Archive of Our Own

Peggy is smart with her money. As the sole remaining Carter, she’d inherited the entirety of her parents’ estate as well as the modest amount left by her brother, which left her with a decent nest egg even after paying for law school. She’d retained a financial advisor - after much searching for one who didn’t condescend to her - keeping her investments conservative but canny, and her partner’s salary at her Lexington Avenue firm took care of her needs and allowed her savings besides.

The financial security she’d built for herself more than paid off when, at thirty-four with no potential romantic interests on the horizon, she realized that she wanted to be a mother. It meant that she could comfortably afford the fertility clinic, the donor sperm, the gynecologist visits, the procedure costs. And it also meant that when her colleagues pasted on smiles and cut off conversations when she came into the room, when the woman from HR bit her lip and widened her eyes as Peggy sat across from her discussing the maternity leave policy, when the senior partners took her to lunch and informed her that they would of course never presume to interfere with her decisions about her own life, but was she certain that being a single mother would be conducive to maintaining the standard that they expected from her - in short, when it became obvious that her current job and her future child were essentially mutually exclusive factors - she was able to quit.

She had realized that she was not likely to go job hunting in the four months before the baby was born, especially as she did not expect the attitudes of the other major firms to be any more evolved. She had planned to spend the time relaxing and getting ready for the baby - preparing the nursery, ensuring that she had all the necessary supplies, looking at childcare options for when she did eventually go back to work, coming to terms with the fact that soon there would truly be a new person who she’d brought into the world.

What she hadn’t realized, however, was just how bored she would be. All the bassinet shopping in the world and the most rigorous search for the perfect quote for the nursery wall could not fill her time. She started volunteering with Legal Aid, working on immigration and tenant’s rights cases pro bono, and she still made certain to register for the highest rated birthing class which began as soon as she hit her third trimester.

She had known that it was going to be a bit awkward to come to class alone. They might be in New York, and she would likely not be the only one planning on raising a baby without a partner, but she suspects that nearly everyone else will bring someone, a parent or sibling or friend. However, she is realizing that, despite the old colleagues and classmates who texted about hosting a baby shower or how they must meet up soon, there wasn’t truly anyone in her life who she would want beside her for the birth.

So she puts on a blue dress and her soft maternity leggings and brings herself over to Brooklyn. It’s a lovely spring evening, and she passes quite a lot of people pushing prams on the way; she smiles back at them, but mostly finds herself placing a hand over her own belly. She never would have considered herself the type before, but when she’s lying in bed at night or lounging on the sofa, she speaks to the baby - absent little things, mostly, about her cases or her latest craving or what’s on her agenda for the week. It feels private and lovely, the idea that this little person will come out already knowing the sound of her voice.

She arrives at the class to find that her suspicion had been right: there are people who aren’t wearing rings or are with same gender partners, there are two couples attending with their surrogates and a pair of women who are too alike to be anything other than sisters, but Peggy is the only one who came alone.

Not alone, she thinks to herself firmly, the baby kicking inside of her.

The first class is mostly introductory material, the instructor balanced serenely on a yoga ball as she has them say their names and anything else relevant that they feel comfortable sharing. This turns out to be ill-advised in Peggy’s opinion, as more than one person rambles on with inane biographical details or overshares about gruesome labor experiences during previous pregnancies. When it’s her turn, she merely says, “I’m Peggy - thirty weeks along, and a single mother by choice,” and nods for the next person to go ahead.

She tries to remember the names of the others, and a few do stick. The woman accompanying her sister, for example, is Angie, wry and funny with no shortage of inserted comments about the absence of her future niece or nephew’s father. Carol is a labor and delivery nurse herself, clearly there at the insistence of her husband, who’s sitting ramrod straight and clutching a notebook and pen - “I think I might have brought home a few too many graphic stories,” Carol says, patting his shoulder. “But those are just the more interesting ones to mention!”

The last woman to speak looks familiar, although Peggy can’t quite place her. Hands rubbing a small circle on her neat little belly, she introduces herself with a smile as Pepper. “This is my first pregnancy,” she tells everyone. “I didn’t think I’d get a chance to be a mom - I didn’t think my husband would ever be ready for it, if I’m being honest. But here we are, so I feel very lucky. Oh!” She looks up as the man accompanying her returns, settling gently behind her as he hands her a paper cup of water. “Thank you. And this is Steve, everyone.”

There is, Peggy thinks, no need to point him out to everyone. Between his broad shoulders and tapered waist, the extremely apparent muscles that he has accented with a simple blue Oxford with the sleeves cuffed to his forearms, and his extremely soft and well-kempt hair and beard, he is essentially the best looking man she, or likely anyone else in the room, has ever seen in the flesh. And he is looking right back at her.

Peggy has, luckily, gained some good skills as a student and at trial. She’s able to look at the handouts about fetal development and take in the information being offered as the instructor begins the section on “physical and emotional care during your pregnancy,” all the while extremely aware of the man across the room.

Steve asks careful questions, the kind which make it clear that he has been listening closely, occasionally looking to clarify or get more specific regarding what the instructor has said but never for a moment making her cover material which she has already described. He is attentive to Pepper, leaning in to make small remarks to her, helping her to her feet as the group is led through some brief stretches, deferring questions about the particulars of the pregnancy to her without making it about his own experiences.

