Title: The Mother of Invention
Author: sholio
Fandom: Agent Carter/Captain America
Characters/Pairing: Peggy Carter, Howard Stark; gen
Word Count: 1300
Content Notes: none (takes place during the general timeline of the first Captain America movie, so no Agent Carter series spoilers; however, I think of this more as an Agent Carter fic than a CA fic, since it's drawing on Peggy and Howard characterization from the show)
Summary: It's wartime in Britain, and Howard Stark is attempting to bake a better cake.


War, Peggy noted, utterly destroyed one's ability to sleep like a normal person. If only the enemy could have the decency to observe proper working hours. But of course they did not, which meant one never quite knew when it would be necessary to stay up for three days straight, or work a night shift then suddenly be called up for a crack-of-dawn meeting.

The fortunate learned to fall asleep anywhere and sleep through anything. Peggy was not that lucky, which was why she was wandering the SSR's London command center at oh-three-hundred and cursing her inability to take advantage of the opportunity to get an uninterrupted eight hours of sleep without anyone shooting at her.

For once, HQ was relatively quiet and calm, with no one rushing about waving emergency dispatches or hustling some sort of important guest on or off the premises. Steve and his team were out in the field. (No word. She resolutely did not think about it.) There were, of course, the rooms of codebreakers and analysts working through the night, drooping over mugs of weak coffee and dreadful, stewed tea. Peggy thought about stopping in to help them, but she wasn't sure if she could manage to dredge enough function from her exhausted brain to make her more than a liability.

Instead she wandered down to the lab section. If there was one person who seemed to sleep even less than she did, it was Howard, and she thought he'd probably welcome the company. If nothing else, there was a good likelihood of some sort of interesting explosion.

"Howard?" she called, wandering between lab tables with assorted bits of military technology laid out on them. A weary-looking technician went past, carrying something trailing wires and odd sparky bits. He pointed wordlessly toward the back. Peggy went in the direction indicated.

"Howard?"

"In here."

She pursued the elusive voice, and soon found herself in a small canteen, presumably for the lab workers. There was a table with benches, a very modern-looking refrigerator (she suspected Howard's hand in its design), and a refreshingly normal-looking gas range. Right now the place was deserted except for Howard, who was wearing a lab coat and ... cooking?

Or at least, stirring something in a large bowl. The table had been taken over with a complicated, scientific-looking apparatus. Peggy clasped her hands behind her back and studied, with interest, the various tubes, bell jars, and beakers of colorful, bubbling liquid.

"C'mon over here, don't be a stranger," Howard said. He held up a wooden spoon dripping with a weirdly stringy batter. "I need a taste tester."

Peggy took a quick step backward. "Isn't that what your paid assistants are for?"

"Oh, be a sport." He smiled at her ingratiatingly. "It's only cake batter."

"Howard, with you, nothing is only anything." She eyed the goopy strings trailing from the spoon. Not that she was an expert on cake batter, but she was pretty sure it wasn't supposed to look quite that much like glue. "What is it made out of?"

"It's cake batter," Howard said. "It's made of the usual things. Er, except the ones which are rationed."

"Which would be essentially all of them," Peggy pointed out.

Howard gave her a dazzling grin that had no doubt dropped susceptible knickers from here to the west coast of the United States. Peggy, fortunately, was not at all susceptible. "That's why they call it science, my friend. Chemistry, to be precise."

"Personally, Howard, I prefer to keep chemistry far away from my cooking."

"Cooking is nothing but chemistry," Howard said. He gave the batter a few more pokes with the spoon. Peggy did not miss the difficulty he had extricating it on the last stroke. "That's all baking is, really. Or any kind of cooking. Chemical changes involving heat. I'm simply working on a more strictly scientific application of the basic principles."

"And incidentally dodging sugar rationing while you're at it," Peggy said.

"Among other kinds of rationing."

"Well," she admitted, "they say necessity is the mother of invention."

One of the beakers on the table, bubbling over its Bunsen burner, chose that moment to pop and give off a little puff of greenish smoke. Peggy jumped.

"It's a real mother, all right," Howard muttered. He studied the spoon thoughtfully -- the batter was slowly turning an odd bluish color -- but did not (she observed) lick it himself. Instead he poured the contents of the batter into a waiting cake pan.

"Howard," Peggy said, "please do not poison anyone. Least of all yourself. If nothing else, think of the loss to the war effort."

"Don't worry. I'm far too fond of myself to test my inventions on myself."

"No, just on hapless souls who wander by the kitchen."

"In all seriousness," Howard said, as he donned a quilted and quite domestic-looking oven mitt and popped the cake pan into the oven, "this is highly unlikely to poison anyone. All the ingredients have been tested, just not together."

"Somehow I don't find that as comforting as you perhaps intended."

"It's really just a matter of waiting now," Howard said cheerfully. He began collecting up the cooking utensils, then noticed Peggy was staring in the direction of the range. "You know what they say, watched pots and all that."

"I was just wondering," Peggy said, "if it was supposed to be doing ... that." She pointed at the oven, and the toxic-looking yellowish-green smoke seeping out around the edges.

"Er ..." Howard placed a hand on her shoulder, politely but briskly directing her toward the door. "Perhaps it would be wise to be elsewhere for a few minutes."

Peggy stayed out of the way while Howard and a couple of hastily roused lab assistants brought a large, portable ventilation device, rather like a vacuum cleaner. They were all three wearing gas masks, which did not fill her with confidence. "Excuse me, do I need one of those?"

"No, no," Howard assured her, rather muffled through the mask's filter. "As long as you stay over there."

Peggy shelved her desire to help, and retreated to a discreet corner of the lab.

The canteen was shortly declared usable again, though a very odd smell lingered in the air, a sort of disturbingly cyanide-ish almond scent, with overtones of scorched vanilla. Howard flopped down on a nearby lab bench while the assistants toted away the portable ventilator, handling it with particular care, as if its contents might explode. He mopped his face with a handkerchief.

Peggy wandered over to the bench. She chose to lean against the wall rather than sitting down, because she was not entirely sure she could make herself get up again if she did. "Howard," she said gently. "When did you last sleep?"

"When did any of us?" was his answer, with an uncharacteristic bite in it. Then he looked at her, and smiled apologetically. This close, she could easily see the network of fatigue lines on his face, making him look old before his time. "He's out there, you know, Peggy? They all are. I'm -- not. And this, I guess ... this is what I can do."

"Bake toxic cakes?" she asked, smiling.

"Among other things."

Weariness ground her down, but she still wasn't sleepy; it was a sort of gritty-eyed exhaustion, where she'd gone past sleep and come out the other side. She held out her hand, and Howard, clearly in a similar state, gazed at it without apparent comprehension.

"Come on," Peggy said gently. "I understand they have terrible coffee upstairs in the codebreakers' room. I believe they even have coffee cakes, although from the flavor, the flour has most likely been cut with sawdust, and possibly with sand."

"Terrible coffee and even worse cake," Howard sighed, and took her hand, accepting her boost to his feet. "Lead the way, my dear."