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theawkwardterrier · 5 years

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Beneath the Flap

Steggy Week 2k19, day 4 Prompt: AUs and crossovers

Summary: The serum doesn’t work out as planned. Steve gets a new role in the SSR.

AO3 link here.

With Dr. Erskine dead, no one can entirely explain why the serum worked, or why Steve woke up the next morning to find that it had entirely stopped working and left him just as he had been before. The vein in Colonel Phillips’ neck gets a worryingly energetic workout as he moves between yelling at Steve (again) for getting himself on the front page, and yelling at Howard for having created a single super soldier for about twelve hours and now not even that.

“What’s done,” Agent Carter says firmly from her place against the wall behind the desk, “is done. And I think, sir, that we all just need to move forward. We’re still meant to fly to London, I presume?” She doesn’t give Steve more than a casual glance, but he still appreciates her speaking up on his behalf.

“The three of us are,” Phillips says, moving on to a more businesslike crabbiness. “But now I don’t have many options for what to do with this one.”

Steve stands as straight as he can now that his scoliosis is back. “Sir, I’d like to reiterate my request to come to London with you.”

Phillips gives a snorting little laugh. “‘Reiterate your request.’ Son, I’d like to remind you that I turned you down yesterday during your fifteen minutes of being Charles Atlas. Now you’re back to being a shrimpy little thing who barely survived basic? I’m sorry, but the senator doesn’t want you on his plate, and neither do I. We’ll just have to see if the lab boys will still take you.”

Stark steps forward. “Actually, I’d like to keep looking at him. At this point, I’m the most familiar with the process. Maybe by figuring out what went wrong here, I can figure out how to get it working again.” Phillips still looks dubious, so he adds, “Might be able to make it more broadly applicable, get the whole program working like we had wanted.”

There’s a split second where Steve thinks the answer will be no, but then Phillips says gruffly, “Alright, pack your bags. But Stark, this had absolutely better not interfere with your other work.”

“It’ll be a side project,” Stark swears, raising a hand.

“And perhaps when Private Rogers is not being a test subject, we could find him some other duties,” adds Agent Carter, and while it’s phrased as a suggestion, it borders on an order. Phillips looks amused so briefly Steve isn’t entirely sure he saw right, but then points a finger at Agent Carter.

“You’re right, Agent. I suppose I can find him something else to take care of.”

“Like I said, most people are pretty good by now about keeping it clean,” says Private Allen, “but if you catch something…” She snips her scissors through the air over the shared square desk in their back office in demonstration.

Steve eyes his pair warily. Sure, he’s had his own mail censored, he knows that. But being the censor is different. Time of war, he reminds himself, and winces at what a slippery slope that is.

Once he gets started, though, he finds that it is pretty easy, just as Private Allen had said. Most of the folks detailed to the SSR know how to keep a secret, and the stuff they write to siblings or sweethearts or fellow soldiers is pedestrian - about the food, or how they're feeling, or the guy in the next bunk who talks in his sleep. Steve snorts reading through the half dozen letters Corporal Daniels has copied out exactly to different girls at different addresses, and rolls his eyes at the way Private Ellerby describes his duties to his mother with a sort of loftiness that is entirely unearned by the guy in charge of divvying out new boots.

He hasn't even touched his scissors, and hasn't entirely realized the morning has passed when Allen says, "One more each and then we'll go have some lunch?" and he agrees.

Dear Kitty, says the letter that he opens next

The weather isn't exactly welcoming, but it is nice to see familiar scenery again. I know things might wear for you a bit, seeing the inside of the same four walls most of the time, but it wears on me sometimes not to always know where I'm going to hang my hat from one night to the next.

(Not that I wear my uniform hat very often - it gives me a bit too much of a jaunty recruitment poster look - but you'll forgive a turn of phrase, I hope?)

Steve laughs a little, and Allen, not looking up from her own letter, asks, "Is that one of Patterson's? If he's trying to hint again about what he’s packing down below, I'll tell you that he's certainly exaggerating." Steve waves her off and continues.

