ᴄᴏᴍᴇ ᴛᴏ ᴛʜᴇ ᴡɪɴᴅᴏᴡ, sᴡᴇᴇᴛ ɪs ᴛʜᴇ ɴɪɢʜᴛ-ᴀɪʀ ( ᴏᴘᴇɴ )

[partialities]

Who: Margaery Tyrell, Cisco Ramon & Steve Rogers
Broadcast: nope
Action: yes, all over the planet and on the Windrose, Blameless & Starstruck
When: catch-all log for the duration of June & July, starters can be found in the comments! feel free to add one of your own or ask me for one/contact me at ladylike

also: cw for gif-use at the comments! all of them are sfw, however :>

Comments

[uprightness]

[ he looks it, reaches to take it and turn it between his fingers before placing it down again ]

Doesn't seem like they'll need Captain America, here.

[ it's so quiet, after all. He used to imagine what the world would look like after the war, the measure of peace it might find. he may have never seen the world end but the after didn't quite meet the expectations. ]

It's quiet.

[ and it's welcomed as well as it can be unsettling. ]

[mucked]

Maybe less so the man, [ she admits -- a shady borderless they of the fleet who don't need him like she needs him. but then again, it was never captain america she needed. it was always steve rogers. ]

But the idea never goes amiss. And your Avengers are here -- some of them. They need you, I suspect. Wherever we are.

[uprightness]

[ he sighs a bit. this, talking like this with her, with peggy it always seems easier to voice thoughts out, uncertainties that he won't easily bring up with many others. maybe it all started with their conversation in the rainy military camp after his less than successful performance and carried through to him voicing his thoughts to her 70 years later. ]

you know, it'd be a lot easier if all we needed to do here is fight invading aliens on planets. At least then, I'd had a plan.

[mucked]

Spoiling for a fight? [ -- but she understood the feeling. when she'd been here about as long as he had, all she'd wanted was a reason to throw a punch. and it happened on the dusty moon, over poker. and afterwards, she'd felt a little better.

but the feeling just came back. ] Afraid I can't help you with that one. I'm tapped out for the time being, Rogers.

[ a slow, humourless smile. ]

[uprightness]

Not something I should wish for.

[ he tries to put aside ultron's words, of captain america who can't live without war. They're not entirely false but they're not a hard truth either. Instead, he reaches a hand to place near hers, the sidelines of their palms touching but only barely so. ]

You're doing good. In a few weeks you could try for a few rounds yourself.

[mucked]

'Gainst a wet paper bag, maybe. [ she breathes out. ] I underestimated his strength, you know.

[ which means she's likely also underestimated steve's, as well. and that's a strange concept. ]

It makes me balk a little at the future. At least your garden variety Soviet agent and general mafioso thugs go down when I punch them -- but it the sort of forces you must face? [ a low whistle. ]

[uprightness]

When we first met, I did too. I thought he was highly trained, like Natasha and when the mask was off, I thought he will know me, that he'll remember.

[ suddenly, against all odds given the subject of the conversation, he smiles a little ]

You punch a lot of those mafioso people?

[mucked]

Los Angeles was lousy with them. Hired muscle, mostly, for crooked corporations.

[ her smallest finger brushes his. flashes of tussles and fights flicker across the mind. nothing concrete; mostly mixed, and not all of them mobsters at all. ]

[uprightness]

[ it's a unique way to have a conversation. what steve knows about peggy carter's life after he went beneath a thick layer of ice, he knows from files, newspapers and video interviews and from what she told him herself, years and years after her adventures have ended. this is different in the way that it allows him a glimpse into what her life was like in a vivid, deeper way and he smiles both from being allowed and from the images themselves. he never got to see her quite like this and jesus christ, he hasn't got the slightest idea how she manages to do these things in dresses and high heels. ladies dancing in those always made him flinch, not to mention the heat of battle. ]

you're -

[ it's a weird thing. most chaps would fall for a gal who would whisper silly nonsense in their ear and hold onto their arm as they walk down the street, for steve rogers, seeing peggy carter as she fights, well.

beats the hell out of the more usual lady antics ]

Peggy -

[ it's said with a smile that's half amusement and half awe, no he has to ask. ]

How did you manage all of that in those shoes?

