Chapter Text
The girls invite him to the dinner that they’re having, though Tillie jokes that it’s just because they’re all tired and want to draft him into cooking. The hotel they’ve been parked for their Christmas break has a tree, and he actually earns enough that he’d be able to put something under it this year.
But they ended up in Delaware for the week, close enough to Washington that when Senator Brandt had mentioned “a little Christmas Eve get-together” that he was having, Steve hadn’t been able to come up with an excuse.
The party is in some swanky downtown hotel. Steve had worked for a while as a waiter at a slightly less ostentatious place in Manhattan, and he almost wishes he was holding a tray tonight. Even the senator had thought that sticking Steve in his costume was ridiculous, but the uniform that was recommended instead feels even more false and uncomfortable. You don’t earn a uniform like this with magic muscles and some good stage patter. The only blessing is that they hadn’t stuck on the medals Captain America had allegedly won during his soundstage missions. Steve goes out of his way to avoid the actual uniformed officers there tonight; they don’t seek him out, which helps.
On the other hand, everyone else at the party seems as if they can’t think of a better thing to do than spend Christmas Eve shaking his hand. More than one couple tells him that their children have seen him in the newsreels or at a show, that they’ve been collecting the comics where he’s featured, and he smooths his face and resists the urge to ask whether their children will really be more pleased with Captain America’s autograph than with their parents spending the holiday at home.
By ten in the evening, Steve’s hand feels so sore that he’s considering asking for a refund on the procedure. Instead, he spots a door down the hallway with a little plaque beside it reading Library. He grips a smile to his face as he moves slowly through the room, and within five minutes, he’s leaning with his eyes closed, his back against the door, and letting out a sigh.
“Well, Captain, let no one say that your evasive maneuvers aren’t impressive.”
He startles up, not because he doesn’t recognize the voice, but because he does, immediate and disbelieving. He scans the room, all the stereotypical private library trappings - heavy wood panels, fireplace, shelves and shelves of heavy, pompously bound books - until he notices her face peering shadowed from behind a high-backed brocade armchair.
“Agent Carter.” He checks around the room once again, just to make sure he hasn’t stumbled into some sort of top secret meeting and happened to miss an entire group of military members and covert operatives. Apparently it’s just her, or else he needs to give spies a hell of a lot more credit. He steps forward. “I hadn’t realized you were here.”
“Colonel Phillips was detained and sent me to appease the room in his stead.” He still can’t see her entirely, but her tone indicates that Colonel Phillips has been detained by his lack of desire to attend this event. Agent Carter gestures, motioning Steve to take a seat in the chair beside her.
“I don’t actually remember Colonel Phillip being the appeasing type.” Steve comes around the chair to sit, just in time to see her smile.
Agent Carter has her hair perfectly curled, her lipstick still fresh at the end of the night. She wears her uniform rather than a formal dress, and it looks like she’s earned it.
“Typically I am the more conciliatory of the two of us. However, like the colonel and Mr. Churchill, I also began to find appeasement a bit ineffective this evening.” She holds a book in her hands, a slim volume that doesn’t match those along the walls. She closes it, looking down at the cover and then back up at him. “One can only be told so many times that it was a shame that all the boys were overseas or I could be at home instead of forced to enlist. I generally prefer a more stimulating conversation without quite so much pigeonholing.”
Steve leans back in his chair. He wants to unbutton his jacket, but hers is so regulation crisp. “I don’t think that you’ll find that here. This crowd is pretty happy to pigeonhole.”
“It is an especially unfortunate way to spend Christmas Eve.”
“I’m sure you had plans, too,” says Steve. “Bet your family wishes that they could see you.” He says it softly, trying for casual, but he knows that she likely picked up on his attempt to find out more about her.
Fortunately, she just looks amused. He’s stepped in it every time they’ve been around each other thus far, so maybe she expects it by now. “Unfortunately, with the demands of my work, a celebration together was never likely.”
“Well, you must have some family traditions. Maybe we could recreate one here.”
Something changes about her smile, something to do with the blink of her eye, the tip of her head. “We’re a largely traditional family, I have to say. My father and brother would insist on singing through our old book of carols in its entirety, despite their dreadful voices. My mother would make a decent turkey that would keep us in leftovers for days, and she would invest hours in getting the pudding absolutely perfect. And at the end of the night, we’d all end up toasting things in the sitting room fire.” There’s a closed door nostalgia to her voice, a sense that she’ll never be able to go back to those tender times. She blinks, sighs a sharply audible breath in and out, and when she’s finished, she looks wry instead of soft and sad. “One year my brother almost lit his socks on fire. Then he outdid himself the next by nearly catching my hair.”
“We already have one step taken care of in the way of traditions.” Steve gestures to the fireplace in front of them. “I bet we could scrounge up something to toast.”
“There’s isn’t much in here to put in the fire except the books,” she reminds him. “I don’t think they’ll toast well, and I do have a firm stance against book burning.”
“I don’t think anyone here’ll miss ‘em,” Steve says. He has the feeling that he’d have to cut apart the pages himself to open any one of the volumes lining the shelves, and he wouldn’t even be surprised if he opened up the fancy covers and found only white paper. “But I take your point.”
“And what about you? Any Christmas traditions that we can attempt?”
“I always looked forward to the orange in my stocking. One year, I forgot to fix up the hole in my sock and I guess the orange pressed on it all night ‘til the hole was big enough for the orange to slip out and roll away. I spent half an hour trying to track it down. I didn’t even think our place was big enough to hide something for that long.” He grins a little, remembering how steamed he’d been. Now the memory feels sweet and cushioned, the words needing gentle, loving speaking. “When I finally found it, my ma told me I should be glad it was an orange and not an apple - no bruises on an orange, and the skin it was sitting around in peels right off.”
She laughs. “Good advice. Very practical woman, your mother.”
“She really was,” Steve says. He has relaxed a bit in the chair, feeling finally a bit comfortable with her, feeling heart-full in a way he hasn’t in a long time. He’s about to tell her about the time his mother had gotten him watercolors and let him use them on the windows when he was confined to bed for half of December and into January, but the door opens behind them and they both still.
“Rogers, good, there you are.” Senator Brandt’s loud voice makes Steve suddenly aware of the sounds of the party still in progress outside. “Break’s over, Ned Fuller’s finally here and he’d love to chat. And if you could figure out a way to bring up your feelings about flood control, I think it’d really be worth your while.”
Steve forces himself to stand. He locks eyes with Agent Carter, pressed small and silent in her armchair with her feet tucked up, no broad shoulders or stray elbows to give her away. She gives him a smile and a wink. He knows he must smile back - it’s automatic, smiling when he looks at her - but the senator leads him away before he can even mouth a goodbye.
The party finally ends, the last people laughing and waving at Steve and the senator. Steve waves back, hoping they’ll mistake his gritted teeth for a smile, and considers how big a headache he’d have if he could still get headaches.
They’re putting Steve up in Washington for the night, but not even Captain America gets as ritzy a bedroom as the ones in the hotel where the party had been. He’s staying across town, and after the endless shaking of endless hands, he’s never been happier to see a simple bed and dresser setup.
His eyes already closed, he flops onto the mattress, trying not to do it with his full weight, and lies facedown for a moment, his hands draping off the bed and onto the floor.
His fingers brush against something just poking out under the dust ruffle. Frowning, he grasps it and picks it up.
The orange doesn’t come with a note. He puts it on his nightstand, and the next morning holds it carefully the entire train ride back to Delaware, where the girls tease him for not coming back with a better souvenir and tell him he’s looking strangely goony-eyed.
He doesn’t know how exactly it got to his room, but he has a good enough idea.