Work Text:
Steve smacks his phone against the palm of his hand a few times, because it has to be fucking up, right?
“Jesus, Steve, what in the bloody hell is that noise?”
“Hold on,” he replies. “I think one of us has bad connection or something, because I think I just heard you ask me to homecoming.”
Peggy’s eye roll is so strong that he can practically feel it through the phone, and he withers in minor embarrassment. He doesn’t know where she gets the power to roll her eyes so intensely from. It’s got to be a British thing, but it never fails to make him feel like an idiot. And she’s been doing it to him since the fourth grade, when they first became friends.
“You heard right.”
“Don’t you have a girlfriend for this reason? I hate dances.” He only sounds a tad bit whiny.
“Not just for this reason, no,” Peggy says, sounding exasperated. That’s another occurring thing in their friendship, but she almost always sounds fond, too. It makes him grin. “I already bought the tickets, but Angie’s going upstate to visit her sick aunt. And I really don’t feel like going stag.”
“Thompson?” He asks sympathetically.
“Thompson,” she clarifies on a sigh. “He’s especially incessant with the flirting when she’s not around.”
“Peg, I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but I’m one of Jack’s number one targets. You sure this is a good idea? I mean, if you really want me to…”
“It’ll be fine. If having you around only brings trouble, I’ll just have to resort to the old-fashioned ways.”
“I’m not going to lie. A large part of me would greatly enjoy watching you kick his ass.”
She hums. “I’m sure you might learn a thing or two.”
“Hey, I’ll have you know that it’s all about speed, not strength,” he shoots back, mildly defensive. Okay, more than mildly.
“Both of which you do not have,” she laughs, and when he doesn’t say anything, she only laughs harder. “Oh, stop pouting!
“I am not.”
“Steve, you pout just as powerfully as I can roll my eyes.”
“You suck at asking people for favors, you know.”
“Of course. Which is why I don’t make a habit of it,” she says. “But I can’t just not go. That’s almost fifty dollars down the drain. What would your mother say about the waste, hm?”
He narrows his eyes. “Low blow, Carter. Low blow.”
One time, Peggy had been present when Steve got caught throwing away “perfectly fine leftovers” by his mom. Never mind the fact that they were mashed potatoes she made on Thanksgiving and he was tossing them in January, Sarah Rogers was raised modestly and had to work her way through nursing school, meaning she spent her fair share of days living off of tap water and ramen noodles. Nowadays, even though they have more than enough money for groceries, leftovers are a cherished delicacy.
Steve shivers at the memory.
“I take it this silence means you’re considering?”
“Well, no, I wasn’t,” he sighs, “but what the hell. I can never say no to my best girl, right?”
Peggy snorts. “No, you definitely can’t.”
***
Rumors, as rumors do, abound quickly.
See, it’s no secret that Steve and Peggy are best friends—have been for almost a whole decade, really—but for some reason the people at their school seem to think the fact that they’re going to homecoming together is so scandalous. It’s also no secret that Peggy’s pretty popular while Steve, on the other hand, isn’t, but petty stuff like that has never bothered either of them. He learned early on that if he wanted to get through school quickly and without much difficulty, don’t give a shit about more than your grades and your close group of friends.
Which is why he doesn’t notice people staring at him and Peggy as they talk at her locker Monday morning until she glares at two guys passing by and says, “Is there a problem here, gentlemen?”
Their eyes slide from her to Steve, but they move on without a word.
“God, can you believe all these losers?” Angie says as she walks up to them, wrinkling her nose at a group of people not-so-secretly gossiping in a corner of the hallway. She casually kisses Peggy’s cheek in greeting before saying, “It’s so archaic. Like they’ve never heard of two friends going to a dance together before. Sorry it’s not the nineteen-fifties, folks!” She says this last part rather loudly, and Peggy wraps her arm around her waist and snickers.
Steve grins at the two of them and shakes his head. “Just wait until we have our first kiss after our dance, Peg. There’s gonna be a riot.”
“You better not, Rogers,” Angie replies, pointing a finger at his chest. She knows he’s only joking, but it’s funny to see Angie get so territorial. For one, she’s small. “You’re just about the only guy I trust English here with, so use that trust wisely. I’m not going upstate because it sounds like some spur-of-the-moment fun.”
He raises his eyebrows. “Isn’t your aunt sick?”
