Sparks, Flames, Embers
Author's note: Hello, I am Margot, and I am a Cartson addict. I honestly tried to branch out into another 'verse, but this pairing sucked me in once again, and I could not resist.
My Disclaimers:as you can tell, Agent Carter is so not mine & characters are only slightly (I hope) OOC due to Modern day setting and therefore culture
My Warning - Rating: M, very very M due to explicit sexual descriptions, the dropping of the F-bomb and other salty sailor language, frequent imbibing of alcoholic beverages by the characters, and overall smutty smut smutness of most of the chapters' content. You have been warned.
If none of this has scared you off, my dear reader, then sit back, relax, and enjoy ; )
Chapter 1: One Night(s) Stand
Beep! Beep! Beep!
Peggy didn't quite wake with a start at the sound of her incessant phone alarm. She did, however, begin mumble cursing the day – which wasn't all that unusual for a Monday morning.
What was unusual was the groggy voice who cursed next to her.
"Marge, if you don't want to add a new goddamn phone to your bloody Christmas list, turn that shit off."
That was unusual. In fact, all sorts of things were unusual. And wrong. So wrong. And her half-asleep brain couldn't quite keep up.
One, her phone was not on the night stand to the right of her bed. In fact, there was no night stand to the right of the bed, just a pile of textbooks and it was not her bed.
Two, her phone was… her phone was… There! Stowed safely away in her purse next to the stack of textbooks. The memory of why she needed to safeguard it came flooding back along with…
Three, he, the warm male body that was next to her, had called her 'Marge'. Only one man was brazenly stupid enough to insist on a pet name, especially that pet name, and she was in his bed.
And had been for two whole days.
Well, not just the bed, if she were to be completely honest.
Oh bloody hell she did not have time for this.
When all of this finally got done computing in her brain, her body and mind both became fully awake. It would have been the perfect cold shower, if her blasted sensory recall was not torturing her with very hot memory flashes of what she had done and who she had done it with this weekend.
"Hey, you know we don't have classes today. Finals were last week. It's Christmas break," Jack Thompson rasped lazily from the bed. Apparently, her frantic attempt to get dressed and exit quickly as possible had not been conducive to him going back to sleep after she finally managed to turn the alarm off.
Peggy paused in her search for her other shoe to look back at him. He painted the perfect picture of temptation, as he lay there sprawled invitingly in bed, all lean, muscular, and golden, his normally well-styled hair all sex-mussed, his face covered in stubble, and his blue eyes impossibly both dark with lust and twinkly bright with satisfaction.
If she had been any other girl, she would have caved and crawled right back into bed for a third day. But she wasn't, she was Peggy Carter, and that crooked, self-satisfied grin of his was not enough of a turn-on to overcome her willpower.
Spotting her shoe under his jacket on the floor by the door, she scrambled for it while muttering, "I know all of that. Hence your frat's party, which led to this – this… well all of all this." God she needed her breakfast tea and fast. Her non-caffeinated eloquence was astounding in its deficiency. "But Angie will be back from her Christmas parties and her Sunday family extravaganza, and I don't want to explain where I have been."
"Why, Marge, are you ashamed of me?" he drawled.
She straightened up from putting on her shoe and fixed him with a Look.
With her chin high and her eyes narrowed, she declared firmly, "I am most definitely not. I am a grown woman and can sleep with whomever I choose. And I chose you."
The pained expression that had been hiding in his eyes and the hunched-ness of his shoulders disappeared at her words. The bizarre relief she felt at that sight helped her forgive him for his next cock-sure words:
"More than once, if I recall, and sober too, at least for part of it."
"You recall correctly," she sighed.
"But…?"
"But Angie is a gossip, and as hard as she will try to keep this to herself, she will drop enough hints to mutual friends of ours, which will necessitate some awkward explanations on my part and I'd rather not go through that. I want to keep my private life private."
He eyed her speculatively for a moment, and then with a nod said, "You're not a kiss-and-tell kind of girl. I can respect that."
"You can?"
"Sure thing, Carter."
She stared at him expectantly for a moment, waiting for an insult. There was always at least one in every conversation that they had.
When none came, she went over to collect her purse, leaned down and kissed him on the stubbled cheek, whispering gratefully, "Thanks, Jack," before letting herself out.
~A~
The previous Friday night…
"So, Marge, where is your lesser half?"
Peggy groaned, perhaps mentally, perhaps not. She really didn't care for the feelings of the male half of the species this night, and hardly ever for this particular specimen.
She downed her shot of whiskey (none of those holiday frou-frou drinks, thank you very much) and turned to face the bane of her existence, who had somehow found her amidst the chaos of collegiate revelers – beer pong enthusiasts, half-sloshed and out of tune karaoke Christmas carolers, and pool-side dancers.
"As I have never had another half, lesser or otherwise, I am not sure who or what you are talking about, Thompson."
"Oh, don't be coy, Carter," he mock-chided as he leaned against the bar next to her. "You know what I mean, that Wilkes chap. The physics major? Tall, dark, handsome and a high I.Q. to match?"
"Oh him. Dunno know," she said with a nonchalant shrug. It was a bald-faced lie. She did know. He had gone home for the holidays, and she was not to call or message him. He had made that abundantly clear.
She signaled for a double shot to the bartender that the Sigma Sigma Rho fraternity had hired for their annual Fall Finals are Finished Fiesta, but when she found Jack still standing there next to her and looking … not concerned, but at least for once non-judgmental, she blurted:
"Have you ever been dumped?"