Things haven't been going quite as smoothly as I'd wished - we lost an excellent man recently, and in some senses more - but we go on. I'll be travelling a bit and I'm not sure where, but I'm sure the service will do its best to make sure that your letters find me. I know that you enjoy a good chat more than sitting down to compose a letter, but I'll ask your favor in continuing to write. Since Michael— the writer censors herself, a thick black line drawn through whatever she had written next. Steve refrains from holding it up to the light to try to identify the words.

Hearing news from old friends always brings a smile to my face, and reminds me that we aren't fighting alone. And, of course, your care packages are always appreciated. The one you sent last time was a treat. The Body in the Library and a pair of your hoarded Dairy Milks were just what I needed - bless you, and twice again!

As for the issue we spoke about last time we were together, I'd ask that you remember to speak up. I know you think that you were brought on only because you are excellent at adding numbers together in your head, but I'll remind you that the skill is more than that and I wasn't the only one who noticed. Mr. G can certainly build a head of steam, but steam is simply the venting of heat and we’ll all be better off if you hold your ground, wait for it to dissipate, and make sure that he understands what you're saying. I appreciate knowing that people like you are helping us work through our problems, and I'll sleep even better at night if you would push through the stubbornness of others and allow your solutions to truly shine. You are brilliant, you've been right more often than nearly anyone, and if they aren't going to listen, you must make them.

I'll leave off my scolding here (I am still holding out for something sweet next time, after all) but remember that I'm thinking of you even through everything else. Speak out, Kit!

Much love,

Peggy

When he comes to the signature, something in him isn't surprised. It isn't that he and Agent Carter are best friends - little could be further from the truth - but the letter shows the tenacity and intelligence and subversive bits of humor that he has already noticed in her. The handwriting is clear and readable, although there's a bit of a patchwork quality to its composition, a smudging to the ink in some places, that makes him think that it was dashed off in odd moments, pieced together as she found the time, and that touches him too: the thought of her remembering to jot down advice and comfort to a friend even with everything he’s seen her taking care of. He notices the places where she'd done her job for him too - "the issue we spoke about last time," “Mr. G” - and his eyes move again to the thick black slash in the center of the page. There's still a place or two where he should probably do a bit of a snip (the reference to Erskine's death is on the borderline), but he decides to let it slide. Steve was chosen for this job, as much as Phillips had chosen him for anything, because he had knowledge of some of the SSR's most top secret work and would be able to pick up references to it. Someone without that knowledge, though, wouldn't understand what was truly being said.

Or at least that's what Steve tells himself as he slips the letter, whole and untouched, back into its envelope, marks it with his censor’s label, and places it in the box set aside for mailing.

"Time for lunch?" Allen asks, getting to her feet, and Steve, considering whether he’ll have time to eat and still run out to find a bookshop with Agatha Christie, agrees.

Kitty -

Just a brief note to wish you a happy birthday. Imagine me singing if you’d like, though I think we both know that it isn’t truly a strong point of mine.

Considering geography, weather, battle lines, the whims of fate, etc., I’m not entirely certain that this will reach you before your next birthday, but hopefully my gift will arrive in a timelier manner (it needs some more particular handling than a letter; you’ll understand my meaning when you receive it).

I hope everyone there is planning to celebrate you properly. And if they’re still reluctant to have a real party there after the one they threw for me and Fred, please pass on from me that I don’t actually consider what happened between us a tragedy and that things in fact are looking even better for me now than they were then - in more ways than one, actually.

I know it seems a bit defensive, but speaking honestly, Kit, I look back on the person I was then and it’s as if I only dreamed being her.

Anyway, you can pass on my official lifting of the curse, along with my greetings to everyone (except Noreen - we both know why). But many happy returns mostly to you, Kitty. I hope things look even better at this time next year for all of us.

Best, Peg

“So why did they pick you for this detail?” Steve asks as they sit at their traditional table in the mess.

