Peggy's eyes were a rich, chocolatey brown, and the way she was peeking at him from beneath her eyelashes was distracting in a way that was a little distressing, if only because Steve found it so very appealing. It made him want to forget all about dinner and spend the next few hours kissing her instead, getting his hands all tangled up in her hair and holding her body close to his. That was infinitely preferable to the conversation that was looming, but he also didn't think it was any sort of possibility. Because in addition to things being slightly strained, they'd been taking things very slowly, and Steve didn't want to push. He didn't want to make Peggy think he wasn't fine with slow, because he was, really, he just...
He couldn't help the way he wanted her, and the few chaste kisses they'd shared hadn't done anything to ease that ache.
He took another bite of mashed potatoes, which was a wholly useless distraction, but Peggy at least made a move to carry the conversation along, and Steve smiled fondly at the way she sighed wistfully over the prospect of chocolate. "Exactly," he said, once he'd swallowed. Chocolate had been a special occasion item only, but that had made it all the sweeter, those rare instances in which he and his Ma had been able to get their hands on some.
"Also, Buck is a liar, and you can't listen to anything he says," Steve said, and then nearly added something about how would he know about Steve's cooking abilities anyway, since he'd so thoroughly kept his distance for the last seven years, but that felt like it might bring the mood down. Or it might bring Steve's mood down, anyway, this recognition of the fact that he'd been without his best friend for so long.
"Anyway," Steve added hurriedly, as if to cover whatever lapse into silence might have followed his previous words, "I've always got peanut butter and jam around, if something really had gone horribly wrong with the shepherd's pie."