She is bent over, marking something in a file, her back to him as he comes over.

"I don't know how you expect that poor kid to make Howard do anything. The guy might listen to you, but he isn't scared of anyone else that way, not even the commanders."

Peggy makes one last note before setting down her pencil, but he can see her awareness of his presence in the set of her shoulders. When she turns around, she has one eyebrow raised, her lipstick-perfect mouth neutral, but there is a smile touching her eyes.

"Howard's afraid of me, then? In that case, I suppose I shall have to hope that the private uses that to his advantage."

Steve shrugs slightly, but can't help the grin flashing around his own mouth. "Well, he's at least intimidated, though that might have something of a different connotation for Howard."

"Doesn't everything for that man?" she says dryly, and he wonders if most people would be able to hear the reluctant affection beneath the words; he wonders if the him of a few months ago would have, before he spent time with her, before he had a chance to understand so many of her different tones and have all sorts of stories, stored up moments of observing the way she was with Howard and with Phillips and with Steve himself.

He realizes that he's been silent for a beat too long, so he clears his throat and says gamely, "At least I've started picking up on that — less of a risk for...misunderstandings."

"Well, we wouldn't want any of those," she says, and actually laughs. The sound flows through Steve's backbone and has him laughing in return.

Their eyes catch and, while the moment doesn't fade, he feels the humor between them soften.

"I heard that your mission was a success," Peggy says, leaning a hip against the desk beside her, eyes still looking up at his. "I'm quite glad to hear it, Captain."

Steve nods, trying to keep his voice level so she doesn't guess that he's had the sudden, snatching urge to take her hand. "Everyone made it back okay. Maybe would have been a couple fewer close calls if you'd been out there with us this time, but you've got things to do, and we didn't do too badly considering."

With gentle contradiction, she says, "I dropped in on Phillips after my meeting to find out whether you—to see if your after-action report had been filed. I think you did a bit better than not too badly." Before he can protest, she adds, "I wouldn't have minded a chance to be out in the field again myself — one might think that considering my skills, I'd be assigned there more often, but I suppose being relied upon for my mind and my strategic abilities is no insult. Still, either way, you not only located and eliminated the Hydra base, you made several new contacts, and if I'm correctly reading between your carefully worded lines, managed to save Dugan from himself yet again," and he feels the compliment settle across his shoulders.

"Well, everyone made it back okay," he repeats softly. The warm weight of her words is still upon him, and perhaps that is what has him opening his suddenly dry mouth to say, "We’re here until early Thursday, you know. I am. I don't know if you're done for the night, but—”

"Carter!"

It's late enough that the stricter secretaries have gone home, or else one of them would surely snap at even the famous Howard Stark for his complete lack of decorum as he shouts and shoves his way into the main room of the bunker.

"I could kiss you for this, Carter — and I will if you're up for it — but I guess that can wait. First I need you to come over to the lab with me to talk through the findings. Your private's already putting a pot of coffee on so we can have a night of it." He brandishes the sheaf of paper in his hand triumphantly. "Thank God the kid dropped your name when he did, or I might not have even read this damn thing."

Peggy snorts lightly. "How very flattering, Howard. To be truthful, I had nearly thought I was free for the night, but if you go back to the lab, I suppose I'll join you shortly."

"Well, don't take too long waiting around. I don't know how long history can wait." But Howard sounds more gleeful than annoyed as he turns again, examining whatever documents Peggy had sent over for him as he returns toward the door once again, taking one last opportunity to give a half-distracted, "Nice to have you back, Rogers!" before he disappears down the hall.

Peggy turns back to Steve, shaking her head slightly. "The man certainly does know how to interrupt things in his favor. What was it that you were going to say?"

But Steve only shakes his head. "That's okay. Sounds like there's history to be made, and you're the one to do it. I'll talk to you about it another time."

Studying him for a long moment, she says slowly, "I suppose I am. If you're certain...." At his nod, she closes the file on the desk with one hand, still watching him, and holds it at her side. Finally, she turns toward the door too. Just before she goes through it, she adds, "I do hope we have a chance to see each other again before your leave is up."

She's gone before he has a chance to let the words whisper out of him: "So do I, Peg."

But they don't.

ii.

It was not common knowledge how long Peggy Carter had spent with Dr. Erskine.