“I’m usually in the secretarial pool,” says Rainy. Maybe it’s not professional and he should still be calling her Private Allen, but she’d told him her nickname and he figures they’re friends now. “It was in my file that I speak French, and after the last girl who did got married, they asked me to step in. You know that we can’t just pass through letters because there’s no one to understand them.” Steve is meant to be taking a similar role for the SSR’s secret and science-related assignments - last week he’d finally been given some heightened clearance, and several encyclopedias worth of classified files to read - but sometimes he wonders if assigning him the letters not actually written in English would be more effective.

Rainy pushes away her plate, the little leftover lump of stew, with its approximate meat and perhaps once potatoes, jiggling slightly. She examines her bread, crinkling her mouth, but butters it anyway. Steve doesn’t take any such issue. Meals here are served on time and in what he considers plentiful quantities. Plus the doctor who’d done his physical when he’d arrived had put him on some sort of extra milk ration in an attempt to “get some heft on these bones of yours” (and given him the glasses he’d known for years he’d needed and also known he couldn’t afford). Steve can still sometimes grasp the feeling of those hours of having been taller, broader, of not struggling to breathe, of having a straight spine and eyes that just worked. But even without all that magical science he had hoped would change things, being a little guy in the army he’s in some ways better off than he’s ever been.

“Everyone from secretarial who has the night off is going to the pictures after supper, if you want to come,” offers Rainy. “They want to see Mrs. Miniver, but I have the feeling I’ll end up crying. I’d much rather see Yankee Doodle Dandy, but I’ve been outvoted again.” She puts on a little pout, which makes Steve laugh.

“Getting your performance ready?” he asks, and Rainy sticks her tongue out at him.

“The girls are much harder to convince than boys ever were,” she reflects, sighing as she tosses hair that Steve can now see clearly is a bouncy and beautiful blonde wave. With the glasses to help him actually pick up on details, he itches for his sketchbook and pencils more than ever. Rainy really does have a fascinating face, beautiful if not classically so, brimming with confidence and a bit of mystery. He wonders if he could get her to sit for him.

“Steve, are you going to answer the question, or are you just going to stare?”

“Sorry.” He decides to ask her later, maybe after the film and the inevitable follow-up visit to a pub. “I’d love to come. Thanks for asking me.”

She stands to clear her dishes. “Well, everyone’s been wondering about you, so coming out tonight and meeting them might settle the questions.”

He knew that he stuck out among the staff here. The only surprise is that no one’s confronted him yet about how he’d gotten in. “So what’s everyone been saying?” He gulps down the last of his prescription milk and stands too.

“Top theory is that you’re the secret son of some higher up,” she tells him seriously, and he almost drops his tray.

“Which one?”

“Most people are split between Marshall and Nimitz, and there are some who are sure it’s actually Phillips, but I think Hap Arnold’s the best looking, so that’s where my money is.” She elbows him as they finish scraping and sorting their plates. “Want to give a pal the real story so I can get a jump on things?”

He shrugs, a little uncomfortable even as he’s amused by her matter-of-fact tone. “Someone took pity on me, I guess. Not a general though, and certainly not Phillips.”

There’s that theatrical nature again: Rainy looks disappointed only for a beat before she perks back up again, says, “We’ve got to come up with something better than that by tonight,” and starts proposing stories as they walk back to the censorship office.

Agent Carter is seated at a table by the back wall. For a second, Steve thinks he sees her eyes following him, and actually considers waving to her although they haven’t spoken since he’s been here. But then he blinks and she is just eating absently while paging through a file on the table in front of her.

Maybe the glasses just don’t work as well as he thought they did. He goes back to work, trying to forget the moment that he had apparently just imagined.

Steve starts saving her letters until the end of the day. He knows that it isn’t exactly professional of him, but he can't help but want to savor them. He tells himself it's alright - he doesn't give special treatment to all her letters, only those to Kit. The dutiful missives to her parents, those that go to the other relatives and acquaintances with whom she occasionally corresponds - they are all read and processed in the order he comes across them, just as he does with all the rest of his load. But when he comes across one addressed in her now-familiar handwriting to Katherine Moore, he tucks it aside, uses it as an incentive to get through another day of the work that wears and weighs on him more and more.

