Moments
To Kiss-and-Tell
She had been a little surprised to see Jack at the restaurant that she was having lunch with Violet at, as she thought he and Daniel were going to be working on his car this afternoon. But she supposed she could have mixed up the Saturdays, and the deli was not that far from his apartment.
Peggy was even more surprised however when the hostess interjected before Jack could explain, "Mr. Thompson? Ms. Carter? Right this way. Your party is waiting for you."
If this was not ominous enough, seeing Daniel sitting there with his very determined looking fiancé and looking to be a reluctant member of their quartet, if his squirming was anything to go by, certainly was.
After they were seated and the hostess took their drink orders, Violet got down to business and announced, "We – oh, alright then, Daniel – I invited you both here to formally reject your R.S.V.P.'s."
Both she and Jack sat there flabbergasted. She was a little bit more than hurt, so hurt that she was at a loss for words, but Jack at least was eventually able to recover the use of his tongue and voiced her very own question, drawling, "Just to clarify, you don't want us at your wedding, and this is your 'formal' un-invitation luncheon?"
Daniel let out a snort of laughter, but continued to let his future bride awkwardly stumble through an explanation. He at least clearly was not the instigator of this 'rejection'.
Violet on her part blushed a deep red of embarrassment and stammered, "Dear me, n-no! I – we – both want you there. It's just that you can't be going stag. You have to be each other's plus ones."
Out of the corner of her eye, she could see Jack slowly smirk in delight. He would revel in the idea of publicly hamming up being a 'couple', so that their colleagues would think he was intent on making a nuisance of himself, while secretly enjoying the fact that they could do 'couple-ish' things without question.
On her part, that was too much intrigue for a wedding which were inherently always quite drama-filled.
"Erm, that is a rather unusual request," she noted, all the while her inner-voice was snarking, 'More like demand'. "Is there any particular reason why?"
Violet rolled her eyes and huffed with annoyance, "My mother fancies herself a matchmaker, and if she considers the two of you as eligible singles who aren't interested in dating one another, she will try to match each of you up with other single guests when she does the seating chart for the reception."
"Yes, er, I appreciate you trying to spare Jack and I any kind of awkwardness…" she said floundering for some kind of polite response, but when she saw Violet frown in frustration as if Peggy was not catching her meaning, she asked hesitantly, "Is there anyone you want us to avoid in particular?"
"Or let down easy?" Jack offered in an attempt to be helpful, but he only sounded smug, as if he assumed he would be an in-demand prize.
"Oh, for Christ's sake!" the normally sweet-tempered woman cursed. "I don't care about 'awkwardness' or my single cousins. I am being entirely selfish and wanting this to be only mine and Daniel's day, and if everybody is watching you two be miserably separated from each other, it won't be. That also means you need to make it official before my wedding day, so your new item status does not steal our thunder."
Again, she found herself speechless.
Once she got passed her surprise and astonishment about hers and Jack's relationship being known, when not even her closest friends or family did, she was able to understand the reasoning behind the demand of Daniel's fiancé. If she and Jack were getting hitched, she wouldn't want Howard to announce that he had knocked-up Ava Gardner or something equally scandalous.
She could also appreciate and respect Violet's approach of being forthright about her desire, rather than just outing the pair of them at an office celebration like some passive-aggressive females might.
She looked to Jack, who shrugged his agreement. They had been dating each other long enough now that they were probably past due 'becoming official' anyways. So she declared, "Okay, we'll let people know before then. But how did you know?"
Violet glanced significantly at Daniel, who admitted, "I would love to be able to toot my own detective skills here or say 'it was elementary, my dear Carter,' but I really…" He paused and sighed, before sheepishly asking her, "Do you remember when you made me wait on your front porch for you while you grabbed that file that you shouldn't have had in the first place?"
"Yes," she admitted with a glare, refusing to look at the once-again-highly-amused-at-her-expense Jack.
