Chapter Text
Peggy Carter’s mind reels as she searches for potential apartments in Hampstead. A wave of dizzying fear and hurt swirls in her gut, as options for an affordable place near her childhood home dwindle in possibility.
Maria talks to her about promotions, offering just enough of a pay-rise to afford a sweet but small little apartment in Camden. The compromise is that she starts actually working for S.H.I.E.L.D.
She picks a job in the mathematics and physics department, smug at Maria’s unamused face. Peggy decides to retire from active combat service in 2012, as she would’ve done years ago had she not been trapped in a pocket dimension of impossible time and space.
Barton and Romanoff help her unload her pathetic pile of belongings, no more than a dozen boxes filled with books, paper and clothes. Both idiots decide to cart an entire queen-sized mattress through the Underground into her apartment, but get caught in infamous London rain, and Peggy cooks soup for the first time ever in her new apartment while making sure their sopping wet clothes don’t leave water stains on her floorboards.
She comes to work on her first day at a S.H.I.E.L.D. office in London, inconspicuously across the road from the Tower of London. She wears her nicest casual work outfit (a pair of soft tan chinos with suspenders, shirt and a woollen cardigan, of course. No more skirts for Peggy) and starts her day at the office, discreet and quiet.
It’s... a lot. “No longer screaming to be heard,” is quite right. She’s a leader, an equal. The men and women (other women? In office jobs? Being respected by men at the same level or higher? Incredible and exhilarating) in the department eagerly listen and share work. No jibes based on her gender, no passing off tedious paperwork, no begging to cover shifts, no uncomfortable comments.
Her anonymity doesn’t last more than a few hours, as her colleagues quickly solve her puzzling identity. There’re rounds of handshakes and invites to Friday night drinks in Westminster district, and many exclamations of awe. Eventually the buzz fades as she dives back into the work, analysing and codebreaking messages in a surprisingly monotonous cubicle job.
Natasha brings her Indian food for lunch, uncharacteristically quiet as they eat together on the rooftop garden. Peggy can feel her analysing gaze in short glances, see her shuffling uncomfortably in her seat. An unexpected guilt hits her like a punch to the gut.
She works into the evening on mathematical equations, breaking a coded message from a notorious underground smuggling group. Her brain feels sluggish and out of practice as she chips away at the message and its various complexities.
She catches the bus home from work, meets the shocked eyes of a young child reading a history book, a grainy but recognisable photo of her in its dusty pages. She holds a finger to her lips and winks, as they nod at her dumbly.
She glances down at the torn strand of hair taped between the doorframe and her front door and reaches for the hidden pocketknife inside her belt, silently opening and closing the door as she brandishes her knife and reaches for her shield half obscured by the umbrella holder and hatstand by the door.
She stalks down the corridor, knife and shield at ready. She hears a quiet creak of footsteps in her kitchen and steps around the corner, poised to throw her knife. She flings it at the dark shape in her kitchen, whole body seizing at the familiar yelp of panic as the blade sinks into her window frame with a dull thud and reverberating twang.
“Peggy, don’t! It’s just me!” Barton yells, fumbling around the benchtop for hearing aids and slipping them into his ears with trembling hands.
Peggy deflates, shield dropping to the floor with a muffled clang, before she tenses again.
“Wait a minute... what are you doing in my apartment?” she asks, flicking on the lights. Barton inhales unsteadily, clutching his chest. Peggy winces at the sound of his hammering heartbeat.
“Uh, waiting for you to get home? With Nat? Because we were going to a restaurant for dinner tonight?” he explains, eyebrow raised dubiously. Peggy nearly smacks herself in the head, stopping when she realises that she could well leave a bruise with her enhanced strength.
“Fucking bollocks! I completely forgot!” she exclaims, rushing into her bedroom to change into her nice new suit as Barton laughs uneasily outside. She steps out in the shining navy blazer and pants, red leather belt and cufflinks included.
“You look amazing,” Barton compliments sincerely, smile kind and friendly. Peggy’s ears flush a bit. “Natasha’s great with outfits, she’s gonna be so proud when she sees you.”
An unexpected flush breaks out on her cheeks, ears burning at the idea of Natasha choosing clothes for her.
“She did? I didn’t know,” she says, clearing her throat to stop the unexpected dryness there. Barton snickers and leads her out into the hallway, steps easy and tone casual. Peggy lets herself relax as they climb into his rental car, stopping outside a luxurious restaurant with shining chandeliers and a private booth in the back of the room.