He is angry at himself, that all he wanted to do was make a real contribution to the war effort and here he is in the heart of it all and still it isn't enough for him. He is angrier that he has given up asking Phillips for more that it seems he will never receive. And he lies guiltily in his bunk at night thinking about how much he loves reading over Peggy's writing, hating that he thinks of her as Peggy now only because he's listened in on her talking to a friend. Sure, it's his job, and sure, she must know that someone would be doing it, but it doesn't give him the right to take so much joy in it. No one else would give them more than a cursory glance - they're perfectly ordinary letters on the face of it; whoever reads Kit's letters on the other end probably doesn't remember them by the time they're through - but Steve can't help it. When he forgets himself, he wonders what she is going to say the next time, what little turn of phrase will make him laugh, what observation will make him think, what detail she will reveal about her life that will only make him fall for her further.

Dear Kitty,

When I said that you should speak out, I had no idea that I would be encouraging you to do so against me. I am proud of you, however. Excellent preparation for the next time someone tries to speak over one of your ideas (and we both know there will come a next time).

You say that you're ashamed that I'm happier now during wartime than I would have been otherwise. Sometimes I'm ashamed at it myself. But then I remember that it is not my choice to make it better for many women in Britain now than it was when we were at peace. Yes, the franchise has been extended by a lordly and reluctant hand, but I'll remind you that it was through strenuous efforts on the parts of our mothers (well, not mine, perhaps) both in civil protest and in another time of war. Do you truly think you would have been allowed to learn higher maths, the advanced calculus over which I despair and in which you so revel, to truly exercise your brilliant mind, had the opportunity at B— (she's blacked out the name, although Steve has read enough of his classified files to insert "Bletchley Park"; he snips carefully to take out the redaction completely) not been opened to you? Do you think that I would have been allowed to show what I was truly made of in a world where women were meant to aspire only to a man, home, and family - and where a nice man, a fitting man, was neither required, nor encouraged in developing?

This war has devastated me, Kit. I've seen its ravages more closely than you can imagine and they terrify and sicken me, and make me even more determined. I am doing absolutely everything in my power to make sure it comes to as clean, fast, and righteous an end as can be hoped for at this point. But I would make myself a liar to my own mind and to you if I ignored the ways that it has given me things that I never would have had, showed me things I might not have discovered until too late otherwise.

I would trade my life for the war to be over. I would trade my life for it to never have started. But it has, it is here, and it has opened doors that would have remained firmly shut - and I know not only for me.

Peggy

P.S. Had a report from Hew that you're in high spirits, and that you were very thankful for the birthday gift - I will politely refrain from imagining how you might have showed your appreciation. Don't worry, it wasn't hard to have him reassigned to courier duty in line with your special day, and I’m sure I’ll have another urgent message to send along with him. Perhaps just around New Year’s?

“What are you sighing about?” Rainy asks, eyes almost crossing as she focuses on cutting out some single incriminating word inconsiderately placed in the exact center of the page.

Steve hadn’t even realized he had been sighing. “It’s nothing,” he says, thinking about how Peggy had so perfectly, so precisely and vehemently, expressed something he had felt himself and felt terrible for feeling, something he had never been quite sure how to say.

It made him feel a little less lonely. He wonders what she would say if he went up to her and said, “That strange and awful kind of lucky feeling? I understand it too.” Probably she wouldn’t say anything, just wonder who in the hell he was and get him shipped back home.

It might be worth it, though, just to see her in real life again, instead of the vague paper outline he has to conjure up every time he reads her words.

“Now I’m not calling this a solution,” Stark says as Steve buttons up his shirt and smiles at the nurse slipping out of the exam room. “But I’ll comfortably consider it a breakthrough.”

“A breakthrough that came totally by accident,” Steve points out.

