Open RP Post

[womanofvalue]

PSLs welcome

AU extra encouraged

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[womanofvalue]

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.

[bearstheshield]

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."

[womanofvalue]

Peggy still isn't sure who at the SSR she should simultaneously punch and thank for this assignment, but right now, all that she wants to do is focus on the man in front of her and not the mission. She reaches out past the covers to take Steve's hand with both of hers, making sure that she has his gaze when she locks eyes with him. "I know, Steve," she promises, because she's all too used to having to put her personal life second to place duty first.

Right now, in the shadows of the evening and no one here with them, there is no emergency and she even thinks that she can put aside duty while their mark sleeps the night away. "You mean every bit as much to me as you did during the war," she says, "and I," she exhales, and breathes the words that she's thought since the day his plane went down, "I love you, Steve, with all my heart. I didn't think we were going to ever have a future and now I learn that it's been shortened by duty."

"I know we're going to do this mission well," she vows, determined, "but if you think I'm going to let these days pass without getting all that I can of you before they dispatch you again to wherever they may, then you're as stupid as you are broad," she informs him. "And look how wide that serum has made your shoulders."

[bearstheshield]

Steve lets out a breath he didn't know he was holding and he's just so damned relieved to hear the words pass from her lips. He loves her, too, and it's a precious thing that he's been holding within himself in these years so that he can put one foot in front of the other. He loves his country. He loves his friends. He loves her as much or almost more than both.

His smile widens just a touch and he feels for all the world like the skinny kid that never got a dame to look at him twice instead of the broad, tall, perfect specimen that he is now.

"Well, I know it isn't exactly mission protocol or anything but Peggy, please, can I kiss you?"

[womanofvalue]

"I'd argue that it's perfectly within the mission parametres," Peggy reasons logically, the hint of a dancing smile on the corners of her lips, "if we are supposed to be posing as a married couple, I have to imagine that we ought to become quite comfortable and natural looking while kissing," she notes, though obviously it won't be happening so much when she's in her nightgown (at least, she hopes, you never know with missions). And he's gone and said please, like the perfect boy scout he is.

She grabs a handful of his shirt to give herself some leverage to pull herself in before cupping his cheek and stopping just before she's about to kiss him, the tip of her nose pressed to his. "You are going to take me dancing," she warns him. "Don't think one little kiss and a mission will get you off the hook, Captain."

[bearstheshield]

"I wouldn't dream of trying to get out of dancing. I would be trying to get into dancing," Steve assures her. With permission asked and granted, he leans in and kisses her the way he's been thinking about for years. It feels like he's been waiting his whole life for this in one way or another and he hopes that it feels as good for her as it does for him. Because oh - it feels amazing for him.

Peggy's lips are soft and when he touches his to hers, he deepens the kiss a lot faster than he intended. He's in over his head with this mission and he's hoping that she's level-headed enough to keep him from slipping under.

[womanofvalue]

Peggy lets out a small, soft, suppressed sound of surprise when suddenly Steve is kissing her far deeper than expected, but with absolutely all the passion she feels herself. She hooks her arm around his neck to allow herself some leverage upwards, aiming to challenge and give back as good as she's getting.

Now, the key thing is getting Steve's hands where she wants them. She looses her grip on him so that she can take both of his hands in hers, not breaking the kiss for a moment as she guides both those big hands (she still remembers how small and thin, how deft and nimble they'd looked) to her hips.

Dizzy with the kiss, Peggy worries that she's abusing company time, but she's given her life to the SSR, the least they can do is give her this time back.

[bearstheshield]

Steve doesn't care about company time. He doesn't care about company time, America's time or God's time when he's got his mouth on Peggy Carter's and his hands are cupping her hips to bring her close to him. So much about this feels like coming home after the war and it strikes him that for he and Peggy, the war never ended. They're still fighting, still sacrificing for their country to the detriment of themselves. Is it always going to be like this? Will they always have to put duty first?

He can't think of that. He can't think of that when his lungs are burning from lack of air and when he breaks the kiss to draw breath, his heart yearns to kiss her again. This is what it means to be in love, he thinks, and he doesn't know if they can survive it. Still, it's the best kind of death.