The night shouldn’t be ruined by Romanoff barely talking and refusing to make eye contact with her, but it nearly is. Barton tells her that she’s been in a tough place, child-trafficking operation fresh on her radar. Peggy sympathises and ignores the pained ache in her chest and the lump in her throat.
---
Aliens. Aliens. Alien invaders. Alien friends. Alien enemies.
Carter should be focusing all her available crisis energy on that. But no.
Howard Stark’s annoying and tragically heartbreaking son just must be her emotional focus in such a time of turmoil.
His cold eyes, his dismissive demeanour, his joking habits. His familiar but not quite familiar enough suit of armour, his luxury and opulence. That same hair and face and grin. His dizzying intelligence.
Now she’s working with Banner and Stark on analysing the mystical laser spear, losing her thinning patience and running on nowhere near enough hours of sleep.
Peggy grumbles into her cup of black coffee as she eyeballs Stark, who is currently pouring a teaspoon of maple syrup with two teaspoons of brown sugar into his cup.
“Are those... tactical suspenders?” Stark asks, pointing at her uniform. Peggy narrows her eyes, familiarity and abrupt novelty at war in her head.
“No, they’re not. S.H.I.E.L.D. tailors did the job, but I personally think it could’ve done with some improvements. And I don’t wear suspenders, Stark,” she protests, rolling up the sleeves of her gaudy uniform to heft a whiteboard out of a side alcove and move a large bench nearer to their work.
“That’s a lie. Peggy loves suspenders, wears them to work all the time. It’s like she’s still a grandma,” Romanoff says as she walks into the lab, clapping her hand against Peggy’s shoulder teasingly. Peggy huffs out a laugh and turns back to the graph in front of her, scribbling out a frequency table for some tedious calculating on the average radiation level released from the spear.
“You know, Dear Dad told me all about you. My missing godmother, the beacon of potential, the comparison against his disappointing son. What a revelation. All those years he spent trying to find you, and by the time you return he’s dead,” Stark remarks bitterly, offering a packet of blueberries to Dr Banner.
Peggy flinches slightly and shoots Stark a glare, grief-filled pain and anger again flaring in her bloodstream, heart pounding in her ears.
“I’m sorry, Stark. But I’m not responsible for whatever shit your father put you through,” she retorts. Dr Banner clears his throat awkwardly as Romanoff whistles lowly.
“Well, how incredibly convenient for you to distance yourself. Speaking of distance, how’s retirement from combat going? You didn’t look very retired in Germany, I must say,” Stark points out. Peggy grits her teeth and turns around, expression genial but firm.
“I am retired. It was one incident, because apparently you boys can’t have meaningful discussions without demolishing half an alpine forest and yourselves. Do you have anything meaningful to add to this conversation, Mr Stark? Or may I please continue my work in relative silence?”
Romanoff and Dr Banner both look surprised at her clipped and furiously calm tone, Romanoff prouder than her other colleagues. Stark looks impartial, carefully blank, wiped clean of emotion. It’s tragic to look at.
“Oh yes, much work. Great Tower Street? City of London. Mathematics department, I believe. A step-down from dismantling cultist fascists, I must say,” Stark bites out. Peggy bristles.
“Did Fury tell you about that?” she asks, scribbling furiously on the white board, even as the squeaking of the marker grates on her ears so harshly that the pen crunches slightly in her hand.
“Nope. I’ve been running encryption of some of S.H.I.E.L.D.’s most deeply-buried files. In a few hours, me and Jarvis will know every dirty secret Fury’s ever kept from us,” he boasts, waving a small glowing device around in his hand. Peggy huffs, discarding her broken pen and snatching up a new one. She can feel Romanoff’s eyes on her back, like hot-irons on her skin.
“Jarvis and I, but congratulations! You failed 4th year grammar and succeeded in hacking. Would you like a compliment?” she bites out.
“What I want to know, is why we weren’t brought onto this project before?” Stark asks. Peggy takes a deep breath and rolls her eyes.
“I don’t think Fury’s interested in clean energy like he says he is. Otherwise, he would’ve contacted me or Dr Banner. And why you? No offense, but you’re not exactly the most intellectually astounding of all the mathematic experts on S.H.I.E.L.D’s payroll. He’s up to something, for sure,” Stark continues stubbornly, pen jabbing at the air as if he’s drawing out his theories on a phantom board.
