a/n: I misread the prompt as just 'quiet time', but it kinda still works!


The noise was audible as soon as the elevator doors opened. Muffled but chaotic, Peggy could pick out music as well as a radio program, the announcer’s cheerful patter jabbering over the thrashing of strings. As she hurried down the corridor, one of the doors cracked open, and an old man stuck his head out.

“You here for that Thompson fella?” he snapped.

“Has it been like this the whole day?” Peggy asked.

He snorted. “And more. You tell him to cut that shit out, or else I come there myself and cram it up his-”

“I’ll take care of it,” Peggy cut in, and continued down to Jack’s apartment.

“You better! Goddamn sonuvabi-” The door slammed, but it made almost no difference, the noise was so loud.

Peggy rapped at Jack’s door. The door was locked, but Peggy had lockpicks, and it was a bare minute before she popped the handle and swung out the door. A wall of sound nearly bowled her over. Grimacing, she stepped inside and let the door shut behind her.

“Jack?” she called. The lights were off, despite it being past dusk. She flicked on the lights in the hall. There was a modern stove and sink to her right, fit into a small, tiled kitchen big enough for a square table and single chair. The living room had an armchair and a coffee table, and along the window, a table piled with paperwork. Just beyond was the door to the bedroom, where most of the noise was coming from. Peggy didn’t hesitate, and quickly made her way to the doorway. “Jack?”

The bedroom was awash in sound and darkness, but Peggy could just make out the crumpled figure atop the bedspread, topped by a white mass; a pillow, she realized after a beat.

“Jack,” she said again, and the figure shrunk, knees drawing up, shoulders hitching higher. After a moment, she walked to the edge of the bed, and touched his shoulder. He flinched.

“Please, go,” he said, barely audible under the cacophony.

Peggy regarded him, mouth pressed into a thin line. The raging of the radio and record player were unbearable, but so loud and nonsensical it was more white noise than anything. It was too loud to hear yourself think—which, she supposed, was why Jack had it this way.

“You can’t stay here,” Peggy said, and lay her hand more firmly on his arm. “Come on.”

The pillow slipped from his grasp and toppled behind him; in the dark, his eyes were black holes. “They won’t shut up,” he said, cracked and uneven. “Everybody—the- the whole damned city, they just keep thinking and thinking. God,” he moaned, hands like claws against his head. “God please make them shut. Up!”

There were dark streaks on his fingertips, down the sides of his face. Alarmed, Peggy realized he’d scratched his ears to bleeding.

“I know, Jack, I know. It’s why I’m here,” she tried, tugging him upright. “We’re getting out of here.”

His breath shuddered, and he made no move to stand.

“Work with me here, Thompson,” she said tersely.

“Just leave me alone,” he said.

“Like this? Don’t be dramatic,” Peggy snapped. She felt under his bed until she felt the smooth leather surface of his suitcase. Inside, the essentials were already packed, always ready to go in case of emergencies. She got to her feet and turned off the radio, then the record player.

“Leave it on, no!” Jack gave a strangled cry. “I can’t—I just want to be alone, Carter, just leave me alone!”

“No!” Peggy shouted back, gripping his arm in one hand and his luggage in the other. She towed them out of the bedroom and towards the door with grim determination. “I’m not leaving you here like this. The quicker we leave, the quicker we get you to someplace with less people.”

“Don’t you get it, Peggy? I don’t want- I can’t- not you, alright?” Jack shouted, high and tense.

“What?” Peggy stopped and stared at him under the yellow hall light. Jack, half in shadow, stared back, wild-eyed and pale.

He gulped in a breath and retreated a half step. “I- I can’t take this,” he stammered. “But I’d rather—this than…”

An airless, ringing silence passed, so strange after the earlier discordance. Peggy barely breathed; the anger simmering under her skin swelled, but all she did was set the suitcase down and stalked over to Jack. He didn’t have time to dodge before she clamped one hand behind his neck and jerked his head forward, just short of bumping their foreheads together.

“I don’t mind, Jack. I don’t care. Go on, take a listen to my thoughts,” she challenged. “I don’t know what you expect to find in there, but you tell me if it upsets you, and we’ll deal with it. Alright?”

His eyes, terrified and feverish, didn’t blink. “No… Peggy, I-”

“It’s alright, Jack,” Peggy promised firmly. “It’s just me. You know me. And I know you.”