She got the credit for extracting him, of course, at least from those interested in offering her even the most basic, begrudging acknowledgment of it. But few knew that she had spent time in his laboratory afterward, that they appreciated each other’s senses of humor and would take turns bringing food that reminded them of home. Later, she and Steve would speak of him with the fond remembrance of too-brief acquaintance that they had both wished had been longer.

It had been just long enough, however, for him to ask — quietly, illicitly, with the guidance of his own moral compass — if she would be willing to test the first batch of the serum he had been brought over to work on.

It truly had been the first batch, and he hadn’t yet realized the importance of the vita-rays. But although she might have had a sense, the vaguest inkling about her reflexes or strength or healing, not even Peggy knew for certain what her time in that lab had gained her: not during the war or her missions in the field, not during the storming of the Hydra headquarters, not as she followed Steve onto the Valkyrie, the energy of the Tesseract still swimming in the air.

They are both still awake after the radio cuts out, after they have said the goodbyes that they can to Howard and Phillips and the Commandos. Peggy looks over at Steve’s tight jaw, at the way that his hair has fallen over his forehead; she remembers how young he is, how young they both are, even if they’ve never gotten a chance to feel it. She wants to forget that they’ll never have the chance now.

They’re already close to each other, positioned together by the controls at the front of the diving plane. After all this time of reminding herself why she can’t, it turns out to be a simple thing to reach over and take his hand.

“What would you say,” she starts, making an effort to keep her voice level, to sound calm and nonchalant even as she has to speak over the wind. “What would you say if I asked you to meet me at the Stork Club, a week next Saturday?”

He laughs a little, although she can feel the clench of his fingers around hers, can see the way he is gripping something small and round in his other fist. “I’d say they’ll need to play something slow. I still haven’t gotten a chance to practice my dancing, and I’d hate to step on your toes.”

“I wouldn’t care.” She swallows, trying to pretend that her voice had not wavered. “I’d take every dance even so.”

“Even if I was late? I’d want to buy you flowers, but I’d be so nervous I’d forget until the last minute and have to go back.”

She smiles at that, the details he is adding to the fantasy beginning to spin it out into something real. “Well, you might be due a tongue-lashing when you finally arrived, but you remembered my favorite flowers were irises, so I suppose I can forgive you.”

And you were there. We were there together, she thinks, squeezing his hand.

“Irises. Of course.” For a moment she has the urge to laugh: it sounds as if he is taking notes, as if this is information he will need to access and act on in the future rather than the two of them pretending in these last moments. “And I’ll have made a dinner reservation at Le Pavillon for after because I heard you and Dernier talking about your favorite French dishes often enough, but we’ll have been dancing so long that we missed it.”

“I hope that my toes can hold up for such a thing, but I guessed that we’d be late — it’s quite the pattern of yours. And I’d remind you then that I’m perfectly happy without anything formal, so we’d find our way back to Brooklyn, to some little place that you knew.”

“We’d talk and eat, and stay so long that they’d be mopping up the tables around us.” It is getting harder to hear him, the pressure immense in her ears. It must be getting harder for him to speak, but he continues anyway. “But we wouldn’t be ready for the night to end.”

Her heart is beating too fast despite her attempts at lightness and calm as she picks up the story again. “So we’d just walk together until sunrise.”

“And we’d know that we were going to have other nights just like that one, and plenty of hard times and boring ones too, but that we’d make it through it all together.”

She smiles then, and so does he, and she wonders how much they are smiling to comfort each other and how much is the true happiness brought on by the comfort they have brought each other in imagining that other life.

“Yes,” she says. “Together.”

And the plane hits the water, and they go under together, too.

iii.

Even after months, there are some days where Steve doesn’t let himself think about all that he left behind: the Commandos and the rest of their lives, the chance to mourn Bucky after the war beside those who loved him, his own sense of stability and understanding of the world around him. He thinks that he’s adapted relatively well, and yet there are still times when the memories will wrap themselves around him, or he’ll realize all over again how very different everything is, how out of place he’s found himself among it all.

He doesn’t even want to think about how much worse it would have been without Peggy there beside him, understanding both the strangeness and his frame of reference, understanding him. He hopes that he’s done the same for her, the only other shipwrecked survivor on this island where they will, it seems, have to live out their lives.