"Well, your landlady accosted me and warned me to be more careful about your virtue. When I asked what she was referring to, she said: 'I saw her carry you up the other night'." And with a dramatic flourish, Daniel whipped out a grey fedora and tossed it at Jack, declaring, "Oh, and here's your hat."
That certainly wiped the smirk off Jack's face.
A sight, she might have reveled at, except for the fact it was her forgetting about her lipstick brand and not collecting all the evidence from the mishap that eventually outed them.
Jack didn't gloat at this fact, but instead eyed Daniel suspiciously, asking, "You've known that long, and you haven't collected on your winnings for Ramirez's bet yet?"
Daniel nodded solemnly and then grinned, asking slyly:
"Speaking of…when did you two finally kiss?"
~A~
They told Jack's family first, (and boy, wasn't that a hoot), but then they decided that their boss should be next.
After giving their Chief a rundown on the status of their current cases (and making sure the door was securely closed), they told him.
"Chief, uh, Sam, we got some personal – or is it personnel? – business to discuss," was Jack's impressive opening line to his friend and their boss.
"Probably a bit of both, I would think, if this is going where I think it is going," Samuel Jorgensen dryly stated, as he leaned back in his desk chair to eye the two of them.
"We've been seeing each other outside of the office on a regular basis," Jack confessed, practically bracing himself as if he thought his friend would unleash the firing squad upon them. It took everything she had not to roll her eyes.
This must have been how Samuel felt as well, because the corners of his mouth were twitching noticeably as he asked, "So you're 'going steady', is that what you are telling me?"
"Yes!" Jack blurted turning three different shades of red, before grumbling, "Dammit, Sam, do you have to make this anymore awkward than it already is?"
Samuel smirked at them, "Why, yes, yes I do. Watching the two of you dance around each other has been all kinds of annoying." More seriously, he added with a sigh, "I am sure there are forms that I will need to have the two of you fill out, protocol and all, but I don't foresee this being a problem as you are no longer officially partners and are of equal rank."
When they didn't do anything but sag slightly in relief, he finally did roll his eyes and make shooing motions, "Speaking of being team leads…Go. Lead. Catch some wise-ass bad guys. Or dumb-ass ones, as the case may be."
They left with great haste, relieved that they had gotten down one of their many awkward conversations. They had at least three more to go.
~A~
They told Rose next, because if Jorgensen knew, then she would inevitably find out next and would be hurt if it did not come straight from them – well, from her. Jack did not want to get in the middle of 'girl talk'.
The SSR gatekeeper responded with a wide satisfied grin and her own slyly asked: "So… when did you two finally come to your senses?"
Trying to hide her annoyance at the fact that everyone assumed their dating to be inevitable, Peggy arched an eyebrow and asked suspiciously, "'When' as in exact date and time of kiss or 'when' as in 'how long have we been dating'?"
"When as in how long of course," Rose scoffed. "I have only been rooting for the two of you since that first undercover mission of yours, but if you let slip the chronological moment of lip-lock, I wouldn't mind knowing that either."
Not taken in by the woman's nonchalant attitude, Peggy protested, "Rose! Not you too!"
It was one thing for Ramirez and the New York boys to bet on her love life, for she would swear that they all had slight gambling problems, but for stalwart Rose to do so as well was a bit much.
Rose shrugged and admitted without shame, "No, but I would like to know who did win the bet. I am the Kiss Bet Commissioner after all."
Peggy stared at the woman quite appalled, reluctantly asking, "Do I really want to know?"
The woman's eyes twinkled with suppressed mirth, as she answered, "Probably not."
~A~
The next two people she told were the two that she had been dying to tell since, if not perhaps the first kiss, then at least hers and Jack's first date – the Jarvises. Mostly Edwin, but she knew that what he knew Anna would eventually know.
