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3pirouette · 2 years

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Fic: Singing in a Storm (1/1)

Title: Singing in a Storm By: TriplePirouette/3Pirouette Spoilers: None Disclaimer: They're not mine. Word Count: 2147 Distribution: AO3 Anyone else please ask first :)

Story Summary: Steve meets Peggy in the middle of a mission for an information drop.

A/N: For Steggy 2K22 Day 3: Headcannons and Meta. After Red, White, and Blue Christmas I can’t get the idea of LoungeSinger!Peggy out of my head. So here.

Also, my WWII history is rusty and literally everything is made up.

~*~

He coughed, the smoke thick enough to irritate his lungs. Had it been a few years ago, he’d have had a fit and would have had to leave the bar, but now he was able to just breathe a little shallower until he got used to the tang of tobacco in the air.

He moved through the throng of sweaty bodies, the summer night warm enough that it made the room humid and uncomfortable. The bar was crowded, but there were some empty tables towards the little ramshackle stage in the back of the club. He slowly pushed ahead, pulling his jacket off and tossing it under his arm.

He was undercover, dressed in civvies that he’d pulled together at the last minute that were a little too long in the leg and a little too short across the shoulders to be comfortable. He sat, throwing the leather jacket over the chair and pulling at his collar. He could feel the sweat beading down his back and across his forehead as he tried to get a deep breath and felt nothing but smoky humidity tinged with the sharp hint of body odor fill his nose and lungs.

The club, like everything else in the small Polish town, was held together with what little hope the people inside had left. He could see the cracks in the plaster where the bombings had shaken the foundation and the heavy blackout curtains stood out where they were pinned back from the windows.

The patrons had seen better days, too. The weariness permeated the air around him, more pungent than the sweat or tobacco scents, more depressing than the way the waitress tried to smile but failed as she took his order, more disappointing than the beer being warm and flat when she set it before him. The war had trudged on too long and it showed.

The rundown stage was just big enough for an upright piano and the small microphone stand and speaker. The conversations around him started to quiet as a piano player sat at the keys and started playing a light melody. It was slightly out of tune, but it was nice to hear something that didn’t come through a tinny radio or off a scratched record. After a moment, he saw her and he sat up straighter. She slipped through the side of the room, stepping up on the stage and behind the microphone as his eyes followed her. He didn’t care if his attention to her stood out.

He missed her.

She started singing, low and soft. It was a song he didn’t know about a lost love that he couldn’t quite connect with.

His love was right there: Peggy. On stage.

She’d bent sent under cover three weeks ago, and tonight was the planned check in. He sighed with relief, his anxiety calming just a little. The first part had gone to plan: find her. Now, he just needed to find a way to get them alone together so she could pass off whatever information she’d gleaned from the small Hydra faction that was using this club as it’s meeting place.

He nursed his beer, his heart rate slowing to the time of the piano as she sang song after song of love found and lost in a low, honeyed voice he hadn’t known she’d had. He didn’t know any of the songs, didn’t care much that half the time he was doing little more than stare at her, really. The sense of calm that overtook him when he finally saw her told him more than he was ready to admit.

It wasn’t a crush.

It wasn’t a wartime fling.

He was deeply, irrevocably in love with Peggy Carter.

Watching her as she swayed in tight, black dress, he wondered how anyone could avoid falling in love with her. She was smart, and funny in a dry, sardonic way. She could take care of herself and surrounded herself with people she chose, not people she needed.

And she was gorgeous.

He tried to never list that one first, but he never left it out.

Every once in a while, she’d look down at him, she couldn’t help but see him in the fully lit club, and he swore she was trying not to smile.

After six songs she stepped back, bowing her head slightly. He came out of his fog, realizing that other people had been watching her, too, as the room filled with applause. It wasn’t raucous, like she deserved or like he wanted to provide, but rather muted and stilted, the kind of applause that anyone tired of the life they’d been forced to live might give.

He expected her to slip off the stage the way she’d come and that he’d have to go find her, but instead she stepped down off the front of the stage and pulled a chair over to his table. She looked him up and down, and waited. When he said nothing, she asked him, “Aren’t you going to buy me a drink?” in perfect Polish.

He hadn’t known she could speak the language, but he did know she constantly surprised him. Still a little shocked, he waived over the waitress. “I’m sorry, my Polish isn’t very good. No good.” He blathered out in English and Polish.

“We will get by,” she replied, leaning on the table seductively, a thick, fake accent on her tongue. “Words are not always needed, yes?”

He nodded, a little off balance by her brazenness. He looked around as she ordered her drink, and neither the waitress nor the other patrons were much bothered or concerned about her. “You sing beautifully,” he stuttered out as the waitress left, unsure of what to really say. They hadn’t talked about how this part would go because they hadn’t known what would happen once she was there. Follow my lead, she’d told him before he left, and we’ll be fine.

She thanked him in Polish, and scanned the room as the waitress dropped off her drink. Though they hadn’t been out much, it wasn’t anything he’d ever seen her drink before, some kind of whisky and mixer that she downed much faster than she would have if they’d been out as themselves.