And that’s exactly why, in the time they’ve been in the future, he hasn’t acted on the instincts that he’s already been suppressing for years now. He thought that she might have felt the way that he did — they’d gone down together dreaming a future between them, after all — but he can’t be certain if it was just comfort she was giving him, or being embroiled in the moment, or needing distraction, if whatever spark she might have felt has been extinguished beneath the pressure of these last months. Bucky’s voice might be in the back of his mind (Just talk to her, you punk. You’ve got a brain and a voice, so use ‘em!) but his best friend wouldn’t understand how it is between them, how impossible it seems to try to test everything when it is so very possible that simply asking the question might ruin things, might leave them each alone when they need each other more than anything, more than ever.

But for each saucy, side-mouthed remark that she directs at him before turning back to make easy, considered improvements to whatever mission plan they’ve been assigned, each time she interrupts whatever Tony is saying with merely a raised eyebrow and a small “hmm,” or neatly flays some television personality so that all that remains is the most strained smirk, each sparring session that they engage in or diner meal that they have together…each minute that they simply spend together, the harder it is for him to recall the significance of his old reasoning. And as the two of them settle in further, finding a level of confidence both in this time and among the Avengers, even that reasoning seems thinner. They are no longer so fragile here. They have other things and people they can rely on if needed. If he asked and she said no, would it truly break either of them?

There is nothing special about the day he decides to try. He returns from assignment and asks JARVIS whether Peggy is in the Tower and realizes that it is always the first thing he asks when they’ve been apart.

As he approaches the lounge area that she likes best, he doesn’t even know exactly what words he is going to use — not the most advisable plan, considering, but he recognizes that if he thinks too much, he’ll backtrack on the decision, and now that he’s made it, he doesn’t want to do that. She’s forgiven him for plenty of verbal missteps, and he thinks she’ll forgive him this one too (not to mention that if she turns him down, a little fumbling over his words won’t be what either of them remembers).

Her back is to him as he enters the room where she’s sitting curled on one of the cushy couches, so he clears his throat, but can’t bring himself to start in with anything further. Trying not to wince at the impoliteness of not starting with at least a little small talk, a better transition, he takes a breath and says, “I—I had a question for you, Peg.”

She turns then, looking up at him just as he’s coming around the couch toward her, and he can tell immediately that she’s been crying.

The signs are so small — a touch of smeared makeup, a bit of dampness at the edges of her eyelashes, a very slight disturbance to her breathing — that he isn’t sure that anyone but he or maybe Natasha would notice them. He sits down beside her and takes her hand without thinking about it.

“Monty’s daughter passed,” she says quietly. “His granddaughter called to tell me, which was terribly kind. It just happened, and it’s late there.”

Steve has the strange, vertiginous feeling that he’s becoming at least slightly accustomed to. He knows in his mind that Jacqueline Falsworth was in her late seventies. He and Peggy have seen her face, have spoken to her via video call, the way they did with all their friends’ family members they could find. And yet his mind also resists the idea that she is anything but the bushy-haired, brightly smiling schoolgirl from the picture Monty used to keep on him. Steve had once sent her an old Star Spangled Show program that he’d signed because she’d made some comment in her letters about missing the Captain America film shorts. Dum-Dum used to refer to her as the littlest J, teasing Monty that he’d practically named his child after himself but at least it would help her fit in with the group when they all met after the war.

There isn’t need for any further explanation for why it has struck Peggy, armored and indomitable, the way that it has. He can feel the idea of it sinking into him too: that even these tenuous connections to their old life, the life that they might have had, are breaking around them, and that he does not know whether they can build the new ones fast and strong enough to hold them.

He holds her instead, putting his arm around her in silence, and they sit there for a long while. When they finally get up, the room grown dark and the two of them slightly stiff, she inquires, voice a bit hoarse, what he had wanted to ask her. He shakes his head and tells her that it isn’t the time just now, that it can wait.

He’s already waited this long, after all, and despite all the ways he feels ready, he doesn’t know that they are, yet.

iv.

Staying in the Tower made sense at the beginning, but after a while, when they both decide around six months in that they’re ready for a change, it only makes sense to search at the same time and even to combine their efforts a bit. And, when they actually take in the price of real estate and both find their sensibilities offended by the idea of paying so much, it only makes sense to begin searching for someplace together.

(They also add housing inequality as an issue to bring up next time they speak to the press. Neither of them asked for a platform, but they certainly use it now that it's there.)

