled despite herself as she turned back toward her office. “I’ll owe you.”
“You already do,” he called after her dryly.
The sound of it followed her down the hall along with the steady hum of printers and rain against the windows.
Steve and Peggy sat down to dinner later that evening after spending most of the day in the same house doing entirely separate things.
Peggy had worked from the dining table surrounded by reports and briefing packets while Steve moved from room to room fixing small things that had gone ignored for months. A loose cabinet hinge. The leaking sink. A broken latch on the back gate.
Rain tapped steadily against the kitchen windows while the smell of roasted vegetables and garlic still lingered in the air between them. For the first fifteen minutes it almost felt normal again.
Small conversation drifted easily enough across the table. Peggy laughed quietly when Steve complained about nearly losing a fight with the garbage disposal earlier that afternoon. Steve listened while she talked about a staffing nightmare unfolding between two response offices fighting over supply routes.
It was familiar. Comfortable, even.
Then Steve’s phone buzzed against the table mid-sentence. Your notification tone. Peggy’s stomach tightened before she could stop it.
Steve paused immediately and reached for the phone without thinking. The screen lit across his face as he opened the message and started typing back almost at once.
Across the table Peggy wrapped both hands around her tea cup and watched him for a second longer than she meant to. “You talk to her a lot.”
Steve glanced up briefly. For a moment Peggy thought he might deny it or brush it aside somehow. Instead he just shrugged. “Yeah.” Then his attention dropped back to the phone as his thumbs kept moving across the screen.
Steve’s attention stayed fixed on his phone a moment longer, his expression easing in a way Peggy had started noticing more and more lately whenever that particular notification went off.
Rain tapped steadily against the windows while she turned her tea cup slowly between her hands. She could not remember the last time a conversation with her had made him look that unguarded. Without saying anything, Peggy looked back down at her dinner and took a slow sip of tea while the silence settled between them.
Steve rolled his shoulders as he stepped into the house, exhaustion sitting heavy in every muscle after another long day in floodwater.
Peggy sat curled into one end of the couch with her laptop open across her knees, the glow from the screen washing pale light across the dark living room. She looked up when he came in. “Hey.”
Steve gave a tired nod in return as he toed off mud-streaked boots near the door.
The deployment had stayed local this time. Flash flooding after three straight days of rain had pushed water through several neighborhoods faster than expected. Most of the day had been spent waist-deep in cold water alongside volunteers rebuilding temporary barricades strong enough to hold long enough for evacuation teams to get people out.
Even now he could still feel the ache in his shoulders from hauling soaked sandbags for hours. Without much more than a tired glance toward the couch he started down the hall toward the shower.
Then his phone rang. Steve pulled it from his pocket and the second he saw the screen his whole posture shifted almost imperceptibly. He answered immediately.
“Hey.” His voice softened around the word without seeming to mean to.
By the time Peggy looked up again he was already sliding the patio door open and stepping outside into the warm night air, letting the door shut quietly behind him.
For a moment she stared at the dark glass reflecting the faint outline of him beyond it. Then she looked back down at her laptop.
A second later her own phone lit up against the couch cushion beside her. A text from Jack.
Without thinking Peggy smiled slightly at the screen as rain tapped softly against the windows and Steve’s low voice drifted faintly through the glass from the patio outside.
Part Five
Please comment or message me if you would like to be added to my tags list.
Cling to unwavering hope with this dramatic illustration of Jesus reaching down to help a woman struggling through a stormy landscape, paire
When the storm is raging and you're barely holding on—hold fast to Him.
There's something profoundly powerful about this image that I can't stop thinking about. A woman caught in absolute chaos—wind whipping, rain pounding, ground crumbling beneath her feet. Everything around her is falling apart. And there, standing firm on solid ground, is Jesus. Reaching down. Steady. Unshaken. Waiting for her to take His hand.
The storms we face
We all have storms, don't we? Sometimes they're literal—illness, loss, financial crisis, relationship breakdowns. Sometimes they're internal—depression, anxiety, doubt, fear. And in those moments when everything feels like it's disintegrating, when we can barely see through the rain, when we're slipping on unstable ground...
We have a choice.
Hold fast
"Hold fast" isn't passive. It's not "hope things get better" or "wait it out." It's an active grip. It's white-knuckled faith when everything in you wants to let go. It's choosing—over and over and over—to reach up when reaching up feels impossible.
And here's the beautiful truth this image captures: Jesus isn't waiting for you to climb up to Him. He's already reaching down. He's already stable. He's already on solid ground. Your job isn't to save yourself. Your job is to hold fast to the One who's already got you.
When holding on is hard
Some days, faith feels easy. The sun is shining, life makes sense, and trusting God is natural.
But other days? Other days it's a storm. And holding fast to Him feels like the hardest thing you've ever done.
That's okay.
Faith isn't measured by how easy it feels. It's measured by whether you keep reaching—even when your hand is trembling, even when you can barely see Him through the rain, even when you're exhausted and scared and wondering if you can hold on one more second.
You can. Because He's holding you too.
For anyone in the storm right now
If you're reading this and you're in the middle of your storm—I see you. I know it's hard. I know you're tired. I know you're not sure how much longer you can hold on.
But please, hold fast to Him.
Not to your own strength. Not to your circumstances improving. Not to other people saving you.
To Him.
The One who stands firm when everything else is shaking.
The One whose grip never loosens.
The One who reaches down into your chaos and says, "I've got you."
Hold fast to Him.
Even when—especially when—the storm is raging.
This powerful artwork is available now ArtfulTs.redbubble.com. Perfect for anyone who needs a daily reminder that Jesus is steady, present, and reaching down—even in the fiercest storms.
hold fast to him #christian faith #jesus in the storm
