I have a few ideas for ficlets along the theme of "Jack is terrible at flirting; Peggy banters rings around him," so I thought I'd put them all together. At the moment, each ficlet/chapter stands on its own.
Peggy bit back a smile as she watched Jack play peek-a-boo with one of the young children they'd evacuated from an orphanage on the Lower East Side. Hoping for shock value, a low-level Leviathan operative had planted a new type of bomb that had the scientists all excited and which, thankfully, had failed to actually detonate. She and Jack had given the all-clear fifteen minutes ago, and were now just hanging around to make sure everyone got back inside without further incident.
Jack uncovered his face again, grinning delightedly as the baby laughed. His wide-eyed, animated expression and high-pitched chatter at the child were completely at odds with the stern or cocky demeanor he usually displayed.
When one of the staff members came to retrieve the baby, Jack waved and piped "Bye-bye!" at the little boy utterly unselfconsciously, which finally prompted Peggy to let out a quickly stifled snort of laughter.
He glanced at her with a raised eyebrow and the hint of a mocking smile. "Something funny, Carter?"
She shrugged. "I suppose I just never expected you to enjoy interacting with children."
He smiled, and this time it was genuine. "Kids are great. They remind you how...simple life can be. How much fun."
"I suppose that means you want some of your own?"
He nodded. "A few. Five, maybe six."
Peggy's eyebrows quickly rose up her forehead. "I hope the woman you have these children with knows what she's getting into."
He flicked his fingers carelessly. "What's the point if you can't field your own basketball team?"
"That's not the one where they run around on a field trying to knock each other down, is it?"
For a moment, he looked aghast, then disappointed. Then he noticed the amusement playing around the corners of her mouth. "Why do I feel like Sousa owes me money?" he asked rhetorically.
They watched an orphanage worker take the last of the children back inside the secured building. Peggy leaned against the wall of the building, the heat of the sun-warmed bricks penetrating the back of her thin jacket. Jack also leaned against the building, crossing one foot over the other and turning toward her with a curious expression.
"Should I assume you don't want any? Kids, I mean," he said.
She looked down, and the silence, just a moment too long, broke the jovial bubble they'd been operating in. "It's different for women, you know," she finally said, looking back up at him. "Especially if we want to keep a job. This job in particular." Pregnancy and chasing bad guys didn't exactly go hand in hand.
Jack studied her, his gaze far too penetrating for someone she had only just begun to see as anything but the office jackass, before he nodded slowly.
"That said, I..." She hadn't planned to say anything else. The beginning of the sentence had just slipped out.
"What?" Jack asked when she didn't continue. It wasn't perfunctory. He seemed, in fact, to be hanging on to her every word.
She smiled briefly before it fled again. "I am...curious...what it would be like. I believe one would be quite enough, though." One wouldn't put her out of commission for so very long. Maybe it might just be possible. Assuming she found someone—someone else—she'd like to have one with.
He watched her for a moment longer before pushing off from the wall. "All right, we'll compromise on two. A girl for you, a boy for me."
He hadn't...he wouldn't...what?
"'We'? I fail to recall the point at which I was brought into this baby-making enterprise of yours."
He grinned unrepentantly and started walking back toward the car they'd arrived in. "Believe me, when it happens, you'll definitely remember," he called over his shoulder.
Suffused with horror, and maybe just a dash of something that was not entirely horror, she stared at his back for a while before raising her voice to say, "Is that a threat, Agent Thompson?"
"Think of it more as a promise" floated back to her over the warm afternoon air.
She stood very still, her fists clenched, entirely unsure what to do with this particular bit of cheek.
Jack opened the car door. "You coming?" he called.
She started forward. "I hope you like changing diapers," she said as she approached. He did a double take. She reached the car and opened the door, holding onto the frame as she stared across the roof at him. "Since the second one would be your idea, it seems only fair you should do most of the work."
He smirked and got into the car. She followed, pulling the door shut behind her. "Takes two to make a baby."
"Only takes one to change a diaper." She thought she saw him blanch just a bit as he started the engine. "Or give the baby a bottle, bathe it, rock it to sleep..."
"And what are you going to be up to while I'm doing all that?"
She shrugged as he pulled out into traffic. "Saving the world, of course."