Work Text:
*
She calls from the office to let him know she’ll be home that evening as has been their custom since moving in together and getting married. Perhaps it had been a little hasty, how quickly the plans came together, but Steve pressed that he no longer was going to make his heart wait. And for Peggy, this, loving each other, cohabitating, was a long-understood conclusion. If only they got the chance.
And they have more than a second chance.
He picks up on the third ring and his voice quickly soothes her mission-set wariness. He promises dinner and ends with an earnest “I love you Peggy.”
Despite still being surround by agents, she smiles and responds in kind.
“I love you too my darling.”
Even without being able to see him, his light chuckle gives away everything. She can picture his pink cheeks and still slightly disbelieving smile. If he was in front of her, she’d kiss him to confidence. Perhaps it was best they were miles apart. After all, her debriefing report still needed to be written.
Exhaustion sets in and by the time she makes it to the front door of their house, she gives no resistance to Steve helping her in and settling her on the sofa. He presses a light kiss to her lips that she deepens until his breath hitches. She will never tire of that sound.
Even a quick meal at their dining table wears her out. Her shoulder is killing her. She wonders if she pulled it or if it’s just residual pain from how she landed when she intercepted the target of her mission. When she looks up, Steve’s held out his hand. She takes it and he leads her into the bathroom. He starts filling the tub as she pulls her hair back. He’s there a moment later to help her out of her clothing, carefully undoing buttons and folding her clothing to avoid tough wrinkles he knows she hates ironing out. She’s down to her underwear when she feels his lips at her spine before he unlatches the last of her confining garment.
The soft smile he gives her when she turns makes her feel warmer than the steam radiating from the bath.
“Stay?” Peggy murmurs after he helps her into the bath.
Steve leans to press a kiss to her hair.
“I’ll stay.”
He gets into the bath, chest pressed against her back as he circles his arm around her waist and pulls her close. She sighs as her body relaxes to the twin comforts of warm water and Steve’s touch. Peggy leans her head back and Steve presses another kiss there.
Without being asked, he takes stock of her shoulders and back, categorizing the taut muscles and colorful bruises. He starts with a kiss to her right shoulder, right where the twin scars are. His touch is reverent, delicate, protective. It’s a gentle balm.
Then, he starts to work his hands to loosen the knots in her back, ridding her shoulders of tension. She can tell he’s following the direction of her hitched breath as he works his way down her spine.
He works her with familiarity. With respect. And she could so easily drift off under his care, head pillowed at the junction of his arm and chest.
She must drift off indeed because she’s startled back into consciousness by a touch to her legs.
“Sorry Peg,” he murmurs in her ear at her hum of confusion. His hand holds a soapy washcloth that he’d been running down the length of her legs. “I was hoping to clean up you and get you to bed without waking you.”
She’s not nearly awake enough for a true response, so instead she turns her head and presses a kiss to the far side of his chest. His grip on the inside of her thigh tightens briefly.
“I’m awake now,” she murmurs. “I have to finish the rest of my beauty routine if I hope to look agreeable tomorrow.”
Steve makes a disgruntled noise but doesn’t comment. After all he knows just how dedicated she is to her pre-bedtime schedule. He helps her into her nightgown, delicate ivory straps slipping onto her shoulders, before fetching her cold cream and hair pins, his deft hands assisting with both.
While she sits at the vanity and starts applying her night cream, a familiar smell to both of them as it’s the same brand she used whenever she was able to procure it during the war, Steve gently lets her hair loose. He grabs the first of her hair pins and starts working her hair into coils, just as he’s watched her do routinely over the past few months. She pauses her own work for a moment just to watch the furrow of concentration in his brow. She’s never asked him for help, except for that time he offered when she struggled that week her fingers were swollen from a punch-out with a thieving black-market arms dealer. The sight of him, focused on getting her hair right to her standards makes her all warm inside again. Her sleepy eyes meet his in the vanity mirror, her exhaustion not preventing her from quirking her brow and lip in tandem in amusement.
Steve grins and leans down to press a kiss to her bare shoulder. She can tell just how proud he is in knowing she trusts him with something as delicate and exact as her bedtime routine. Which of course if she were more awake, she’d tell him was silly, because she trusts him with her heart and her life, of course she would trust him with doing his best to set pin-curls.
While her eyes struggle to stay open, Steve continues working, the gentle feeling of his fingers in her hair lulling her further to sleep.
Once he’s finished, Peggy practically nodding off in her seat, he presses another kiss to her shoulder before carrying her the few steps to their bed.
Their thick, plush comforter falls over her as Steve tucks her in. She has to fight to stay conscious, not quite ready to succumb to sleep. She grabs for him until her hand curls around his bicep. He slides in, heads resting close on the pillows. She reaches her hand up to curl around his cheek, thumbing at his cheekbone and jawline.
“I missed you,” he murmurs, the same way he has for months.
She hums in response. “It’s good to be home, my darling.”
Falling asleep pressed against him is a life-affirming gift she refuses to take for granted. She slips her leg between his and holds him close.
