#he's great at being an accessory to incomprehensible schemes

[thesokovianaccords]

12 + 34 for Steggy for the 2 part drabble game?

(...let's not talk about how long ago you sent me this prompt lol)

12 - Finally home after a hard day / 34 - “It’s 2am. Go back to sleep.”

The Carter siblings were…a lot. If Steve had to pick a phrase to describe them, it would be—well, it would be pure chaos.

The most hyper-competent people he’s ever met. 

But, still. Pure chaos.

Steve didn’t actually regret moving in with the Carters after his old roommate decided to abandon him to live with her boyfriend. Most days. 

But Michael and Peggy—well, Steve had a pretty good command of the English language (despite what they might say) but words failed to describe them. No matter how hard he tried.

He told Sam that they’re maddening, and yet disarmingly charming. Bucky heard a story or two about Michael’s one-man war with the MTA, and Peggy’s many international misadventures—the context of which Steve was honestly afraid to examine too closely. Natasha actually heard one of Peggy’s terrifying non-anecdotes about the time she and a friend were trapped on a mostly-deserted Mediterranean island, and she had to play a high-stakes game of blackjack to secure their freedom (he desperately wanted to follow up but was very afraid she’d actually answer his questions). Tony knew a lot of their stories already because he was there, was an accessory, or heard about their exploits through the grapevine—the dubious benefits the Starks and the Carters running in the same social circles. 

Steve had been called to find Michael after he ran away to a farm in rural Virginia—Peggy had been her usual inscrutable, unflappable self, but Steve was a quick learner (and slightly obsessed with discovering all of Peggy’s tells, a fact he was ruthlessly suppressing). He had been ferried—by Tony and Pepper—across the Atlantic and Indian Oceans to bring Peggy her passport as she fled to the British Embassy in Hong Kong, with Michael calling him every hour on the hour until she had it, and Steve had her, safe in hand. Both of them would go silent for weeks at a time and then pop up again in their shared fifth-floor walk-up with no warning at 4:00am, hungry and loud and full of stories that were high on hijinks and low on details.

Steve was ninety percent sure that the whole Carter family was involved in some form of espionage, but he had just enough self preservation to never, ever ask for details. Even when his journalistic instincts screamed at him to dig deeper, he knew it was a bad idea to know more than the bare minimum.

Not that any of that stopped him from orbiting closer and closer to Peggy, much to her brother’s amusement. Steve couldn’t help himself—her glossy hair (voluminous with secrets, of course) and her lips painted red and her killer sense of humour and her absolute confidence in herself were a potent drug, intoxicating and addictive. 

Maybe it was pathetic, how he knew all her favorite foods and always had a bottle of her whiskey on hand—created specifically for her by a distillery in Scotland she’d saved from some convoluted extortion scheme. How he started studying French when he saw a plane ticket to Morocco on their dining room table—just in case she needed a bailout. How he woke up sweating and tense—from dreams about her laugh and her perfume and that one time she took swinging trapeze classes—in a way that was extremely inappropriate for him to be dreaming about his roommate (whose brother was also his roommate). 

But on the other hand, Steve wasn’t about to rock the boat. He was content to admire from up close and from afar, but always on the outside looking in. Peggy wasn’t complaining, but she also never said anything to signal her own interest—and she had become too important to Steve to consider stepping outside the boundaries they’d established. She and Michael both had. They were family—chaotic and dysfunctional family, but whose wasn’t, at the end of the day?

So, Steve stayed within this equilibrium—enjoying her presence when they were home, worrying after her and her brother when they weren’t. He was used to it, and even when he’d come to expect chaos, the Carters still managed to surprise him once in a while.

It was in the wee hours of the morning when Steve returned home from covering a gruelling all-night Security Council meeting, exhausted and overworked and ready to collapse on the nearest soft surface for the three hours he had before returning to the UN for the next day of the General Assembly meetings. The last thing he was expecting to see when he opened the front door was warm lighting flooding the kitchen, soft brass instrumentals flowing through the apartment, and Peggy in the midst of what could only be described as culinary carnage. 