And yet, more than once, Peggy catches him glancing over in her direction.

She’s never considered entering a relationship with someone who already has a partner, and wouldn’t want to be with anyone who would consider such a thing. Steve is married, she reminds herself sharply as they pack their things at the end of the session. His wife is having a baby, as is Peggy herself. She is simply just going to have to get through the remainder of the classes with him and then their paths will never cross again.

Never mind that he’s gorgeous, or how much she appreciated his attentive nature, or enjoyed the sound of his voice.

She arrives precisely on time to the second lesson, ensuring little opportunity for socializing, although she does wish she’d come a bit sooner when she realizes that she’s entering just on the tail end of a story of Angie’s which has the rest of the group grinning.

She sits far across the room from Steve, focusing on the instructor’s descriptions of Braxton Hicks, the signs and stages of actual labor, and some thankfully mostly encouraging statistics about premature births. Finally she says, “After a bit of a break, we’ll be having some facilitated partner discussion about what to do during the early stage of labor, as well as beginning to work on some exercises to do together as your baby is preparing to be born.”

Peggy makes her ungainly way out of her chair, hoping it will only take a moment to secure the instructor as her stand-in partner so she can get over to the refreshments before the pita chips are finished - she’s been having tremendous salt cravings all through the day. But before she’s even moved a few steps, there’s a tap on her shoulder, and she turns to see Steve standing behind her.

“Um,” he says and then stops.

“Can I help you?” She knows that her tone is not welcoming in the slightest, and that’s how she wants to keep it, without anything he might perceive as an opening.

“I was wondering—” He visibly takes in a bolstering breath, and although she has perfected her imperious demeanor on many before him, although she has determined not to allow any warmth toward him, it is somehow endearing to her. “Well, there are partner exercises coming up, and I thought I might step in. If you needed one. A partner.”

“You have a wife,” Peggy reminds him, all sense of endearment gone and her voice dropping from unwelcoming to outright frigid. “You’re meant to be helping her.”

She clenches a fist at her side, but Steve only looks jolted, absolutely, nakedly startled.

“I—A what?” His eyes widen. “You don’t think that—Pepper and I aren’t married!”

“Your girlfriend, then. Domestic partner.” She starts to turn away, growing more disappointed with this conversation, not to mention that the pita chips are surely dwindling.

“Pepper and I aren’t together at all,” Steve says, voice still a polite volume but quite desperate now. “We never have been. Look!”

And as Peggy shifts her gaze, she suddenly remembers where she recognizes Pepper from. It was that Time magazine cover which got so much pushback several years ago: The Woman Behind the Man had been the headline, Tony Stark in the foreground, along with, smaller and somewhat in his shadow, Virginia Potts, the new CEO of Stark Industries and Stark’s eventual wife.

The two of whom are currently standing with their heads bent together, laughing slightly at something on his StarkPhone screen. His hand is gently massaging her lower back.

“Tony and I are friends...well, sort of,” Steve says. “He knew he couldn’t make the first session and felt bad about leaving Pepper alone, and I live nearby, so he asked me to fill in. Then something came up today, but he was able to slip in the back. That’s sort of a feat for Tony, trust me - quiet entry isn’t exactly his strong suit.”

“I’d imagine not,” she says, trying to rearrange everything she thought she’d understood about the situation. “It was kind of you to step in.”

He shrugs. “I like Pepper, and anyway, there’s no reason not to do a favor if you can. It’s why I asked if maybe you need a hand…”

That awkwardness is back, and she nearly says no, tells him to go on his way and enjoy the rest of the evening, she’ll be just fine with the instructor. But then the woman herself walks over and, having apparently picked up enough clues as to what is going on, comments that if they’re both comfortable with that, it would be so helpful to give her a chance to walk around the room and work one on one with everyone.

Peggy isn’t one to be pressured into anything - she paid for the class and she’ll advocate for herself as needed to make certain that she gets what she’s due. But it would be a kindness to everyone else in the group, and surely it won’t make a terrible difference whether the person helping her will be one stranger who won’t actually be in the delivery room or the other...?

And so they move into the second part of the session, Peggy (thankfully fortified with some hastily snatched pita chips) moves through the poses with Steve spotting and supporting her. As vaguely uncomfortable as he evidently is, his hands are assured; she has no trouble trusting him to help her balance on the birthing ball or as they’re following along with the forward-leaning inversion. When he’s helping to guide her limbs through the side-lying release, he does it with regular, low-voiced inquiries to ensure that she’s comfortable, both because of the position and because it involves far more touching than anything else so far. She even likes his shy, genuine laugh at the involuntary moan she lets out when her leaning over the ball releases the knotted tension in her low back.

The last of the exercises is a partnered yoga flow. Peggy almost wants to object and leave early. Everything else Steve has stepped in for today can be done on her own or by a professional helping her on the day, but her birth journey simply is not going to feature someone who will sit at home with her calming her through the early stages. However, she reasons that most of the particular movements can likely be done just as easily without someone else, so she guides herself to sit back to back with Steve, closing her eyes and listening to the instructor.

“Try to match your breath to your partner’s,” she says, and Peggy finds that she doesn’t have to: she and Steve were already breathing in sync.

