Daniel swallowed nervously, watching the street in front of the car windshield as Angie drove the two of them towards the Griffith. "You know," he said to say something – and it might just turn out to be pertinent if she agreed with him, "While you were finishing up your shift, Peggy was telling us about a theory she has about our group."
"Which theory is that?" Angie asked curiously. "I've gotten the impression that she thinks about us a lot."
Daniel flushed, hoping she wouldn't think he was being too forward. "That there is, ah, a special pull between certain duos in the group."
She smiled sideways at him, eyes twinkling as she declared, "I think she's right."
"Me too," he admitted.
Angie's grin widened and she let one hand fall from the steering wheel, placing her hand over the one that he had on his knee. He smiled, feeling the tension dissolve out of the air as he flipped his palm over and squeezed her hand, requesting, "So tell me about yourself, Angie. I want to know everything."
At his prompting, she began to tell him about her job, her preferences, her dreams of Broadway. He loved every second of it – and that was that.
Peggy didn't quite breathe properly from the time they left the automat until they were at the address that Howard had given Angie. However, by the time they arrived, she'd gotten Jack and Mr. Jarvis – should she call him Edwin, or as she'd heard Angie do earlier in the day, even Eddie? – to agree to try a truce on for size. She just hoped that it held in the face of the woman she assumed they were about to meet, the woman who had inadvertently caused such a problem in the first place. Poor, unsuspecting Anna.
Mr. Jarvis sounded incredibly pleased as he pulled up to the three-story mansion and declared, "Welcome to your new home, Miss Carter, Agent Thompson. Shall we go in?"
"Let's wait," Peggy said impulsively, looking out at the large white house. "For Daniel and Angie."
"You know that could be awhile, right?" Jack asked with a smirk, turning around to raise an eyebrow at her from where he sat in the passenger seat.
"No, it won't," she corrected absently. "Ms. Fry would never let Daniel above the lobby. Not a second time, anyway."
"Right," Jack drawled. "It's a 'security matter'."
"I didn't assume you'd be in a hurry to get chewed out anyway," Peggy remarked, eyeing him teasingly as she remembered the words she'd seen once resting between his shoulder blades.
"What do you mean?" Mr. Jarvis asked in confusion.
Ignoring his question, Peggy asked one of her own: "Is Anna a talkative woman?"
"Not generally. Only when she's angry."
Peggy snorted, Jack winced… and Mr. Jarvis' mouth twitched with a grin as understanding dawned. Then the British man pointed out cheerfully, "Ah, there Miss Martinelli and Agent Sousa are now! Time to go in!"
"Come on," Peggy laughed, getting out, opening the passenger side door, and half-dragging Jack our and up the steps.
"You know what?" Jack said suddenly, finding a way to prolong the inevitable. "You, Jarvis, and Angie go on ahead; I'll stick with Daniel."
Peggy shook her head, still amused, but let the two men lag behind as Angie caught up with her and Mr. Jarvis.
Angie and Daniel both had been grinning like lunatics in love – which they kind of were – from the moment they pulled up in front of the car, and Angie's excitement only got stronger the farther into the house she got with Peggy and Mr. Jarvis. When she disappeared to go call her mother in some other room, Peggy didn't quite know what to do with the space that stretched between her and Mr. Jarvis now that they didn't have Howard's mission between them.
And she really didn't know what to do when Mr. Jarvis handed her the vial of Steve's blood. But he was searching her face, desperately looking for a reaction from her. He was proving that his loyalty to her went far beyond his ties to Howard Stark, and she was truly struck – not even for the first time – by the look of unspoken love in his eyes. And, well, he was so close to her – right there – and they were soulmates, and there was no way that she was ever going to verbalize how grateful she was to him. So she threw their unspoken agreement and boundaries out the window and she kissed him.
And was shocked straight down to her toes when he kissed her back.
If she hadn't loved him before now – and after everything they had been through together, she was already fairly sure that she did already – she certainly did in that moment.
They hastily broke the kiss when they heard Howard coming into the house, talking to whoever had met him at the door as he walked towards the sitting room that they were in. Peggy couldn't decide whether to smile, laugh, cry, or scream. Something was starting to tell her that she was going to have done all of the above by days' end.
"So, how are the paramours liking the new place?" a wheedling voice asked as Angie heard the door to their new house open and close when she hung up with her mother.
"Don't call them that, please," a second new voice said softly, and then holy crap! Howard Stark was walking past her without seeing her as he talked to a tiny brunette on his opposite side.
Apparently the soft-spoken woman wasn't the only woman who objected, because as Angie stepped unnoticed into the doorway through which she'd disappeared earlier, Peggy demanded, "Hush, Howard."
"Oh, come on," Mr. Stark shamelessly jostled his shoulder against, what was the woman? His housekeeper? "You can't honestly believe that the two of them haven't slept together yet!"
"You," Peggy spoke up crisply. "Are drunk, aren't you, Howard?"
"Just... tingly."
Eddie barely contained a sigh as he guessed, "I take it getting your inventions back didn't go as smoothly as you had planned?"