Beneath the War Rooms
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The briefing had gone far longer than expected. Steve Rogers, engrossed in the details, had forgotten to watch the clock. Time didn't seem to matter much down there anyway.
The Cabinet War Rooms were set far below the surface of the street, hidden under a block of seemingly innocuous buildings in the center of London. There, a veritable warren of tunnels, reinforced with cement and metal girders, served as the secret heart of the British war effort. The lights never went out; officers, secretaries, strategists and codebreakers worked day and night to determine the Axis' next move.
"Sorry to have kept you so long, captain," the general lit his cigarette and finally stepped back from the map on the wall. "I think that's about it for tonight. You have a place to stay?"
Steve blinked, trying to pull his mind back from the little colored dots and lines on the map. "Ah, yes sir. I'm not sure where it is, but Agent Carter..." Where was Peggy, anyway?
"I have it all sorted," Peggy's voice cut in calmly. Despite having been in the hot, crowded rooms for who knew how many hours, she came across as fresh and tidy, though she had taken off her jacket as a concession to the heat. "If you'll follow me, Captain."
The general nodded cordially in farewell and went to consult with one of the codebreakers. Honestly, did nobody sleep around here?
Steve fell into step behind Peggy as she headed towards the exit. A couple officers hurried by, and a whiff of cigar smoke betrayed the fact that Churchill was somewhere in the vicinity. Far above their heads he could hear the shuddering thumps that spoke of dropping bombs, and wondered how close they were.
When they reached the stairs, they were prevented from leaving. "Sorry, captain, agent," the soldier on guard apologetically blocked their way. "There's an air raid directly over our heads - nobody's leaving tonight."
Peggy huffed a sigh and turned on her heel. "I suppose we'll have to stay the night," she admitted. Her forehead was puckered ruefully, and he knew they were both trying not to think about their friends, out in the bomb-riddled night.
"Is there anything I can do to help?" he asked, following close on Peggy's heels.
Peggy shook her head, threading her way back through the narrow hallways. Steve didn't really enjoy being down there; the air was thick and stale, heavy with smoke and body odor and stress. Even though he didn't have bad lungs anymore, he still reflexively choked every now and then.
"No, not unless you know how to combat aircraft. We'll have to stay the night. Would you like to commandeer a room from a lower ranking officer?"
"I - of course not." He wasn't about to kick some poor fellow out of bed in the middle of the night. It wouldn't be the first time Steve had slept on a floor. He didn't particularly mind, though he wasn't sure if there was a space large enough for him to lie down in without getting tripped over.
Actually, he was more concerned about where Peggy would sleep, though he wasn't sure how to ask.
"Right this way then, Captain."
She was descending a flight of stairs that went straight down into the floor. It was narrow, steep and short, more of a hole in the floor than a stairway, and Peggy had to duck under the doorframe at the bottom. Steve Rogers pre-serum would have had no trouble, Steve thought wryly as he struggled after her. Of course, by this time that Steve would have been curled up in a corner, blue in the face from an asthmatic attack brought on by the bad air.
Peggy was waiting for him. "It's not exactly the Hilton," she explained, swinging her hand out to indicate the room, "but it's dry and supposedly bomb-proof."
They were standing in a basement just tall enough that it couldn't quite be called a crawlspace. The air was significantly worse down here, hot and humid and even more stale. Beds lined both sides of the room, most occupied for the night.
"Pick a bed," she advised, walking past him. He tried to follow and smacked his head against a low beam hard enough to see stars. Somebody giggled, and he stooped lower, flushing.
"Peggy," he hissed, reaching her side. She was slipping off her shoes at the foot of one of the iron bedsteads. "I think this is the girl's room; where do the fellows sleep?"
"There isn't one. Everybody sleeps everywhere," she explained, pulling out her hairpins and tucking them into her pocket. "You can try to kick an officer out of his room upstairs, or go downstairs if you like, but if you think this air is bad, it's even worse down there."
There was another level below this? Steve shuddered at the thought.
Peggy shrugged off her jacket and lay down on the bare mattress just as two or three secretaries came down the stairs. Unlike Peggy, they were wearing dressing gowns and curlers, carrying their sheets. A chorus of giggles went up when they saw Steve standing awkwardly in the middle of the floor.
Blushing fiercely, Steve started toward the stairs going down. Bad air or no bad air, it had to be better than giddy girls in nightgowns.
"Oh, for heaven's sake Steve, get in bed." Peggy flapped her hand at the mattress next to hers.
Boy, would Bucky snicker if he heard that. Relieved to get out of the public eye, Steve gingerly lay down on the bed she indicated. It creaked ominously and he hoped it would hold under his weight.
There was a moment of silence.
"Aren't you going to take your shoes off?" Peggy finally whispered.
Steve thought his face would burn away as he sat up and yanked off his shoes to a ripple of sleepy giggles around the room. He pulled off his coat and tie too and hung them over the bedpost before lying back down, self-conscious at the feeling of going to bed in a room full of girls.