She looked him up and down in a way that somehow managed to make him feel uncomfortable, then slipped into his lap. She was close enough she could whisper in his ear. “Pretend I’m propositioning you.” She leaned back, and the red tint to his cheeks and ears, more from her brazenness in public than from her words, made her smile. “Good. When I stand come with me. They don’t surveil the back alley.”

She leaned back and smiled seductively, and Steve felt his heart start pounding again, though if it was from excitement of her being so close after so long, or the anxiety of being reminded they were in a Hydra stronghold being watched, he didn’t know. She stood, taking his hand in hers, and started to leave him from the room.

A laugh stopped them, a waitress who hadn’t served them leering. “Finally decided to have some fun,” she commented in Polish, making Steve feel dirty with the way she’d said it.

“Been waiting for someone my type.” Peggy shot back, her eyes narrowing. “Not everyone is as careless about who they sleep with as you, Katarzyna.” Peggy pulled Steve through the back of the club and pushed through the back exits to a quiet alley, agitated.

Steve took a deep breath, the humidity of the night far better than the stench of the club. “You alright?”

Peggy looked up at him, her demeanor had changed so subtly he didn’t think anyone but him would notice. “Nosy woman in everyone else’s business,” Peggy replied, her thick accent still playing to her cover. She stepped closer to him and grabbed his collar until she had him pushed back against the brick. “I’d very much like you in my business.” She leaned up, and with just the barest of whispers in the voice he knew so well, she demanded, “Kiss me.”

He didn’t deny her, instead he took her in his arms and let his lips meet hers in ways he’d been dreaming of for weeks as his jacket fell to the ground. He wanted to profess that he’d missed her between pecks, to let her know that he knew this was more than just a crush when she took his bottom lip between her teeth, to say loud and proud that he loved her and only her into the night when he felt her nails rake through the tiny hairs at the back of his neck, but he did none of it.

He followed her lead and kissed her, and hoped she felt everything he wanted to say out loud through the way her held her close and pressed his lips and tongue against hers.

She hiked her-self up on him so she could whisper in his ear as he kissed his way down her salt-tinged neck. “There’s a small vial in the garter of my left stocking,” she hitched her leg up over his hip, and his moan wasn’t for show, “find it and palm it, we don’t have much time.”

Her own moan wasn’t faked, either, as his hand wandered under her dress and to her thigh. He dipped his head close to her ear, close enough that he hoped no one who might be listening could hear. “I miss you,” he whispered, taking the chance he knew he shouldn’t.

“Same, my darling.” She pulled back and pressed her forehead to his as his fingers fumbled around her garter to the secret compartment he knew was there. “I’ll need extraction, two weeks from tonight. Details are on the microfiche.”

He started to protest. If she knew she needed to be extracted, she was in more danger than she wanted to let on, but her lips crashed into his, silencing any protest he had. “Trust me,” she muttered, still kissing him.

It was barely long enough for him to get the vial in his hand before the door they’d come through opened and a bald man with a sour face cleared his throat loudly. Peggy jumped back, wiping her hips with her hand and straightening her dress. Steve, vial of microfiche safely in hand, shoved both fists in his pockets and hung his head, pretending to be caught.

“Is there a problem?” she asked, this time in crisp German.

“No problem,” he replied, crossing his arms. He wasn’t overly large, and Steve would have been able to easily best him, Peggy too, but he did have a menacing air about him that set Steve’s teeth on edge. Hydra, he’s sure. “As long as you and your friend go back inside.”

She rolled her eyes at him and leaned back on Steve. He played dumb, trying to follow the conversation and pretended he didn’t know the language even though he was understanding every word. “Really, Sergi, you let the waitresses do who and whatever they want back here, but I find a nice man to kiss for a few minutes and you’re following me?”

He tilted his head in a manner that meant he was expecting her to move, and with a sigh she stepped away from Steve, running her hand down his chest. “It was fun while it lasted,” she called back to him, her cover accent firmly back in place, and a hint of sadness in her eyes that Steve could tell went far deeper.

Steve moved to follow her, but Sergi stepped into his path. “No. You go.”

“Bu- Why?” He whined as he sagged his shoulders, trying his best to seem dejected and frustrated and small, not angry and upset like he really was. He was more concerned now than ever that she was in some real danger. “I just wanna—”

“Go!” Sergi pointed towards the end of the alley, blocking the door. “She needs to sing, and you need to go.”

Steve shoved his hands deeper into his pockets, slumping and turning away, grumbling to himself as he grabbed his jacket and looked back at Sergi who still stood guard. He moved out of the ally, his stance and demeanor changing as soon as he was far enough away that he thought it unlikely that he’d have been followed.

He rolled the little vial between his fingers. Howard was waiting back in the little room they’d turned into a base, ready to develop the microfiche and Phillips was waiting for the call back as base. As soon as they read what Peggy had sent, he was going to start on a plan to get her out.

And after that, he was going to tell her he loved her.

And then maybe he’d let her pin him up against a brick wall again.

#SteggyWeek22 #Steggy fic #LoungeSinger!Peggy #3p's fic #Steggy Week Day 3

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