“Please, she has carpal tunnel and arthritis in her right knee. She’s just being overdramatic, but I can’t get out of it.”
Peggy gives her an amused look. “Overdramatic, huh? Coming from the woman who wants to be an actress?”
“I didn’t say it wasn’t a good trait to have,” Angie says. “Aunt Deb just doesn’t know how to use it properly.”
The bell rings, and they laugh amongst each other for a few seconds before they have to go their separate ways. Peggy and Angie have homeroom together, so they walk hand-in-hand to calculus as Steve heads in the opposite direction. Art is a good class to have first thing in the morning every day, if only because one, it’s an elective, and two, it’s his favorite subject. The counters that the art department uses in lieu of desks usually sit two people, but Steve always takes the one in the corner so no one can stare at his projects (call it a pet peeve) and nobody who isn’t his friend ever wants to sit next to him anyway, which he never complains about.
However, he has nothing to say, complaint or otherwise, when Natasha Romanoff slips on to the stool beside him with nothing more than a dazzling smile and slight tilt of her head.
The thing is, Steve’s harbored a crush on Natasha just as long as he’s been friends with Peggy. In fact, the two are almost exclusively related to one another, because in the fourth grade Steve tried to give Natasha a drawing of a dancer he’d made her, only she’d walked off with her friends without so much as a backwards glance. In her defense, he hadn’t spoken all that loud and she was already pretty distracted playing on the monkey bars, but the point is that while he’d watched Natasha walk away, Peggy had walked up to him and quite bluntly told him to suck it up. And that she wanted to be his friend, because he could draw well and she had a dragon obsession at the time.
It’s funny how the world works sometimes.
It’s also not like Natasha’s one of those people who look down on others, because if that was the case, there’s no way in hell Steve would still be hung up over her all these years. She may hang out with that sort of crowd, but he supposes she can’t help that she has all the perfect qualities to being popular in high school—beauty, athleticism, charisma. But she’s also kind, and charitable, and really, really smart. She also has never noticed him their entire academic lives, which is funny considering the alphabet dictates he almost always sits in front of her whenever they have classes together.
Belatedly, Steve realizes that he must be staring and closes his mouth.
“Um,” he says lamely, watching as Natasha pulls out a rather untouched sketchbook from her bag and a case of sharpened pencils. No charcoals to stain her fingers, he notices, and embarrassedly wipes his black-tinged hands on the thighs of his pants.
Then he closes his eyes and internally curses himself, because not only does he now have streaks of charcoal on his jeans, but his mom’s also going to kill him the next time she does laundry.
“Steve, right?” She says, and he blinks in surprise. Somehow, he also manages to nod. “My partner’s out sick for the week, and since we’ve got that partner project due Friday, I figured we could work on it together. Unless…”
Natasha tilts her head again, giving him a quizzical look, and Steve recognizes that he probably looks like a deer in headlights.
“Uh, no! I mean, yeah, that’s a great idea. I didn’t—I haven’t given much thought on who I was going to work with yet, but,” he swallows, and something in her expression changes. Amusement, he notes. Great. “I guess I don’t have to. Anymore.”
A smile slowly creeps on her face, and Steve almost melts in his seat at the sight. She’s really gorgeous. “No, I guess you don’t. But I’m warning you now; I’m a terrible artist.”
“I doubt that,” he says without thinking. Natasha lifts an eyebrow. “I mean, don’t cut yourself short. Sometimes it’s all about finding your specialty.”
“Hm. Really?”
“Yeah. Uh, for example? I’m pretty shit at sculpting. And photography. But drawing’s not bad. And painting is okay, when I’m in the mood.”
She nods, thinking over his words. Steve’s pretty sure it’s the most she’s ever listened to him aside from when he has to present projects in front of the class, but even then, nobody ever pays much attention to those.
“I’m pretty shit at all of the above,” she says after a moment.
“Art’s very vast,” he replies with a shrug. “Um, dancing is considered an art form. Ballet. You know.”
She smirks. “And how do you know I do ballet?”
He knows a lot of ways, really. The way she moves, almost flows. Even the way she stands, when she’s not being conscious about it. And one time he saw a pair of satin slippers hanging from the strap of her backpack freshman year, but he just settles on, “Ms. Taylor’s class, in the fifth grade. You did a piece for our end-of-the-year art expression project.”
