Lessons in Rule Breaking and Other Reader-Inserts*Steve Rogers*Reader*

Grease and Pearls - Pt. 1/3

All you know is uptown; fancy clothes, expensive cars, jewellery outshining one's personality and exhausting dinners with family acquaintances and business partners. Your life is all planned out; one day, you'll marry Howard Stark's son and you'll be the golden couple adored by press.

You desperately seek to see life outside this suffocating glitz.

That's how you meet Steve Rogers.

For cxptain's Tumblr challenge (lovemeter), Prompt: Uptown Girl by Billy Joel

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1. Uptown Meets Downtown

Your sigh was drowned in the sea of voices as you slipped under the surface, the water closing above your head. The moment you opened your mouth to gasp for air, it filled with water instead, and you reached out to the sun glimmering above, trying to save yourself--

To be entirely honest, now you were being dramatic; however, shall anyone exchange places with you, you were sure they would feel the same about the company of artificial people in their best Sunday suits and fancy dress, sitting around the table pretending to be engaged in the small talk.

As your eyes fell on man seated opposite to you, a bowtie around his neck, one corner of his lips raised in a blend of a smile and a smirk, your mind drifted to your wonderful friend. KR BAR

Virginia Potts, or Pepper for short, a nickname saved for her friends only, would be much better of a match for Anthony than you. She was nothing short of a proper lady and her parents, while not as wealthy as yours, were much more liberal and supportive of her following her dreams. Pepper Potts was about to turn tables and start her own company from a scratch, businessmen be damned. Her mind was brilliant, her persona enchanting, her appearance turning heads wherever she went and her heart was overflowing with kindness and determination. She was about to make people question the very definition of doing business once she set her foot in the field.

Your parents' thinking, on the other hand, froze in the sixties, maybe forties. You were meant to become a glorified housewife, albeit educated enough to teach her own kids. You never really minded that; it wasn't what laid heavy in your mind. Anthony did.

Anthony's parents were as strict as yours, never quite giving him a choice but to take over the family company and wickedly join it with your father's by tying your families together one day.

Your future family and your love life were to be based on a business deal. The romance of it.

Tony wasn't an unlikable person by any means; a genius, somewhat charming in his own slightly arrogant way, he even made for an entertaining company at times. Nevertheless, your affections for him couldn't begin to even hope to grow beyond friendship. On top of that, it just happened to come that while he was meant to be in the charge of to-be-his company, his interest laid further in the progress of technology itself, in designing things, rather than in attending board meetings.

In other words; Pepper would have been a better match for Tony, much better equipped to lead an enterprise than you and Tony together and oh, let's not forget, her feelings for Tony went beyond friendly, unlike yours. And they were mutual.

But here you were, sitting through another forcefully polite dinner with the Starks and you wanted to be anywhere but here-- you wanted to be somewhere where you could actually breathe.

As you inhaled shakily and possibly too loud for a lady, your sister Sharon shot you a scolding look. You wanted to scream. However, like the well-mannered girl you were, you fixed a smile for your guests instead and engaged in meaningless conversation until it was time to prepare for bed; you let Anthony kiss your knuckles in goodbye and ignored your father's pleased smile that had your chest constricted, your stomach full of ice cubes instead of the butterflies you were supposed to feel when being with your future husband.