"Are you thinking about something you'd care to share?" Bucky asked as Peggy shut the bedroom door behind them. "Because you've still got something on your mind."
Peggy turned to face him, saying, "There are things that Jack, Daniel, and Eddie don't necessarily know."
"Such as?" Bucky asked with upraised eyebrows.
"He said, and he is under the impression that, the three men have only slept in the same bed as the three women and vice versa."
"Is that not true?"
Peggy kicked off her shoes as she admitted, "There was a time when I knew Daniel and Jack, but we weren't admitting – to the public or ourselves – that we were soulmates. I met Angie during that time, and..." she blew out a deep breath. "A whole mess ensued. At some point at the beginning of that, I got kicked out of my apartment and moved into Angie's apartment building. There was only one bed in that apartment, and she and I had no problem sharing it. Then, later, when I got promoted to director of SHIELD, as a group, Eddie, Jack, Danny, and I started taking frequent visits out of town. It was confided in me that Angie and Anna slept in the same bed during those times when they had the house to themselves, and there were a couple of times that Anna and I did the same – or all three of us women, for that matter – whenever the boys would be away overnight for one reason or another."
Bucky laughed, teasing, "Really? Good, sweet, little Anna bucked tradition like that?"
"Our 'little Anna' has a whole other side to her!" Peggy joked right back.
"Okay… So it's really just the three men who are gun-shy about sleeping in their beds with another guy?" he summarized in all seriousness.
"Right – but the guys don't know it."
"I can still use that, though," Bucky mused, taking off his own shoes before he tugged his shirt up over his head. "But I can use it tomorrow."
"What's tonight?" Peggy asked, trying not to make assumptions – not with as much as he had protested sharing a bed with her.
He flung his shirt away and stepped up to her, setting to work on the first button on her top. "Take a guess."
June 9, 2014
Seventy-two hours ago, Steve had lived alone on his level of the Avengers Tower, and now he was waking up with one of his recently-discovered soulmates curled against him, Bucky and Peggy in the next bedroom over, and – judging by the noise coming down the hallway – his remaining four soulmates were doing something in the kitchen. Even still half asleep, he beamed and tightened his hold on Daniel, just to make sure that this was real and not a dream.
"Good morning," Daniel muttered sleepily.
"Hey," Steve perked up. "I didn't realize you were awake. Is that my fault?"
"No; listen."
Steve froze, his enhanced hearing picking up almost every noise from the bedroom where it sounded like Bucky and Peggy were stirring, and most of what was coming from the kitchen.
"This is not a warzone, Jack Thompson!" Angie shrieked. "No flour bombs! No!" Steve and Daniel chuckled as she dissolved into helpless laughter, gasping, "Anna, Eddie, help! I'm under heavy fire!"
Daniel turned to look at Steve over his shoulder with a playful look in his eyes, and with a simultaneous nod, they scrambled from bed and ran down the hallway, Steve grabbing his shield as they went. He skidded into the kitchen, wrapping one arm around Angie's waist to pull her back behind the cover of his shield as Daniel barreled into Jack, knocking twin fistfuls of flour from the other man's hands. Anna and Eddie both looked on in amusement from their cover on the other side of the counter.
Realizing who held her, Angie turned in Steve's arms, resting her hands on his bare chest as she looked up at him and fluttered her eyelashes, the perfect cinematic damsel in distress as she sighed, "My hero!"
"Better give him a kiss as payment," Bucky suggested from the doorway.
"My plan exactly," Angie declared, rising on her tiptoes to do just that. "Good morning, handsome."
"Good morning, movie star," Steve smiled down at her, holding up his shield so that they had a little more privacy as he stole a second kiss.
"What happened in here?" Peggy demanded, looking around at the flour-covered kitchen with wide eyes.
"Jack," Anna declared as Edwin suggested, "Talk to your husband."
"Don't tell me that Stark doesn't have a cleaning staff for this sort of thing," Jack protested before adding, "Hey, Ang, your pancakes are burning."
Seeing that Angie was going to unwillingly extract herself from Steve's embrace, Eddie rolled his eyes and volunteered. "I'll take care of it."
"Come on, Eddie," Bucky objected. "If you let them keep doing that, I won't have an appetite left!"
"Your appetite will be just fine if I know you," Steve shot back, pulling away from Angie long enough to extend a hand to Bucky.
When Bucky stepped forward, both Steve and Angie claimed one of his hands, the movie star even granting him a kiss on the cheek.
"Pancakes are ready," Edwin declared, taking a platter full of food to the table – apparently he was going to see to it that they had a real breakfast this morning, and wouldn't Darcy be grateful for the help in that?
Anna trailed behind him with a stack of plates and forks and the eight sat down around one end of the ridiculously large dining room table that Tony had brought for every level years before. Steve had scoffed at the purchase at the time, but now he was grateful for it. Yet, looking around at his seven soulmates sitting around him, he was thankful for so much more than tables.
Loki had no idea how he was going to be received when he came onto Coulson's Playground base, so he decided the least number of choices they were given the better. In the end, he armed himself with a cellular device that JARVIS had been uploaded to, his dagger, and his magic before he teleported directly into Coulson's office.