Luckily, those same sensibilities mean that they're each perfectly fine with the small bedrooms boasted by their eventual apartment. After tenements and dormitories and temporary shelters, bedsits and barracks and battlefield tents, their place actually feels like something of a luxury. Besides, they have a decently sized living area, which is where they spend most of their time when they're home, talking through the day, bickering over what to watch on television, and sharing takeout food (which Peggy considers one of the great benefits of this century.) They aren't, however, exactly home often.

Not every mission requires both of them, or even one, but they're called away on SHIELD business with a fair amount of frequency. Still, Peggy finds even that is improved by their living together; there is something nice about having Steve call from his room to hers that he's packing the upgraded earbuds Tony made for both of them, or in coming home to find that the coffee maker is already on with her favorite mug beside it and there's a note from Steve saying he's gone to pick up fresh bagels because he'd heard she was on her way back and thought that she might want to talk.

She considers, more and more often these days, asking him if he might want to be something more than friends and roommates and fellow-travelers, if he might consider becoming the sort of partners she had once thought they would. The reasons that they have held off until now are clear to her, and yet she thinks perhaps they are finally ready for it, the idea settling into her mind, hopeful during the times that they are together and yearning during those that they are apart.

Their mission tonight involves the STRIKE team, never Peggy's favorite. There's something about them, even beyond the fact that they always seem more willing to listen to Steve than to her, that has her radar tingling, but she's never quite been able to pinpoint what or catch them at anything. Regardless, they accept the plan of action that she and Steve lay out readily enough, and she steps away to inspect her weapon once more, the rushing sound of wind and speed filling the cabin as Steve and Natasha chat through their final checks behind her.

"You know, if you ask Kristen out, from Statistics, she'd probably say yes," Nat says casually, and Peggy very carefully continues focusing on her ammunition.

"That's why I don't ask," Steve replies, and there is that slightly insolent tone she's familiar with: not cocky in the sense of arrogance, but just that little bit of couldn't call my ride and thank you, sir and the hell I can't — I'm a captain! cheekiness that she knows so well. It has her smiling.

Natasha is familiar enough with it at this point as well, bantering back, "Too shy, or too scared?"

Peggy can't quite identify what it is — the extra beat he takes to respond, perhaps, or a shift in his footing — but there is a very subtle change to him, even before he speaks, his tone more serious. (She would say more honest, but Steve always is.)

"I'm not looking to be fixed up right now. A relationship...Well, I'm not exactly hoping for a Kristen." She knows that Natasha is looking at him, likely giving that sharp-eyed, assessing stare of hers, but Peggy can't bring herself to turn, not even as Steve pulls that smart-mouthed spirit back over himself and adds, "Besides, what I really am is too busy," not even as he hurls himself out of the jet, likely without a parachute. She needs the extra moment to keep herself blank before allowing Nat to turn that gaze on her in turn.

She is lucky that she has the mission to distract herself for the next several hours. As they return home, however, she leans against a bulkhead with her eyes closed, and although she can pretend to sleep, she cannot pretend away the disappointment which layers within her. He isn't ready or seeking to be with someone, and she respects that, but she has waited so long and she had hoped...

Still, she will have him on the sofa beside her discussing modern animation techniques, or whichever Agatha Christie she's been catching up on most recently and which he'd stolen from the end table, or whether they're meant to get an anniversary gift for Tony and Pepper. She will have him calling to her as he comes in from after a run, and trading unprompted raised-eyebrow glances during Avengers meetings, and at the midnight quiet kitchen table while they sip quietly from their cups of tea and don't have to pretend away to each other the nightmares of cold and war and lost things.

She does not have him the way that she wishes that she could, but she does have him, she has their home and all that they share together, and that will be enough.

And yet she still hopes it only needs to be enough for now rather than forever.

v.

The trouble with being in love with Peggy Carter, Steve continues to find, is that she can be frustratingly opaque. He's known her in two centuries at this point, thinks he is more familiar with her than practically anyone else here and now. And yet there are those moments, the ones that loop behind his eyelids at night, the ones he is certain must be obvious to anyone looking, but which she never mentions or pursues, and he cannot figure out why.