“I don’t ever remember your father being this distrustful of his superiors. Times really do change,” she snaps, as Romanoff whistles faintly in the background.
They’re sniping continues back and forth, even as Banner quietly points out what energy source Loki might be seeking, and Peggy’s stomach drops into her boots at the mention of Barton, and Romanoff leaves the room with a huff.
A few minutes later she leaves with a growl muffled behind clenched teeth and vanishes into her quarters, jaw aching and fists trembling.
She opens a security feed channel to Loki’s prison cell with the access code Romanoff gave her, freezing at the sound of Romanoff’s own voice in the livestream.
I have a very specific skill set. I didn’t care who I used it for, or on.
Agent Barton was sent to kill me. He made a different call.
Dreykov’s daughter. Sao Paulo. The hospital fire.
Your ledger is dripping, it’s gushing red, and you think saving a man no more virtuous than yourself will change anything?
Mewling quim...
Romanoff trembling, stumbling back slightly, face morphed into one of terror. The sick feeling of panic in Peggy’s gut, the surge of protective flame in her chest, brain kicking into battle-drive without hesitation. Not even Carter had known these things, been told these facts. The fact that their enemy knows it intimately fills her with rage.
Peggy storms out of the room with her shield at the ready, marching down to the detention level to help Romanoff, ignoring the worried stares of engineers and guards around her.
She stops when she bumps right into Romanoff in the hallway, nearly stumbling over the assassin’s silent footsteps. A light flush of pink graces the tips of her ears, but the only other sign of shock on her face are her slightly wide eyes.
“Peggy? What are you doing here?” she asks. Peggy sputters and waves her shield around vaguely, throat closing slightly with embarrassment.
“I’m... helping you?” she explains quietly. Romanoff cocks her head before understanding dawns on her face and she laughs slightly.
“I don’t need help, Peg. I was manipulating him. I’m fine,” she dismisses. Peggy stops and pulls her into a side room, eyes sharp as they roam her face. It’s the same carved and blank expression as it’s always been, and awkward shame bubbles in her stomach. She ignores it.
“I was watching the security, I thought you were in danger. I rushed here. But you’re... okay?” she asks gingerly. Romanoff scoffed and leaned forward to whisper slightly into Peggy’s ear.
“I’m fine, Carter. I promise. Don’t need my brave strong hero to rescue me from the big bad Loki, you know,” Romanoff teases condescendingly, giving Peggy’s bicep a cheerful pat and a discreet stroke before walking back down the hallway in her near silent footsteps.
Peggy sucks in a deep breath to quell her pounding heart and continues after her.
During their walk back to the lab she stops, turning on her heel to stare through a large metal door into a storage room. Romanoff continues along until she gently taps at her arm, leading her into the alcove.
“I can’t stop thinking about what Stark said,” she whispers. The slightest tinge of blush glows on the tips of Romanoff’s ears at their close proximity, and Peggy leans back with an uncharacteristic sheepishness.
“You might wanna elaborate, Peg. I could write an entire book on random shit I’ve heard Stark say today,” she jokes. Peggy’s lips twitch involuntarily into a smile before she tampers it back down into a serious frown.
“When he asked why Fury didn’t call them onto the project earlier. The clean energy solution from the Tesseract,” she explains. Romanoff’s brows furrow into an unimpressed glare.
“Please don’t fall for Tony’s paranoid bullshit. I need at least one sane person on my side right now,” she snarks. Peg softens a bit.
“Look, you go ahead. I want to check things out a bit. I don’t trust everything I’ve been told here. Call it habit. And please don’t tell anyone,” she pleads. Romanoff’s face twists slightly, into something equally wry and contemplative. Peggy meets her eyes, despite the urge to pull them away, and gently rests her gloved hands on her shoulders. Romanoff shrugs them off and Peggy’s heart falls again.
“Fine. But don’t do anything stupid,” Romanoff reminds, patting her arm once again before walking down the hallway.
Peggy finds blueprints for the Champion of HYDRA’s portal and unused designs for Tesseract powered weapons in a storage room on the Helicarrier, dodging guards and engineers. She marches back up to the lab and slams it on the table, as Fury and Stark both stop their argument to listen to her. How refreshing.
“Phase 2 is where S.H.I.E.L.D. uses the destructive power of the Tesseract to recreate HYRDRA era weaponry. Sorry for the impatience, boys, I’m trained for rolled-sleeves boots-on-the-ground physical espionage rather than digital,” she interjects. Fury’s nose scrunches with annoyance.
