Chapter 4
“Everyone make it back all right?”
Peggy hummed, vaguely, as she flipped through the tablet she had propped on a pillow before her. “Everyone seems to have made it safely back from Stark’s event. Bruce, Betty and Cassandra arrived back in New York and are at the tower this morning. Thor and Jane made it back to England. How, I don't know. Maybe they used his hammer? Darcy returned to her family’s home in Pennsylvania before she plans to return to Culver and her studies after the break.”
Steve, clad only in pajama trousers, and towel drying his now more modern styled hair, paused long enough to peek from under the large, fluffy white terry cloth, blue eyes blinking as he considered her statement. “England is a bit far for him to fly with Jane using his hammer, don’t you think?”
Peggy shrugged in her oversized t-shirt, the absurdity of this conversation hitting her as she thought about it. “I suppose it’s no more strange than him using a hammer to fly at all.”
He tilted his head under its towel. “Fair point.” He then returned to drying himself off from his morning shower, as Peggy attempted to return to the files she had pulled up, but found the sight of a half-naked Steve now, as ever, far too distracting for her to be mindful of it.
“You keep staring like that, Carter, and we won’t be able to do anything today.”
“You say that as if it is a bad thing,” she returned, wickedly, delighting in the shy smile and faint blush she was still able to elicit out of him. “It’s our long weekend! We have all the time in the world, or at least as much time as we need before we have to head back to the East Coast.”
“Well, when you put it that way, Agent Carter…” With the ridiculous speed his serum had imbued him with decades ago, he pounced on the bed beside her, snagging an arm around her waist. “You make a very compelling case for staying in.”
“I usually do,” she giggled, far too pleased that her not-so-cunning seduction worked, and even more pleased as Steve pulled her closer, brushing his mouth over her jaw, just under her right ear. She shivered as all other thoughts for the day, as well as the tablet that had been resting on her lap, slid away under his lips and wickedly clever tongue…
“Hmmm,” he grunted, hands groping over the blankets, blindly, and it took Peggy long moments to realize he was not looking for her, so much as reaching, blindly, for her now lost bit of electronics laying in the scant space between them.
Well, that had killed the spontaneity somewhat…
With mild and bemused consternation, Steve held up the delicate object, eyeing her wryly. “You were saying about long weekends and taking time off?”
Peggy wasn’t particularly sorry about it, as she had checked it periodically the whole time. “I was keeping tabs on things!”
“What could possibly be going on when all the Avengers were just here two days ago?”
“The rest of the world still ticks on without us, Rogers,” she grumbled, making a snatch for it. That was a foolish mistake against a super soldier, however, as he flipped it to glance at the screen.
“Case files? Not even the news?”
“It’s an old case file,” she muttered, defensively, successfully able to grab it from in front of his curious nose. “A dead case file.”
She wasn’t fast enough to keep the truth of the file from his discovery, however. “On Daniel Sousa.”
She tapped the screen, regretting not figuring out how to allow the screen to go dark quickly enough. “I told you he disappeared after I did. No one knows what happened.”
She had told him, months before, when he first woke up, though in fairness, she didn’t bring it up often. After all, beyond the strangeness of his disappearance, the entire situation was awkward to bring up to the love of her life. How did she explain the guilty need to search for the man who had been Steve’s successor in Peggy’s life?
“I remember,” Steve replied, softly, as she tucked her tablet on the end table, waiting for her to resettle before reaching a finger to tip her chin towards him. “And I do get it, Peggy, you don’t have to feel bad for wanting to find out what happened.”
She knew that, intellectually, but that didn’t mean her mental reflexes understood that. “Just…we were here in the city and it made me think of it. I haven’t for a while, what with the Avengers, and…well all of that.”
“And there has been a lot of all of that.” His wry, crooked smile crept up again. “You ever think about taking time to figure out what did happen?”
“Sometimes,” she admitted, though in reality she hadn’t given it as much serious consideration as perhaps she should. “I’d hoped to ask Coulson to help, but…”
She drifted off, sadly. If the runaway tablet hadn’t effectively killed the mood, the mention of Coulson very much did.