She regards him for a moment. It’s almost long enough to make him squirm and wonder if he’d said something eerily observant, but she lets out a small sigh crowned with a rueful smile instead of calling him a weirdo and moving to another seat.
“Too bad I can’t do that for this project, right? I’d probably ace it.”
He shrugs again. “Maybe Mrs. Parker will let you get away with it.”
Steve can’t properly hide the triumphant smile on his face when Natasha laughs.
He goes through the rest of his day rather thoughtlessly, instead focused on what happened first period. He’s almost half-convinced he’s in a dream, that maybe it’ll turn into a nightmare sometime soon and he’ll blink and suddenly be in his underwear during biology, but it doesn’t happen. Instead he misses the entire lesson (which is a nightmare in its own way, because he has a quiz next period) and focuses on the memory of Natasha laughing at jokes that he hadn’t even meant to be jokes, the way she tips her head back and her lips pull up in a wide smile. By the time the bell rings, he embarrassingly realizes that he’s drawn a rough sketch of her profile instead of answering the assigned questions from his textbook. He slips out while everyone else turns their work in, making a beeline for the front of the school so he can catch his bus before student traffic gets too heavy.
Somehow Natasha spots him just as he’s boarding, and she gives him a little wave before getting into her car that has him so distracted he almost misses his stop.
He’s not home for more than three hours before Peggy and Angie show up to drag him out shopping for his rental suit (he’d tried to protest that he didn’t have any money, but the both of them quite quickly told him to shut it and that Peggy had it covered, anyway). Half of him doesn’t want to go because Angie’s a terrible driver, but he and his mom can’t afford another car besides the one she already drives, so he hasn’t gotten around to getting his license, and Peggy complains about Americans driving on the right side of the road even though she’s lived in the States since she was eight and only goes back to England for a part of the summer each year. It’s just—
“Move over, old woman! God, my Aunt Deb can move faster than you, and she has arthritic knees!”
—Angie has major road rage. And a heavy foot.
As if for emphasis, she accelerates around the old lady doing what seems like six miles per hour, honking her horn.
“Angie, you’re going to get us pulled over,” Peggy scolds, one hand wrapped tightly around the support handle built above the passenger’s window and the other gripping the middle console.
“Nonsense, I’ve been doing this for ages,” the other woman says dismissively.
From the backseat, Steve chirps in, “You’ve barely had your license for a year.”
“Hey, I’m the only ride you two have got, so you either enjoy it or walk.”
“At this rate, I’d rather walk,” Steve grumbles.
Angie ignores him and turns up the radio. Peggy shakes her head and doesn’t argue any further, but she also doesn’t uncurl her fingers from the handle until the car’s parked in front of the rental store and at a complete stop.
The two of them make Steve try on what has to be about fifty suits, and he half-silently complains about it the whole time because it’s not like they’re going to prom Saturday. It’s homecoming. This is his fourth year in high school and he’s never been to a homecoming dance, let alone the game. Peggy’s just lucky he loves her so much, because he’s not sure he’d do this for anybody else.
Except Natasha, he thinks belatedly as he adjusts his current suit’s jacket in front of the mirror. But there’s no way in hell Natasha would ever go to a dance with him, homecoming or otherwise. Just because she had one conversation with him in art class doesn’t mean his social status has suddenly skyrocketed. If that were the case, being friends with Peggy and Angie would have done that. And he’s positive that no matter how good a person Natasha is, she wouldn’t be caught dead going to a dance with Steve as her date when she had friends like Tony Stark and Clint Barton. And Thor. Jesus, how can he ever compete with that guy?
He shakes his head before opening the curtain and stepping out to show Peggy and Angie the suit. He can’t compete with the likes of those guys, guys who have been friends with her since they were all in grade school. He can’t get his hopes up. She’s just his partner on some art project, nothing more.
***
Despite Steve’s realization that he will probably never be worthy of Natasha’s time on anything more than a platonic level, he’s a nice guy. And not the self-proclaimed kind, mind you, but the type that was raised by a single mom to be fair with others and to never let a bully win and to treat a woman with the utmost respect, even if, in this case, he has no chance with that woman.