In the privacy of her own head, she can admit to being just a touch disappointed when she arrives for the third week of class and finds Tony and Pepper seated together with no Steve in sight. Nevertheless, she waves to them and seats herself beside Angie to chat, then pays careful attention to the admittedly somewhat gruesome videos that they’re shown and the discussion of medicated versus unmedicated childbirth.

When she exits out into the dusk afterward, the last one in the inevitable line for the toilet and therefore the last to leave, and spots Steve on the sidewalk, earbuds in as he walks, she does have the feeling that her reaction is a bit less than private: she can’t help the smile which comes over her face, and she barely thinks before she’s stepping down toward him to say hello. It would only be polite, after all, to thank him for his help last week.

It’s evident after only a few moments that they want to keep chatting, but also that her back and legs and feet - her general physical form, in fact - would prefer that she be seated while doing so. Conveniently, he knows a good coffee shop around the corner.

They each order a large mug of tea - rooibos chai for her, chamomile citrus for him - and he watches with clear amusement as she talks herself into a small raspberry hazelnut bar as well.

“Sorry that it’s a little hipster,” he apologizes as they take a seat at one of the tables by the large front windows. The light has turned blue and misty outside. “It’s hard to avoid around here at this point. Not to be ‘back in my day’ about it, but the neighborhood’s changed a lot since then.”

She takes a sip of her tea - a nice blend, and she will say that pregnancy has required her to explore outside her old standards of coffee, Earl Grey, and English breakfast. Gracious, she misses caffeine sometimes, though. “You grew up here?”

“Born and raised, yeah. Plenty of my friends have stayed around too, although plenty more have been priced out.” His mouth screws tight, as if he’s holding back a whole tirade on gentrification and lack of affordable housing opportunities and the destruction of community ties. “I was lucky - my mom’s old place is rent controlled, so I didn’t have much trouble when she passed. I probably couldn’t have afforded to stay here on my salary otherwise.”

“What is it that you do?”

“I’m the Director of Education and Programming at the Brooklyn Museum.”

She sits back, trying to examine him without being obvious about it. She doesn’t know what she had expected him to say; he would be an unusually good-looking accountant or human resources representative, after all, but there’s little about him that marks him as an artistic type, no graphic tees or arresting scarves, no casual mentions of his friend who’s doing a gallery show uptown or the tickets he got to the new off-off-Broadway sensation.

“It’s a great job,” he says, seemingly oblivious to her perusal. “I was studying Art History over at Brooklyn College and I got a summer internship—” His face contorts a bit, seemingly involuntarily, as he thinks about the concept. “—and I added a Children and Youth Studies major that fall and was able to get the position pretty soon after I graduated. It’s been amazing - although obviously it means that I haven’t gotten out of my comfort zone much, the way you have.”

“What makes you say that?” She leans into her accent a bit, taking another sip of tea and blinking slowly as he sits with suddenly wide eyes. “I’m joking Steve,” she says, smiling, before he can start to stutter an apology. “I moved from London for law school. My parents and my brother had all passed, so there wasn’t very much keeping me there. I wanted to try somewhere new, and happily it worked out.”

“And you’ve never considered going back?”

It truly is a skill, to ask questions in a way which conveys pure interest and not a shred of judgement either way, and perhaps that is what spurs her to honesty rather than brushing it off.

“I did think about it a few months ago. It’s extraordinarily expensive to give birth here, and I’d recently left my job, so it isn’t as if I was tied to very much. But my professional contacts are here - that will be advantageous when I do start looking for a new position - and although relocating across the ocean while five months pregnant isn’t the worst idea in the world, it certainly isn’t the best.”

“Well, I have to say, I’m pretty glad to hear it.” He looks down into his mug, running a finger along the rim.

She quirks a brow. “Oh? Too patriotic to allow people to want to leave?”

“No, I can guarantee that there’s plenty about this country that makes that easy to understand.” He laughs softly, shaking his head, and lifts his eyes to face her. “I just meant that if you’d left, I’d never have gotten a chance to get to know you.”

“Oh.” She clears her throat, telling herself that she’s startled, maybe even a bit uncomfortable, rather than touched. But his tone is so genuine, his hand shaking just a little, that it’s hard to pretend, even in her own head. “I suppose I’m glad to have met you, too.”

As they move from the fourth session’s discussions of the theory of relaxation techniques and laboring positions to the practical applications, Peggy finds herself wishing that Tony Stark had gotten caught up in something so that he’d been unable to attend. It’s an absurd thought: if Steve were filling in again, he would spend the class partnered with Pepper, as he had agreed. Even sillier, they had exchanged numbers after their meeting the previous week and have actually been texting, so if she wanted him here for herself, she could have just asked; certainly it would have been odd, but working with the instructor is not nearly as seamless, and besides, Steve seems the type to want to lend a hand even when it’s unconventional.

Regardless, he couldn’t have said yes, to her or Pepper or anyone else. As he’d told her while they were messaging yesterday afternoon, he’s working late this evening, supervising a family art workshop at the museum until after 9.

(We do plenty of stuff earlier in the afternoon and on weekends, he’d explained, but I want to make sure there’s a chance for all sorts of folks to come, no matter what their schedules.)

They finish class just before 8, and it strikes Peggy, as she and Angie bid each other goodbye at the street corner, that there’s no particular reason for her to go home. The baby is fairly calm, just shifting a bit, and she’d been so hungry that she’d eaten before class, so there’s no need to rush home to have some dinner.

The museum is on her route anyway.

