The Princess and the Twins
By: SassyShoulderAngel319
Fandom/Character(s): Avengers - Steve Rogers/Captain America
Original Idea: Single Parent!AU, y’all!
Notes: (Masterlist)(About Me) This is the second LOOOOONG one in a row. (That I wrote not posted.) Wow. It just kinda ran away from me. @steverogersnotebook This is the one I wasn’t sure if I was ever going to finish! (That title sounds like a band name.)
I sat on the bench at the station, waiting for my train. With headphones in and a sad song playing, I stared at the ground. It was my weekly existential crisis of oh-boy-what-am-I-doing-with-my-life time so I was completely lost in my own little world.
Until a little blonde-haired, blue-eyed girl boosted herself up onto the bench right next to me. She was probably four.
I paused my music and pulled my headphones out, shoving them into my bag.
“Hello,” I greeted, slightly awkwardly, as I looked around for her parents or guardians or whatever—some adults who she was with.
With any luck this kid had been taught Stranger Danger and wouldn’t say much to me, but would let me help her find her grownups while sitting on the same bench. She wasn’t crying so I assumed she hadn’t gotten lost, per se. She probably ran off, distracted by a butterfly in her mind, since the station was indoors.
“Are you a princess?” she asked me.
I looked down at her, confused but also amused, and finally got a good look at her. She was wearing an American flag shirt, frilly denim skirt with cotton shorts underneath, and Velcro kids’ Converse. There was some glittery face paint of a star on her cheek farthest away from me and she had sparkly red nail polish on her tiny fingernails.
Raising my eyebrows, I smiled at her. “Am I a princess?” I repeated back at her cheerfully. “Why do you think I’m a princess?”
“Because princesses are always the prettiest ladies! And princesses wear pretty dresses!”
I tucked the skirt of my dress slightly under my leg and put my hand on my chest. “Aw! You’re so cute. And I’ll tell you a secret.” I bent forward a little in a non-threatening way. “I am a princess!” I stage-whispered near her ear. My whole grownup life I’d done my best to encourage imagination in the children around me—my neighbors’ kids and grandkids, my nieces and nephews, my young cousins—because I felt like imagination was a resource that some people were losing but other people never ran out of.
The little girl gasped. “You are?!” she stage-whispered back in awe.
“Yes I am. But you can’t tell anyone, okay?”
“RED!” a frantic voice shouted.
The girl and I looked up, following the sound.
A handsome, six-foot-two, muscular-as-heck man pushed his way through the small crowd at the station towards us, carrying another little girl in one arm. He had the same blond hair and blue eyes as the girl sitting next to me.
When he broke through the line of people separating us from him, the girl next to me hopped down from the bench. “Dad!” she squealed excitedly, running over to him.
“Red, honey, you can’t go wandering off like that! You scared me!” the man admonished gently, picking her up in his other arm. The second little girl was probably the same age as the first, but looked frail and younger. She had brown hair and brown eyes. Her eyes were sharp even if her legs and arms were thin for being around four.
“But, but, Dad! I found a princess!” Red told the man. He looked past her small face at me. I gave an awkward single wave, just tilting my wrist down and setting my hand back on my leg. The man approached me.
“I am so sorry if she was bothering you. She’s a bit of a handful. They both are.”
I shrugged. “It’s no problem. She was no bother. I have a lot of experience with kids.”
“See, Dad?” Red pressed, trying for quiet and utterly failing. Kids were so cute. “She’s in a pretty dress, she’s pretty, and she told me she was a princess!”
“I see that, sweetheart,” the man acknowledged. He turned back to me. “I’m Steve, by the way.” He paused for a moment. “Uh… I’d shake your hand, but… my hands are full.” He looked at his hands as he spoke, each cradling one of his daughters.
I laughed and stood up, slinging my bag securely onto my shoulder. “It’s fine. A slight breach of etiquette for a good reason is no breach of etiquette at all to me,” I dismissed.
Red didn’t like being ignored, apparently, and Steve wasn’t picking up on what she was trying to say. “Dad!” she complained. “You’re a king! So you have to marry a princess to have a queen!” Her tone was full of a “duh!” tone.
Steve blushed. “Sorry,” he muttered to me. “Ever since their mom died, Red here has been determined to find me a new ‘queen.’”
I chuckled. “No problem. She’s cute.”
“Dad!” Red protested. “She’s the first princess we’ve met! Aren’t you going to at least try to make her your queen?”
“Red, sweetheart, how about I give her my phone number, and she gives me hers, and then I can let her see if she would like to meet me again?”
“Okay!” Red replied brightly.
Steve sighed and gave me a small grin as I pulled out my phone. “I’ll forgive you if you just tell me your number instead of typing it into my phone yourself,” I commented casually, creating a new contact and writing Steve into the first-name section with an American Flag emoji next to it, taking a context clue for me later from Red’s outfit.
He recited his phone number as I plugged it in, and then showed him to make sure I got it right.
“That’s it,” he informed me.
I sent him a text with my name. “And now you have mine.”
“Daddy?” the other little girl asked. “Why didn’t Auntie Nat come with us?”