The moment the words were out of her mouth she regretted it. She expected him to laugh, to make some pompous caustic remark like 'are you kidding me? I am Jack bloody Thompson', or worse, to make some smart-arse comment about how she must be the poor sad pathetic dumpee, who was stereotypically trying to get wasted, laid or both to forget her woes. (She wasn't. She was just here at the loudest party she could think of, where she could be distracted and not technically be alone).
He did none of those things however. Instead, he surprised her with, "Yeah, I was once. Freshman year. Long distance relationship with a girl who went to Berkeley. She decided she didn't want to date someone who was so far away and who wanted to go into 'the corrupt tyrannical institution' that was law enforcement."
Normally, she would have made some rejoinder like 'so you chased after badge bunnies instead, huh?', but she was loathe to break this bizarre truce that they had. If he wasn't going to kick her while she was down, she would do the same. So she said nothing.
After a few companionable moments of silence, while she sat there nursing her whiskey and he, his beer, he finally broke it with a musing, "Huh, I was right about him being your lesser half. I knew that Wilkes fellow was all book smarts and not a lick of common sense."
She arched a questioning eyebrow.
Being familiar with this expression, he answered smugly, "Well, any guy who would let you go is either insane or just plain dumb. And from what it sounds like, he didn't let you down easy but flat out dumped you. That just goes to show he has no sense of self-preservation."
Peggy didn't know whether to feel chuffed at the idea that Jack Thompson, her arch-rival and Lehigh University's legendary catch-and-release Casanova, thought her as a 'keeper' or at the idea that he found her so intimidating.
Before she could decide how to exactly reply, he continued, "So for what reason did he brave the wrath of Peggy Carter?"
Whether it was the combination of the truth serum qualities of the liquor and his excellent buttering up skills or her desire to get the truth out there before he came up with some reason of his own – like she was frigid in bed or some such nonsense, she told him.
"He felt that I cared more about my career than our relationship…"
He had accused her of always complaining about Jack Thompson being an asshole and how he was going to ruin her chances at getting the coveted F.B.I. internship nomination and never caring about his worries about how he never got enough lab time to work on his capstone project because the wife of one of the faculty members was always given preferential treatment.
This was patently untrue of course. She had gone out of her way to delay Whitney Frost and shorten her times in the labs as much as possible so that he could slip in ahead or after her, and made such a nuisance of herself with the Dean about Professor Chadwick's tendency towards nepotism that she had nearly jeopardized her own good standing with the faculty.
"… and he resented the fact that I didn't want to spend the break with him and meeting his family or having him come home with me to meet mine. I thought it was too soon and he thought six months was soon enough."
There was a brief pause in which he said nothing, and she found herself holding her breath like a convicted felon at a sentencing hearing, and then…
"Dumbass."
He said it so deadpan and with such a perfect imitation of his mentor Vernon Masters that she found herself nearly snorting her whiskey.
After he awkwardly patted her back to help her get over her sputtering-coughing fit, he ordered her another shot to replace hers, and then the rest of night he hung out with her.
They poked fun at the off-key karaoke carolers, most of whom were from one of the university's sororities, the one that wore a lot of pink and who were really there for their Mrs. degrees.
They danced. They challenged each other to darts. And they flirted. Mostly, he whispered dirty jokes and made insinuations that Jason was sexually intimidated by her and that Jack was 'up' for the challenge.
And as she was never one to back down from any kind of challenge, she took him up on his offer. After making sure no one was in his room and the door was locked, the figurative gloves came off along with literally everything else.
~A~
The following Saturday morning…
Peggy was awoken for the third time by the tiny sound of the Invisible Man's theme song.
The first time she had roused just enough to catch its last few bars before it went to voicemail.
The second time, she made the conscious choice to let it do so, and when Thompson groaned a "What the fuck, Carter?" she managed to croak: "Let…voicemail…wanker'll get … picture…"
She then promptly burrowed deeper into the covers. She wasn't about to get off the Big "O" Bliss Train for the next stop of Hangovers-ville, especially not for Mr. Doesn't-Want-to-be-Seen But-Apparently-Wants-to-be-Heard.
This time though she realized that the bloody bastard was going to win.
"Who the fuck is that, Carter?"
"Wilkes. Ugh, what the hell does he want at - " she paused to crack open one eye and peer at the clock on his desk that was half-covered by one of their shirts, "- something-thirty in the morning?"
"He probably wants you back. Do you want me to take care of it?"
"It's in my jacket pocket."
Too late she realized that providing the location of the offensive device did not also communicate 'and bring it to me' or 'hang up and silence the goddamn thing'. Before she could rectify her error, he was answering.
"Carter's phone."
There was a brief pause, in which she could partly make out an irritated demanding grumble from the other end. Jack did not let him finish though, before he cut him off with:
"Who this is, is none of your business, especially not after you called it quits."
Another pause, this one even more irate. By now Peggy had managed to roll over and look at Jack, who was sneering at her phone so fiercely it was practically a snarl. She discovered in that moment that his sneer/snarl was much more attractive when it wasn't aimed at her, and especially when it was aimed for her.
"I do say so. Now fuck off. She's now with someone who can make her happy and who will put her needs before his own."
He then hung up on Jason and threw the phone at his desk, missing it but (hopefully) not breaking it. She didn't have a chance to check though because he then drew her to him and made good on his promise.
He made her happy several times, and he didn't come once before her, all weekend long.