There aren’t very many people browsing so shortly before closing, and she’s warned by no fewer than four employees that she won’t have very much time in the galleries. Nevertheless, she consults the brochure and the placards as she walks slowly past the entrancing exhibit of Kehinde Wiley paintings in the Great Hall, and absorbs the history and colorful, abstract shapes of the Williamsburg Murals in the Glass Hallway.

Even without the map, she knows when she’s approaching the Education Center, the bustle of activity and cheerful chattering of young voices apparent even before the space comes into sight, so different from the hush of the rest of the museum. It’s a large room, with plenty of cabinet and closet space and easily adaptable furniture. Right now, long tables are set up with an apparent explosion of fabric scraps, groups of adults and children gathered over them, excitedly planning and working diligently; they seem to be making quilt squares.

Steve, in a blue-checked Oxford and gray chinos, identification lanyard dangling from his neck, is crouching next to a pair of girls with braids and matching pink dresses, laughing as they show him something on their project. He seems to joke back to them, expression sly as they collapse into giggles.

She is struck suddenly with the vision of herself at an event like this with her own child one day. Not soon - the rest of her pregnancy, first, and the birth, those early months and years of late-night feedings and learning to smile and crawl and speak, developing curiosity and humor - but one day, she might sit at a table here and make an artifact, create a memory, with the person who is living inside of her now. She’d never thought of herself as sentimental - she’d brought few enough things with her to New York, and has never longed much for London - but she finds herself already treasuring the idea of having something for them to keep and love despite its imperfections, something which will have a place in the home that she and her child share together.

And somehow Steve, who looks up and finds her standing there, who gives a small wave, joy quieted but still present on his face, seems to fit into that picture without trouble.

She doesn’t respond to the messages Steve sends later that evening or the next day, can’t quite bring herself even to read them. It had been simple, growing to be friends with Steve. She had liked it. She had liked him, liked his passion and his humor and his consideration, his careful hands, liked the way he saw what and who she was and, without flinching, seemed to like her in return.

It is not fear, perhaps, which makes her push away the prospect of more. She labels it prudence, caution, respect for herself and her baby. Her due date is approaching so rapidly, after all. She can’t afford to have the potential of another relationship distracting from the one she’ll be forming with her child.

While the next class’s descriptions of potential birthing complications and interventions thankfully do not require any partner work, Peggy finds herself coming away from the session tense, regardless of the instructor’s calm and reassuring demeanor. They also leave with homework: to think through, if not write down, their birthing plan.

It had been something Peggy had already considered a priority, so she sits down that evening, leaning back on the sofa with the form resting against her belly. Many of the spaces are filled in easily - the hospital she’s chosen to deliver at, that she’ll be wearing a gown rather than her own clothes, how she will walk around as much as she can at the start and wants continuous fetal monitoring as things progress. She has established opinions and even when she notes that she isn’t certain of something, at least the terminology feels manageable, the class and her doctor having prepared her well.

But she can’t avoid the places where she can’t request things she suddenly realizes that she’d like to: there will be no option of a partner stepping in for skin-on-skin if she needs medical intervention after the birth, no one who might accompany the baby to the NICU while she isn’t able to if it comes to that. Even though she’d known that they would be left blank, the emptiness of the spaces at the top for those supporting her during the birth seems to press in on her.

She falls briefly asleep without meaning to - the ways that her body seems to have a mind of its own have been one of her least favorite surprises during her pregnancy. When she wakes up, without truly considering it, she sends a message to Steve.

I’m afraid that the baby won’t have anyone but me to love them.

He writes back nearly immediately: Can I call you?

When the call comes, she almost lets it ring out even though she’d said yes. But in the end, she takes in a deep breath and answers.

“My family was always small,” she says quietly. “Only my parents, my brother, and me. All of my grandparents died before I was ten, and they had no other children. My mother wasn’t unsociable, but she always had acquaintances more than friends, and I—I worry that I’ve done the same thing. And when it was only me, it was alright that my social life was limited to benefits for the firm or occasional drinks with coworkers or dinner every other month with someone from law school. I didn’t have time for anything else anyway. But now...I want the baby to have better than I did. I want them to truly have people.”

Steve doesn’t say anything for a moment. She thinks he might have the window open; there’s the faint sound of the street in the silence, but she doesn’t mind it. Then he says firmly, “They will. You both will.”

“How?” she asks, and as businesslike as she tries to sound, she knows that it’s the most vulnerable she’s allowed herself to be in a long while.

“Look, when my mother came here, she didn’t know a soul other than my father, and he died before I can remember. She was working all sorts of shifts at the hospital, but I always knew she was there for me. She was my first person, the same way you’ll be for your baby - that kind of solid love that gives you your start. You’re already giving them that, just thinking about these things, just trying to give them something you didn’t have. And as for the rest...Well, if you don’t like the idea of baking for your neighbors—”

“I don’t think they’d enjoy that very much either,” she mutters, thinking of her pantry, and the underdone mess she’d produced when a midnight craving for banana bread had hit her during the first trimester.

“—and you don’t want to wait for those parent groups and the school board when the baby is older, what are you doing on Sunday afternoon?”

The answer, apparently, is accompanying Steve to a barbecue hosted by an old friend of his mother’s.