[womanofvalue]

Peggy actually has to take a moment to wonder if she's having that dream again when she parts with him, wanting to chase after another kiss, but it's possibly for the best that there's some room between them so she can speak. "I don't want to dissuade you," she speaks, her voice a little throatier and deeper than expected, "but I am absolutely ready for more, but only if you've got some manner of protection."

While she loves Steve more than she's loved anyone in the world, she's not ready to hang up her hat and job in order to raise his child. Not yet, at least. If things go well, perhaps that's a dream for the future, which is a thought so stunning and incredible that she sits back slightly, eyes a bit misty. "Oh, darling, I've missed you so," she confesses, clasping his hands at her hips as she thinks of all the possibilities there are, now.

[bearstheshield]

That's not something Steve thought about bringing along when he was on the clock, so to speak, so he reluctantly slows down and feels, for all the world, like a teenage boy in the backseat of a car. He wills his heart to stop hammering in his chest and lays his hands against hers, touching the backs of them lightly.

"I got a little ahead of myself," he says, giving her a little grin. "Sorry. I'll have to go to the store tomorrow and take care of that."

[womanofvalue]

The little noise of frustration in the back of her throat is wholly deserves, as far as Peggy is concerned. She's still staring at him like he's a mission to conquer, a mountain to climb, but the problem at hand isn't going to resolve itself seeing as the shops are all closed and she's already changed for the night. Besides which, they have an appointment at the local club at the same time as their mark in order to start doing reconnaissance.

She worries how thick the air will be with tension between them, an entirely different kind that she wonders how she'll cope with, but she managed during the war, didn't she? "When we're not working," she admits, parting from him only slightly, to control her own lustful desires.

"Tomorrow is about evaluating the mark. We need to decide what approach to take," she says, blustering through business as if that will stop her mind from wondering what it would feel like if she took Steve in hand and brought him to climax. Her cheeks, unfortunately, betray the fact that her thoughts are not aligned with her words.

[bearstheshield]

"We do need to figure that out," Steve agrees reluctantly. Getting his mind back on the mission was going to be difficult, especially since Peggy was right there and he could think about nothing but how she'd just felt in his arms and how her mouth had felt against his. Focus, Rogers. Focus.

"Do you want to work on it now or would you rather try to get some sleep and get up early in the morning?"

[womanofvalue]

If she doesn't get sleep, she's going to be quite a mess tomorrow, but sleep also implies that Steve is going to be right there with her, arms around her, and she's not entirely sure how much sleeping she's going to get done when he's like that. "I'm wide awake," she confesses, heart beating out of its chest. "Someone has gone and turned my adrenaline up to eleven. Do you have any idea who that could be? Handsome, stubborn, far too dramatic for his own good," she teases wryly, taking a pillow to adjust behind her back so she can settle in and regard him from there.

[bearstheshield]

"No idea who that might be," Steve says, teasing her right back. He's going to have a long night, he knows, because he's got to keep his hands to himself until he can get to the drug store and get condoms. There's the mission, too. He's not the kind of guy to compromise something like that just for a dame, even if it's his dame, and he needs to get it together.

"We can just suffer together. Misery loves company, right?"

[womanofvalue]

"I think we put ourselves through enough misery these last few years," Peggy says, aware that she sounds particularly huffy to her own ears, but it has been a very long time since she's kept the company of another man in such a regard and it would be rather nice if she could be doing that again with the man she's desperately in love with. Of course neither of them had planned on such things.

"Tomorrow," she says, resting a palm on a safe place (or at least, she hopes it is) on his shoulder, "I'll dress in my finest pearls and homemakers dress and you can put on a suit. We'll go to the club, I've heard that our mark likes to run his mouth, I'm sure he'd love to befriend a famous face while I work his wife for information."

[bearstheshield]

"Sounds like a plan to me. And if I have to dance with my pretend wife for a few dances, well, it's just in the interest of trying to look completely innocent and nothing more than what we look like. We're just a happy couple."

Steve gives her a broad smile, almost impossibly bright. "Because I really, really want to be your husband tomorrow night."

[womanofvalue]

Peggy tries not to stare at that beautiful, sweet smile of his too long, worried she'll blind herself with hopes of the future. She prevents herself from saying anything stupid about not minding how long he's her husband for any number of nights, but it's a close thing. "Perhaps Howard figured that for all your brawn, subterfuge is a skill best done when you're able to be honest," she says fondly, unable to help herself as she leans in to kiss that smile of his.