The bed was too short. It wasn't a problem he was used to having. Twisting up his legs, he grimaced at the squeal of rusty springs. He lay still, trying not to make any more noise, listening to the muffled sound of the bombs outside. Probably nobody else could hear them, at least not as distinctly, but his enhanced hearing could easily pick out each explosion. How many people would be dead by morning?
Turning his head, Steve's attention was immediately arrested at the sight of Peggy in the bed next to his, already fast asleep. She lay on her side facing him, arms curled up loosely. She looked younger when asleep; the businesslike agent persona fell away and she breathed deeply, like a child.
Something strange happened in his chest then, and Steve looked away, too much a gentleman to stare at a sleeping lady. He couldn't get over the fact that she was comfortable sleeping so near him, with no blanket, no bed roll, nothing to shield herself with. For some reason, he'd never felt so honored at her trust in him as he did at that moment.
He stared at the ceiling for a long time, listening to the distant bombs, before he dropped off to sleep.
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"Captain."
"Captain Rogers."
"Steve."
Steve hauled open eyelids that felt like they weighed a ton apiece. Vaguely impressed that he'd managed to fall asleep on the cramped mattress, he rolled over and almost fell off the edge of the bed. The pair of neat, dark shoes in front of his eyes stepped backwards, and he looked up to see Peggy Carter bending over him. There was a suspicious twitch to the corner of her mouth.
"If you're quite ready, Captain? The Prime Minister would like a word."
"What time is it?" He hauled himself upright, blinking hard. One of the drawbacks to having a fast metabolism was the amount of sleep needed to fuel it. He could keep going for days on sheer energy and willpower, but when he slept, he slept like a log.
"0730," Peggy was doing her hair by touch alone, fingers carefully patting across it before putting in the hairpins. He was impressed at the way she managed to look so put together after sleeping in her clothes.
"Captain?" asked Peggy, sounding a little amused. He jerked out of his thoughts as he suddenly realized she'd caught him staring and went scrambling for his shoes. One had rolled under her bed, and he had to do some searching in the dim light to find it.
"Do you have a comb?"
Peggy was facing him, eyebrows lifted expectantly. He filtered through his pockets until he found the item requested. It was old, and missing several of its teeth. Bucky had given it to him three Christmases ago, and he usually kept it stashed in his pocket alongside his handkerchief.
He offered it to her, and she took it and promptly handed it back. At his confused look, she glanced pointedly at his hair and went back to her own toilette. Steve stared blankly for a moment, and then felt his own head and got the hint.
Bending low to avoid running into another beam, he finally followed Peggy up the stairs. The air outside the dormitory was almost fresh by comparison, and he took a deep breath as he straightened his spine and buttoned his jacket.
"Your hair is still rumpled." Peggy was eyeing him critically. "And your tie - here." She stood on her toes to pat his hair a little more firmly into place while he hurried to fix his tie. "We can't have Captain America looking like a ragamuffin."
Raising his eyes from his tie, he watched her absorbed face, very close to his, totally focussed on fixing his recalcitrant hair. She suddenly became aware of his gaze and paused, fingers still brushing his temples, eyes widening fractionally as they met his. Neither one breathed for a long second.
The strange moment was shattered as a girl in a dressing gown came up the stairs and squeaked in embarrassment upon seeing him, scuttling off toward the ladies room with her arms full of sheets and stockings. Peggy stepped backward, self-possession fully restored, and gave him one last sweeping glance.
"That's better," she decided before turning away, and if her voice was a bit breathier than usual, neither of them noticed. "You'll be late for your meeting, Captain," she called over her shoulder.
Steve could feel Bucky laughing at him in the back of his head as he took a long breath and followed, trying to shake down the memory of her face so close to his. After all, there was a war on. This couldn't be the time for anything more.
Someday though, when the war ended... who knew? He quickened his steps to catch up.
The Cabinet War Rooms were the top-secret headquarters for the British war effort, and were located underneath a strong, inconspicuous building. They essentially dug a whole new basement complex below the original basement, and then filled the original basement with cement six feet deep and yard-wide steel beams, so the new, deeper basement had a really reinforced level right above it as an attempt at bomb-proofing.
During the war, people worked there around the clock; the lights never went out for six years. At night, some people slept in the basement of the War Rooms - essentially the basement of the basement of the basement of the building. Many people preferred to brave the air raids and go home at night, because the air was so bad down there.
The War Rooms are a museum now, and I had the opportunity to visit earlier this year. The stairway down to the basement dormitory was so ridiculously small and short that I couldn't resist the idea of having Captain America try to go down it.
Because it was wartime, many of the employees were women. The recording of one typist's story was played in the museum, and I couldn't resist throwing in a reference to it. At night she would change into her dressing gown in the bathroom, take her sheets, go down a few levels, and find an empty bed. The next morning, she always seemed to run into the most dapper officers as she scuttled back to the bathroom in her dressing gown.
Well, the most dapper officer I could think of was Steve Rogers. Enough said.
The idea that Steve keeps a comb in his pocket is from the life of my grandfather, also a WWII veteran. I never got to meet him, but my family still has his old comb.
Disclaimer: I don't own anything except my grandfather's comb - actually, my mom owns that. All characters are fictional, although I did get some inspiration from the story in the museum.