He shuddered, and then his gaze unfocused. Peggy watched as his brows furrowed, watched as he grimaced, then smooth out the lines in his face. It wasn’t as if there was a physical indication that he was reading her mind—no itch, no pressure, nothing. The lab techs seemed to think the aftereffects of his encounter with the confiscated prototype were less active and more like a radio receiver, picking up any and all sundry thoughts within a certain radius. Perhaps, like a radio, he could tune into a single source of mental radio waves, they’d theorized. It would need more testing, but they seemed to be on the right track; after a moment, something in Jack seemed to unclench just a fraction.

“That’s right,” she said, and his eyes snapped back to focus on her. “Just focus on me.” He seemed a little more present, if still haunted

“You…” he said, low and cracked. When she glared at him fiercely, he didn’t seem to notice. He was occupied with her thoughts, after all, and knew what she was truly thinking.

Peggy gave up, hefted the suitcase in one hand and looped her arm through his. “Yes, me,” she said, testy but relieved. “Steady on, let’s go. I’m taking you to Howard’s cottage in the Catskills. We can wait it out there, or until the lab comes up with a solution.”

“Okay,” he said, biddable. When they stepped into the outside corridor, he flinched, but she kept her pace steady, towing him out of the building step by step.

“You keep your head on me, Jack,” she reminded him as she navigated them down the street and towards the car. He nodded, sickly pale and sweating, pressing his forehead against the glass as Peggy raced as fast as she could through the jammed city streets. It was gradual, but the further they rolled away from Manhattan, the more Jack’s shoulders unwound.

They were across the Hudson and into the thickly wooded stretch of road now, and Jack had gone boneless in his seat. “Thanks, Peggy,” he slurred.

She didn’t bother glancing away from the road before her, didn’t bother replying at all, in fact. Still, he must have heard something, because he gave a small huff of amusement before sleep overtook him between one thought and the next.

All around them was silence but for the humming burr of the car as Peggy drove steadily through the night.

a/n: idk where this came from but it went longer than expected!


Tammy had two roommates.

One was Jenny Olvera, who worked in the accounting department at a law firm, coordinated their rent payments with the landlady, remembered to buy toilet paper, and had never met crisis she couldn’t troubleshoot. If a zombie apocalypse happened, Tammy would grab Jenny and her perfectly packed emergency kit, and follow her pre-printed instructions to the closest safehouse, where they could hole up with a pantry stocked so efficiently, they’d be able to stay a couple months, while Jenny methodically signaled anyone with a shortwave radio, walkie-talkie, or smoke signals.

Well, it wasn’t quite a zombie apocalypse that had thrown Tammy for a loop, but a disgruntled practitioner, who’d come into the store ten minutes before closing and looking to make a scene.

“Ma’am—” was about all Tammy’d been able to sigh out before the customer threw at her face a Silver & Rue bag that was confusingly both smoking and soaking wet.

“It didn’t work!” the woman had shouted before Tammy’s manager could toss her out of the shop. “You sold me a broken product, you charlatans! My child was with me, you could have killed him.”

“Gargh,” Tammy had managed from behind a faceful of poorly-poured potion.

“Tams, that’s a chimeric solution,” her coworker had said worriedly. “Better go wash it off before it takes hold.”

“It’s fine,” Tammy had replied, scrubbing a paper towel over her face. “She said it was a dud.”

It was not a dud, however, as she found out an hour later, while eating cold pizza in the living room and watching Hawaii Five-0. It was, in fact, just on a delayed schedule, and one moment, Tammy was idly pondering the tightness of Scott Caan’s shirts and the next, her cheap spandex leggings had split into shreds because she’d gone and grown a fucking giant ass fishtail from the waist down.

Jenny would’ve taken a single look at Tammy, immobile on the couch because of her great big flipper-flopping scaled fishtail and immediately conceptualized four backup plans as to how to turn them back to legs, but she was working late at the office today.

Which brought Tammy to roommate number two:

Sam “Doritos” Sing.

