Moments
A/N: Thank you all kindly for your reviews. They are much appreciated. And now for our featured presentation...
Coffee Run / Seniority Perks
The new boss was a 'grade-A piece of work' to use one of Angie's less than colorful customer descriptions.
He was short and had the Napoleon complex to go with it.
Well, really he was not that bad, but Peggy was finding that her tolerance for narrow minded egotistical male superiors was becoming quite low. She did not know if it was because he was just one too many, her recent subversive activities had given her a taste for something more than dutiful submission, or the fact that after 6 months of a coachable boss in believe-it-or-not Jack Thompson her head had become filled with fanciful visions of true equality and now she was seeing reality for what it was – a world of dirty glass ceilings. Whatever the case, it grated.
And it irked. And she found herself doing something that nearly cost her all she had worked so hard for…
~A~
"Carter, get me a cup of coffee!" barked the new Chief Johnson from his office door.
Peggy set down the reports that she had just received from the lab rats on the closest desk (Palmer's), which was nowhere near the break room, before heading to hers. Once there, she promptly picked up her purse and headed for the door.
The bullpen grew increasingly quiet with each step she took. As she passed each desk, typewriters stilled and conversations halted. Daniel, who had been rifling through one of the file cabinets, looked as if he wanted to step in her path, keep her from throwing it all away.
She quelled him with her sternest of looks.
"Carter, where do you think you are going?"
Johnson had that tone of voice that a headmaster might have when catching a student cutting classes.
It inspired her.
Channeling the ditsiest girl in her class at St. Martin's, she spun on her heel, and with a wide, vacant, and bewildered expression, she answered, "Why, I am going to get you a cup of coffee, sir."
This took him a minute to compute. (She could literally see the wheels turning in his tiny unimaginative mind, as he scowled at her, then scowled at the coffee pot through the break room window, and then scowled at her again.)
"Is there something wrong with ours?"
"Oh no, sir – er, at least I don't think so. I prefer tea myself, but everybody else seems to enjoy it," she inanely babbled. "But I thought you must have more refined tastes and must not like it, since you were sending me to fetch you some."
He stared at her like she was the prattling idiot that she sounded like, before speaking slowly and patronizingly, "No, Carter, the brew in the office will do just fine."
She resisted the years of instilled military training of subordinate obeisance and refused to retreat. Agent Peggy Carter was no longer the coffee errand girl.
Agent Peggy Carter stood her ground, even while staring quizzically at her superior, eyes blinking in confusion, as if she could not follow the logic of his statement.
Several of their onlookers began to snicker. Some because they had caught on to what she was doing, and the others, the fools, because they had bought into her ditz act.
Jack, though, because he was Jack and for some unfathomable reason was one of the few who was game to follow her lead, piped up, "Hey, Niedermayer! Since the chief wants a convenient cup of jo – right here in the office – and since you are right there by the pot, why don't you get it for him?"
Niedermayer, who was one of the aforementioned fools and who was standing in the break room doorway, quit snickering and hastily went to do as he was bid, being wise enough to know when not to insist upon status quo of gender roles.
Peggy beamed beatifically at one and all, ignoring Johnson's scrutinizing scowl, and returned to her desk. She graciously nodded at Palmer's knowing wink even as she accepted the lab rats' report back, and tried not to gloat at her minor victory.
After that, many of the veterans in the office followed Jack's example and directed whoever was standing nearest the coffee pot to get Johnson his 'cup of jo' or if they were 'right there', they would hastily claim the 'privilege.' She herself was rarely in that position, since she, a woman of impeccable taste, was of course a tea drinker.
Johnson let this little collective subversion continue, and instead found a new avenue to knock her down to her 'rightful' place, by insisting that she file all of his documents.
When he did this, she most often would simply add it to her ever increasing pile. All of which would manage to be filed in their proper alphabetical place by the end of her shift. Sometimes, however, he would insist that she file it 'now, Carter'.
Her immediate and quiet acquiesce to these demands seemed to be a signal of some sort to the entitled arses of the office, because when she would return to her desk, her pile would mysteriously and exponentially increase.
Matthews, of course, was the first to blatantly try to imitate his chauvinistic leader within the first two of weeks of the new reign.
"Carter, file these for me. Won't you, doll-face? Thanks, you're a real sweetheart."
"Matthews," she called out quite loudly and with much irritation. Without looking up, she instructed with matching condescension, "Be a good junior agent and file your own work."
"But you – "
She cut off his protest with a leveled glare. "I file the Chief's work because he is the boss. I file my own because I don't trust you junior agents not to remember that 'i' does not come before 'e' when it comes to the order of the alphabet. Revel in the fact that I doubt your competence in what you feel is a woman's forte."
Poor Matthews blushed beat red, but hastily scooped up his files and scuttled off.
Daniel turned in his chair and raised an inquiring eyebrow, most likely concerned that she wasn't her 'usual' sweet self, but he respectfully didn't verbalize it.
Jack, however, obviously felt no compunction to do so; and with his feet propped up on the desk to her right, (which he had commandeered upon being demoted back to Deputy Agent), he let out a low appreciative whistle. "Harsh much, Marge?"
Giving no ground, she defended herself without apologizing and shrugged diffidently. "I may have been channeling my inner drill sergeant and may have had months of pent up frustration towards certain persons who will remain unnamed packed behind that cut, but I will not move backwards."
Daniel nodded with understanding and returned to his work, but Jack just chuckled and cheekily replied, "These 'unnamed' persons, would they be Agent Wilkes or Flynn or…?"
He continued to list former agents who had transferred from the office when Dooley had taken over, but she ignored him, for that's what one did for the incorrigible ones.
And if one were to ask her for the reason for the smile playing at the corners of her mouth, her answer would have nothing to do at all with Jack's teasing.
She would succinctly tell them it had to do with the satisfaction she felt in standing up for herself. For without a doubt she knew that no other agent would dare imitate Matthews out of fear of being on the receiving end of her sharp lashing tongue.
But to herself at least, she would admit that the smile that she was trying so hard to stifle had to do somewhat with Jack's antics but also with the actions of all the other senior agents as well.
No one had protested her remarks towards Matthews and not a single one had asked her to file something, even when Johnson's behavior towards her had indicated that the former status quo was acceptable once again. This and all the actions they had taken regarding the coffee had proven to her that in their eyes she was indeed one of the boys.
And that felt damn good.