“So did X-rays and the Toll House cookie.” Howard grins unconcernedly and claps his hands together. Steve’s been coming to see him every week or two for the last three months and he’s never looked this delighted with the progress. And it wasn’t even Howard who did anything: apparently a lab tech had brought one of the portable sun lamps which are so popular at headquarters over to his work station where he had a couple of vials of Steve’s blood.

“And you’re sure the ultraviolet in there caused some sort of reaction?” Steve asks.

“That’s the theory as of now. We’ll keep running isolation tests but,” Howard smacks a file gleefully against his palm, “the samples that were exposed to the UV look almost identical to the ones we had taken right after the procedure.”

“And you think you’ll really be able to get things back to how they were?”

For a minute, Howard looks more cautious. “I don’t want to get your hopes too far up, pal. It’s looking good, real good, but this really was Erskine’s baby and I’m just the understudy here. I don’t want to make any promises.”

“How much longer are you looking at for testing?”

“If it goes well, maybe another month and we’d be ready to try again. You still willing?”

Steve tries to give a simple nod, nothing overeager, nothing to jinx it. Last time had turned out to be too good to be true, but maybe this time… “Come find me when you’re ready.”

“Good enough.” The door opens, and Howard’s secretary enters. “Good to see you, sweetheart,” Howard tells her in that smarmy tone of his as she hands him a stack of papers to sign with a smile. He nods to Steve, who says, “Hi, Millie,” and sees himself out.

He’d told Rainy a couple of weeks back that he didn’t understand why girls like Millie put up with that kind of stuff from people like Howard or worse, and she’d just laughed and said, “Of course you don’t. The thing of it is, Steve, when this war finally gets done, most of us are going to have to go back to the way things were, which means that this is a perfect time to find a half decent husband. You have to keep smiling to keep the options open, even with the beasts around base.”

“Why would you want to settle for half decent?”

Her smile turned slightly brittle at the corners. “It’s not really about want, more about what’s going to have to happen. There aren’t as many nice men as you might think. I have standards - I keep my ear to the ground, so never anyone with a wife or a fiancee or a steady, and no one who’s given another girl a problem - but I have to jump on it, or I’ll be back home with a dud or everyone whispering about what I might have gotten up to with all these men here.”

Steve didn’t even feel overly affronted by the remark - he’d spent his whole life firmly in the dud category when it came to women, and at least Rainy was his friend - but something must have shown in his face because she’d pointed a finger and said, “You’re lucky I haven’t jumped you, honestly, but it’s pretty obvious that you’re taken, considering all the sighing and mooning you do when her letters come through here.”

“What do you—I’m not—I don’t moon.” But she was already grabbing a letter off her desk and staring at it with big dopey blinks, heaving her shoulders about and taking in huge, dramatic breaths, occasionally letting out a little ha-ha-ha chuckle. He guessed that it was probably a pretty decent impression of him reading one of Peggy’s letters, but he wished he wasn’t so obvious about it.

He’s not exactly being subtle now, but he never is on the way back from his appointments with Howard. He doesn’t get many other opportunities to wander around with his eyes casually peeled - usually he’s meant to either be working, at chow, or in his bunk, not moving through the more essential and top-secret SSR areas where people like Howard and Phillips and Agent Carter do their work.

He’s distracted from thoughts of getting a glimpse of her when he comes across the huge map that dominates the tactical room. He tries to just peep from the corners of his eyes as he strolls through, but even with his new glasses he can’t see quite that well. Then again, no one’s around at the moment, the last of the SSR personnel striding out with a stack of folders and not even a glance at Steve. He takes advantage, placing his hands at the edge of the massive model as his gaze sweeps over the little markers that represent troops and bases. He frowns, and not only because those little wooden figures are too insignificant for what they’re meant to stand in for: Bucky and his friends, people who Steve grew up with, millions of exhausted and foolish and jubilant soldiers, each with their own past and future. How can a war ever end when all the people fighting it are reduced to game pieces? How can a war ever end when the people in charge are overlooking something so major?

“That’s not right,” he mutters to himself.

“What isn’t right, Private?”