“She’s also the mother of my best friend,” he says as they amble together down the street (the fastest pace she can typically achieve these days). “And honestly, Win plays mom to half the neighborhood, plus plenty who can’t afford the neighborhood anymore. She hosts this sort of thing about once a month, says it’s to celebrate everyone’s birthdays since the last time, but it’s more just a general excuse to catch up. We couldn’t get everyone in one place to cut a cake anyway.”

He isn’t exaggerating: the gathering spans from the backyard, where two grills are spewing smoke and the mouthwatering scents of charcoal and meat, through the house which has apparently been in the Barnes family for three generations, and even spills down the front steps onto the street. There’s music playing, but more prominently there is laughter and conversation, people hugging and shouting and gesturing.

There should be something overwhelming to it all, entering this place she doesn’t know, a stranger amidst all the familiarity. But they’re greeted almost immediately by Steve’s friend, who introduces himself as Bucky and flirts with her seemingly on instinct. When she returns his remarks with cool disdain, he only grins and says, “Yeah, you’ll fit in around here. Come on, let me introduce you around.”

Everyone she meets - Bucky’s siblings and cousins and people he doesn’t quite remember how he related to, neighbors and old school friends and folks his mother picked up along the way - is open and chatty in a way that she instinctively would have expected to be uncomfortable but is actually terribly welcome. For the first time she tells someone other than her obstetrician about how her pregnancy has been, laughing with Bucky’s expectant sister about the odors that they’d never thought much about until their sense of smell had been heightened, listening to advice on sleep schedules from a man who has three children continually using him as a climbing structure. One older woman tells her that she’s carrying high, which means she’ll have a girl. A second woman interrupts to jeer that it’s certainly a boy, considering how inaccurate the first woman’s predictions have been in the past, before their third friend informs them that they really should get on "the TikTok" like her to learn about how sometimes people aren't boys or girls.

And Steve is there the entire time, an arm around Bucky’s sister's shoulder, offering himself as an auxiliary climbing structure, having his cheek patted by each of the older women as they pointedly inform Peggy that he's a "good, single boy" once they determine that Peggy doesn’t have a partner.

Peggy doesn’t react to that, and only barely glances at Steve from the corner of her eye. He blushes a bit, but doesn’t say anything, doesn’t stop introducing her to people as, “My friend, Peggy.” The simple firmness of the statement, the lack of expectation of more, warms her.

It’s hours later that they leave, Peggy full from cake and lemonade and all manner of grilled things. They take their time walking through the June heat; Peggy suspects that Steve’s pace is typically about ten times faster than this, but he doesn’t complain or try to hurry her along.

“I should have planned this a bit better,” she says as they pause at the corner despite the moderate pace. She wipes her face as delicately as she can. “An autumn baby is sounding better and better - crisp breezes, perhaps even the chance of an early snow.” She sighs at the thought. Some days she thinks she will miss being pregnant, feeling her baby turn slow circles within her, knowing that they are always just there, beneath her skin, in her grasp at every moment. Often, though, as she catches a glimpse of herself in a window and doesn’t register her own body, as she struggles with heartburn or back aches which won’t be alleviated by any position or online tips, she wishes for the whole ordeal to be over.

Steve shrugs. “I think babies come when they come, sometimes.”

“Yes, well, I had a bit more choice in that than most.” They continue on for a few steps before she says, tilting her head to look at him indirectly, “You can ask, you know.”

“Ask what?”

“Most people,” she says, “are fairly interested in knowing the circumstances of how I became pregnant.”

He makes an annoyed little sigh. “Most people apparently can’t mind their own business.”

“That’s true,” she agrees. “But I can’t blame them for being curious.” She had noticed, actually, how few people had asked probing questions as Steve and Bucky introduced her around - a nice change of pace, and it only endears those she’d met to her more.

“I don’t really have anything to be curious about.” The statement is so blunt and unexpected that she pins Steve with a stare until he explains. “That first day in class, you said that you were a single mother by choice. That’s all that I need to know: that this was something you wanted, something you chose. I’m glad you got it.”

She finds herself more touched by this than she should be. It was her choice, one that she hasn’t regretted, one which shouldn’t be considered novel or peculiar or shameful. She doesn’t allow herself to give credence to those sorts of attitudes, but she can’t help but wonder how the baby will feel once they’re older, whether she will be able to strengthen them enough to allow the judgement to roll off, to give them happiness in who they are and how they came to be. She hopes that there are people like Steve around them to give them respite.

“Will you come back next month?” Steve asks as they arrive at her door. Somehow she had allowed him to bring her all the way back without questioning it.

“I’d like that,” Peggy says, even as the baby kicks in reminder. She places a palm on her belly - I’m here, love. “I’m not certain I’ll be in any state to do it, although I’ll hate to miss celebrating your birthday with everyone.”

Steve ducks his head, smiling. “We’ll do it next year too, and the next.”

“Well, I suppose as long as this little one stays put a bit longer, I’ll start with this year’s.” She places a hand on his wrist and angles up to kiss his cheek. “Good night, Steve.”

He waits for her to go inside, very still. She gives him a casual glance from the lobby. It is only when she is upstairs that she realizes that, if she keeps coming to the Barnes’s, her baby will have their birthday during the same monthly gathering as Steve’s.

She gets a text from Steve as she’s leaving class the following week.