Natasha’s already sitting in the chair next to his vacant one when he arrives at class the next morning, though she doesn’t notice him immediately. She’s half-bent over her sketchbook, lips pursed slightly in concentration and a line forming between her eyebrows as she slowly moves her pencil around the page, and Steve knows that he’s definitely going to fail his biology quiz because he’s going to be too busy trying to sketch this image to memory instead.
God, he’s royally screwed.
He shakes himself out of his reverie and walks over. Natasha looks up as soon as he sets his things down on the counter and smiles warmly, and it doesn’t pass his attention when she uses her arm to block whatever she’d been working on from his view and turns the page to a blank one. He doesn’t question her on it, but he regrets not saying something else first when Natasha tells him good morning and asks, “Are you going to the homecoming game Friday?”
A tiny, tiny part of him considers lying, because he really doesn’t want to admit that he spends all of his Fridays like a hermit. But again, he was raised by a pretty great mom. “Uh, I wasn’t planning on it. The cold doesn’t really do well for me. And I’m running low on my inhaler, so.”
He resists shutting his eyes, but can’t help the litany of idiot, idiot, idiot that momentarily repeats in his head.
But Natasha just nods. “I understand. It gets pretty chilly out there, but if I don’t go Clint likes to pretend that he’s really offended. He can be a baby sometimes,” she says with a slight wrinkle of her nose.
Steve’s never been entirely sure if she and Barton are dating or ever have dated, and he wants to ask, but he also knows it’s none of his business. He supposes there’s no harm in carefully concealing the question, however.
“I am going to the dance, though,” he says, averting his eyes when he feels hers watching his face interestedly. “Are… you?”
Idiot, idiot, idiot.
“Yeah, but I’m going alone. Clint was my date, but then he and Bobbi became a thing, but it’s alright,” she replies. He almost whoops with joy, because that almost certainly means she’s single, right? “And I heard you’re going with Peggy?”
He shrugs. “Her girlfriend’s going to be out of town, so I agreed to go with her because she already bought the tickets. I don’t typically go to these types of things, though. They’re not really my, um, scene.”
“That’s nice of you,” she says, then smirks. “Kind of wish I could’ve snatched you first.”
Steve, with all the grace of a two-legged horse, sputters. “W-what?”
Natasha just smiles, but then the teacher walks in and she doesn’t say anything more about that.
But, seriously, what?
***
By some minor miracle, Steve doesn’t completely tank his quiz, but that’s also not to say that he did particularly well, either. Frankly he doesn’t give much thought to anything else the rest of the day other than what Natasha said to him at the start of homeroom, and even then he pushes it to the far reaches of his mind. It can’t happen. It won’t happen. He can revel in the fact that she’s single, but in no way can he ever fill that role. No matter how much he wants to.
Angie’s leaving for upstate the next morning, so she and Peggy have plans to hang out for themselves before then and Steve doesn’t really begrudge them for wanting the alone time. But he also gets out of his final class late trying to finish his assignment and ends up missing his bus, and his house isn’t exactly within walking distance—not for an asthmatic kid, thank you very much. He’s resulted to sitting on the school’s steps waiting for his mom to get off her five o’clock shift when someone taps him on the shoulder.
He’s pretty much expecting Rumlow or Rollins, his usual tormentors, to be behind him, so he can’t help the scowl that’s already forming on his face when he turns and sees Natasha standing there.
“Woah, easy there, tiger,” she says lightly, holding up her hands. “I come in peace.”
His expression immediately shifts into an apologetic one. “I’m sorry, I thought you were—”
She cuts him off with a laugh. “I’m only joking. Don’t worry about it, Rogers.”
And really, the way she says his name should be illegal.
“What’re you doing here?” he manages through a dry throat.
“Helping Fury out with some reports he was late on grading. I T.A. for him last period and he had to run to a meeting.” She shrugs. “No big deal. What about you?”
He feels his cheeks heat up as he replies, “Missed my bus.”
“Poor baby,” she teases, grinning widely. Steve rolls his eyes and shakes his head and it—it feels so natural, this rapport. Sort of like what he and Peggy has. “Well, I was planning on asking you tomorrow if you wanted to work on our project together after school, but I’m free now. And I have a car. So, unless you’ve got to be home right away…”
“No, that’s great,” Steve says, trying not to sound too eager. “I actually had some ideas I wanted to go over with you.”
