Sparks, Flames, Embers
A/N: Warning - there will be excessive name-dropping, canon-allusions, and text messaging. Easter eggs ahoy!
Chapter 5: Game
Friday Night
"So what's this Paintball Extravaganza all about again?" Angie asked curiously as she painted her toe nails.
Her eyes had grown wide with her curiosity as soon as Peggy warned her that her teammates would be invading their dorm to discuss their overall strategy for the upcoming week's event.
"It's a charity event that the student council sets up – a week long paintball tournament that's a mishmash of Assassination, Capture the Flag, and VIP. The winning team gets a hundred dollars-worth gift card to Amazon to be split as they choose and the rest of the money from the entrance fees is being donated to charity of their choice," she explained. "If we win, it is going to the local shelter that supports homeless veterans."
"And you chose to team up with Howard, Eddie, Rose, and Aloysius for this?" Angie asked in disbelief, her eyebrows arching but her gaze never lifting from their intense focus on her toes.
Peggy shrugged, "Rose and Jarvis have a surprising knack for this kind of thing, and Howard and Samberly have their uses. I would have liked to have had Daniel, but he like most frat boys is playing for a house team."
Rose had recrited her, and Howard had invited himself and Jarvis along. The real problem had been their fifth memer. Howard had wanted Jason, "a fellow brain not some jock", but Rose had saved the day by inviting Samberly, whom was deemed as an "acceptable" alternative due to his being some kind of engineering major.
"So Daniel's on Jackie-boy's team, isn't he?" Angie inquired, recalling Peggy's outraged reaction to Daniel's unavailability. This time, her gaze did lift as she asked with a knowing smirk, "And what will it take for you to defeat his Most-Smugness?"
"The team with the most points wins, which I think we can do by getting the most 'flags'."
Before she could bore her poor roommate with the details, there was a knock at the door.
As soon as she opened her door, Jarvis and Rose were shoving equipment and packets at her saying, "Here's your gun and ammo. We're white paint…And here's your packet with all the info for the app that the council will use to keep track and provide updates."
She set the gun and the ammo on her desk and opened up the packet while they made themselves at home. The packet contained the rules that they had signed to abide by (practically in blood) – only play during the hours of 8am and 8pm, only on campus and never indoors, only shoot at players (if non-players are hit you and your team will lose points), and so on and so-forth.
She downloaded her app and created her account. As soon as she did so, she was notified of her first target.
Spider Raymond
Team: Mafia
Major: Business
Identified Skills: Strategy, Networking, and Swing dancing
Flag Keeper?: Yes
Score! For her first target, not only was she going to be able to get ten points an assassination kill was worth, but also the twenty-five that capturing the Mafia team's flag was worth. It was going to be a productive first day.
~A~
Day 1…
9:06pm
Peggy was almost grateful that her phone started ringing. It gave her a reasonable excuse to make her final apologies to Colleen (who had unfortunately gotten covered in green paint when some tosser from the Leviathan team tried to take out Peggy just as the clock struck eight).
"Hello?"
"I just thought I ought to tell you in case you didn't see the leader boards, but I am an Ace. Five kills in one day, including an Assassination target," Jack crowed in her ear.
"That's impressive, Jack," she said honestly, and then with some smug amusement of her own, she added, "No, I haven't checked the boards yet. But have you?"
There was a static-filled hiss as Jack let out an exasperated sigh, "Yeah, Carter, I did. Two Assassinations, a Captured Flag, a Stolen Flag, and a whole team annihilated. Good job."
Peggy snorted. Good? That was damn-effing awesome. And he knew it. He had after all let out a low impressed whistle at the sight of the two white paint splatters on the man's forehead. She had heard him as she had passed him outside of the Business College lounge.
She had no idea why he had been there, but she had been leaving Raymond's assassinated self to move onto her next target on the 'Warehouse Boyz' team. Fortuitously for her, all five of them had been taking a smoke break behind the gym. So in one fell-swoop, she had gotten her ten target points, her twenty-five flag points, and twenty points for her four additional kills (five points for each non-target kill).
This second team's flag 'keeper' had not been her assigned target, so unlike Spider Raymond's glow-in-the-dark Pac-man night-light, the Warehouse Boyz' zodiac calendar could be stolen from her if she was killed as she had acquired it by making a non-target kill. Thus, the distinction that she had 'stolen the flag', rather than 'captured the flag'. It was the most complicated paint-ball game she had ever heard of, much less been in, but she was going to own it.
"So the purpose of this call was to what?" she challenged.
"To let you know that I am just as skilled as you, if not as lucky as you were today. So don't get comfortable."
"Hmm… I am sensing a bet coming on."
"Well, that's mighty perceptive of you, sweetheart," he crooned in her ear.
She took advantage of his dramatic pause to make sure that the coast was clear in her dorm for what had become hers and Jack's bizarre version of flirty banter.
When she saw that it was clear and that their calendar showed that Angie had yet another late night rehearsal, she taunted, "So what is supposed to happen when the poor delusional wannabe-cop girl finally discovers that she's not able to keep up with the big boys?"
"Awe, come on, Carter. Don't be like that!"
Since he sounded genuinely offended, she didn't press him further on that front and amended, "Okay, what is it that you're fantasizing about as the forfeit for this bet?"
"Oh, Marge, let me count the ways that I could make your toes curl and your – "
"Yeah, yeah, and my hair stand on end and my body writhe and so on and so on," she interjected. "You only get one, that is, if you win."