“Oh look, Pepper and Tony had their baby,” she says, showing Angie the picture Steve had forwarded along of a purse-lipped little bundle being held by a tearful, beaming Pepper. “A Cesarean, just this morning.”

“Hope they were able to handle it without all the prep,” Angie says, pulling a face. They’ve only just come out of the session on C-sections, complete with some fairly graphic imagery.

Peggy winces in sympathy but continues reading. “Dear little thing is named Morgan.”

“Morgan Stark, that’s cute!” Angie declares as they turn down the sidewalk together. Angie’s sister, Nell, has already disappeared down into the subway, apparently rushing for a hair appointment. ("A hundred nicknames for Eleanor and that's the one they picked when our name is Martinelli,” Angie had whispered to Peggy in the line for the toilet two weeks ago. “No wonder she rushed into marrying the bozo - she didn't realize she could change her name any other way.")

“Yes, with a name like that, she’ll be off to a good start in life - in more ways than one,” Peggy comments wryly. Although Pepper was warm and Tony was jocular and easy to speak with, and although they were clearly looking to be relatively hands-on as parents, one couldn’t quite forget that they had control of one of the largest technology companies in the world. It was nearly impossible, after all, with Tony reminding them so often.

“Hope they’ll come by so we can see the munchkin in person,” Angie comments. “I’ve been seeing everyone here so often that sometimes I forget that we’re finishing up soon. Can’t believe that in a couple weeks we’ll all go our separate ways - and after the things we’ve seen together! You’d think that there’d at least be a Hallmark card for the people you’ve heard about all that discharge and membrane stripping with.”

Peggy laughs and takes in a breath. “Well, if you aren’t too busy just now, I do know of a coffee shop nearby. And I can promise no discussion of anything to do with membranes.”

Angie loops her arm through Peggy’s. “Don’t you worry, English, I’m temping at a new place and I’ve got plenty of stories to see us through, so it sounds like a plan to me. Lead the way.”

Peggy’s nesting instincts begin to gain particular strength over the following weeks.

“I wonder if it’s because we’ve moved on from our classes being about pregnancy and labor to discussing handling of actual infants,” she says over the phone to Steve as she carefully folds and stacks all the sleeper suits she’s purchased and laundered in the recommended hypoallergenic, fragrance-free detergent she’s also stocked up on. “It makes it all seem a bit more real, and quite imminent.”

“I wonder if it’s because you’ve got a calendar and you know that it’s not even a month before you’ll be holding your baby. Down to the wire now, Carter.”

For all that he’s teasing, there’s a bit of awe in his voice, a genuine excitement which she finds quite lovely. Hearing it she can’t help but ask, “Do you want children, Steve?”

There’s silence on his end for a moment. Then he says, “Yeah, I do. I don’t know if it’s in the cards for me, though.”

She divides her stack into neat thirds, settling each into the top drawer of the new soft-close bureau she’d purchased. “Why in the world not?” She’s listened to Steve speaking about his work, has seen him doing his work and how conscientious he is about everyone around him; there’s no doubt in her mind that he will be an amazing father. Moreover, although she has gotten accustomed to being around him such that she sometimes forgets it, Steve is an extremely well-built man. He must certainly encounter a significant population with the immediate biological instinct to perpetuate his genetics.

“When I was a kid,” he starts, and she thinks she hears him swallow. She rests a hip against the dresser as her own face shifts toward seriousness. “I was pretty sick. I had to have a lot of different treatments and I was on medications I still can’t pronounce. Some of them were experimental at the time. Even now that I—Even once I find someone I want to spend my life with, the doctors can’t exactly guarantee that it’ll be easy for me to have kids biologically.”

He says it without asking for pity, without stepping around the words, but the idea still seems tender to him. She makes a soft, understanding sort of noise, but it doesn’t seem the moment for solutions or platitudes, so she says nothing.

“I’ve thought about adoption,” he continues, “but it’s a big investment - I don’t know that I have the money for it. And of course they can always use more foster parents, but I’m a single guy who works a fulltime job and doesn't even have weekends free, which isn’t exactly ideal. So, like I said, I’m not sure it’s in the cards for me.”

“Steve,” she says, quiet and very gentle. Because she understands the desire to have a child of your own even when the most traditional route hasn’t opened itself to you. Through science and intent and fiscal means, she was able to open her own way, and it hurts her that he can’t seem to find his.

“It’s okay,” he says immediately. He clears his throat. “It’s okay. You never know what might happen and—and if not, Becca keeps having babies, and Bucky probably will someday too. I can always be Uncle Steve to them. It’ll be okay. I’ll be fine.”

She seats herself in the glider, setting it into smooth, subtle motion nearly without thinking. It is on the tip of her tongue to offer something, but it is too wild a thought, and so she holds in the words and simply sits with the difficulty of it with him, the way she wishes someone might have for her.

Just finished with class. Would you like to come meet me? she texts Steve later the next week. She was restless all last night, her body unsettled all today, and the lesson they’ve just finished about postpartum issues didn’t help. Not to mention that there’s only one session left to discuss all sorts of things about diapering and feeding, which she certainly doesn’t think is sufficient preparation. She’s pushing through, she always pushes through, but she’d certainly like to get her mind off of it all.

Luckily, Steve is free. They get their tea in compostable to-go cups - iced this time, an affront to her cultural sensibilities but even in her loosest maternity dress with her hair pulled up off of her neck it is too hot now for anything else - because Peggy is feeling the urge to walk around, so he suggests they go to Sunset Park.