*
He’s weary and worn out but having Peggy close always brightens his mood. Especially now that returning from a long mission means coming home to her. There’s no better feeling then their reunions in the front hall, her warm kisses, the comfort of arms wrapped around each other. Knowing he doesn’t have to let go, and that if he does, he’ll be able to hold her close again as much as he desired. And he desires quite a lot.
Despite his unique amount of life experience, this most recent mission leaves him wary and worn out more so than usual. After kissing his wife deeply, and telling her how much he loves her, he thinks he needs to clear his mind a little. The last thing he wants is to bring anything negative home, not when he could lay it down elsewhere and remember that being home with Peggy is more than he could have ever imagined. That having the right partner with you means never having to shoulder the weight alone.
And yet old habits die hard.
Once he’s properly kissed Peggy, the life-affirming passion that he never tires of, his first course of action is to head into the bathroom as was his usual habit. Cold water to wash his face and a clean shave, a gesture of creating his own clean slate. This one requires more work than usual as he’s grown a beard and moustache during his three-week absence.
He runs his fingers through the prickly hairs. It’s the first time he’s been less than clean shaven since the time he let go of another identity he had been trying on a lifetime ago.
His mind drifts into stranger, melancholic memories as still happens on occasion.
Steve peels off his button-up, leaving only his undershirt as he grips the countertop and stares at his reflection. He gets as far as pulling out the shaving kit and setting it by the sink, but his mind is still distracted.
Before he can so much as take out his straight razor, Peggy pokes her head into the room.
“You alright, my love?”
Knowing that he’s Peggy’s husband, her love, never fails to make him smile. Still, she quirks her brow at him, takes the shaving kit from his hand and asks him to sit down.
“Do you mind, darling?” she asks in a warm quiet tone that he loves as she so rarely uses it, only meant for him.
“Mind?”
He’s not sure what he means exactly, but far be it for him to push her away.
“Your facial hair,” she says. “I thought I would help you clean it up. We can keep some of it if you’re partial to it.”
He cracks a grin in spite of the exhaustion.
“It’s kind of itchy,” he admits. She responds only with a hum and reaching her hand over to push his hair from his forehead. “What do you think of me with a beard?”
Peggy quirks her brow and her lips twitch upwards. She continues to run her red lacquered nails though his hair.
“I don’t despite it as much as I do your overgrown and too long sideburns. Or how desperately you need to get your hair trimmed in the back. But perhaps I’m nostalgic to the way I had you during the war.”
Steve snorts. “That bad, huh?”
Peggy’s smirk grows, her hand still playing in his hair. “You’re still the most handsome man.”
He shakes his head good-naturedly. “You hate it. What if I give you permission to trim me to perfection?”
Peggy settles herself on his lap and leans in quickly to press a deep kiss to his lips, pulling away to see his dazed look. He quirks his brow in question.
“You are perfect,” she says earnestly. “You might however, also be well groomed.”
Steve takes her waist and kisses her with a long linger. She remains perched on his lap, stroking up his jaw, allowing him to distract her from the task at hand. While his hands move, one to cup her hip, the other on the softness of her thigh, hers continue to stroke his face, and he could sit here with her forever.
He chases her lips when she does pull away. She grins but keeps a firm distance between their mouths that he wants to so badly close.
“But back to your beard. You didn’t say if you were partial to it,” she says.
“Not particularly,” he admits honestly. “It was something I tried on at one point. When I thought I wasn’t who or what I thought that I should be. I thought it would make me feel more… like me.”
“And did it?” she asks softly.
He shakes his head. “Looking back, it was a way of hiding. Of distancing myself. Maybe I needed it then. But I don’t anymore. And really, this time it was only lack of access to a straight razor that’s kept me from shaving it off.”
Peggy strokes up his cheek until she’s got his whole face cupped in her hands. He gives himself over so easily, his gaze open and trusting.
“For the record, in the right circumstances and when properly kept so that it does not scratch me when kissing you, I do believe you could pull off facial hair,” she tells him.
It makes him laugh, and he ducks his head to rest against her collarbone. He feels her press a kiss to the top of his head.
“Let me clean you up my love,” she murmurs.
Apart from a few barbershop visits, something he seldom needed until his twenties anyway, no one has ever touched him like this. He’s never considered anyone would want, let alone offer, to take care of him like this. He’s never had any idea the intimacy of a partner caring for him like this.
She works with skill, but he’s always known her hands to be deft, whether that be with a gun, a typewriter or his bare skin.
Her movements are exacting, gentle as she carefully applies the shaving cream, followed by sweeping sure strokes of the razor. Even if she nicked him he wouldn’t care. His heart feels so heavy with emotion. To be here. With her. In their home, just able to care for each other.
When she’s finished, her lips quirked in a bothering on smug grin, he sets the kit away, grabs her around the waist in a swiftness that catches her off guard.
Steve squeezes her tighter to him as her laughter rings through the tiled bathroom. He kisses her hard and leads her to their bed.
He would not trade the comforts of home for anything at all.