His convenient excuse shatters like glass as Dr Banner and Stark show off blueprints of long range missiles, a distinctive blue cube buried in the nose of the design.
“It’s so nice to see the world hasn’t changed one bit since I’ve been gone,” she snaps, arms crossed and tension thrumming through her body.
Romanoff arrives with the blonde demigod, her attempts to remove Dr Banner from the room only met with aggression and demands for answers.
Peggy raises a dubious eyebrow at the immediate passing of blame onto the equally confused blonde demigod. Fury’s excuse is still weak, in her opinion, but she doesn’t say that aloud. Organisations like S.H.I.E.L.D. and the SSR were always “out-gunned”, that’s why they needed heroes and soldiers, not weapons of slaughter.
The arguing and blaming only spirals like a whirlpool, barely stopping even as Peggy interjects with genuine questions like what the bloody hell does a higher form of war mean?
“Big man in a suit of armour, huh?” she jabs out, antagonistic and angry. “Take off that and what are you?”
“Genius, billionaire, playboy, philanthropist,” Stark answers easily. Romanoff rolls her eyes.
“I know people with none of those things worth a dozen of you, Stark. You might think you’re hot shit, but don’t forget, you didn’t build that suit first. You’re nothing compared to Steve. I watched the footage, I read those files. You fight for yourself and no one else,” she cuts deep, words like a knife. Stark’s brow twitches slightly and she pushes the blade in further.
---
When Peggy tells the story to Wilson next week, she’ll describe it as a “fucking shitshow of a mistake”. Wilson, being a mature and well-qualified therapist, will ask her to elaborate.
There isn’t much to elaborate on.
She nearly died multiple times, one of her best friends was mind-controlled and tried to kill her, she met the son of her dead friend wearing a suit of armour near identical to the one piloted by her dead... beau? Romantic interest? Potential husband? One of many names.
And aliens! Aliens. Friendly and not-friendly aliens.
But Captain Peggy Carter is nothing if not an expert in denial, so she decides to put all that mess behind her and continue with her retirement.
Barton is also nothing if not an apologetic and kind sweetheart, who brings lunch without warning while Peggy is halfway through unlocking a very tricky mathematics problem eluding her colleagues at the London S.H.I.E.L.D offices. Romanoff arrives in the same leather jacket she first met her in, and Carter hides her blush with the help of her lunch.
“Something big has come up, Peggy. It’s skip week,” Barton whispers across the table. Peggy opens her bacon and egg sandwich, dumps a handful of hot chips inside and closes it again. Romanoff looks equally disgusted, impressed and confused.
“What is skip week?” she asks. Romanoff rolls her eyes as Barton sputters loudly, drawing the gaze of several wary colleagues.
“It’s only one of the most important events of the year!” he exclaims. Fitzgerald glares at her across the room, eyes half-peeking above his novel. Peggy waves sheepishly.
“Laura and Clint hire a skip for a week to get rid of all the shit he hoards. It’s great fun, and we’re inviting you,” Romanoff explains quickly. Peggy puts her sandwich down and cleans her hands with a napkin.
“Sounds... messy, and a bit fun. But I’ll have to decline, I’m working all week,” she replies calmly. An expression of muted heartbreak and regret flits across Barton’s face before he schools it back into gruff calm. Peggy feels her heart soften like bread dough.
“Clint’s kids want to meet Auntie Peggy, did you know?” Romanoff says smugly.
Peggy sighs and accepts the offer as Barton smiles brightly and Romanoff claps her on the back, looking down at the tabletop with a strained expression.
---
“No! Don’t get rid of that, it’s still useful!”
“Babe... it’s a broom handle. A broken broom handle.”
“It’s not broken, the brush is just missing. I can fix it.”
“With what?”
“... duct-tape?”
“That’s your answer for everything, honey.”
“Don’t put it in the skip! It can be a training weapon for when Lila grows up!”
“Babe. Babe. I love you. But we are throwing out the broom handle.”
“Fine. Fine. Still a waste.”
Peggy listens to their conversation as she sips on a glass of homemade lemonade, watching Cooper sprawl himself across Romanoff’s lap before wrapping her into a crushing hug.
