Sparks, Flames, Embers
Chapter 13: Overcoming Baggage II
Beep! Beep! Beep!
Jack slapped off the alarm and would have rolled over to give Peggy her space, but then he felt her stiffen, so instead he just laid there. He didn't try to draw her closer, soothe her, or make any other move. He played possum and prayed that he could successfully let a hung-over Peggy lie, for if she knew that he was awake, then they would have to talk. If they talked, then they would fight, and if they fought, then this delusion of happiness that he had woken up with would be over.
It was about as sound as his plan had been for how to deal with Carter at the reunion. But when it came to Peggy Carter, he was a man who made the River of Denial his backyard swimming hole.
To be honest, he hadn't really had a detailed plan. It was more like an agenda. He had wanted to go and show them all that his break-up with Peggy had not broken him. He was going to go there and see his brothers. He would flirt with Ramirez's girlfriend, just to rile up the man. He would tell Violet in person more embarrassing stories about Daniel, while the man stood right there and flushed three shades of pink, if not red. And he would exchange small-talk with Peggy, possibly get an autograph from Angie Martinelli, and then move on.
He had achieved all but the last two.
Upon seeing Peggy sitting at the bar in that emerald green number (she had always looked radiant in jewel-tones), the thought to get the vivacious actress's signature flew clear from his head.
It wasn't the first time that he had seen her since their break-up. That 'honor' had gone to Dooley's funeral, where his only thoughts then had been his regret that they were not at a place yet where they could cry on one another's shoulders and drink whiskey late into the night and then get up and seek revenge for the man's death the next day. All that they had been able to do then was look at each other across the grave and nod at each other.
But last night they had done more than exchange awkward small talk. They had drank and chatted congenially and even flirted, and then they had danced.
The memories of those curves pressed against his, the friction of their movements, the heat that they generated nearly sent his heart a-thumping, but he was able to rein it in so as not to alert Peggy to his level of consciousness.
If he had been less intoxicated last night, he might have been more gentlemanly and attempted to have dissuaded the equally intoxicated Carter against reliving their college days.
But he hadn't been, and he couldn't say that he regretted it. Not only had he avoided the disaster of offending Peggy by seeming to reject her advances, he had also found evidence that they still had it – that spark that made Jack and Peggy them. And if they had the spark, then perhaps it could be fanned into a flame, one that would last longer than their first go around.
Here's to hoping.
When he felt her body relax as she finally got done sorting through whatever she could recall of the night before, he opened his eyes.
And his blue eyes met her beautiful browns, as she asserted, "Oh yeah, you definitely improved in your dancing skills."
"Why, thank you, darlin'."
At the sound of his voice, she flushed with embarrassment and then just as quickly went white with horror. She also sat straight up, clutching the sheet to her bare chest with one hand and what had to be aching and swimming head with the other.
Not wanting to exactly be in a vulnerable position when she recovered enough for her anger to set in, he slowly sat up and gave her a little space. He also tried to hide his smirk when he noticed her tracking the coverage of the sheets over his own naked form and the slight flicker of disappointment she had when they did too good of a job.
He must not have done too good of a job at hiding his smile, because when her roaming gaze tracked up to his face, she scowled and bit out, "This shouldn't have happened."
"Dunno about that, Carter. We are two consenting adults," he mildly pointed out.
"Who didn't work out last time!"
"Because it was no good long distance," he reminded her bitterly, but more optimistically, he added, "But as we learned last night, we're both in D.C. now."
When all that got him was silence, he backtracked with an indifferent shrug (that he didn't at all feel) and said (what he didn't at all want), "And like I said, we're two consenting adults. Just because we had yet another spectacular rut and tumble does not mean that we have to start dating like we did last time."
"You knew it would be no good long distance when we were together in New York. You tried it before with her. You knew, and yet you sent me to Europe anyways!"
By now she had shifted to her knees to square off with him and the sheet was in dangerous peril of slipping with each rise and fall of her heaving chest, but this glorious sight of wrathful Peggy was not enough to stem the tide of his own rising anger.
"'Send you'? 'Send you'!" he bellowed. "For one thing, Carter, no one sends you anywhere. For anoth– "
"Fine! 'Strongly encouraged' then!"
"'Encouraged'? Hell yes, I encouraged! What the fuck was I supposed to do, Peggy?" he snarled back. "Be the guy who kept you back from following your dreams? You were offered a chance to make contacts in the international intelligence community, which could give you a leg up in your quest to get transferred to the counter-terrorism division, and I was supposed to ask you to give that up for me?"
"Well, if you thought that you were caught between such a rock and a hard place, why didn't you cut your losses then? Why did you let it drag out so long? You quit trying to make it work long before we ended it," she accused.
The tears that were pooling in her dark eyes did not at all move him. It had become abundantly clear to him now that they were coming not from a place of grief over them, but of resentment towards him. She blamed him. Fuck that.