“Not Prospect Park?” she asks, sipping eagerly through her straw.

He shakes his head. “That’s right by where I work. I’m there all the time. It’s a little overdone.”

“Steve,” she tells him gravely. “That was quite close to what a hipster might say. I do believe you’ve been corrupted by the neighborhood.”

He laughs. ”Come on. I’ll try not to start talking about how amazing vinyl is, but make sure to get out of here if my cup turns into a mason jar.”

They have to take a seat on a bench nearly as soon as they get there.

“I really can’t recommend this stage of pregnancy,” Peggy informs him. “My feet hurt constantly - although I saw Carol’s in class and I’m terribly lucky that they aren’t swollen as badly as hers - I can’t get comfortable at all, I’m having terrible trouble sleeping, and then I’m out of sorts all day.” She allows him to help her stand again, and they continue walking. “Truly, I’ll be very happy once we’re past this part of things.”

As her water breaks just then it isn’t a cinematic gush, but a definitively noticeable amount of water splatters over her sandals and onto the path. She and Steve both stare at it for a moment.

“Huh,” he says. “I guess you might not have too much longer to wait.”

Despite the slight surprise, things are actually going according to her plan. The paramedics arrive quickly and, after examining her, determine that she is not going to have the baby just this minute. Her obstetrician says that it’s alright to take a bit of time; she is at the hospital and will be waiting when Peggy does arrive, so they make their way to New York-Presbyterian.

She doesn’t even think to ask Steve whether or not he wants to come, and he doesn’t say anything different. Everything has somehow automatically become “we’ll” and “let’s” as they talk it through, his hand crushed into hers as the contractions begin in more powerful earnest. It’s only when they’re in the elevator up to Labor and Delivery that she says, “You’ve really gone out of your way, Steve, thank you, but Dr. Ribaudo will meet me when we arrive.”

“Oh.” He looks down at her - he has to, considering his height and her placement in the wheelchair - but his gaze is quite level. “I can stay, if you want me to.” He pauses for a breath, then adds, “I’d like to stay, if you’ll let me.”

It’s a startling idea - not that Steve would be considerate, that’s a given, but that he would go to these lengths for her, when they have not known each other very long in the scheme of things.

“It could take quite a long time,” she warns as the elevator lets out a soft ding, signaling their arrival.

“That’s okay,” he says. “I’m good at waiting.”

It does take a long time, hours that she loses track of in the midst of it. The things which anchor her are the nurses, their attentiveness and calm hands, the way they seem to be able to predict when she needs more ice chips and when she wants to walk or move into a different position; Dr. Ribaudo’s voice, familiar after all these months and yet utterly different as she instructs, “Push now, Peggy, once more!”; and somewhere in the back of her mind, the thought of Steve thinking of her too.

And then they hand her son to her, bloody and panting out little half cries as he settles against her skin, and she knows that he will be her central anchor for the rest of her life.

Steve taps on the door sometime after, although she’d asked them to send him in. She looks up briefly from the baby, now cleaned and sleeping against her heart, and smiles.

“Hello,” she says softly. Steve steps into the room. She is aware that she must look a fright, even with the kind intervention of the nurses, but you would never know that from the way he is watching her.

“How are you feeling?” he asks, taking her in.

She laughs, a slightly brighter, giddier laugh than usual. “Dreadful. Wonderful. As you can imagine.” She shifts up a bit on the pillows. “You can come closer,” she offers. “Come meet him.”

He crouches as he reaches the side of the bed. She can smell the hand sanitizer that he put on; only a day ago that would have had her eyes watering with the overwhelming odor. Now it feels like care. She shifts the baby a bit so Steve can see his face, pudgy and dreaming.

“Peggy.” Steve’s eyes catch hers, then drift back. “Look what you made.”

“I know.” She can already see that he has features which she doesn’t recognize from her own family, but it doesn’t matter when he is so entirely hers. She strokes a finger over the back of his hand, impossibly small and soft, unblemished. The only world he has ever known is her.

Seeming to understand that the moment calls for soft voices, Steve asks, “Does he have a name?”

“For months I had thought of Michael for a boy, after my brother,” she says. “But I had the awful feeling he would become a Mikey or a Mike no matter how hard I fought against it, so I decided that I would use it as a middle name instead. I’ve been looking through the book and making lists ever since, but it wasn’t until I saw him that I knew: Theodore. It means ‘divine gift.’”

“Theodore Michael Carter.” He says it in that same hushed way, even as a grin spreads across his face. He looks up at her, waiting for her nod before he reaches out a hand, gently rubbing his thumb over the baby’s back. “Welcome, little guy.”

“I wondered, actually—” She pauses, readjusting Theodore, taking more time than is probably necessary. “I was thinking perhaps Theodore Michael Steven Carter. So when he gets a bit older, I can tell him about the lovely man who waited to see him for the first time.”

The grin drains away so slowly that at first she doesn’t realize it’s happening. Then Steve is shifting slightly away from her, her own giddiness fading into a frown as she watches him.

“I’d rather...I’d rather you didn’t,” Steve says. Before she can ask exactly why not, he rubs a hand over his face and continues. “When you say that, it makes it sounds like he’ll never meet me, like the only thing I’ll be to him is a story, a memory that he won’t even have, and I—It’s your choice, of course it is, but if I can, I’d like to know him. I’d like to know you both for a long time.”