“Awesome. Because I feel like a lost little lamb when it comes to this project, and here I am with a mini da Vinci as my partner.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t call myself that.” Steve rubs the back of his neck and ducks his head.
“Aren’t you the one who told me not to sell myself short?” She nudges him in the side with her elbow before walking away, and Steve follows her to her car. He’s seen her driving it before, of course. It’s a black, fancy sports model that doesn’t seat more than two people—the type that guys drive around just to seem cool, but it fits Natasha. Compact. Smooth and sleek.
His palms are clammy by the time he slides into the passenger seat, and he swipes them across his pants before she can notice.
Neither of them talk much on the drive over, but Steve does take advantage of the fact that he’s in Natasha Romanoff’s car and observes as much as he possibly can before this rare opportunity passes by. One, it smells incredibly great. He realizes it’s the air freshener that faintly lingers on her clothes, the one that smells like cherries and drives him a little crazy when they sit next to each other in art. Two, she’s got a fantastic taste in music—in fact, it sounds incredibly close to his own, and he even almost starts singing a few times but stops before he can embarrass himself so thoroughly. And three, thank god, she is nowhere near the type of monster driver Angie is.
They end up at a Starbucks downtown, at a table nestled in the corner of the place. It reminds him of their desk in art, only they’re sitting across from each other now, so there’s really no way Natasha can hide any sketches she’d been working on as she flips to a fresh page. They’re doodles of flowers, mostly, and a bunch of designed variations of her initials, but it’s cute. And she’s really not that bad, which doesn’t even begin to surprise him.
They discuss their project over Danishes and iced coffee. It’s nothing major, honestly, but Natasha’s a straight-A student and Steve’s pretty passionate about art, so the two of them make a rather determined team.
“Maria’s not nearly as creative as you are,” Natasha comments around the straw in her mouth, causing him to look anywhere but at her lips. “We’d probably tank if she wasn’t out with strep throat. And you’d be out of a partner,” she winks.
Steve shrugs, toying with the curled edges of his sketchbook. “I don’t mind working on my own.”
“Is that some veiled suggestion that you don’t want me, Rogers?” She teases.
The words it’s exactly the opposite threaten to roll off his tongue, but he holds them back. “N-no, I mean—I was just saying that I’m pretty used to doing projects by myself, group or solo. I don’t usually have a partner.”
Natasha leans back in her chair, arms folded across her chest. “I noticed. And I don’t get it. I mean, you’re like the ideal partner.”
She’s seriously not making it easy for him. Whatsoever.
“Uh, really?”
“Yeah,” she half-shrugs. “You don’t force all of the work on others, you carry your weight. And you’re not a moron.”
“Completely,” he finishes, making her laugh.
“At all,” she says. Steve raises his eyebrows at her. “Okay, maybe just a tiny bit,” she concedes with a smile. “But it’s good.”
Despite himself, Steve flushes, and Natasha smirks as she finishes the rest of her coffee.
They don’t stick around much longer after that, and Steve only somewhat hesitantly gives Natasha directions to his address so that she can take him home. It’s not like he lives in a shack, but he used to ride the bus with her before she started driving and he’s seen her house. It’s huge. And it probably has its own gardening crew to keep the lawn nice and neat, whereas there are weeds pretty much dominating his front yard because his mom hasn’t had enough time off to attack them yet and his lungs would probably give up halfway through.
When they pull up in front of his driveway, though, Natasha doesn’t have much chance to comment on anything, because his mom’s standing at the trunk of their SUV, unloading groceries. She turns when she hears the low rumble of Natasha’s car, does a double take when she sees who’s driving it, but quickly collects herself and waves when Steve widens his eyes at her from the passenger seat.
Natasha waves back, smile broad and genuine, before telling him, “You going to make your mom carry in the groceries all by herself, Rogers?”
He blinks. “Oh, well, no—”
She laughs at him, and, right, she’s only teasing. “See you tomorrow?”
He nods, thanks her for the ride, and doesn’t move away from the curb once he climbs out the car until she turns off his street. When he meets his mom halfway up the driveway, she’s got a funny expression on her face than he can’t rightly blame her for.
“Was that—?”
He lets out a long breath. “Yeah, it was.”
“From the fourth—?”
“Yep.”
“The girl you’ve been in—?”