Sensing that whatever chance they might have had to spend their morning in bed, more pleasantly occupied, was quickly fleeting, Steve at least was quick enough on his feet to change tactics. “Well then, we have one whole day ahead of us before we have to be back. We could spend it looking into his case.”
It hadn't even been an angle she had considered for their day. “Tempting, but I don’t know where to begin with a nearly sixty year old case.”
Steve was not nearly as pessimistic as she was. “A few phone calls to the right people, maybe, can turn something up.”
“And is this how you really want to spend the last day of our long weekend, chasing after a cold case that might tell us nothing?”
“Why not?” His crooked smile was now nearly a smirk.
“We could be doing anything else,” she returned, facing him on the bed and pulling her knee to her chest. “We’ve made the pilgrimage to Dodger Stadium and the holy shrine that is your beloved baseball team already…”
“Still not the same,” he sighed, dramatically, not even flinching as Peggy reached to pinch his arm.
“We did the Getty Museum yesterday,” she continued, ignoring his drama. “But there is another lovely one not far from here, more mid-city. And then Pasadena has several lovely ones, so Pepper told me. She said the Norton Simon has several modern art pieces, but the Huntington Library has a wide range of art, and has a lovely gardens and a tea shop…”
“Did you research all the art museums in the metro area just for me?”
She smiled, sheepishly. “You spent all the war bemoaning the fact that now you were finally in Europe you could see none of the art, and finally, you can see as much as you want, so do not tell me you are comp…”
He responded by grabbing her arm and pulling her towards him, kissing her so thoroughly, that whatever protest she might have had died. When they did break apart, finally, more because she needed to breathe than he did, she stared down at him, dazed and a bit at a loss as to what she had just been saying.
“I love you,” he whispered, laughter in his eyes. “But I think that if we are here, and while we have the opportunity, we should maybe take that old file of yours and…”
Any further statement he would have had on the matter died, as on the other nightstand his SHIELD issues phone began to ring, obnoxiously. Peggy turned to it, but he sighed, wearily, glaring at the offending bit of electronics. There were few people who would try to get a hold of Steve, but she knew that if someone did, it was usually not to have a conversational chat.
With a fluid motion, he turned to swipe the phone from its resting place, reading the screen, his brows knitting together. “Romanoff, she says Fury has a mission for us.”
Despite herself, frustration rose to the fore. “You have leave today? We were taking a long weekend.”
“I know.” Without any more commentary than that, he rolled to his feet, with only a hint of regret at the cutting short of their weekend away. “But we will have Christmas in a week, our first with no war, no mission out in the field, just you and me.”
He was right and she wished she were more mollified by this. “Did Romanoff say what the mission was?”
Steve shook his head, already gathering things to begin to pack. “Fury assignment, so I’m guessing something either so delicate he doesn’t want someone else doing it or something that he did give another team and they bungled it. That seems to be the tenor of our missions.”
Peggy hadn’t asked about the work Fury had been assigning to Steve and Romanoff, knowing that Fury wouldn’t appreciate her sticking her nose in non-Avengers business. Besides, she didn’t want either Steve or Romanoff to feel they had to choose sides between herself and Fury. But after their conversation the night before and after hearing Steve’s misgivings, she couldn’t help but wonder what it was they did and why Steve was so concerned.
“You could just come with me to DC early,” he suggested, hopefully, neatly tucking away clothing.
“Do you have a time frame on the mission at all?”
“I only know what I told you.”
She sighed, pulling herself off the bed, reluctantly. “Then perhaps I will go to New York instead. There is work to do there and in light of our discussion last night, I’d like to see what I could do to push things along with the World Security Council in terms of SI funding the Avengers. I gave them a report months ago, but they’ve been sitting on it.”
“You’ll figure it out,” he said, with the utmost assurance. “You always do.”
Peggy wished she could feel as confident as he did. “The war may be long over, but you are still running out on missions and I’m still trying to knock thick heads in to move our objectives forward.”
“Some things never change,” he teased, quietly, as he continued to pack.