Sometimes it is a small thing: the two of them on their couch, laughing over something or quiet and simply together. She will touch his arm or tuck her cold feet against his warmth, and their eyes will catch, something settling over them, a peaceful intensity, the fact that they are alone ever more obvious. Sometimes it is increasingly evident: planning and strategizing more on instinct than anything said, or unerringly seeking each other out after the latest battle or catastrophe as the others watch, relief masked beneath traded banter.

As the moments stack up, more days with them than without, he knows that he cannot be imagining them. But she seems to break their gaze first, letting that sharing slide away, and so he takes the cue from her, much as he'd like to move forward to something new for them, something more, something he's thought was promised or inevitable for so long.

He begins to wonder if he was mistaken all this time, if he misread or exaggerated things that he thought were understood between them. He begins to wonder whether he could have been wrong about all of it.

Or maybe she's changed her mind.

This idea isn't impossible — she has always felt almost laughably out of his league, after all, and they've been through so much since they first met. Whatever she had once felt suited her about him might be gone, or she might need something different, might have found something — someone — that appeals more to her. But he understands too why a person as forthright and in control as Peggy might avoid saying anything: she doesn't want to hurt him, doesn't want to take the chance of disturbing the dynamics of friendship and cohabitation and team.

He wants her to be happy, even if it isn't with him. But he still can't help but be grateful that he'll have even this bit of her for at least a while longer.

The urge he has to talk to Bucky about all of this is different these days, no longer quite so scabbed over or distant now that they know he's alive and out there and coming back to himself, but also nothing that Steve can act on. Still, he has the inkling that if they could talk about it, his best friend would just end up telling Steve that he's always made simple things complicated, and the way he feels for Peggy Carter is pretty simple when it comes down to it so maybe he should just give in and ask her to see a movie, regardless of whether it means disrupting the balance of what they have now.

(He imagines reminding Buck that you can watch pretty much anything from home these days, pictures that eye roll in response. Bucky would probably be the type to still go to the theater.)

But it is more complicated than that, at least for Steve. Because he values his and Peggy’s time together, however it comes. Because she is the only one who understands, and he doesn’t know how he would have managed if he had woken up here alone.

Because he loves her, and wants the them of it for as long as he can.

So he focuses on enjoying each morning of running side by side (Sam setting his own pace as he remarks dryly that he’s glad that they have each other because no one else could keep up) and getting breakfast at their new favorite bagel place, each day of working together to keep the world safer, each night of taking Mr. Cavendish to the grocery store because his son who usually does it broke his leg or helping to host superhero-themed pajama storytime at the local library (and even returning later by popular demand and just because they’d enjoyed the children’s bright excitement). He takes it all in, and reminds himself that if he ever thinks of more, it does not mean that he is unhappy with what he has, what they have together.

Despite all that is involved in helping to trying to root out and crush Hydra for good (not to mention the business of organizing the Avengers so that the ordinary crises they’re meant to handle are still covered even without the structure and support of SHIELD) they do get a good bit of time when it is just the two of them, ordering takeout and spending the evening together in their apartment.

Tonight it is burgers and fries and Meet Me in St. Louis — it had come out before they went into the ice, but they hadn’t had a chance to see it.

“She really is—was terribly charming,” Peggy comments, reaching over absently to take one of his fries, although he can see that she still has a few of her own left. Steve doesn’t comment on it, only finds his mouth turning up at the corner as he nudges the biggest one toward where she’s reaching before he turns back to the screen.

“It’s a shame what happened to her,” he agrees, watching Judy Garland’s Esther shift from moving ever so carefully about the room in her corset to rushing out to meet John Truett at the door. Another thing they missed, another thing they wouldn’t have been able to prevent even had they been there. “I remember going to the American Theater to see The Wizard of Oz, how her voice filled up the place and you just wanted her to get home.”

She makes a small sound of agreement. “I saw it shortly after it was released in London — January 1940. Everything outside was so tense then. I didn’t transfer to Bletchley until the next month, so I was bored daily by office work while at the same time being completely overwhelmed by knowing everything that was going on that I couldn’t do a thing about. But for a few hours, I just suspended my disbelief and allowed myself to be there instead of where I was.”

He starts to respond, but she adjusts herself in her seat and ends up three inches further in his direction, near enough that he can feel the skin-close warmth of her, and even though it isn’t a new sensation anymore, he still has to catch his breath and try to remember what they were talking about. Glancing at the television, he snatches up a cue from the conversation playing out there.