"You were supposed to come back. After three months at the Paris office, a temporary assignment while someone was out on maternity leave, and then you were supposed to come back. But you accepted the transfer to the Berlin office, without talking about it with me first," he accused back with far more raw remembered pain than anger leaking into his voice than he would have liked.
He stared at his clenched fists, unable to look at her anymore, even as she tried to defend, "But you never – you could have – Why didn't you say anything then?"
"Why bother? You had promised that it was another short-term assignment and you were so excited about it. So I thought I could wait it out again. And I waited, Peggy. I waited for you to come home, to talk of wanting to come home – to me. But when you never did…" he drifted off, his voice flat and as stoic and as bitter as it had been all those years ago.
He expected her to be rebuffed by his resignation, to accept the futility of it all like he had all those years ago, and to do what she had done then – walk out on them.
But he had once again underestimated Peggy Carter.
Into the silence, she whispered, "I waited for you to ask me."
This brought his head up, and when he looked at her face, he saw tears streaming down her cheeks, her nose red, her eyes puffy, and her mouth twisted into that this-shit-is-so-not-funny sardonic smile of hers, and he couldn't help but laugh, (bitterly that is.)
"What a pair of fucking fools, we are, Marge."
She punched him, and hissed, "I'm still waiting."
He grabbed her abusive hand with one of his own, while his other whipped out to tug her closer to him. When her chest was pressed against his and her face inches from his own, he breathed, "Come home with me, Peggy. I want you to be mine again, but this time forever and always."
He stared beseechingly into her eyes, searching for any hint of panic. He might have been too fast, too strong, but he didn't know how else to be with her. When he hadn't been, she had slipped through his fingers.
But there wasn't any panic. There was just her dark eyes hungrily searching his, her free hand snaking up to grab the back of his neck to tug his lips closer to hers, where her mouth was breathing one beautiful word – "Yes."
~A~
She said yes.
As soon as she said it, that coil that had been twisting up her gut every time she thought of him, of them, came undone.
It must have for him too. Because not only had his tensed shoulders relaxed, but his mouth had crashed against hers in a heated kiss that put all others that they had shared (at least from what she could remember of last night) to shame.
His hands clutched at her feverishly. His weight propelled her onto her back. His hungry lips never leaving hers.
When she tried to flip their position, he shifted his grip on her hand at his chest so that their fingers were interlocked and then he raised them above her head, pressing her more firmly back into the rumpled covers by his upper body weight alone.
She whimpered, but not at his remaining on top, but at the fact that with him holding her like this, she had nothing to arch or grind against.
He chuckled evilly, even as he corrected their positions. Well, he corrected it in that he was now rubbing his erection between her lower lips, but his mouth was no longer kissing hers – or any part of her for that matter.
And the space was too much, especially after having years of it.
"You're not a goddamn see-saw, Jack!" she snarled as she futilely tried to draw him back down to her with her free hand or even grind herself harder against him.
He took some pity on her and began to kiss along her jaw-line, along her neck to that sweet spot that always made her bones melt and then –
He stopped.
"Jack!"
He hovered there and breathed, "Say. It. Again."
"Oh God. Yes, Jack! Yes…just please," she begged with her words and her body.
But all he did was grind against her a little harder, hover over her a little more, and hiss, "Yes and?"
"And what?!"
"And what is it that you want?" One long lazy lick from collar bone to ear. One darkly ordered, "Tell me."
She couldn't. All she could do was utter a primal keen of need. Because all she could think about was how much she wanted him in her, his mouth on her, his hot skin sliding against hers.
"I am waiting."
Those three words broke her, and she cried, "Yes, I want to be yours! And – and I want you to be mine."
"Always," and with that he was thrusting up and into her, his lips and teeth were sucking right there, and he was hitting her just right there. Again. And again. And again.
And she was nothing but a moaning mess. Her legs drawing him in closer. Her body arching towards his. Her free hand roaming, caressing wherever she could touch, holding him to her, holding him right there. Her inner-muscles tightening around him every time it seemed he was drawing himself too far out.
He never did though. He always thrust back in harder and faster than before. And with every drive home, she gasped, moaned, whimpered: "Always", "Yours", "Forever", "Mine," or "Yes, Jack, always!"
Her words and her spasming greedy body sent him over the edge. He spilled into her with a roar of "MARGE!" or "MINE!" she couldn't be quite sure over her own victorious and satisfied keening shout.
He collapsed on top of her and only made a half-hearted attempt to move off, which she stopped (and could stop now that she had both of her hands). She didn't mind his weight. In fact, she welcomed it because he was here with her, and not just as a fucking blast from the past.
Eventually, the pounding of her heart slowed and her panting gasps quietened enough to hear his lower murmurs into her neck:
"Gods, I love you, Marge…Don't leave me again…please? I love you so much…"
She had let him go once before because she had thought that there hadn't been enough love between them to hurt him this much. He had acted so indifferent, so aloof about their extended separation, that she had assumed that he must not have cared as much as he had, so she had forced herself to quit caring too. Crikey, she had never been more wrong.
She tightened her hold on him and breathed, "No, Jack. Never… I love … too … never again."