He spins, not quite believing that she is here, that he didn’t sense her behind him or at least hear her heels approaching.

“Your map’s wrong,” he blurts, thinking of the way Bucky would cover his face in embarrassment because even after all that tutelage Steve still couldn’t get a simple sentence out to impress a lady.

Her mouth twitches upward, just the left side, and she lifts a meaningful brow at him. “I did well at geography and I’m fairly certain that we’ve labeled everything correctly.”

“It’s not that.” He gestures to the Alps between Italy and Austria. “Why isn’t there a fortress marked there?”

“Why should there be?”

She is studying him intently now and he stumbles a bit with his words before getting back on track. “You’ve got a half dozen units which have encountered Hydra troops in a pretty small area and a short time span. They have to be coming from somewhere, and I’d say the likeliest place given the information is about here.”

“I’ve been informed by experts in six different disciplines that it’s absolutely impossible for someone to build anything there because of the bloody great mountains on either side. And until we can get further aerial surveillance of the site, it’s known around here as Agent Carter’s magical base theory,” she says with a wry bit of challenge in her eye. He just shrugs.

“I don’t know about magic, but I do know that logic dictates an enemy base around that location. And besides, isn’t this a rogue Nazi science operation we’re talking about? Maybe they could come up with a way around the problem of...what was that? ‘Bloody great mountains?’”

"Cheeky," she says quietly, but she's smiling as she does, and the affection in her tone startles him and turns something sour in his belly. Because she's here talking to him as an equal without knowing that he's been peering into her private thoughts, mulling over and coveting them in a way he doesn't with anyone else's feelings. If she knew that, she would probably never look at him with politeness much less friendliness.

"I should get back," he says abruptly, and he shoves his hands into his uniform pockets and finds the first exit he can.

Kit!

The news came through the grapevine before Hew arrived back - I should have known that soldiers would be such massive gossips, but honestly - which is how I've gotten this letter out in the early post.

Congratulations to the both of you. I know you have that lovely rose-covered church back home that will make the perfect spot for the ceremony - even if you decide on a winter wedding, everything will look absolutely picturesque all draped in snow. And while Hew might argue for Edinburgh, I do encourage you - as always - to put your foot down. Although goodness knows you would merely have to think about a trinket you saw on holiday as a child and the man would already be crawling on his knees over the ocean to fetch it for you. He really is a darling where you're concerned, and I say you couldn't be luckier.

I certainly have no wish to intrude on your happiness, but you did ask about my own romantic prospects, and I'm afraid to report that they're a bit stalled at the moment. (I don't wish to ruin things further, but "grim" might be putting it better, if I'm to be frank.) I wasn't actively seeking a single thing in that area, and I think you’re well aware how thin on the ground suitable prospects are, especially someone who would find me suitable in return. (If Fred was frightened off by a bit of light introductory work, he would barely give me the time of day in my current position.)

But then the man I’ve been writing about came across my path and I could suddenly think of little else. Do you recall the letter your sister sent years back describing the Ideal Man, the one we all laughed over that night until we couldn't breathe? I know it’s a silly old thing, but I keep thinking to myself that he ticks each box: kindness and compassion, intelligence, respect for who I am and what I stand for, looks (it must be mentioned), and that special something that works its magic on you in particular...Things are a bit sticky, given our relative positions, and he seems rather dense about the whole thing, but those factors could be overcome. We had a conversation recently that made me think he thought of me in the same way. However, it ended with a definite rejection, and I have seen him many times in close company with a woman, so I wonder if he is perhaps very privately spoken for. I'm nearly ready to give up, if you'd like the truth.

I know. You're the romantic of the two of us, Kitty, and I can practically hear you telling me to seize the day and not rest until I've properly done the job.

I suppose that attitude is why you are the once announcing an engagement and I'm the one moping over people who don't seem to notice a thing.

I'll take the advice, if I can. After all, I would never want to upset the bride before her nuptials.