“Steve, darling! Welcome home!”

His exhaustion bled out of his limbs at the sound of her voice—cheerful, excited to see him, her familiar accent washing over him like a sense of relief. He dropped his shoulder bag by the door, shocked to see her in the flesh after three weeks of increasingly cryptic text messages and memes lighting up his phone at odd hours. He mouthed her name, unable to force the sound from his throat, but it didn’t matter, as she tugged him to the kitchen island, chattering all the way about how she had missed him, she’d brought him a souvenir but he mustn’t ask about its origin, Michael was in the city but she wasn’t sure where, she’d been gifted this divine new chocolate chip cookie recipe that was going to blow his mind.

Steve followed along gamely—he forgot, when she was away, exactly how enticing Hurricane Peggy could be up close. She manoeuvred him onto a stool, dropping a plate in front of him that was stacked precariously high with cookies that, admittedly, looked delicious. He took a tentative bite and sighed with relief at the gooey centre and melted chocolate—her past baking experiments had not been as successful as this one.

“So, there I was, dangling off the bridge over the river—mind, I’d already secured myself with a rope and was waiting for someone to pull me back in, so I was making a shopping list for when I got back in today, and I stopped by the bodega on my way home because I know you with your sweet tooth, we probably wouldn’t have any chocolate chips left, and—“ Peggy trailed off, taking in the way Steve was already half-off the stool, drifting away as she prattled on. “Steve, dear lord. I forgot about the time difference. Here I am, nattering on, and you look like you’re about to collapse. It’s 2am. Go to sleep.”

He straightened, shaking his head. “No, that’s okay, Pegs. I’m listening. I’m not that tired. You were dangling off a bridge.”

She laughed and grabbed the cookie that was falling to pieces in his hand. “Darling, go to bed. You’re clearly knackered.”

He shook his head. Stubborn to a fault. She clasped his newly-empty hand in hers, mindless of the chocolate residue. “My darling, I’ll still be here in the morning, I promise. Go to bed—Peggy’s orders. You have a busy day ahead and I can’t have you at less than your best because of me.”

He eyed her carefully. “You promise?”

His eyes were drooping, his cheeks rosy with exhaustion, but his look of determination and suspicion made Peggy feel, finally, like she was home. There were worse things than to have such a man as her anchor, her port in a storm, calling her back. “Yes, Steve. I promise. You won’t be able to get rid of me. I’ll be skulking around the United Nations for a couple days—we can grab a drink, as long as you don’t ask for any details.”

He tossed her a wry look as he stood, and she couldn’t help but reel him in for a hug. “You know I missed you terribly, right?”

He nuzzled his nose into her hair for a brief moment, roses briefly overtaking his senses. “You were having far too much fun for that.”

She smacked him on his back, playfully. “I never have half as much fun as when I’m with you. I’ll just have to drag you along with me next time—it’ll be the best of both worlds. Now, off to bed with you.”

He squeezed her tightly, then stepped back. “Welcome home, Peggy. I’m glad you’re here.” And with an irreverent salute, he vanished into his bedroom. Peggy turned back to the mess she’d made of the kitchen with a critical eye. The pastry chef behind the recipe had promised Peggy that these cookies were magic, capable of turning a man to mush, but clearly she’d forgotten an ingredient or two.

#steggy #steggy fic #steggy au #theawkwardterrier #surprise? #this is so old I dont even know where to find the prompt list lmaoooo #anyway this was originally going to be something much different but I sort of got it in my head #that if peggy and Michael had been reunited they would have been pure chaos #and I just rewatched schitts creek and then I was like...oh my god the two of them as David and Alexis?? gold #so...this happened #have peggy as an international woman of mystery and Steve holding her stuff as she storms an embassy #he's great at being an accessory to incomprehensible schemes #idk what this even is but hopefully its at least fun! #also I wrote this in like a stream of consciousness burst of inspiration so apologies if it’s nonsense ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ #from the vault (aka the drafts folder)