“Yes, mom, that was her. How was your day?” He says quickly, not even trying to be subtle in steering the subject elsewhere. His mom just gives him a look and chuckles, shaking her head. It’s not until they’re both putting the groceries away in the kitchen that she asks, “I don’t need to have the safe sex talk with you, do I?”
Steve almost drops the carton of eggs he’s carrying over to the fridge, much to his mom’s amusement.
***
The next morning, Steve tries to dodge all questions Peggy has (although he has no doubt that most of them come from her girlfriend) about his budding friendship with Natasha, because it’s really only that—a friendship. Peggy looks seriously doubtful, but in the end she just punches him in the shoulder with a smirk and asks him if he did the civics homework, and he knows that means she’s dropping it for the meantime.
He and Natasha spend most of first period playing hangman and tic tac toe in his sketchbook since they’re already a little bit ahead on their project than majority of the other class, and later, after school, they go to Starbucks again but really only end up talking instead of doing actual work, which he doesn’t mind one bit. He doesn’t tell Natasha that after harboring a huge crush on her for basically most of his life that he knows well enough about her, but she does surprise him by knowing some stuff about him, too. She asks him if he still talks to Bucky, his old best friend that moved away in the eighth grade, and he tells her that they Skype whenever they have the free time. Steve slightly suspects that Natasha might’ve had a thing for Bucky once upon a time, but so did practically every other girl at their school, so he’s not really bothered by it. She even asks him, albeit tentatively, how his mom’s been, because around the same time Bucky left she was diagnosed with breast cancer, but she’s in remission now and the odds are fairly well that it’s not coming back. She smiles warmly, says that’s great, and sucks a piece of frosting off her finger from her lemon cake.
When Natasha drops him off at a home a couple hours later, his mom is thankfully not around to humiliate him again.
He goes to school the next day in the same mood he’s pretty much been in all week, but the smile fades from his face when he walks into the art room and sees Natasha sitting at their usual spot, a bouquet of flowers in front of her instead of her sketchbook and a colorfully decorated poster board propped up against her stool.
“Matt asked me to homecoming,” she explains with only a slight wince. “It’s a bit much, but the flowers are sweet of him.”
Murdock’s in a few of Steve’s classes. He’s an alright guy; in fact, Steve even kind of likes him, but he can’t help the pang of jealousy that goes through his chest nevertheless.
“I take it you said yes?” He manages.
“Well, why not?” She responds. “It’d be kind of rude to say no, and I don’t have a date, anyway.”
Steve just hums as he takes his seat beside her, taking out his sketchbook and setting it on the desk beside the flowers that he kind of hopes she’ll move somewhere else.
“You alright?”
He distractedly takes out his pens, curses quietly when he means to take out his pencils, and practically sticks his whole head into his bag trying to rummage for the rickety plastic case he keeps them in.
“Steve,” Natasha stops him with a hand on his shoulder. “What’s up?”
He straightens, forcing a smile as he turns to face her. “Huh? Oh, nothing, I just… forgot to eat breakfast, is all.”
Natasha blinks at him, lips pressed together in a flat line, but doesn’t push the subject. Still, she casts side-eye glances at him throughout all of first period, and he concentrates on the sketch of a cityscape he’s been working on in the back of his book until the bell rings.
On Thursday, they complete their project amidst awkward conversation and long periods of silence, and Steve feels like a complete dick the entire time because it’s not Natasha’s fault that he has a hopeless crush on her and can’t do anything about it. He supposes that he should just be happy it’s Matt she’s going to the dance with, because she could’ve easily been asked by Thompson or any of the other jerks on the football team and Steve can’t even begin to stomach that thought.
He spends most of the period trying to think of ways to reset the balance to his and Natasha’s friendship, but when he finally works up the courage to just apologize, the bell rings and she leaves without so much as a backwards glance. It reminds him of that time in the fourth grade on the playground, only this time it stings much more.
Peggy tries to cheer him up at lunch, although the both of them know that it’s his fault anyway, for being a complete idiot. He’s just thankful she doesn’t say that much to his face.
On Friday, Maria comes back to school looking very much like she hasn’t been sick for most of the week, and Natasha sits with her as opposed to next to him which, again, stings. They get called up in pairs to review their project’s grade with the teacher, and although he registers somewhere in the conversation that they got an A-plus, he mostly focuses on trying not to ruin the folded paper he has clasped in his sweaty hand that he wordlessly slips into Natasha’s lap before they go back to their respective seats. He doesn’t have the courage to look back at her face, so he spends the rest of the period with his nose bent in his sketchbook. By the time the bell rings, he realizes that he’s drawn a sunflower and a snake in the shape of his first initial.