All my love and best wishes,

Peggy

Well, Steve thinks, swallowing hard as he sets the letter down. That's that. She's had her eye on someone else this entire time and he was a fool to think he ever had a chance. This man is a fool, too, for not seeing the chance he has.

He still finds a smile for Kit: he's never met her, never even read one of her letters, but Peggy's warmth for her has sparked the same within himself. He hopes that she and Hew are happy, that they both make it through and have a chance at a life together.

"Take a walk, Rogers," Rainy tells him kindly. "You're going to fog up the windows with all your sighing, and it's still first thing in the morning."

"No," Steve says, biting down on the wave of sadness inside of himself. Even the letters, illicit as they were, aren't safe anymore. "I can work." He’ll have to get used to it sooner or later.

He starts looking out for the man who has Peggy’s heart. He doesn’t even notice he’s doing it until he catches himself staring with furrowed brow at a letter from Corporal Lewis, who he thinks he’s seen talking to her a couple of times. He tries to recall whether he’d noticed between them that particular magic she’d mentioned. He imagines he’d know what it looks like: it’s what he’s felt looking at her, all the way back to Camp Lehigh. With a precision that surprises him, he can recall the quiet amusement, the perfect red upturn of her mouth as she’d smiled at him when he’d climbed into the back of her jeep. The memory of it still makes him smile now, even as he knows that it’s the sort of thing that will have to keep him going from now on.

“Private Rogers.”

He snaps to attention, dropping the letter and saluting from the crisp, commanding tone even before he quite registers who’s addressing him.

“Agent Carter.” He flounders for a minute. “This is Rainy. Private Lorraine. Private Allen, I mean.”

“Private.” Peggy nods at her, but Rainy is too busy letting her eyebrows climb into her hair and mouthing “Is that her?!” at Steve as he tries to subtly wave her off. Unbelievable that he once thought her sophisticated and composed.

“Perhaps we might speak in the corridor? I wouldn’t want to distract Private Allen from her work.”

Steve can practically feel Rainy’s wide eyes on his back as he holds the door for Agent Carter and follows her out into the hallway. He expects that his friend will have her thumbscrews waiting when he comes back.

“Rainy would have let you distract her all day,” he says, trying for a laugh as they find a quiet place around the corner, but Peggy only presses her lips together and says, “Indeed.”

After a space of silence, still waiting for her to speak, he suddenly has an inkling of why he’s been called out here. She’s smart, Agent Carter, and she’s somehow figured out that reading her letters is the best part of any given day, that he sometimes reads them through two or three times before sending them on. She’s probably letting him stew in it, waiting for him to confess. “Was there something you wanted to speak with me about?” he asks through the clenching of his lungs and throat. He stands very straight even as a thread of sweat slides slowly between his uniformed shoulder blades.

“I did.” She gathers something within herself and starts, “Steve—” before he cuts her off.

“Yes, I’ve been reading your letters,” he blurts, barely registering the use of his first name. “It’s my job, but just doing your job is no excuse, and it certainly doesn’t let me off the hook for the way I read them. So I understand if you won’t ever trust me, but I just wanted us to both know.” He lets the last of his breath go as he trails off and faces her like a firing squad.

“Of course you’ve been reading my letters,” she says with what he thinks is a little smile on her face. “All of the higher level SSR correspondence is distributed to you.”

“You knew?” It feels as if he’s six steps behind and he doesn’t quite know how to make his brain catch up.

“Yes. Just as I know that you aren’t particularly good at the job. Agnes who empties your wastepaper basket says that the others in the department are full while you barely ever seem to have anything thrown away.”

“People don’t speak out of turn too often,” he says uncomfortably, but then adds with a bit more fire, “And there’s also the little matter of free speech, unless we just decided to hell with the whole Constitution around the same time we locked up all the Japanese folks.”

“Not quite,” and she’s certainly smiling now, eyes softened at the corners. “It sounds, however, as if you aren’t entirely satisfied in your current position. I was wondering whether we might put your skills to better use elsewhere.” She holds up a file folder he hadn’t even noticed before and flips it open to show far off shots of snow and dirt and trees and an incongruous steel fortress. “The surveillance flights came back. The Hydra base in the Alps is no longer simply my pet theory.”

