womanofvalue | Open RP Post

Steve doesn't expect to hear her. Of all the people it could be, of all the people that Howard Stark could find to pair him with after all this time he thinks it's cruel to find the one person that he doesn't want to pretend to be married to.

He wants to actually be married to Peggy Carter.

She deserves better than this, this mockery at playing house with him and he has to draw in several deep breaths before he can set the mask in place and play the part. Can he pretend to be a happy husband with Peggy? The trouble isn't happy. The trouble is pretending.

"In the kitchen," he calls back, voice a little shakier than he'd like.

For a very long moment, Peggy wonders when she went mad. She avoids dropping her bag, but only just, and stands there for a long moment in the front hall running the possibilities because it cannot be him. She still has nightmares about the plane going down and of Steve's last words to her on the radio. She'd gone to the Stork Club after, everything seeming worse and worse with each passing moment.

Her legs propel her forward without her even realizing they're forcing her to face the situation, staring at the man in the kitchen and wondering if Hydra's technology (or the SSR's, rather) is so advanced that they're able to make a clone of him or a mask. Staying steady, she only lets herself stare at him for a moment before she starts a sweep for bugs with one of Howard's devices, grateful when nothing pings, and yet disappointing because now she has to face this man and understand how.

"You're not dead," is all she begins, carefully keeping several feet of space between them in the event she's walking into a trap.

"I'm not dead," Steve echoes. She looks the same as she did before that ill-fated flight but different, too. She's older now, there's grief etched in the beautiful lines in her face and his mind readily supplies that he's added to that grief. Who knows how many others she lost in the war, countless, but he didn't want to be one of them.

He wants to go to her and erase the distance between them but his feet are frozen and he's not sure how to start. He's not the kind of man to break a promise but he'd broken a big one to Peggy, the biggest one he's ever made. Is she going to forgive him for that?

"They found me, rescued me. I've been undercover in one assignment or the other ever since then. I wanted to contact you or anyone else but I've just been under lock and key for the most part. Couldn't even send a letter."

She's not sure what emotion is going to win, but she has the feeling betrayal is going to make a valiant attempt at being the winner. Her eyes are blurred with tears and she doesn't know what to do, but decking Captain America seems like the most reasonable thing to do, seeing as she can't knock out Howard Stark right now. Setting her things down, she eyes the windows and the sight lines, wondering if they're being watched, before she grips the countertop to try and keep herself in one place.

"No one told me," she says, her words clipped. "I thought I was walking into an assignment with Jack or Daniel. No one even mentioned you. I just thought Mrs. Rogers was a cruel joke."

"Howard wouldn't have toyed with you like that." Steve knows that Howard Stark can be a tease, at times, but he thinks the man realizes that he and Peggy are off limits. He's realized it on Steve's end, anyway, so hopefully he has from Peggy's as well.

"I wish I could have known how to get in touch with you. I've missed you so much since...well, since then. I've been thinking about you almost every day. I hate breaking a promise and I broke one to you, Peggy. Will you let me make it up to you?"

It's been years. She doesn't know how to get across how much she's been hurt in that time, but she's sure that it likely shows on her face. It's been years of her thinking that Steve is dead and not knowing what to do about it. She hides her gaze by sending her eye contact to the ground, breathing in sharply.

"Will you show me to the bedroom? I'd like to unpack," she says, to avoid allowing herself to break down. There's a mission at hand and she'll lock herself in the washroom in order to let her emotions out later.

"Yeah, of course. Right this way," Steve says. He reaches out and touches her hand, just enough contact to guide her down the hallway, and drops it almost as soon as he does; it's just as electrifying as the first time he'd met her and time hasn't helped. What could help it, honestly? Steve doesn't think anything would change the pull he feels between he and Peggy Carter.

"Look, Peggy, I'm so sorry I broke my promise. That's not the kind of man I am. I'm going to make it up to you, somehow, even if it wasn't my fault. It doesn't matter. I'm the kind of man who sets things right no matter why things went wrong to begin with. I'm going to set this right too."

