It seems I have nothing else to do with my life than let these two consume it. Oh well.
Enjoy.
"You only live once, but if you do it right, once is enough." -Mae West
Jack can remember when he first realized that he had fallen for her.
It had been three months after her transfer into the SSR, and most of the men had divided themselves into three groups: those who thought that Cap's former girl was going to be an easy lay, those thought that her being there was a joke, and those who tried to mind their own business and forget that she was there. But it was, after all, hard to forget the gorgeous brunette that walked through the bullpen each morning, despite what the agents had denied. He himself had tried to stay out of it; a girl was a liability, and he was no closer to securing his own future at the SSR than touching hers with a ten-foot pole.
He remembers exiting the building with her right behind him, her heels clicking against the tile as they walked outside. It had been a crisp night that left him ignoring the tingles skittering down his spine, but she hadn't looked affected by the brisk air. He remembers how she stepped right past him, not even offering him an apology when her elbow tapped against his.
Jack remembers how he had called to her, "Need a ride home, darling?" It had half been a joke. He didn't know much about the woman at the time, only hearing the rumors that circled around the office.
She had paused then, and even from a few feet away he could see her tense stance. She had turned, raising an eyebrow at him. "Agent," she had stated crisply, clicking her tongue. "I'm afraid that that would be entirely inappropriate. I assure you that Agent Golding upstairs might need a ride – or the Chief, perhaps?" Her eyes flickered to the lights upstairs before returning her gaze to him. "If that will be all."
She had turned, and he was left standing there, dumbfound, a strange tightness forming in his throat. He's suddenly aware of his pulse flickering underneath his skin and the blood pulsing through his veins.
Jack shakes his head. No, he tells himself as he hails a yellow cab with the wave of his hand. The driver pulls up, a man with a thick Italian accent, asking where he needs to go. He gets in the car, clenching his teeth before telling the driver his address and settling back. Something about her – it's unsettling.
The feeling is gone by the time he walks up three flights of stairs to his apartment, but he still feels like something has changed.
He just didn't know what it was.
After that, his life is mostly the same. He still goes straight to the bullpen everyday, working jobs, missions, writing up paperwork that he can't wiggle out of, and generally just living the day-to-day workforce of a man working for the SSR.
Except –
He dreams of her now, of those scarlet red lips that he cannot seem to look away from; those pretty little eyes of hers that always narrow at his; and the way her curls bounce against the back of her neck. She sometimes ties her hair up with it gets hot in the bullpen, leaving him a view of the sweat that skirts across her collarbone and downward.
But he wakes up afterwards with a blooming in his chest and ashes in his throat, because he should know better, he does know better, he needs to stop godammit, but he doesn't. He's shaken when he sees her every damn time because something about her is just so unnerving and new that he can't stop.
Jack takes some of this anger out of her, calling her Marge and sweetheart and darling and he can't stop and he feels horrible at the look on her face.
The look on her face when he asked her why she was still here had haunted his nightmares. She had looked so broken, and he had ignored how the middle of his chest had tightened at that moment.
Then the thing with Howard Stark happens, and he's swept up in a whirlwind of lies and fairy tales and nothing that he's ever seen before. He wasn't trained for this; he was trained to fight for the United States army, not to deal with magic typewriters and mysterious blondes that always seem to be out of his reach. But he tries and he tries and he tries, until Russia.
Looking back, he remembers Russia as the first time he had been in a war zone since Japan. He remembers freezing up, his limbs jolting and his mind swearing at him as Carter screams for him to snap out of it, to get moving.
Jack had been unable to do any of that.
He tells her about Japan. How could he not? But the look on her face when is does is the exact opposite of what he had expected; he had expected her to be repulsed. He had told her because maybe, just maybe, it would help him get his delusions of grandeur out of his mind. Telling her was supposed to crush and crumple any idea that he could ever be by her side.
He hadn't expected her to understand. He hadn't expected her to try and comfort him.
He tried to stop being cruel towards her. He tried to distance himself now, speaking to her only when she spoke to him, doing his own paperwork. The Stark mission continues, but Carter seems to find a way to wind herself into it every damn time.
As the days slip by, he finds himself worrying for her, drawing closer as he tries to pull himself apart. He finds himself looking out as for her, even after she's been accused of being a traitor.
Only, he finds that he doesn't want to hurt her. That he can't hurt her.
But then –
Her name is cleared.
They catch Stark and untangle this entire mess. The Chief blows himself to bits. He nearly gets shot by Sousa (or so he thinks, that son of a bitch had scared the hell out of him) and they wrap everything up in a neat little box, with only Dottie being the string that escaped.
Except, in the midst of everything, she gets shot.
Jack comes around to find Dottie gone and Peggy (god, when he had started thinking of her as Peggy) on the ground, on hand pressed tightly to a spot underneath her ribs. She's two shades lighter than she usually is and her breathing is erratic at best. He's across the room in an instant with Sousa not too far behind.
When he presses his hand on top of the wound, his palm stains red. He swallows thickly as he snaps his fingers in front of her flickering eyelids.
"Hey," he barks, ignoring the quickly rising panic in his chest. "C'mon Carter, you gotta stay with me, you gotta stay awake."