“Auntie-Nattie, Auntie-Nattie, Auntie-Nattie, Auntie-Nattie!” Cooper chants quietly, his eyes bright with wonder and mischief. Romanoff laughs and presses a hard kiss against his temple, face bright with her grin. Peggy smiles softly at the interaction.
“Who is the cutest little Barton baby on the block?” she asks dead-seriously, expression frozen into a gruff and firm glare as Cooper giggles uncontrollably.
“It’s me!” Lila screams as she sneaks up behind Peggy and leaps into her arms. Peggy abruptly spills her lemonade across her face and shirt as she yelps, wincing while Lila wraps her entire head into a hug, wind-pipe protesting with a harsh snap of pain.
“Lila darling, I can’t breathe,” she rasps, jolting again at Lila’s shriek of giggly delight. She runs off across the yard while trying to catch Cooper, leaving Peggy to grumpily clean up her ruined shirt with a towel as Romanoff laughs at her cruelly.
“They’re very frightening enemies, capable of unspeakable evil,” she sooths, voice condescending. Peggy slaps at her arm teasingly and pushes her sunglasses back onto her face, relaxing in the Missouri sunshine.
“Shut up and bring me another glass of lemonade, wastrel,” Peggy mutters bitterly, swatting away flies and sinking back into her seat.
After the short lunchbreak she goes right back to work, rolling up her sleeves and hauling some of the heavier things the Barton’s have accumulated in their shed right into the garish orange skip.
She’s throwing an entire wooden palette into the skip when she realises there’s a nail stuck in her hand, rusty and menacing. She eyes the shard of metal sticking out of the joint of her thumb and pulls it out with a light wince, dumping it in the skip.
She meets Laura’s expression of horror and rushes to explain. She barely gets a word out before Laura drags her into the house as Romanoff cackles in the yard.
Laura bandages her hand while scolding her for waiving her need for work gloves and reminds her that the palettes aren’t to be thrown out but recycled and explains the function of palette tracking. She sends Carter off with a gentle pat on the back and a reminder to take care of herself.
Peggy feels another rush of warm joy filling a deep hole in her heart as she listens to the cheers of the Barton children while she throws an entire fridge into the skip, blushing at Romanoff’s wolf-whistles of approval.
---
Carter wakes up from a vague nightmare sometimes in the early morning, hair heavy with sweat and phantom tentacles dragging across her skin. She throws off the covers and heads into the London streets, wandering across the cold and rainy cobblestones as she shakes of the screams of terror and splatters of cosmic blood.
She takes a day off work and naps again, watching baking shows alone at her home. Romanoff arrives with lunch, and they eat their sushi rolls in silence, eyeing each other with equal suspicion and worry.
The next evening, she books an appointment at her local hairdresser, because her hair grows long past her shoulders and reminds her of those same eldritch appendages that she sliced and hacked through for hours years minutes decades as they drag across her back and neck
She walks into the quaint place, eyes one posters of a woman with billowing hair across her forehead and looping behind her ears and asks for the same style.
That afternoon she cards her fingers through the short waves, shaved down to bristles around her ears and the back of her neck, regret and shame bubbling in her stomach like a bitter stew.
Barton walks into her apartment for dinner, sees her new haircut, and promptly drops the bag of extra-spicy Thai seafood and chicken takeaway in his hands, containers cracking in the plastic bag.
Peggy cleans up the mess with him while laughing at his barrage of confused questions.
Romanoff sees her hair at a meeting with Hill and promptly leaves the room in a rush. Peggy lets her anger, confusion and hurt stew in her chest, the feeling fading as Romanoff returns with a distinctive blush on her cheeks, being elbowed by a smug Barton until she jabs him just above then kidney and he yelps.
---
Maria Hill arrives at Peggy Carter’s front door on April 9th at a sharp 8:15 am with a potted plant in her arms. She grumbles out her birthday wishes and an explanation. The idea was from an offhand sidenote in Peggy’s official profile, a comment from Barnes, her habits of caring for potted plants before and during the war. It’s a small ceramic pot painted with tiny shields and drawings of a bubbly and cartoonish Captain Carter winking and throwing up a peace sign.
It has a sprouting pot of thyme inside it, leaves vibrant and fresh.
Peggy accepts it and wraps her into a hug, ignoring Hill’s wiggling and snapping protests.
It sits proudly on her kitchen bench, basking in the spring sunshine. (A few weeks later she buys a bigger pot to move the steadily growing herb into and replaces the thyme with a small fern).