She hadn't told either of them before now because she knew that Edwin would struggle to not tell Howard, and she hadn't been ready for one of hers and Steve's oldest friends to know, at least not until she was more certain of her and Jack.
So when Edwin had quietly asked, "Are you happy?", she had been able to honestly and without hesitation declare, "Yes."
Edwin quietly searched her expression, and then after finding whatever he was looking for, he gave her a decisive nod and asserted, "Good enough."
To his wife, he asked, "I suppose, my dear, you will be wanting to call Miss Martinelli?"
"Oh yes, dear," Anna chirped eagerly.
After bringing over the phone closer to them, he bowed out, dryly stating, "Then I will leave you to it. I don't think I can handle the decibel levels. If the windows can't either, please let me know."
~A~
Mr. Jarvis had not been too far off about the windows. They really did shake at her friend's high-pitched shriek of "Finally!"
A few ecstatic squeals later: "So when and where did you kiss? What was the spark that lit the last straw on the camel's back?"
"I think you are mixing your metaphors, dear," Anna pointed out amusedly.
Over Angie's dismissive 'Pshaw', Peggy began her tale, "Well, it all started with this file…"
Once she had finished telling her story, Anna asked (probably before Angie could monopolize the interrogation), "So I am curious to know – why him and not that nice Dr. Wilkes?"
Peggy, not expecting this kind of question, took a few moments to consider how best to respond.
While she did so, Angie interjected knowingly, "She's fiddling with her tea cup, isn't she?"
Peggy scowled at the phone and then at Anna as she tittered, "Why, yes, Miss Martinelli, she so is."
"I thought so. If anyone ever wants to question Peggy about anything, the best way to read her tells is to stick a cup of tea in front of her," her alleged friend observed.
To forestall any other such commentary, she declared, "If you must know, Mrs. Jarvis, I do what I always do and try to imagine growing old with the particular gentleman in question."
"And?" Anna asked curiously.
Being a private person, she would normally not disclose any of this, but as she trusted these two women like she did no others, (not even her own mother), and because she needed to process this out loud for herself, she quietly answered:
"With Jason I could picture us growing old together and having a reasonably happy life, but I couldn't picture it without Jack being somewhere in the background too. With Jack, on most days, it was just him and me, and we would be happy – bickering – but happy. Not even the phantom of Steve could ruin it."
As soon as her little confession was done, Anna reached across the table and gave her hand a comforting squeeze.
And once Angie recovered from her speechlessness, she said, "Wow, Peg, that was one of the most romantic things I've ever heard, and I have lived and breathed theater as long as I can remember. I hope your Blondie knows what a lucky guy he is."
Before she could respond to this, Angie asked, "So if you two have been keeping mum about your relationship for this long, why fess up now?"
Peggy explained the story of Violet's request, concluding, "But don't worry – I saved the best for last. No one knows as much about this as you do."
"How many have you told?"
"Our chief, Rose because if the chief knows, she will soon too anyways, his family, and you all, but not Howard – he's next on my list," she admitted.
"Wait! You've met his family? What are they like? How did that go?"
At the very memory of that disaster, all Peggy could do was groan.
~A~
Over Mr. Stark's bitter yet urgent instructions on the other line that he challenge 'that Danny chap to double-or-nothing…for when the smug bastard will pop the question', he could hear his wife's delighted giggles and the uproarious tinny laughter of Miss Martinelli.
Jarvis wondered how much wheedling it would take for his dear wife to relay such a humorous tale.
~A~
Much to Violet's pleasure and Daniel's relief (and secret amusement), Peggy and Jack were on their best behavior at the wedding and following reception.
The only time that anyone could say that their relationship stole the limelight from the bride and groom's was when it was time to toss the bouquet and garter – for to the disappointment of many, neither one of them could be found.
At least, not until Sousa's Great Aunt Beatrice went to get her coat from the closet. To hear her tell it, the M.I.A. couple was 'smooching like there was no tomorrow'.