She smiles at him weakly, her chest rising underneath his palm. "I shoulda known," she whispers, head rolling to the side. When she doesn't move again, he carefully slips his arms underneath her thighs and back, lifting her up. He knows that he shouldn't move her but he's got no choice; even if they could call the SSR they wouldn't get here in time.
"Start the car," he yells back at Sousa, and the man looks down at Peggy with alarm.
"Thompson–"
"Start the damn car!" Jack roars.
He doesn't remember much after that. He remembers careening up to the nearest hospital, shouting for help. Panicking to the doctors when they took her to the operating room. He remembers the nurses trying to restrain him as she slips away from his sight.
But in the end, she doesn't die. He waits for hours on end, walking the length of the waiting room and back again. Sousa waits with him, the other man's expression remaining one of permanent disbelief. When the doctor finally comes out with the news, Jack has thought of at least twenty-six ways on how he could kill Howard Stark with his bare hands.
He's not allowed to see her for four days after that, because he's not family and she needs time to recover. He goes home, takes a shower, and tries to get the ghost of her blood off his hands. But they do let him in eventually, and the moment they do he starts screaming at her, because how could she have been so reckless, how could she have been so stupid, what the hell could have possessed her to do such a dangerous thing as taking on a Russian assassin alone –
She's screaming back at him during his rant. She screams at him how he has no right to lecture her, how she is a bloody grown woman thank you very much and she can take care of her self.
She screams at him, "Why the hell do you care?" and he stops in his tracks.
His voice and the sound of his shoes tapping annoyingly against the marble cease to exist. She's still on the patient's bed by the side warily, her fingers absentmindedly tracing patterns over where he knows the bandage is splattered over her ribs. It's no longer the flickering flame of blood as it had been before, but the painful reminder lingers in his memory.
Jack turns to her, fingers curled into fists by his sides. He opens his mouth, than closes it again. There's a burning searing beneath his skin, flickering through his veins as he stares at her, chest heaving.
"I – I can't lose you, Carter," he forces out, watching as her eyes widen with the words. "Peggy – I just – I have lost too damn much to this world, to this war. You will not be going with it."
He pretends that his eyes aren't stinging, that he isn't going to wake up tomorrow with searing sense of regret. He pretends that Sousa isn't lingering outside, waiting for him to finish his turn visiting the brunette. He pretends a lot of things, but mostly pretends that she isn't staring at him with something akin to sympathy.
"Jack," she replies, her voice rough. "Look at me."
He looks at her. She's got her head tilted, her fingers pressed against her wound. "I know things haven't been easy," she starts, and he winces. "But no matter what happens, I assure you, that I have no intention to just up and bloody leave– "
His head snaps to look at her, and before he can stop himself he's taking two strides across the room, his hands slipping onto her cheeks as he swallows her next word with his lips. There's a moan threatening to spill from his chest as his lips move against hers, because he's kissing her like there's no tomorrow, like there's no one else but the two of them. Her hands slip into his hair, pulling on his roots as she arches up against him, matching him bit by bit as his hands fall beneath her thighs, picking her up with ease. He presses her back up against the wall and resuming his motions.
He's trembling, but he feels more alive than he has in months as he pulls his head back from hers, catching glimpse of her dilated pupils and narrowed eyes, before leaning his head down and pressing his lips to the juncture of her neck, moving down her collarbone. His fingers twitch downwards, stroking the skin just below her skirt.
"Jack," she gaps, choking out his name. Jack pauses for a moment at the sound, swearing obscenities against her skin. He sets her down then, drawing his head back as he meets her gaze. Her lipstick is mussed and there's a strand of her hair out of place, but he doesn't move.
She staring up at him as he lets out a weak laugh, unsure of what to do next.
"What the hell was that?" she starts, and he winces. She's always been blunt.
"I don't – I – dammit." Well, he can't say that he didn't try.
She continues as if he hadn't said anything. "You kissed me," she jabs her finger at his chest, raising an eyebrow.
He tilts his head to look at her. "You sure as hell weren't protesting," he argues back.
He can see her fingers twitching at her side, as if she's resisting the urge to hit him. "That isn't – that's not the bloody point!" she snaps back. "I –"
He interrupts her. "I'm sorry," he says, and she stops. "I'm sorry that you got shot and I'm sorry that I've been an ass since we met, but you scared the hell out of me, Peggy. Alright?"
She's silent as she looks up at him, eyes flickering to meet his. He continues, his back teeth clenching together. "If you don't want anything more, than fine. We can pretend this never happened. But –" he pauses then, stalling. "I goddam like you, Carter, and I would like to take you out. On a real date – preferably without the guns and the getting shot." He's shoves his hands in his pockets.
She rolls her eyes. "Aren't you supposed to take the girl out before snogging her senseless?" she asks, and there's a rush of something inside of his chest. She pauses for a moment before looking up at him, a small smile gracing her lips. "Jack," she tells him. "I'm saying yes."
When he walks out with his heart three times lighter to tell Sousa that it's his turn to see Peggy, he sees the man looking at him oddly.
Sousa raises an eyebrow. "You've got a little something…" He makes a motion circling around his own face. Jack raises his fingers to his cheek, pulling them away with red coloring. Peggy's lipstick.
"Dammit."
He swears that he hears Peggy choking back a laugh from inside.
(They make it. Somehow, through all of the dangers and the arguments, they make it.)
Here's a happy ending this time, folks.