Author's Introduction:
This was a writing exercise (the prompt was "secret"), but I liked it, so it gets to be here. My stress levels are through the roof today and I need a tall blond of my own.
Tags: slightly AU, modern!Peggy
Tall Blond
A first-time-for-this-sort-of-thing by Firestar9mm
Suddenly Monday appears again.
Where was the weekend? I lost it again.
(Melanie C, Suddenly Monday)
He was prone to smiling-which was a bit of a surprise, since in his short life before the serum he had had very little to smile about. But a lonely boy never knows that he is lonely until someone tells him; he would have assumed he smiled plenty even back in the days of using a trash can lid as a shield, even if that had not actually been the case.
Still, he smiled ever so much more now, and that was due in large part to the woman sitting at the table, even if she was most decidedly not smiling at the moment.
The grin broke out on his face before he could stop it, and her eyes widened in direct proportion to it, darkening from deep brown to nearly black with fear.
"Steven. Grant. Rogers," she said, the words coming out in metered lengths; he knew this habit as well as the warning rattle of a snake's tail, even if she had not used his middle name to drive her severity home as though he were an unruly child. "You may not. Tell. Anyone what you have seen here."
"I don't know, Peggy," he said slowly, knowing that teasing her when she was in this state would be like waving a red flag in front of a bull, but unable to help himself when she looked so adorably flustered. "This is going to make them question everything."
The entire thing was Pepper's fault.
Steve wasn't sure when Pepper had appointed herself their den mother, but he supposed her years of pulling Tony out of everything by his scruff had simply conditioned her to keep an eye on all of them by now. But for her to come to him rather than meet whatever it was head-on said something; Pepper was not a stupid woman, and not only was she respectful of others' boundaries in a way that Tony never would be, she knew her own, and the darkness in her normally clear eyes when she touched his arm—gently, as if to share a secret—told him that this was something she did not think she could handle. That touch immediately jumped it up the chain of command, along with her soft, almost helpless whisper.
"I think Peggy's upset."
In the office, this was not an uncommon occurrence; broken down into percentages out of a hundred, Peggy's workdays—strange and unorthodox as they were and always had been—now consisted of roughly twenty-eight percent upset, fifty-two percent unstoppable, twelve percent thoughtful, eight percent figuring out how to use the technology available to them (this last was usually accompanied by the rough British slang he had come to adore hearing her mutter or snarl when she was displeased). Outside of the workplace, Steve would have happily decapitated anything that made Peggy upset with his shield and not felt even a quiver of conscience, but in the office it was a different story: Peggy upset was Peggy inspired, her discomfort or disapproval the thing that drove her to affect the positive change she had always been the herald of anywhere she went; Peggy fulfilled.
However, Pepper, as previously stated, was not a stupid woman; anyone who ran around with Tony Stark had seen everything twice and survived it killing them at least one of those times, so he took her concern under advisement and kept a closer eye than usual on his beloved for the next few days.
By the middle of the week he had upgraded his own concern—Peggy might not have been upset, but she was definitely hiding something.
Peggy, from an era when women had to constantly wear masks in order to get anything productive done, had elevated nonchalant espionage to a level that even Natasha had to grudgingly respect, but Steve loved her more than anything in the world, and his love gave him deeper insight into her every move. So he noticed when she excused herself and absconded down the hall, not to reappear for twenty minutes. He noticed when she ducked out of the building and strode, quickly without hurrying, on an "errand" that she would return from, empty-handed. He noticed her moods swing from disproportionately irritable one hour to disproportionately sanguine the next.
Hiding something, he had concluded, and now, having followed her, he knew exactly what it was. "Peggy..."
"You do not take another step." This was a warning he had heard before, but never aimed at him; it would have hurt his heart if the situation hadn't been so hilarious. Plus, she was cutely covering her cup with her hand, as though he would take it from her, which made him want to burst out laughing.
"What is it?" he asked. "I'm going to at least assume dark roast."
She blanched then, and the look that flitted through her eyes—for less than a second, there and gone—was one of abject, guilty misery.
His own eyes widened. "Light?"
She glanced up at the menu board, then relinquished her cup, and although she was blushing mightily, the silky smile was one he knew all too well, one that made him wish they were home with nothing to focus on except each other.
"They call it 'blond' here," she informed him, and pushed the cup towards him. "This is a 'tall blond'."
"Was there a need for the level 2 secrecy on this?" he asked, taking a seat across from her and accepting the offered cup to sample its contents. Blinking, he said, "Is that syrup?"
She trained that dangerous look on him again, two hard discs of color in her cheeks, and said, "You may. Tell. No one."
"Why didn't you just ask for a coffee pot?" Steve asked. "Pepper will get you one."
She still looked guilty, but this was a different kind of guilt.
"Pepper and Tony were kind when outfitting my workspace," she explained. "They were especially proud of the tea service."
Steve smiled affectionately at his beloved. "I see." And he did; Peggy was the height of class, and he sensed what he had suggested might be a breach of her impeccable manners. He knew the tea service she was referring to, and she was not wrong that it had been the crown jewel of Pepper and Tony's combined efforts to make their latest castaway in time feel more at home. It was an antique, in pristine condition, and quite a lovely thing on its own; seeing it had made Steve wish Pepper had been on hand when he'd been found, as her subtler efforts would have comforted him far more than a SHIELD agent in a starched white uniform and a radio broadcast of a weeks-old baseball game he had been in attendance for.
"Tony was very excited about it," Peggy continued. "It...well...it reminded me quite a bit of Howard, actually."
Steve's smile faded a touch; this was not something to tease her about. Howard Stark had been both their friend and their albatross, but they had never doubted the man's heart was in the right place. Steve imagined Peggy missed Howard even more than he did, but he knew exactly what she meant; Tony showed far more of his father's spirit than he was aware of.
Putting his hand over hers, Steve assured Peggy, "Pepper and Tony will understand if you stop pretending to like tea to spare their feelings."
She snatched her hand away haughtily. "I am not pretending! I've more appreciation for tea in my little finger than you'll have in your entire Coca-Cola swilling life, Captain Rogers."
Deciding not to remind Director Rogers that he knew where her emergency bottle of Dr. Pepper—the cherry-flavored variety, to boot; she had always had an affinity for anything red—lived in their shared refrigerator, he felt his smile widen again at the cuteness of her affected outrage.
"Sometimes I just...need a little..." She glanced at her cup almost forlornly.
"Boost?" he suggested.
She shook her head. "Time."
Time. It had been the lynchpin of their entire lives—both of each of their lives, the old and the new. Not enough time to do everything they wanted, too much time before they'd seen each other again, time racing on without them both-and now, it seemed, all the time they'd never thought they'd have with each other.
He closed his hand back over hers, and now she let him. It wasn't about coffee versus tea or Pepper and Tony's feelings, not really—it was about having a moment to herself every so often, and for that he was almost ashamed that he'd followed her here and intruded upon it.
Rising from the table, he bent and pressed a bold kiss to her temple-neither of them was much for public displays of affection, especially not visible ones, but he felt this time it was necessary—and was pleased when she blushed prettily, accepting it. "I'm sorry. I'll let you be. Take a minute with your tall blond." He winked, and turned to leave the cafe.
Her hand was on his arm before he reached the door; he heard the thump of an empty paper coffee cup landing in the wastebin.
"Wait for me, darling," she said quietly, bringing herself into step beside him. "You're the tall blond I like best."
He was very prone to smiling these days.
Author's Notes:
Steven Grant Rogers and Margaret Carter saved my life. I have lost friends over my defense of them. I would advise not to become one of those people. That is all, thank you.