“I suppose not,” she agreed, trying not to let herself slip into a sulk. While she had been, and still was, confident they could make the distance and business work between them, there was that part of her that resented losing what precious few moments they had together these days. She had waited six years to get him back, and she jealously protected what time they did have. Duty was duty, and he had agreed to work for SHIELD, just as she had, but still…
“Los Angeles isn’t going anywhere,” Steve teased, gently, clearly picking up on the tenor of her mood. “I am sure Stark will have another event at some point he will drag everyone out for. And besides, Angie’s here, you will want to see her.”
“I know,” she admitted, not bothering to hide her disappointment, knowing he would see through it. “Am I a bad person for resenting the call of duty right now?”
“No,” he chuffed, neatly tucking in clothing and items into his small bag. “It has been kind of non-stop for us, even in a new century. It would be nice to have a moment, I suppose, to decide where we are going, you and I.”
She mulled over Angie’s tipsy and well-meant teasing the night before and Steve’s response. “I suppose where we are going is eventually to some church somewhere, Captain Rogers, before Angie is scandalized.”
He laughed outright at that, nodding. “Romanoff too, or at least she keeps leaving big hints that we should just get it over with.”
That surprised Peggy. “Who would have taken her for a romantic?”
“I think she may surprise you,” Steve replied, earnestly. “I think for someone like her, leading the life she does, there’s a part of her that would love to have security, stability, someone who always has her back. Live vicariously through me, I guess. If she can’t be settled and safe with someone, push others into having that sort of life, then.”
That did make a strange sort of sense about the elusive Romanoff. “What do you want? Are you ready for ‘safety and security’ knowing the kind of lives we lead?”
He paused in his packing, regarding her directly, as serious as she had seen him since he had awoken months ago. “You know how I feel, Peggy. I’d have married you the moment I woke up if you had agreed, but I’m old fashioned like that. And I get it, this modern world, they don’t rush into it as much, and maybe there isn’t as big of a need for it. But I love you, I think I have from the moment I saw you punch Hodge in the nose. You waited years…decades…to find me. I’m willing to wait however long you want and need. The bigger question is if it is what you want?”
And therein lay one of the central conundrums they had faced since he awoke - how two old-fashioned people from the 1940s could navigate a very modern relationship in 2012, figuring out where to compromise and where not to. “I want you, Steve, to just be with you.”
At her words, he sighed, setting down a pair of folded socks to come and settle on the bed beside her. “You got me, Peggy, without question. When I went into this, I went all in. And I am not trying to take away your career or even mine, but laying out facts. For now, with the commitments we have, it’s hard to think of ‘safe and secure’.”
“Perhaps, outside of our suspicions and trepidation regarding SHIELD, another benefit to furthering the SI agreement would be to bring you and Romanoff fully onto the Avengers. Free you up from Fury’s direct control. Maybe bring Barton over as well. That would lessen some of those separate commitments, at least.”
“That is a benefit, yes,” he agreed, reaching over to tug at her left hand, wrapped around her knee. “And maybe then we can talk about the whole ‘settling down’ of it all without sacrificing either your career or mine. We could…compromise, have a 21st century sort of marriage.”
She grinned, somewhat shyly, at the very idea of being married to him, forever and always. “Are you sure you could put up with the likes of me legally bound to you?”
He tugged on her hand, playfully, dragging her across the large bed and practically in his lap. “I don’t know if ‘putting up with’ is the right word. I waited all of my life to find the right dance partner, Peggy Carter, and now that I have, I’m not letting you go.”
“You may regret that some days, soldier,” she teased, softly, far too mesmerized by the way his lashes framed his summer blue eyes.
“I doubt that,” he whispered back, meeting her lips softly, hungrily pulling her more fully onto his lap.
His phone rang again, but he ignored it, as his long, elegant artist's hands were quite busy doing other things at that moment.
“You aren’t going to look,” she asked, breathless, as his fingers slid up the hem of the shirt she was wearing.
“Logistics,” he shrugged his broad shoulders, concerned…at least with his phone and Romanoff’s message. “And besides, she can wait fifteen minutes. I’m busy.”
Peggy smirked wickedly at him. “You assume we will only need fifteen minutes?”
“I suppose then we ought to get on it,” he returned, casually, his hand moving much higher. “Can’t keep the SHIELD transport waiting all morning, can we?”
In the end, they made it wait an hour-and-a-half longer, and neither Steve nor Peggy were sorry.