“Because she wanted to stay with her other nieces and nephews for another couple days. But I wish she’d come with us because then I’d have someone else to watch you two crazy kids,” Steve replied.
“Well, what train are you on?” I wondered.
“The eleven-twenty back to New York.”
“Hey so am I. If you want, I can sit by you and keep an eye on these two. I promise I’m not a kidnapper or anything.”
He shook his head. “I couldn’t ask you to—”
“Nonsense. If I spend the ride alone I’ll just listen to music and fall into the void of What-am-I-doing-with-my-life. I’d be happy to help.”
“Well… if you really wouldn’t mind…” Steve began.
“She wouldn’t!” Red put in enthusiastically.
Her frail little sister rolled her eyes.
“Red, leave that up to the princess,” Steve chastised gently. Red pouted.
“Well she’s right. I wouldn’t mind.”
“Well, then, princess, if you’d care to join us, I’d love to escort you to the train.”
I chuckled and readjusted my bag strap on my shoulder. “I’d consider it an honor, Your Majesty,” I remarked, taking his awkwardly-offered elbow. We strolled through the station towards the train we’d be getting on. I noticed that Steve had two little backpacks slung over his shoulders that I hadn’t seen before.
“So, this is Red,” I began, nodding at the blonde little girl. “But I don’t think you told me your name, sweetpea.” I looked at the brunette entreatingly.
Wide-eyed, she looked to her dad. He smiled and nodded. “You can tell her, honey,” he murmured.
“Peggy,” the little girl told me.
Steve grinned. “Their real names are Sarah and Margaret,” he explained. “Sarah was my mother’s name. But this little one’s favorite color is red so her uncle started calling her Red and it stuck.” He gave Red a pointed glance so I knew which twin he was talking about.
I nodded understandingly. “I see. I like Red. It’s a fun nickname.”
We reached the train. Steve jumped over the gap between the platform and the interior with ease, set Red down, and offered me his hand. I took it and let him help me hop the gap myself before he scooped his obviously-more-adventurous daughter back up. “Let’s go find some seats,” he told his girls. Peggy gave a tiny little nod and Red smiled widely with a more enthusiastic nod. I followed them down the aisle of the train until Steve found an open booth with a little table and four seats. “Here alright?” he asked me.
“Mind if Red sits by you next to the window so she doesn’t run off?”
I laughed and held my hands out for the blonde twin. “Not at all.” She leaned towards me. I took her in my arms and set her down on the seat next to the window before taking the aisle seat for myself. Peggy sat across from her sister and Steve sat across from me. Red blabbered about “Uncle Bucky” and “Uncle Sam”—the latter of which made me furrow my eyebrows and think of those I Want YOU posters that turned into memes—for a while and Peggy doodled on a little notebook covered in scribbles.
“Princess?” Red asked after a couple minutes, poking me in the leg.
“What’s it like running a kingdom?”
“It’s a lot of hard work—and I’m still learning how to do it—but it makes me a good leader and a thoughtful person. I have to carefully consider my actions and make the best decisions I can with what I have to work with. It’s not an easy job, but it is a good job.”
Red watched with rapt attention—even Peggy looked up from her notebook. Steve was grinning between me and his daughter.
I felt my phone buzz in my purse.
You certainly have a way with kids. It was from Steve.
I smiled across the table at him and shrugged. “I have a lot of kids in my family that I interact with,” I explained.
“Would you mind, I don’t know, maybe joining me for dinner some night so I can thank you for being so good to these two today—assuming I can find a babysitter?”
Peggy perked up. “Auntie Nat?” she asked.
“Or Uncle Tony!” Red put in excitedly.
“Not Uncle Tony,” Steve told his blonde daughter. “Last time I let him tend you two he let you play with tools and Peggy almost took her eye out.” Red drooped a little but agreed that wasn’t a good thing.
“I’d love to go to dinner with you whenever you can find a babysitter. I’m free most nights anyway,” I told Steve quietly. He smiled.
Red started to stare out the window and Peggy went back to drawing. They were cute kids—and they had a very handsome dad. I was trying not to notice, but come on, how could one not notice? He was tall, blond, and chiseled.
Steve and I talked quietly during the ride, swaying with the movement of the train. I didn’t want the ride to end. It was just… nice. Pleasant. I hadn’t had such a good conversation with someone I’d just met in a long time. He was just easy to talk to. He had a good personality and when he listened to me talk I felt like he was really listening.
But all good things had to end. Eventually, with screeching brakes that made all four of us cringe, the train ground to a halt in the Big Apple. We were home.
After Steve and I got the girls off the train, he shook my hand. “I look forward to taking you out to dinner.”
“I look forward to joining you,” I replied.
Red looked up at me. “It was nice to meet you, princess,” she offered.
I smiled. “It was lovely to meet you as well.”
Peggy just gave me a timid wave from her dad’s arm. I waved back.
Steve took Red’s hand and the three of them went off in the opposite direction to me.
I smiled as I headed home. I liked Steve and his daughters. I couldn’t guarantee our date would go anywhere, but I kinda hoped it would. Poor guy. Single dad raising two daughters all on his own—and at such a young age too!—couldn’t have been easy.
Yeah. If the date went somewhere, maybe one day I could be the queen to his king, as Red suggested.
