Chapter Text
“Agent Carter” Steve sighed, his hair still plastered to his forehead in some places and stood askew like the leaning tower of Pisa in others.
Peggy leaned over slightly towards him, hiking the ragged sheet over her chest. She quirked an eyebrow and attempted to flatten down the hairs trying to make a break from Steve’s head.
“Considering what we’ve just done I think you’ve earned the right to call me Peggy don’t you?” she asked, finishing Steve’s side swoop with a small pat from her manicured fingers to his head.
“Yes Ma'am,” Steve nodded, the rosy hue on his cheeks still present. Infact that hue had been present since the day he met Peggy Carter. It’s like she introduced herself and return he immediately threw himself into a vat of Red Dye No.5.
“Steve” her tone was halfway between peeved and pleading.
Steve looked around the room with infinite calm and wisdom in what Peggy had just said, at least with what appeared to be infinite calm and wisdom. In reality, Steve, with his knowledge of women at about the same level as a child’s knowledge about splitting uranium atoms, was only looking around the room to avoid looking at Peggy, who’s curious tone was making him sweat in a way that made him glad he wasn’t going to be touched naked again that day.
“What?” he asked finally, because he wanted Peggy to be honest. And mostly because he was clueless.
“Nothing- ” she started, like a woman who wasn’t Peggy Carter. She interrupted herself and started as she meant to, “Just don’t call me that in bed, it makes me feel like you’re fucking your elderly neighbour.”
Steve’s eyes went wide, like a dog who’s just been caught pulling butcher’s papers from the kitchen garbage can. He hummed in quick agreement as Peggy finished tucking a stray strand of spun gold behind his ear.
“I wouldn’t have even got that back in the day before you know,” he guestered to his heaving person, “ this. ”
“I still think half of New York are complete imbeciles for letting you pass by,” Peggy said and there was nothing in her previous behaviour towards him that indicated that she was lying. She had told him on more than one occasion that the pectorals the size of planets were a nice touch, even if a little unnecessary on Howard’s behalf.
“I’m sure whoever I conned into having sex would have loved all the wheezing.”
“From her or from you?”
“From me, you know what my lungs were like. Buck used to call them ‘my shitbag airbags,’” Steve smirked in a way so fond, it would make anyone think that he missed having lungs made from half deflated beach balls. However in reality he missed James Barnes teasing him about having lungs made from half deflated beach balls.
Peggy screwed up her nose, “That’s graphic of him” she said like she hadn’t spent her entire adult life with men whose idea of courteous conversation was finding new words for penises with a glass of sherry after dinner. She beckoned over to a gold tube on the makeshift bedside table. Next to the golden tube on the milk crate with candle on it was a compact mirror. It was the same colour as the tube but tarnished with age and wear, with an engraving of ‘M.C’ on the lid.
When they first met, Steve had asked her why she’d chosen to get ‘M’ rather than ‘P’ engraved on the mirror. She had told him that it was her mother’s, who incidentally shared her name and who incidentally, was far more lecherous that a barnacle attached to the bottom of an old ship. She’d also told him she’d always incidentally preferred her middle name too.
“Can you please pass me those, I need to meet Stark in 20 minutes.”
Steve gathered both items in one large hand and passed them across the poor excuse of a bed to Peggy.
“I should probably check on the dancers” Steve announced as Peggy applied the deadly shade of red to her lips, neatenting the smudged edges with expert precision. “Bucky woulda loved to see me in a chorus line” his tone was fond again.
Genuine fondness between friends has never annoyed Peggy before. She’s always been of the belief that the world could do with a little more fondness in it. But there’s something in the way that Steve carefully runs his tongue along his plump lower lip, or gets a look in his eye suited far more to a man gazing upon a constellation of freckles on his lover’s face than a man only speaking fondly about his best friend.
“I’m sure he’d like to see you too” she tested her face hardened in thought, her eyebrows pinched like stubborn caterpillars on her pale face.
Steve was taken aback by the shift in tone. The room was suddenly drained of it’s post coital bliss and was pumped with something a invariably more uneasy. Steve snapped his head to look at her but she’s fixated on the puddle besides the bucket, clearly doing a terrible job of collecting the rain that is lashing onto the roof of Peggy’s quarters and consequently dropping onto the floor of Peggy’s quarters.
“Steve I’d like to be perfectly candid with you” she announced bluntly, her eyes still fixated on the damp spot in the corner of the room.
“Uh” he posed, eqlouantly.
“You and Barnes” her tone mellowed but was still inquisitive. It was very clear that she knew how to control her voice and her body language. She’d never get to be in this position in the SSR if she couldn’t. She finally turned her head back towards Steve, who looked as dumb struck as the day he walked out of Howard Stark’s machine.
“We’re - were ” Steve stuttered before speaking, his voice was filled with an uncertain melancholy, he’s not really sure if he should be using the past tense. Bucky and the rest of the 107th had been stuck behind enemy lines for weeks. Even the most optimistic man would have lost every ounce of hope of them still being alive at this point. Luckily Steve wasn’t just optimistic, he was kind of foolish too. That combined with his new shiny body, he probably had the best shot in the world of finding them, even if that shot was one taken in the dark, blindfolded with his arms tied behind his back. “We are just friends. ”
“Well I think that answers my question don’t you?”