He can’t help the way his voice picks up, turns serious and strangely professional, as if he’s really part of it all. “So you’re formulating an attack plan?”

“We have something in the works,” she says briefly. “And I actually— Well, I was here to offer you a chance to be involved.”

“In strategy? With you?”

“It would be nice,” she says slowly, “to work with someone with a mind of his own. Someone who can listen.”

Steve’s instinct is to glance around to make sure there’s no one else there she could be referring to. He smothers it, but ends up pointing stupidly to his own chest, which isn’t much better. “Are you sure—Do you really mean me?”

“Who would I be speaking of otherwise?” She tilts her head at him, a bit of hesitance to the motion. That’s not like Peggy, he thinks, and it’s so strange that he knows that she is cautious only in a tactical way when this is one of a bare handful of conversations between them. “Steve, you have been reading my letters, haven’t you? Even the most recent ones?”

A disbelieving little snort escapes him. “You can go back and ask Rainy that question and she’ll laugh herself sick.”

“Is she—Are you...in a relationship?”

“No,” he says in careful confusion, and then adds recklessly, “She says she wouldn’t even take a chance on a guy as hung up as I am on...someone else.”

He remembers the way that remade body of his had reacted, careening around corners, rushing too fast for control. That’s how he feels now, on an edge too rapidly, recklessly, approached. He’d always accepted that he wasn’t exactly a catch for any girl, no matter what Bucky had insisted, and he’d made himself stop caring about it all, given up reaching. Except for now, apparently. Except for her.

She says, “If you’ve read the letters, why would you assume I meant anyone else? Unless—” and something is dawning on him, terrifying and bright and impossible: the idea that she is reaching back.

“Why wouldn’t you just say something?” It’s bewildering to even ask the question, to even be entertaining the possibility that this is what she meant, but she acts as if it isn’t.

“I thought I was, after a fashion,” and he thinks he sees a bit of a blush rising in her cheeks. “Apparently I hadn’t taken into account your obtuseness.”

“And you still want someone that obtuse on your team?” The words contain too much yearning hope for them to simply be about a new army assignment.

“A little obtuseness can be charming, under the correct circumstances,” she says, and he hadn’t noticed that they were so close until a door slams down the hall and they shift apart as if they’re being chaperoned.

“Why don’t we say you report to me at 0800 tomorrow?” She folds the file against her chest with one arm. He has a sudden, delightful image of Peggy as she would have been at school. “I’ll have you officially reassigned by then.”

He nods. “Rainy’s going to be furious. She says it took long enough to break me in, she’s not going to be pleased to have to do it to someone else.”

“Yes, well, I think it’s someone else’s turn to break you in.” Even with her bland, businesslike tone, he feels the tips of his ears glowing from the insinuation.

“Just so I’m aware, how does—” He clears his throat. “How does Colonel Phillips feel about his people becoming...friendly under his watch?”

“Oh, he takes it about as well as you’d expect,” she says casually. “If he finds out about it.”

“Then I guess I’m lucky to have a crack SSR agent on my side.”

Her eyes meet his, and he sees his foolish grin echoed in hers for the moment she allows it. Watching her tuck it away and become professional again only makes him smile wider.

“I’ll see you in a timely manner tomorrow, Private, or I’ll be sending you a strongly worded letter.”

“That doesn’t give me much incentive,” he tells her honestly. “I’d love any kind of letter of my own from you.”

A week later he gets back to his bunk and finds an envelope tucked beneath the blanket addressed in familiar handwriting. He doesn’t even know how she got it there - he’d just left her after a strategy session and her announcement that they would be traveling to visit troops on the continent - but he sits and tears it open before he can think of anything else.

Dear Steve...

#steggyweek2k19 #Steggy #Steggy fic #Steve Rogers #Peggy Carter #Attachments by Rainbow Rowell ft. Steggy

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