There was an amused huff of laughter, and then he launched into a very detailed description of one of his toe-curling fantasies that by the end of it, she almost wished that she would lose.
Almost.
"And how about you, Marge? What would you want to be my forfeit if I were to lose to you?"
Jack wasn't the only one that had more than one deep dark wish about the other. But she knew of at least one that would really get under his skin like he had hers.
So in her huskiest of whispers, she mused, "You missed out on my demonstration for our presentation in Dooley's class…but I could give you private one with a few of the more – sensual – restraints that I learned in my research."
So it wasn't the sexiest thing ever uttered, but it was certainly good enough to get a reaction out of Jack.
There was a groan at the other end of the phone and then: "You may not do the best dirty talk, but you certainly fight dirty, Carter."
"Count on it."
~A~
Day 2…
10:18pm
Peggy: Sorry about Krzminski
Jack: No u r not
She could just picture his petulant scowl as he rapidly fired back his accusation. She was tempted to reply 'ha ha, you're right' or 'sucker : P', but she refrained and went for the mature response.
Peggy: Sorry that the big guy is permanently out of the game and your team is a man down? No
Peggy: But sorry that Dottie was the one to get him? Yes.
She went about her nightly routine of washing her face and brushing her teeth, but when she next checked her phone, there was yet another message.
Jack: U should be.
Now that was daunting. Almost out of morbid curiosity, she sent: How so?
Jack: Ray told me that he had your target file
'Shit.' She did not text that to him. But she certainly was thinking it.
If Ray had her target file and Dottie Underwood had assassinated him, then that meant that Dottie would now be gunning for her. Shitty shit. Sure-shit. Tits.
Instead of giving his gloating whatever response he was itching for, she decided to deflect and do her own bit of goading.
Peggy: taking out the Arena Club? That took some balls, which I didn't think you had
She had meant to taunt him about his tendency to brown-nose and kiss-ass for anyone with a modicum of influence (and those in the not-so secret misogynistic society known as the Arena Club were highly connected in federal law enforcement). But too late, she realized what she had opened the door for, and sure enough he walked right through it like the cock-sure son of a bitch he was.
Jack: really? Cuz I seem to recall some hands-on verification tests
To punish him for his crassness, she went silent and began scanning her newsfeeds instead. She was in the middle of some article about alleged election tampering, when Jack sent: 'okay. Ok. I will take the compliment' and then while she was perusing her Manchester United team's stats, he added: 'it did cost me some political capital with the campus elite, but it was so worth it'.
That she could not ignore.
Peggy: is that how you got the tip-off that I was after Mcfee?
Jack: maybe
Which really meant yes. And that pissed her off.
She had started off her day trying to track down the tosser who had plastered Colleen the night before, so that he could pay for the poor woman's dry cleaning.
She had tracked down the student council member who had the team rosters and had managed to convince them to give her at least one name and background info. They had probably given her Mcfee's name because he was the worst shot on the team, but when the council member realized that Mcfee was the team's flag keeper, they tipped him off that she was tracking him down and he went into hiding. So she had spent all Sunday morning and part of the afternoon searching for the sweaty little man instead of chasing her own target.
Not that anybody else seemed to know that.
When she and Jarvis had finally found the man, two of Mcfee's team members had been there and so had Jack, Daniel, and possibly Li and Ramirez too.
Leet Brannis had been there to do a Keeper transfer. (A Keeper who believed he was doomed to be assassinated could hand off the team's flag to another team-member in order to avoid a flag being captured or stolen, but only one such transfer could occur per team).
Sasha Demidov had been there to kill her as she was later to discover. (This was apparently before Dottie had gotten her as a target).
But Jack and his frat buddies had just been there to keep her from collecting another flag.
Peggy: you were totally trying to run interference on me!
Jack: hey, you were the one that promised to fight dirty
Jack: besides all's fair in love and war, sweetheart
Peggy: oh yeah? Well lucky for me you're good at one and shit at the other
When he didn't reply, she just knew that he wasn't sure how to take it. Ha!
She of course meant that he was crap at 'war'. He had only grazed Mcfee and had missed her when he had ambushed the man at his white truck. She and Jarvis had already been chasing after Brannis by that point.
She hadn't managed to kill Brannis and steal his flag because in order to prevent her from doing so, Demidov had popped five green rounds into his own teammate's chest so that by default he would become the team's flag keeper. (It was a futile attempt because Jarvis got the drop on the man himself, and so they still got Leviathan's 'flag', a tugboat charm). In retaliation of being offed by his own team member, Brannis had let her know that she could send the dry cleaning bill to Demidov.
Her point being – look at all that she had accomplished even with his poor attempts at interference.
Jack: not cool, Marge. Not cool
Peggy did not know if Jack was good at love, but she did know that he was great at the sex. It was a distinction that she was not going to let him in on though. She would much rather keep him on his toes and questioning his prowess. He was conceited enough as it was.
She thought that might be the end of their evening's bantering exchange, but then about twenty minutes later, just as she was dropping off to sleep…
Jack: Daniel thinks that we should target you to steal all those flags you've been acquiring
That woke her right up. Daniel was an excellent sniper. She did not need him gunning for her on top of being Dottie's target too.
Jack: but I told them you are MINE.
As Peggy stared at her glowing screen and those four big, bold letters, she knew that he didn't just mean to target with his blue paint. She knew that it was a deeper, darker, more possessive claim.
It sent shivers down her back. And the primal part of her enjoyed it so much, that she let him have that last word: MINE.