Steggy Fic: The Art of Misdirection
“Well, if you can’t figure it out, I guess you’ll just have to wait until Christmas morning.”
This is my @steggyfanevents Steggy Secret Santa 2025 gift for @randomwholocker! Happy New Year, and I hope you had a great holiday season!
The fanart is actually my official gift, but I wrote an accompanying fic too!
Summary: This year Steve had decided there was going to be at least one present Peggy definitely wasn’t going to figure out ahead of time.
“What in God’s name is in this?”
Steve grinned at the implausibly-shaped gift Peggy was holding up. “Well,” he told her, reasonably, “if you can’t figure it out, I guess you’ll just have to wait until Christmas morning.”
They were partaking in one of Peggy’s favourite childhood traditions: sitting on the floor next to their tree, trying to guess what was inside all their gifts. Peggy and her brother Michael had, naturally, kept formal score of who got the most right every year - but Peggy had informed Steve, their first Christmas together, that she had no need to lord her successes over him.
Steve had suppressed a grin at both the entirely reasonable assessment of who would likely win and the poorly concealed gloat about it, and they'd agreed to guess just for the sake of guessing. He strongly suspected that she actually did keep score on Christmas morning, but so far in their four years of marriage she’d kept her yearly triumphs to herself.
Still, this year he’d decided that there was going to be one present she definitely wasn’t going to figure out ahead of time.
“You look rather smug, Rogers.” Peggy’s dimples appeared as she regarded the gift, her lips quirking upwards. “Am I to understand that you’re challenging my deduction skills?”
Steve was almost completely sure he hadn’t left a trail for her to follow, but he was married to the director of one of the world’s premiere intelligence agencies, and he’d certainly seen her do more with less. “Yep,” he told her with more confidence than he suddenly felt. “But outside detective work isn’t fair, Director Carter. You have to guess from the package itself.” He considered. “Or from asking questions, but I can’t guarantee I’ll answer them.”
“Not answering often says just as much, or more, than answering, you know,” she told him solemnly, although there was a grin hiding at the corners of her mouth.
Steve made a face. “That’s what Natasha always said.”
Peggy laughed. He’d been a bit worried, at first, that Peggy might be jealous of how close he and Natasha had been, that maybe she wouldn’t want to hear anything about her - and then he’d seen her own relationship with Edwin Jarvis and realized that she completely understood the sort of strong, platonic friendship he and Nat had shared. “And she was right. You should have listened.”