Steve wanted to ask her what she meant by that, but he understood in an instant what he’d insinuated with his telling choice of words. Steve exhaled a long breath, like he was trying to rid himself of everything within him before Peggy could blow him up like the Hindenburg. He laid his palms flat on his covered legs for a moment. “I don’t think we were ever just friends ” he resigned.
She put the lipstick on her own milk crate bedside table with a pointed click. She took a deep inhale and processed the information. It didn’t take long, it’d been something she’d half expected for a while. She’d seen Barnes just as she arrived in Azzano. He hung around the barracks with a sly grin plastered onto his face that said he was either going to try and con you out of your father’s inheritance or take you to a dark corner and take you apart quickly and efficiently, like throwing a jigsaw puzzle down the stairs. As he was always giving that look to a dark eyed svelte fellow, who hung around him like a bee to a flower. Peggy’d always assumed the the latter. When she realised who that was, flirting with Juan Lopez like it was easier than breathing air, it wasn’t too hard to assume that he’d extended the same behaviour to an equally svelt, possibly more arduously righteous, man in his life.
Peggy stood from the bed and pulled the top blanket around her naked self. The blanket was rough on her skin, it poked and prodded her like an irritating child or the nagging feeling that you’d left the iron on 20 minutes after leaving the house. She avoided Steve’s eyes for a moment, she didn’t want to press him for anything else. She liked Steve and he liked his sense of autonomy, she wasn’t about to force words into his mouth even if it was, ‘Everything’s okay’ .
“I guess this is goodbye then” Steve chirped like a grasshopper that was currently in the process of being squashed by a steam roller.
Peggy felt her face pulling in tight with confusion, “Why’s that?”
“Because I’ve told you I’m queer,” he finally peered up at her as she’d slipped back into her brassiere and panties. He looked only directly at her face as if to try and make his point further, “or at least was.”
Peggy groaned and held down tightly on the itchy blanket she still had bundled in her hand to stop her hand instinctively pinching at her nose. She looked at Steve, who by now had been maintaining eye contact longer than she’d ever experienced before in her life. Not that she minded that, Steve has beautiful eyes. Although he was currently so red he looked fit to be covered with garlic butter and be served as a fish course.
“By the way you just enthusiastically put your tongue inside me I don’t have any doubts that you’re into women, Steve,” she hopped gracefully back into her first stocking, being careful not to snag it. She looked up again at Steve, “You can like both.”
“I can?” He asked dumbfounded but brimming with excitement, like the thought had never occurred to him.
“Of course, who’s out there to tell you otherwise.” She crossed her arms in protest of anyone dare tell Steve Rogers what to do, like he’d even listen anyway.
“There’s not a soul on earth to tell me I can’t like both too.”
“What?” Steve leaned forward in the bed as to catch the words in the air before they hit the ground.
Peggy nods and smirked as she finally clipped her stocking into place. She quickly pulled up the other one and clipped it too.
Steve still looked like he’d been slapped across the face by a handwritten copy, first edition kama sutra. Peggy hoped there was a myriad of images of her with a couple of the dancers flickering behind those baby blues. He rubbed the back of his neck and wheezed in what was probably the first time in months, “Not to be crude, but holy shit.”
She placed her hands on her hips and licked over the waxiness coating her lips, “Don’t you think I feel the same way about you and Sergeant Jawline ,” she said confidently. She wasn’t about to deny that because she'd thought about it ever since she'd figured out who Bucky Barnes was and the teams he most definitely batted for, even though she was pretty sure Steve was never going to ask it.
Steve leaned forward again in the low candle light, his abs creasing in neat rolls as he leaned to put his hand on his chin in careful thought, “You are just full of surprises.”
“The day you think you’ve figured me out is the day you’re well and truly screwed, Rogers.”
He smirked and placed his other hand behind his head. His planes of muscle illuminated curiasco in the murky light. Steve splayed out like this made Peggy think that Michelangelo would have fired David on the spot if he’d met Steve Rogers.
“I think you’re right there. Although I do want to know more, if that’s okay Peg?” he grinned that dumb little grin that made Peggy want to kiss him but also punch him in the face for making a woman like Peggy so vulnerable in her chest and between her legs. She began to nod before Steve started again, “Y’know about you, and me and Buck. ” His tone was a little more wavering this time, which was completely understandable for a man who was merely hours away of executing a rescue/suicide mission for the man he’d clearly been more than fond of his entire life.
“I’ve got 10 minutes before I need to leave. Question for question? If you want to talk about him, I’d like to.” There was no way Peggy was about to let Bucky Barnes die either, she was going to keep him alive one way or another.
Steve gives another careful nod whilst sipping a glass of water.