“Speaking of suspending disbelief, it’s hard to imagine that this guy would spend the whole picture trying for a chance with her and then let things fall apart over a tux and a basketball game run too long.” He’s been in the twenty-first century for long enough to know that everyone calls them movies now, and he usually does too, but it isn’t awkward if some of his more natural vocabulary slips into conversation when it’s just him and Peggy.

“I suppose you’d never disappoint a woman like that?” she asks, and even though he knows that she’s only teasing him, that it must be a gently amused reference to that first conversation of theirs (I think this is the longest conversation I've had with one) he answers seriously, unable to stop himself.

He keeps his gaze focused on the screen where Esther is crying theatrically into her pillow, although he barely registers the scene. “If I was lucky enough to get that sort of chance,” he says slowly, “I’d be looking forward to it too much to get distracted by games, and I wouldn’t let anything else stop me either.”

He turns to look at her then, and finds that she is already watching him. Their eyes meet first, holding, and he feels between them not just the lightly traded flirtation of those past shared glances, but the weight of his love for her, all that they have been through beside each other then and now, the perfect understanding and utter confusion and the waiting and the hope…

They’re going to have to look up how to remove grease stains without damaging the couch, because the fries scatter as the two of them move toward each other, but he doesn’t pay that more than the vaguest attention. He knows that this isn’t exactly the way to treat a lady, especially one who’s his teammate and roommate and friend, and he promises to actually take her out sometime soon, but in this moment, there is Peggy’s mouth moving perfectly against his, her hands warm and sure on his shoulders, and his thoughts are half Finally and half More.

He is in the midst of trying to figure out how exactly to get to the more — Peggy seems to have some idea, and he’ll happily follow her lead — when he begins to register a noise in the room beyond the movie still playing on the television or the low, contented sound that Peggy is making in her throat. It persists for long enough that he forces his mind to whatever level of attention he can muster, trying to identify what it is.

Peggy has noticed it as well, pulling away just far enough to catch her breath and say, “I think it’s your phone.”

For a moment, he can’t quite identify or remember what she is talking about. Then he reaches into his pocket and finds his cell phone, still cheerfully piping out something about “a little bit of Monica.” (Tony has a habit of swapping his ringtone around, and although Steve has definitely gotten better with technology, the process of switching it back somehow still always eludes him.)

Then Peggy’s phone is ringing too, a standard little chime, and they both look at each other and know that they don’t have time for more now.

As they ready themselves to meet Natasha in the car already idling on the street, as they strategize in the Quinjet and deal another blow to Hydra alongside their friends, there is barely a moment to think about what has happened. But as they head back, everything calm and victorious, Peggy begins to keep her careful distance from him, only giving him the occasional assessing glance.

It was a mistake to her, he suddenly understands, and the horror of that, the exact thing he’d feared, drains everything from him.

All those years of feeling but ignoring his own pain, of clenching his jaw and moving forward anyway…they must have been preparing him for just this.

He keeps his distance right back.

+1

The trouble with being in love with Steve Rogers is that he is good at concealing his emotions most of the time, but it works far less well around people who know him and he is a terrible liar in any case.

More specifically, the trouble is being in love with Steve Rogers, having kissed him and wanted to continue doing so while also realizing that he likely needed time and space and, considering the speed and amount of space he’d put between them afterward, it seems that she was right.

And she can swallow down her own disappointment and try to regain at least some of what they’d once had, but Steve is being so terribly awkward about it.

By unspoken mutual agreement, they spend less time alone together in their flat, instead busying themselves with work or taking turns volunteering for missions where they aren’t strictly necessary. Even when they do manage to sit together for breakfast or to relax in the evenings, there is something so very stilted about it all, the ease they’d had with each other, the comfort that gave, lost to them now.

This was exactly what she had worried would happen. Her imagination hadn’t told her, however, how very much it would hurt.

She accepts that she is going to need some time to move, if not beyond this, then at least somewhere further through. And so, when she stays at her desk much longer than she needs to instead of going downstairs to attend the Christmas party that Tony had insisted on throwing for the team, she does not make excuses even in her own mind, only issues mental congratulations once she’s finally forced herself out the door.

The lift lets her out near the lounge; already she can smell a variety of foods, all likely tremendously expensive recreations of holiday classics. Her light, nearly silent footsteps are covered by the chatter and the low background of cheerful music coming from the lit space, even as she gets closer.