He goes through the rest of his classes still feeling like a jerk tinged with a bit of nervousness, but he doesn’t try to brush Peggy off when she asks if he wants to binge Star Wars that night instead of going to the homecoming game. His mom has to work a late shift and he really doesn’t feel like being home alone and wallowing in his own self-deprecation, so they ride the bus to his house together after school and collapse on to his bed amongst a heap of junk food that’d make his mom have a fit if he knew this was what he’s having for dinner. He doesn’t think about any after-game parties that Natasha might be attending, doesn’t wonder who she might be going with, and doesn’t worry about whether or not she gets home safely at the end of the night when Peggy ends up falling asleep on his bed and he crafts a makeshift one for himself on the floor.
Or at least he tries not to think about it.
Steve’s mom takes Peggy home the next morning to get ready for the dance, which sort of confuses him considering they don’t have to be at the school until six o’clock and she leaves at nine in the morning, but whatever. The withering looks Peggy and his mom give him advises him not to argue, but he also doesn’t bother refraining from rolling his eyes before promising to pick her up on time.
He spends majority of his morning listening to music on his bed, but his mom is off for the day and has been bubbling with excitement ever since she found out he’s going to his first high school dance (despite being a senior, he kind of feels like he’s in the ninth grade all over again) and makes him get ready earlier than he’d planned. She also hovers in the bathroom doorway as he does his hair, but he supposes she does that on purpose because when he tries to do nothing more to it than what he usually does (which is nothing), she clears her throat, narrows her eyes, and disappears into the kitchen without a word.
Later, she helps him tie his tie, and he puts on a pair of dress shoes he wore to his cousin’s wedding when he was fifteen. They’re only a little tight, and they’re also sort of dingy from sitting in his closet for too long all these years, but his mom is beaming with pride once he’s all dressed up, so he doesn’t try to protest when she hugs him tight and kisses him on the forehead.
Peggy looks great when they pick her up at her house. She lives with her older sister and niece, both of whom are way girly than she is, so she’s wearing much more makeup than he knows she’d ever put on herself. She’s still wearing her signature shade of red lipstick, but she’s also wearing blush, mascara, and eye liner, and Steve can’t deny that she looks especially beautiful with her hair twisted up like that. They take the standard amount of pictures together on her doorstep, and then a few extra ones of just Peggy by herself so that Angie doesn’t have to cut Steve out of one, before climbing into the backseat of his mom’s car and heading up to the school.
They only spend about ten minutes being cooed over one final time by Steve’s mom (which is actually not that long considering she spent an hour crying over how grown up he was getting when he was forced to play a tree in his second grade play) before finally making it up to the gym. There’s already a fair amount of people inside, though no one's really dancing yet—which is all well and good, because Steve doesn’t know how and even though he’s sure Peggy’s going to try and drag him out on to the dance floor later, he’d rather it stay later, thank you. Instead she leads him over to the snack table and they shove Cheetos under their lips like walruses and send pictures to Angie, who makes them laugh when she replies Aunt Deb sucks with her old lady knees :( and then makes Steve choke on his soda when she sends another text commenting on Peggy’s boobs.
And then he almost chokes again, because he happens to glance at the entrance just as Natasha walks through the door. It’s like some dumb movie cliché, actually, because the gym’s dark and it’s still light outside so she’s backlit by the sun and god, she’s beautiful. Her hair is softly curled and falls around her shoulders, and she’s wearing a red dress that nearly makes him pat his jacket down for his inhaler, but Peggy squeezes his arm and grounds him with a small chuckle and shake of her head. Matt walks out from behind Natasha at that same moment, the lenses of his glasses matching both his tie and her dress. The both of them look pretty fucking perfect, really, and Steve shoves a handful of Chex mix into his mouth and crunches loudly.
“Your jealousy is palpable, darling,” Peggy says into his ear.
“Shut up, Peg,” he grumbles.
She smooths her hand over the lapels of his suit’s jacket. “Mm, just don’t get crumbs all over yourself, alright? This is coming out of my wallet.”