"Remember," she says, "the key is finding out his secrets and then, the attempt is to also sway him to our side. It's lovely to get both, but if we must have one or the other, information is key."

[bearstheshield]

"Information, right. I'll work on information. And yeah, it's easier to lie when you don't have to lie. I'm not very good at lying about anything."

Steve has always been painfully honest, even when it's to his detriment, and he doesn't think he could pretend to be married to a woman if it wasn't Peggy Carter. He cares too much about her to pretend to love anyone else.

[womanofvalue]

Peggy settles in with her pillow, trying to settle in with the rather large bed. She'd been used to a single at the Griffith and though Howard tended towards opulence, she still always slept as though she'd never gained the space, firmly in a line. The positioning, now, becomes a touch awkward not because she thinks she'll be rejected, but rather she doesn't want to rile Steve up. She's hardly intending to tease him.

"I'll lie well enough for the both of us," Peggy promises, cupping his cheek. "On certain topics, only, of course." There are other things that she would never lie about, not on her life.

[bearstheshield]

The next evening, Steve takes his time getting ready. This is the date he's never gotten to have with Peggy and while it's technically part of the mission, he wants to still give her the respect she deserves. He puts on a proper suit, a nice tie and he hopes that he looks every bit of the part of the hero she'd hoped she'd get to dance with at the end of the war.

"Ready to go, Mrs. Rogers?"

[womanofvalue]

She's affixing gold earrings to match the bright shining (fake) gold of her wedding ring, staring at her reflection in the mirror as she wonders whether she looks like a Mrs. Rogers now. She's wearing the suitable dress of a respectable non-working wife, a pearl bracelet upon her wrist delicately. With clutch in hand, she adjusts her hair and dabs perfume in the appropriate places before she goes to meet him, standing in the door of the bedroom.

"And here I thought I'd keep my name," she jokes, knowing full well that she must be Mrs. Rogers for any of this to work.

[bearstheshield]

"Oh, come on, give a guy a little chance to dream," Steve teases. She looks absolutely beautiful and if she wanted to be Mrs. Carter-Rogers or just Ms. Carter, he isn't going to complain. He's just going to count himself lucky that she's willing to go out with him at all. He's already done his tie but he subtly loosens it, makes it seem like the knot isn't quite right.

"Do you think you can help me with the tie? I don't do so well with suits that aren't star-spangled."

[womanofvalue]

Peggy gives him a dubious look as she approaches him, but her eyes are filled with the challenge and fire that she'd had the night in the pub, when she'd walked in with her red dress and a challenge practically laid out for Steve. She settles right in front of him and reaches up to begin fussing with his tie.

"I suppose, for now, I'll be Mrs. Rogers," she says idly, as if the cover doesn't utterly depend on it. "Your boring little housewife. I must have made Captain America quite the roast dinner to capture his heart," is her wry, mildly contemptuous comment, because that's what the men at the club will presume. She slides her thumb over his neck as she works, catching at the pulse and feeling her own thunder in turn.

[bearstheshield]

"I...I don't think you could be boring if you tried," Steve says. His pulse is hammering and any of the bravado he'd had before starting this little charade has quickly fled him. He's not good at these sort of games. In this, he's still the boy that couldn't get the girl while his friend had two on each arm. He's learned how to win fights now instead of just endure and he's a paragon of the human physique but he's still not any better with women.

He's certainly not any smoother with this woman.

"Even if you were just a housewife, Peggy, you wouldn't be boring."

[womanofvalue]

She can't really hide her smile from him, so sneakily amused by the way he fumbles and stumbles over his words. While there are times when Steve's inability to converse with a woman had frustrated her, she's come around to being charmed by it again (provided she doesn't find him kissing other women anytime soon). She keeps her gaze on the tie, especially since that's about where she comes up to, with his height being what it is.

"I don't plan on being a boring housewife anytime soon," she says, half an offhand warning in the event he had any misconceived perceptions. She cups his cheek with her palm, knowing that if she hadn't just applied a coat of lipstick, he would be kissed right now. Stepping back, she regards him with a placid, calm look. "Were you able to get to the drugstore?" she asks, as if they're simply having an off-hand conversation.