Peggy pulled her slip from the tattered wood floor and examined it for any snags before pulling it on in a little triumph. She smoothed the satin fabric down and turned her attention to the newly present again Steve, “When did you first know you were attracted to him? Or boys?"
"It was always him, only him. At least at first. But Buck-" he deflected his gaze from her and she looked away giving him privacy as he rifled through so many memories that could count as the first time. That what it feels like, being in love with someone, everything feels like the first time for something.
He lifted his hand to his mouth and chewed on the hangnail on his thumb, his voice was slightly muffled, “11 I guess. I wanted him to look at me the way girl’s looked at him, but in retrospect, he looked at those girls the way he looked at me.”
“That’s very sweet.”
He removed his thumb from his mouth and smiled at Peggy, who was finishing up closing the delicate buttons of her dress shirt, “I’ve never talked to anyone about this before. It feels good.”
Something exploded inside Peggy, the warmth from Steve radiated through her.
“The same question to you Pegs.”
“No imagination,” she chortled shaking her head teasingly “Not quite as sweet as your story, during boarding school we used to practice kissing on each other, and I guess I liked it a little more than just for practice.”
Steve stuck out his bottom lip in apparent satisfaction.
Peggy looked around the dank room as if to find inspiration for a question. She already knew exactly what she wanted to ask but she didn’t want to scare Steve away. She wanted to know if Steve loved him but honestly, she already knew the answer to that question. So she stared at the mottled wall of her living quarters and asked, “Is Barnes a homosexual?” she let out a squeak as she wiggled into the tightness of her woolen skirt, narrowly missing the bucket. It was pretty much empty anyway, even if she had knocked it.
“Yes,” Steve announced hanging on the ‘s’ like he wasn’t entirely convinced in what he was saying, “Not like me though. Those girls were just for show, I think, he seemed to like me a hell of a lot more than them.” He paused for a second and examined the moles on his left hand, “Actually I don’t really know, we’ve never really talked about it. I suppose we should have done, before y’know .”
Y’know was quickly becoming a synonym for the atrocities of war. It was far easier to look a man in the eye and give a solemn y’know than tell something that no man alive should ever have the misfortune of telling.
Peggy could see the sadness and apprehension fill him like mustard gas into the trenches. She decided on lightening the mood as she fixed her stray hair pins. “Shame, I wouldn’t have been adverse to inviting him into our quarters,” she mumbled whilst holding one of the pins between her teeth as she affixed another behind her ear.
“Peggy!”
She crossed her arms again, “Tell me you weren’t thinking the same thing about one of the dancers out there.”
Steve suddenly looked very childlike and very innocent, “Nope!”
Peggy hoped he was faking it, that he was just as crude as she was. That he’d been thinking the same saudid things that hadn’t left her mind for weeks. No such luck. “God you weren’t were you?” she announced in defeat.
He shook his head and laughed as he picked up the final stray pin and handed it to Peggy.
“Did you ever have a girlfriend?” He asked as the cool tang of metal left his hand. He sat back down against the headboard with a resigned thud. His body became achingly stiff, like it had become tired just with the anticipation of finding Bucky. Worry had begun to gnaw at his thick muscles and youthful features like rot through wood. He’d clearly suffered loss before, because what man steps into a machine like Stark’s if he had anything to lose, but whatever had happened before seemed to pale in comparison to Bucky.
She pinned the final unruly curl into place before answering softly, “No, nobody ever came close. I fooled around a little here and there, but nothing tangible.”
She turned away from Steve as she put on and straightened her jacket. Steve wore his feeling on his body like big bold tattoos, etched in vibrant colours and beautiful designs. He did his best to hide them but they moved and swirled on his body every time he spoke or moved. Her heart strained across her chest. She’d never loved anyone or been open like he was, at least before Steve, who’d she’d been dying to fall in love with since they day they met. She turned around after composing herself, she wasn’t to let Steve know what she knew, even if his stunning tattoos told her everything she needed to know.
She tapped her fingers on the thick wool of her skirt and smirked to carefully reset the momentum, she wasn’t about to let the anticipation of tomorrow ruin today. “Okay, who fucked who?” she purred, with a shit eating grin splayed across her features.
“I can’t believe you just asked me that,” Steve announced with the composure of a man who was slipping on ice.
“Go on,” she presses, her voice low and annoyingly devilish.
“ Bucky and me, we switched but uh, I always liked -”
“Getting fucked” She said matter of factually, popping her shoe on her foot.
“Yeah” Steve nodded, his entire body dripping with Red Dye No.5.
She popped on the other shoe and stood up again, and gracefully placed her hands on her hips, “Interesting.”
She let her voice settle into a growl, “Incidentally I always liked doing the fucking”
“How-”
“A contraption made from belts and a wooden rod covered in a rubber coating, quite ingenious really.” Peggy interrupted, clearly eager to finally tell someone about her ingenuity.
“Interesting ” Steve mirrored, “Do you miss it?”
“Do you?” She rubuttled as she began to walk out of the door. She looks back over her shoulder to Steve, who’s swirling tattoos of truth were proposing something that Steve was never going to propose himself.