The lifestyle Peggy had chosen lent itself to a certain amount of trouble, and that trouble took a variety of forms. Spend any amount of time in the Capitol, in the clubs full of people dressed in gauzy facsimiles of clothing (or even less than that, paint and glitter and more skin than fabric), in parties that weren't even thinly-veiled excuses for debauchery, and someone was going to make a pass. Peggy couldn't avoid those settings. She was expected to swim in those social circles, to keep up with the other escorts and stylists and the people who lived for events like this one, no matter how distasteful she'd come to find the finer details. It had seemed glamorous when she was a child. Now it was like flaking away gold to find that it was all paint and gilt and what hid beneath was rust.
She knew how to handle herself. She hadn't always known, but there had been enough strength to build a thick skin and a sharp wit, and if she honed those things by smiling sweetly at men while simultaneously cutting them down to size, that was Peggy's business. It had garnered her a reputation, and reputation was all some people had to stand on anyway. Anything to stand out above the rest. Anything to retain herself, the things she valued, and to continue to better serve the people who deserved it.
Steve was one of those people. He'd always been on the short list, no matter what poor decisions he'd made or impulses he'd been unable to control. Peggy couldn't hold what happened last night against him, but she wasn't going to insist he forgive himself. That, she'd learned, was a lost cause. Steve always did things in his own time, and he was harder on himself than anyone else might be.
"I know," she sighed, leaning into the solid warmth of him, arms loosely twined around his midsection. "I know you are, Steve. If I thought for a moment you were insincere in your apology, or that you were trying to deceive me about the circumstances, we would be having a very different conversation. As it is, I see no reason we can't both move beyond this." She rubbed a hand over his back, slow and easy.