She nudges her hip against his to let him know she’s just kidding, and he remembers, yeah, this is the girl he’s here for. He can’t be a downer all evening. So he tugs on her hand and says, “Let’s go check out the photo booth?”
“Why, I’m surprised,” she says, following him anyway. “You want to take pictures of yourself. Willingly.”
“Well, there’s a first time for everything. Proof of that is me being here at this dance, remember?”
They shuffle into the photo booth set up at the other side of the gym and take as many pictures as they can before they run out of spare change, and then spend five minutes laughing at the ridiculous expressions on their faces in each frame. Steve tucks one of the strips in his wallet and is about to suggest they go pick at the dessert table when the DJ changes the song and Peggy’s entire face lights up. Honestly, that’s all he needs to know what’s coming next. And he can’t deny her, even if he’s got two left feet and not a single nimble bone in his body.
She hauls him out on to the dance floor and sort of manhandles him into the right position, but they’re also both laughing, so it’s alright. It’s not really a slow song, but it’s not an upbeat track, either, so they result to mild swaying in the middle of the dance floor and make jokes about one of the chaperones masterfully executing a string of dance moves circa the nineteen-eighties that have them giggling into each other’s shoulders and earning odd looks from nearby couples, but Steve hardly cares. By the time the song’s over, he realizes that he’s actually having a lot of fun.
But then Peggy smirks at someone over his shoulder and walks away with just a wink, leaving him very confused. Somebody taps him on the arm, however, before he can follow her.
Natasha’s standing there when he turns, and seriously, it should be illegal for somebody to look so breathtaking. He splutters for a moment, mouth dropping open embarrassingly wide, and Natasha stifles a smile and lets him recover. When he does, he rubs the back of his neck and glances at the ground, his cheeks hot.
“Uh, hi,” he greets lamely. “You look…”
Thankfully, she doesn’t tease him this time. “Thank you,” she says with a soft smile.
“So, look, I’m sorry I’ve been sort of a—well, a total asshole lately,” he says, deciding that it’s best to just come out with it. That smile’s still on her face, and she tilts her head, indicating for him to go on. “But the truth is? You kind of scare the hell out of me. In—in a good way, I promise. Well, maybe not completely in a good way, because it makes me act like a dumbass, but—”
Natasha looks amused now, and he lets out a long, shaky sigh. Well. He may suck at talking to women, but nobody’s ever accused him of being a coward.
“—I’ve kind of had the biggest crush on you since we were in the fourth grade, and you started talking to me and my mind was sort of… blown? Completely. And then I got unreasonably jealous when you told me Matt was taking you to the dance, because it’s not like you liked me or anything, and—shit, uh, aren’t you supposed to be with him, anyway? I don’t know if you two are…”
He stops talking, if only because he’s running short on breath and he doesn’t want to crown this whole disastrous ordeal with a long huff of his inhaler. Natasha hasn’t walked away from him yet, though, so that’s a good sign.
“He slunk off with Elektra as soon as we got here,” she finally explains with a casual wave of her hand. “You know how they are. They’re always on-and-off, and I guess when he asked me they were currently off, but now they’re on, I guess, because they’ve been making out in the hallway for the past ten minutes.”
Steve flushes. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know you were having a bad time. I wouldn’t have dumped all of that on you like that,” he replies, wincing.
“Don’t worry. It was worth it,” she shrugs. Then a smile slowly spreads across her face. “Because you’re cute, Rogers. And, yeah, you were kind of being an asshole, but you apologized. And you also gave me that drawing of a dancer in class yesterday. Nobody’s ever given me something that nice before.”
“Well, it’s the same drawing I tried to give you on the playground in the fourth grade, only less stick figure-y,” he admits shyly.
“That was you?” He nods, flushing. “I was a total jerk back then. I’m sorry I brushed you off.”
He shakes his head. “It certainly didn’t dissuade me.”
“No, it didn’t,” she smiles.
“So, uh, we’re good, right?”
“Yeah, we’re good,” she replies, and his shoulders almost sag in relief. “But on one condition: you have to dance with me.”
He swallows nervously, because he’s getting a second chance at this and that very well might screw it up, but nods nevertheless. “Okay.”
“And…”
“And?”
“And you have to take me on a date sometime.”
He grins. That he can do.