Just as she is about to step through the doorway and greet everyone, she hears Thor’s voice, boisterous with what she assumes is an early indulgence in something aged ten generations in Asgardian barrels, saying, “Captain, you don’t seem to be joining in the celebration. Are you not fond of this festival, or are you still feeling the effects of your marital falling out?”

Peggy presses herself hastily against the wall, although she can still hear what sounds like an actual spit-take from Tony.

“How exactly can Cap have a marital anything? I think I’d remember that invitation, or else I’d’ve listened to my dad telling me bedtime stories about whether you wore a tux and how you parted your hair and how he pressed the flower from your buttonhole—”

“Are you not married to Agent 13, then?” says Thor around his words, sounding confused, then adding, as if to ensure that Steve is thinking of the correct person, “Your Peggy? Peggy Carter?”

Steve says, “No, Peggy and I…We…” Pressing closer and extending every bit of serum-offered extra senses, she thinks she can detect just the slightest hitch in his breath. “Peggy and I aren’t together. I don’t know why you thought that we were.”

For a second, there is silence, even the song in the middle of changing over. Then Maria Hill says, bold and dry and matter of fact, “Probably because you’re in love with each other, if I had to guess.”

Into the still-evident quiet, Steve manages to stutter, “We—What—”

Gently, Pepper says, “I think she means…the way that you are with each other.”

“The way we…?”

“Come on, Steve.” That’s Sam now. “We’ve all seen those looks between you two. Hell, sometimes you get so deep into focusing on each other that it’s like the rest of us don’t even exist.”

“That’s not—”

“And you are always by each other’s sides, whether in battle or in celebration or simply as a part of life,” Thor adds. “And each time you speak of returning to your shared home, you do so with great joy.”

“Of course we—”

“Could be the way that you finish each other’s sentences, and understand references that the rest of us don’t,” Bruce contributes.

“Sure, because—”

Around what sounds like a mouthful of food, Clint says, “You respect each other. You cooperate. You can argue and compromise. That’s all important.”

“Well, we’re friends, and—”

Natasha interrupts Steve with such simple authority that it barely even seems to register that it’s happened. “Even knowing that you aren’t together, there’s just a way you watch each other when you think no one else is paying attention — it’s obvious that you both want something more, and I don’t know what happened between you two, but you should do what you can to fix it.”

“Maybe I can’t!”

Steve must have been sitting, because Peggy can hear him on his feet now, the sound obvious as the rest of the group hushes at his uncharacteristic outburst.

“Maybe it’s one of those things that can’t be fixed,” says Steve, softly now. “Not when she doesn’t want what I do.”

Whatever bright, casual energy had been filling the room has faded with those words, with the true vulnerability there.

Alone in the hall, Peggy closes her eyes and thinks about best intentions, time, and chances. When she opens them again, she finds Steve just past the doorway, already looking right at her.

“Come on, Cap,” Tony calls. “Don’t leave before the party’s really gotten started. We’ll brainstorm ways to get her back—”

“I don’t know that you’d be my preferred source for those,” Pepper mutters.

“—and you’ll get to open your Secret Santa gift.”

“I’ll open it another time,” Steve says, not taking his eyes off of Peggy. “I don’t think I’m in the mood for that right now.”

They are lucky that none of the others follow. She hears someone, maybe Rhodey, mumble that they either have to get better at throwing parties without awkward incidents or stop throwing parties altogether, and then Thor distracts everyone by discovering the karaoke machine. She wouldn’t necessarily put it past Natasha, or possibly Sam, to intuit her presence somehow, but she and Steve remain by themselves as they walk quietly back to the lift.

The atmosphere here is different: brightly lit, and JARVIS’s voice has that surrounding quality. The two of them stand against the back wall as the numbers trip downward.

Finally, into the silence, Peggy says, “They do still dance, you know. Here and now. If that was something that you wanted.”

He is a very solid man, Steve Rogers, tall and broad and sturdy in ways both obvious and unseen. His hand trembles, just slightly, as he takes his phone from his pocket and unlocks it.

“This is where I hoped to get to take you,” he says, and she sees that the browser is open to a page for an establishment called Swing 46.

“I’m free on Saturday,” she tells him, their whole past, even its pain and troubles, fitting into its place as the foundation of their future. “And every day after that.”

Steve smiles, and takes her hand, and they forget all the rest.

Coda