This was by no means the most intimate embrace they had ever shared, but that didn't mean it wasn't nice. Steve felt himself relaxing by degrees as he leaned into Peggy, that slide of her hand up and down his back practically dragging the tension out of him. He couldn't believe she was allowing him this, and his sigh echoed hers, content for the moment, soft and easy in a way he hadn't been when he'd first entered this room.
"I think - I might be sticking around a few days," Steve said, picking his head up enough to look down at her. He wanted to be able to see her expression for this, in the hopes that he'd know what her true feelings were as regarded his question. "Here, in the Capitol. Can I take you out for that dinner, before I leave?"
It maybe wasn't ideal timing, but it was starting to feel like there wouldn't ever be ideal timing, and he just... he didn't want to miss out on this. He didn't want to wait for something else to go wrong, for the Capitol to find another way to drive them apart, before they'd even really gotten together. He wanted at least one night that involved the two of them at a linen-covered table, candlelight glinting off the polished silverware. He wanted to see her dressed up and know it was because the two of them were out for the evening, not because of some nightmarish Capitol party.
They kept talking about it like something off in the distant future, and that, Steve was starting to think, was a problem. He could do slow, he could do slow no problem, but slow wasn't the same as putting something off, as waiting and waiting and it maybe never happening. He wasn't about to let this slip through his fingers.