The moment his hand touches hers, she feels her skin prickle with anticipation and want, the likes of which she thought she'd buried a long time ago. Her grief is warring with her joy and she's not sure where her emotions are landing, only that she's got Steve here alive and she's still too mad to properly appreciate that. She hitches her bag a little tighter and follows after him.

"For the sake of this mission, I think we'd best set the priority of information gathering first," she says, as professionally as she can, though her eyes refuse to move from the curve of his jawline and the plushness of his lips. "That's how we do this right and it means convincing our mark that we're a harmless couple." She eyes him speculatively, smiling with nostalgia. "Your former silhouette would have helped in that."

"I don't think anyone would have believed a guy like me could land a dame like you," Steve says, giving her a little grin and laughing to break the tension. Peggy is right, which isn't surprising, and he draws in a quick breath to help steady himself. They have a mission right now that's more important than anything that lies between the two of them.

"How I look now is probably a lot more believable than how I looked back then."

Peggy starts to fold her clothes and hang the appropriate ones, unable to stop himself from staring at him. It keeps happening, where she stares at him like she's going to lose him again, and when she's done, she ends up sitting on the edge of the bed (the only bed in the room) and reaches out to take his hand in hers.

"Steve," she murmurs, her voice a strangled knot of emotion. "I missed you so much," she murmurs. "I still can't believe that you're here. That you're here with me and we're working together again. And I love every single version of you," she promises. "No matter your height or weight or measurements."

"It's the same for me with you," Steve assures her. He has both her hands in his and he squeezes them lightly, just enjoying the solid weight of them and knowing that he can touch her and look at her as much as he wants and know that she isn't just a memory or a daydream. She's real and she's here and she's his.

"Doesn't matter what you look like, what you carry...it's you that I love. It's always going to be you, for me, no matter the distance or the time apart."

It's such a bittersweet thing to have this and know that now they have to turn around and work. It's so wonderful and yet, she can't forget that she was lied to. She can't forget that he's been hidden away from her. Slipping her hand away from his, all that she can do is wonder how she makes this work.

"Lucky for us, then, that we're meant to play happy families," she says, trying to be bright. "Think you can convince the man that Captain America took a docile, gossipy wife?"

"I think I can. Captain America is Captain America, after all. He wants something nice and normal," Steve says. It's strange to talk about himself in the third person so he shakes his head to clear it and tries to get over the fact that he gets to play husband to Peggy Carter as a matter of work. It's...almost too good to be true.

"Are you fine with having Captain America for a husband? Tights and all?"

How on earth is she ever going to get it through that thick head of his that she loves him for who he is? Peggy holds back the half-irritated, half-fond sigh and tries not to let everything show on her face, because she'd be a terrible spy if she allowed him to see every emotion. "Were you intending to wear the tights in our marriage bed?" she deadpans with a curve of her lips upwards, knowingly using humour to deflect away from the truth.

That there was and is a large part of her that, before the war had ended, had intended to have and hold, to keep Steve Rogers as her husband as an equal and fight alongside him. He would never have made her into the housewife that this assignment requires her to play.

"Do you?" she asks, suddenly. "Want something nice and normal?"

"Sometimes," Steve admits. He wants something nice and normal, yes, but that doesn't mean normal for her while he goes out and saves the world. "Sometimes I want for us to have this right here - to be together, to not have to worry if the other is coming home. I don't think we'd be happy with that, though, and if we got a chance to really make a go of it, I would want it to be on our terms, in our definition of normal."

They've both got scars, wounds from the war and beyond, and he doesn't think that's ever going to fit into a perfect little neighborhood like this. "Sometimes I want a chance to just take you out dancing on a Saturday night."

Peggy rubs her palms up and down her thighs as she thinks about what Steve is saying, about how he wants normal and not-normal all at the same time and how badly she craves that, too. Standing, she begins to work the buttons loose from her skirt, eyeing Steve pointedly and gesturing with her fingers to get him to turn around. "A little privacy," she says, as if they haven't seen each other in next to nothing already.

"We could go dancing, you know. Here," she points out, fetching the nightgown from her valise. "There's a little place not too far and it wouldn't be outside of our cover stories to go dancing on a Saturday night, have the one I was promised and then denied."