Barton and Romanoff arrive just before dinnertime cheering and apologising for the flight delay. They bring pairs of socks, a homemade tea-cosy and a shirt with the words “I prevented the destruction of Earth from an interdimensional tentacle monster and I all I got was this stupid T-shirt” and a small Union Jack. It takes several tries to explain the meaning.
They endure Romanoff’s terrible cooking and grill her for the poor attempt at macaroni and cheese, too greasy and salty for perfection but far more edible than the field rations they’ve all suffered through.
They drink and celebrate early into the morning, as Barton retires to the spare bedroom around 4am, eyes half-closed and cheeks dimpled with his grinning.
Peggy offers her bedroom to Romanoff, who appears to completely zone out as she stares into space, her face rapidly turning pale. She jolts away with a squeak muffled through her teeth as Peggy reaches out to check her temperature.
“Really, Natasha. I can take the couch,” she argues. Romanoff stares at her for several more painfully silent seconds.
“Or we could share your bed,” she blurts, eyes widening in mortification. Peggy laughs and agrees to her plan, handing her a bundle of clothes and turning away from her ashen-white face and frozen features.
Romanoff curls up on the opposite side of the queen bed, halfway hanging off the mattress and hand twitching by the gun on the nightstand. Peggy smiles and slides under the covers next to her, falling asleep quickly from exhaustion and a deep contentedness seeping into her bones.
She swears to the ends of the earth that she feels something warm brush her hands in the night, but by the time she wakes up, it’s gone again. Along with Romanoff, who leaves a sticky note glued to her forehead, impossibly neat handwriting filled with curt but polite apologies and the details of a 11:45 meeting that morning.
---
Peggy walks into the physics lab with a cup of coffee in her hand, jet-black slacks and tie with her new rich navy shirt shining in the grey London sunlight. One of her workers whistles and makes a sly comment about red-haired assassins, while Peggy fights off a furious blush and teasingly snaps at them to get back to work.
Romanoff takes one look at her as she brings lunch and abandons the container of shakshouka in her arms, grabbing Peggy’s tie in one hand as she marches her down the office corridor and into an empty meeting room.
Peggy does nothing but sputter and wriggle as Romanoff pushes her against the closed door, grip still firmly held onto her tie and other hand gripping her belt tightly.
Oh. Oh she’s about to kill me. What did I do now? Peggy thinks faintly as Romanoff glares at her with fury and hatred, red flush glowing on her cheeks and ears.
“What the fuck is this?” Romanoff snarls, voice slightly strained. Peggy swallows.
“Is... is something wrong?” she asks. Romanoff makes a sound like she’s dying and Peggy jolts with alarm.
“You can’t just show up to work looking like this,” she complains, eyes roving the rolled-up sleeves of her shirt and the curve of her jaw. Peggy blinks.
“I thought you were angry at me?” she whispers. Romanoff laughs darkly and uses her tie to tug her face closer, meeting her eye. Her pupils are dilated and glinting in the lowlight of the function room.
Oh. She’s aroused. OH. Oh thank God I’m not dying today. Peggy thinks as she scolds herself for imagining that one of her best friends would kill her.
She does look slightly feral and predatory, so maybe murder isn’t quite off the books yet.
“Here’s what we’re going to do,” she growls. Peggy swallows again as her legs go weak, heat flushing through her body. “You are going to stay very far away from me for the day. Or I will do something very bad and very inappropriate in front of some very important people. And then. And then,” her voice is hoarse. Peggy is sweating through her lovely navy shirt. Her tie is getting dangerously stretched.
“I will be coming to your house at 10:30 pm, and you will be wearing this outfit, and I am going to do filthy things to you. And then maybe we’ll talk about the dumb feeling part of this,” she snaps, jabbing a finger into Carter’s chest and glowering at her.
If Romanoff wasn’t pinning her to the door, Peggy would’ve already collapsed into a boneless heap on the floor.
“I understand perfectly,” she murmurs, something strained and dangerously non-situation appropriate trying to escape her throat.
“Wonderful,” Romanoff grunts as she releases Peggy’s tie and marches out of the door angrily. Peggy tries uselessly to fix up her clothes and calm down her flush.
When she gets back to her workstation, she finds Barton with his feet propped up on her desk and the shakshouka in his lap.
His smug grin as he takes a bite could power a jet-plane, so Carter steals back the container and shoves him off the chair with a sigh, clearing her throat as he lingers around her desk and smirks at her knowingly.