She watches Steve look at her, at her baby. She thinks about wanting to make certain that he has people, and how Steve is truly the best she could ever wish for. But she thinks also of Steve’s careful voice as he’d told her he wasn’t certain he would ever have children of his own.

“I hope,” she says with intent, “that you wouldn’t be looking for us to fulfill some image you have of the perfect family, arriving ready-made for you. That wouldn’t be fair, Steve, to any of us.”

His eyes go wide. “You think I—No!” He moves closer again, that earnestness of his apparent. “Peggy, I would have wanted to know you no matter where we met or how. And now you have him and he’s—he’s a part of you, too.” He swallows. “I’d be really lucky to get to watch him grow up, same way I’ll be lucky to be around you for as long as you’ll have me.”

That image from weeks ago comes back to her, she and a nebulous child, already more defined now, making something together, with Steve by their side. The image had unsettled her before with how easy it was to picture, how easy it was to want.

And now her baby is here, Steve is here, and he seems to want the same, or at least wants to try for it.

She lies there, feeling the rapid rise and fall of the baby’s chest against hers.

When she looks at Steve, his breath seems to match hers.

“Alright,” she says. “But when you tell him the story of the day he was born, try not to embellish very much.”

“I won’t have to,” Steve promises, brushing very lightly over the baby’s thick hair before he reaches over to squeeze Peggy’s hand. “I won’t have to. It was perfect.”

“—and remind them that we will certainly not be paying full price, considering what they pulled last time.”

“Can I threaten them with you suing them out of existence if they give me guff?”

“You want to tell the multibillion-dollar international cable and internet conglomerate that I’m going to sue them?” Peggy asks distractedly as she looks over a memo from one of her new hires before glancing up at Angie. “Of course you can.”

“Excellent.” Angie grins and scribbles something in her notebook. For all that she’d talked about being bounced from one temp job to another, it clearly can’t have been her fault: she has excellent office managing skills and an upbeat temperament, both of which Peggy now views as essential.

Even while she was on maternity leave, such as it was, she had been considering her next professional move, realizing as she looked over her options that she didn’t actually like any of them. She couldn’t stay home forever - despite how much she loved being with her baby, she wasn’t cut out to do it long term. Even if money was no issue, she needed to work to exercise her mind and use her skills. But she didn’t want to return to the world of challenging herself at the big firms but being left with no time for herself or her relationships, time which the nonprofits and law clinics, for all the moral satisfaction, couldn’t guarantee her either.

Steve had been the first she had mentioned her idea to, late at night once the baby was finally asleep: a new firm, one which hired on top talent looking for a better work-life balance, which specialized in a mixture of corporate law and more altruistic cases, ensuring that they could finance their own good intentions.

“We would have on-site childcare and flexible work from home policies,” she explained as Steve sipped the tea he’d made for the two of them and listened. “And the company culture wouldn’t value most billable hours or who is coming the earliest and staying the latest. I can’t be the only one who has a child to love but loves the working world too. It would be criminal to let that sort of skill slip away simply because of lack of accommodation.”

“It sounds like a good idea to me,” Steve told her. “But more than that, it sounds like a good idea to you, and you’re the best judge I know.”

Steve had been over at her apartment quite often, especially in the time just after she brought the baby home. She had interviewed people to help, but in the end it was he who would give her the time away to take a shower or get out into the fresh air for a walk on her own, he who organized meal deliveries with Winifred Barnes at his side, so she didn’t have to think about ordering delivery much less cooking anything for herself. It was Steve who bickered with her over nicknames for the baby (she is determined that he will be a Theo, while Steve insists on Teddy), watched with her for his first real smile, bought a copy of Goodnight Moon and read it aloud every night that he was there, Steve who walked proudly at her side as she came to the first gathering at the Barnes’s with her son in her arms, and Steve who urges her to call or go out for the evening to Becca or Pepper to commiserate and trade advice.

He had first kissed her on a Sunday afternoon, four months after she had given birth. She was a bit warm from the walk they had just taken and they had left the baby in the pram by the door, not wanting to move and wake him after he had dozed off. She had worried, when he asked if he could kiss her, that it might ruin things between them - a terrible prospect, when he was so much a part of her life, of Theo’s life, but she had wanted to kiss him for so long that she felt she had to try. And, instead, when Steve’s mouth met hers, it wasn’t as if it was the first time at all; it felt as familiar and comforting as holding his hand, as matching his stride as they walked side by side, even as want cascaded through her.

Although they’re taking it slow, they have done quite a bit of kissing in the two months since then. And a bit more than that.

(Slow isn’t stopped…)

“Look who it is,” Angie says, elbowing Peggy. She looks to where Angie is pointing across the space which will one day be their offices and finds Steve, baby carrier strapped to his chest, coming to join her as if she’d conjured him there. He doesn’t work on Mondays or Tuesdays, so he has care of the baby then, a prospect he so clearly delights in that her heart expands to watch them together.

“The boys are back in town,” Angie sings out. Steve’s grin flashes, Theo wriggling and letting out one of those high, screeching giggles of his. “Well, your boys, I guess, English.”

Yes, she thinks. Mine. Both of them, mine. This whole life, mine. And she walks to meet them with her hands outstretched.