[mucked]

[ heavens above, he's endearing. her smile grows crooked while she watches his particular kind of awe steal across his face. as if he should ever be in awe of anyone else, hero that he was. is. would be. gently, she nudges her knuckles against his shoulder -- like a little push could banish that admiration straight out of his body. ]

Practise. [ she drawls, half sarcastic. ]

[uprightness]

[ it's a funny thing. for all the serum and the Captain America glory, Steve admires this woman as she does him. What he has now, he worked for, no doubt but Peggy, she has worked as hard if not more. A little man, he has come to realize, still had an easier time in the world than a woman, at times ( more lunch orders than missions, he remembers she said and if it frustrates him he doesn't want to know what it made her feel ). it's her, after all, that believed in him after Erskine, he carried that faith with him long after they parted ways.

he's a hero, certainly but in his time, Peggy Carter is a legend, an acknowledgment he wishes she had earned straight after the war. ]

Practice.

[ a smile ]

Training in heels and evening dresses?

[mucked]

And wigs. Often, there are wigs involved.

[ is she teasing him? likely. but it's a loving sort of tease, because these are details she'd never had the time to share with him before he'd been lost. so many conversations had been wrapped up in the war. perfunctory, and professional.

she can be a lot less guarded, here. ]

Field operatives are trained for all manner of undercover missions. You never know who or what you might need to pretend to be.

[uprightness]

-- Would have been horrible at it.

[ he has to smile. dear god, seems like her acting skills are top notch while Steve, well . ]

Not very good at pretending.

[ captain obvious. ]

[mucked]

We all have our strengths, [ darling. she doesn't say it, but the affection hangs there in the air. pregnant with possibility. ] And honesty is a rather fine one to have.

[ does she feel bad about all her lies? no. not really. but they do weigh a person down, in the long run. so many friends with whom she hasn't been honest. ]

[uprightness]

When push comes to shove, you've never been anything but honest.

[ this line of work, the one they devoted themselves to demands more than what people would guess. being the ones to protect others, it has its price. still, Steve brought down SHIELD, the very organization she had founded only because he thought she would have done the same had she knows the magnitude of secrets and hidden truths, project insight. the trust he lost in SHIELD, he has in her and it's unshakable.

a beat and ]

wouldn't mind seeing you in a wig, though.

[mucked]

[ a chuckle, then: ] Remember how I talked about that dance they held on the poisoned moon? Shortly before you arrived? The culture required us to appear in disguise. [ ... ] So I was blonde for the evening.

[ implying that there was a wig knocking 'round somewhere, though that's about as close as she gets to admitting to steve that it still exists. ]

[uprightness]

[ he gives her a long look, obviously trying to picture it before deciding - ]

You're trying to pull my leg, aren't you?

[ he's not buying. ]

[mucked]

Ask Barnes. [ her smirk is wry, given the latest development in that friendship. ] He was my date, after all.

[uprightness]

Blonde.

[ he gives her another look, trying a little harder this time to imagine her hair golden rather than dark and he mostly manages this time but it still begs the question: ]

Where did you get a wig on that moon to begin with?

[mucked]

[ calmly, but with a mischievous gleam: ] Who's to say I waited until the moon to get the wig, hm?

[ maybe she already had it! at least, that's what she wants him to think. ]

[uprightness]

Why would -

[ puzzled, terribly so before realization strikes and he shakes his head ]

You're teasing me.

[ how rude. ]

[mucked]

[ she laughs, and decides to put him out of his misery: ] It was an abyssmal sponsor gift that I'd managed at long last to put to decent use. No more and no less.

[ presumably some 'sponsor' caught wind of her spycraft past and thought the wig would be a delicious sort of gift. ]

[uprightness]

They gave you a wig.

[ he'd have frown down at the fella since that to be somewhat inappropriate even if he can't exactly explain why. ]

Well, space seems not to have chocolates.

[ not that he'd want her to get those from any anonymous sponsor, either but still. ]

[mucked]

-- Who knows, it may yet come in handy. You never know when you might need a disguise. [ gently, she steers the conversation away from chocolates. from gifts. from wooing. ]

[uprightness]

[ a hum.]

Maybe. If the need arises, I'd know where I can burrow one.

[ cheeky. But he does like to see her smile. ]