Steve turns around and gives her the privacy. They're playing at being married, not actually married, and he owes her every courtesy. They're starting over, more or less, and he shouldn't be seeing her in next to nothing without her express permission.

"I would love to take you dancing. Let's work that into our cover. There's nothing that says we can't have a little fun while we're working."

She feels a chill going down her spine and she knows that it has nothing to do with the cold. After all, the cold would have nothing to do with why she feels the frisson of hope and anticipation as she slides into the creamy silk negligee that covers her from shoulder to knee, with small cap sleeves to keep her comfortable. She clears her throat to give Steve the all clear to turn around as she digs through her things in order to find her curlers, knowing that it will take her mind off everything in order to keep her hands busy.

"Have you learned yet?" Peggy wonders, trying to still her excited, rapidly beating heart. "If I have to bring steel toed heels, I'd appreciate the warning."

"No, not really. You're probably going to want the extra protection," Steve says, turning back around. His throat feels a little tight at seeing her and he's not certain that he'll get through this without telling her exactly how he feels about her in ways that she might not be prepared to hear right now.

He thinks he probably needs a little extra protection for his heart. He's still madly in love with her, as in love with her as he'd been before that last mission and that promise of a dance but he knows a lot of time has passed between now and then. Does she feel the same way?

"Sorry. I didn't have a lot of time for dancing lessons."

She can't help the way that she lowers her head just a little to have Steve's eyes on her so attentively. She's pleased that the clothes are doing the job they are (Rose is surely due for a promotion) and she's rather hopeful that the look in his eyes means only good things for their future, once she gets past the being lied to part.

"What did you do?" she asks, crawling under the covers and patting the space opposite for him to take. "And change, will you? Unless you intend on sleeping in that," she says, eyes roaming over his still terribly attractive body.

"Worked on taking out HYDRA cells that held out after the war," Steve says. He goes to find something to change into as well, strangely shy about changing in front of Peggy when he normally never has a problem changing in front of the men on his team. Times have changed, he guesses, and Peggy still makes him feel like a teenage boy getting his first glimpse at a real woman.

"A lot of solo, tactical missions. I did a lot of field testing for Stark's technology too. He is constantly coming up with new things, Howard, and I'm indestructible enough that they trust me with it."

Peggy doesn't take her eyes off of him, not now that she has him right in front of her. She's still so worried that she's going to blink and he'll vanish right in front of her eyes, before she's even had a chance to reach out and feel as to whether he's real. "Howard comes up with a lot of things that might kill you," she says, her eyes wide with criticism as she thinks of some of the things she'd seen in his lab. "Please tell me you're dredging up someone's common sense to know when not to say yes to Howard," she all but pleads, given how terribly things could go.

"It takes a lot to kill me," Steve says, shrugging one shoulder. "And, up until right now, I didn't know I had one very important reason to live. Now I have a reason to be more cautious than usual so I think I'm going to be saying no to Howard Stark a lot more often. Do you think that's a fair trade, Peggy?"

Steve certainly hopes so.

Peggy knows that there's a mission at hand and it will require their focus, but quite honestly, sitting under the covers of a wide bed with Steve changing into his sleeping clothes and talking about reasons to deny Howard his madder intentions wears down the last band of resistance and she falters, exhaling past her worries and anger. "I'm still cross that you've been alive and didn't tell me," she clarifies. "And you should know that if Howard is missing a limb the next time you speak to him, it's thanks to me."

"Steve, I..." She pauses, not entirely sure what she's meaning to say, because there is so much. "Come here," she says instead, patting the bed in front of her and thinking that perhaps this will be easier if he's next to her.

Steve sits down on the edge of the bed near her. He hasn't made this move up until now mostly because he hasn't wanted to push past Peggy's comfort level but with her invitation, he's glad to follow her.

Everything in his mind is jumbled up. He's wanted to tell her, reach out to her over the past few years but he's been told not to. Now he's in a room and in a house full of everything he wants and not reaching out and taking it is a real struggle. Holding back his emotions is a true struggle.

"Yeah, Peggy? I am sorry. Really sorry. You know how it is when you're torn between duty between a person and country."

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