Sam, who’d been a hasty replacement for Jenny’s cousin, who dropped out of the lease after being offered a job the next state over. Sam, who Jenny’s cousin had introduced as, “Spacey, but mostly harmless.” Sam, who, when pushed to elaborate, Jenny’s cousin had hedged, “You know, just one lightbulb, empty house kinda guy. Great at karaoke, though.” Sam, who’d invited them to call him ‘Doritos’ and followed that up with exactly zero explanation. Sam, who once mentioned he’d thought Gandalf was a real actual person in history, and that Middle Earth was ancient China, because “you know, they’re the Middle Kingdom or whatever.”

Sam, who, having just emerged from his room, froze in the doorway.

The point wasn’t so much that Tammy didn’t trust Sam to navigate himself out of a tent of wet tissue paper—he was very sweet, and didn’t have a mean bone in his body— but that… okay, actually, that was exactly it. Nice and dim was not what this situation demanded.

“Dude,” Sam said after a long moment. “You’re a mermaid.”

“I’m hexed is what I am,” Tammy growled.

He scratched his floppy hair, face scrunching up in confusion. “But like… why?”

“Does it matter?” Tammy flapped her hands agitatedly. Her tail flapped along, rattling the coffee table and both she and Sam stared at it in horrified fascination.

“Hey look, I don’t judge, love is love and all, everyone’s kinky in their own way, but this is a shared space, man,” Sam said, a tad reproachfully.

“Oh my god, Sam,” Tammy hissed hysterically. “There was an accident at work!”

“No doubt, no doubt,” Sam said, relieved. “So, you need anything, or…?”

To her utter mortification, Tammy felt tears prickle her eyes, the shocked anger and confusion and resentment rolling into one unstoppable swell. “Just go away,” she snapped, and glared at the dull, dishwater-gray scales of her fishtail instead of throwing something at him. After a moment, he shuffled off into the kitchen, and Tammy sniffled, reminding herself that the transformation would wear off soon. The sort of generic spell kits their store carried were mass-produced and harmless, regulated as they were by the U.S. Federal Augury and Thaumaturgy Commission. A couple hours as half a fish, stuck on the couch, and everything would be fine.

Except the tail was heavy and pulled awkwardly on her spine and kidneys, and she’d left her phone charging on the other end of the living room which was now totally out of reach, and she’d had a headache even before the change, and also her scales were starting to itch horribly and—

“Okay, Tams, don’t take this the wrong way and all, but I’m gonna touch you now,” Sam said, startling her out of her funk. She hadn’t even heard him approach.

“Don’t sneak up on me like that,” she groused. “What do you mean?”

Sam looked at her very seriously, which was more comical on his face than reassuring. “I’m going to pick you up and carry you to my car.”

“I’m not leaving the house like this,” she said, horrified.

“No one’ll even see you,” he promised solemnly. “I got like, towels in the car.”

“But—no, Sam, it’s fine, it’s only a couple hours.”

“My dude,” he said grimacing, “your scales are drying out, and we only have a shower in the house. Also, the living room is starting to smell like Red Lobster.”

“But,” Tammy said helplessly, and then gestured to her body, which could be described as Rubenesque. Sam, on the other hand, as fit as he was, leaned more towards the beanstalk variety of human silhouettes.

He brightened though and shrugged. “Oh, it’s cool. I lift.” And before she could protest, he bent, slid one arm under the bend of her tail and the other under her shoulders and stood up in one swoop. “The trick is to do it with your knees,” he confided with a sunny grin, and headed towards the door, whistling.

~

Tammy fiddled with the edge of the ragged beach towel he’d dug up from the trunk and glanced at him. He’d turned his cap backwards and was bobbing his head along to the alt rock radio station. Despite the half year of cohabitation, this was probably the longest time they’d spent in each other’s presence without dinner on the table.

“Where are you taking me, exactly?” she asked with some exasperation, after he continued humming along to the radio without any indication of filling her in. “We’re not going to a beach, right?”

“Oh! Yeah,” he grinned and snapped. “So I did think about it, but traffic is pretty gnarly at this hour, and by the time we get there, you’d just have regular feet and no bathing suit.”

“Duh.” Tammy rolled her eyes. “I told you, I can just wait this out at home.”

“But also, I had the perfect second place in mind,” he told her proudly, and then Tammy realized they were turning onto the grounds of the local university.

“Not the pool!”

“What, no, you said no people.” He looked hilariously offended, and Tammy couldn’t help but crack a smile at that. “No way. I’m taking you to my department garden—it’s behind a gate, and I have the keys.”

Oh, right. Sam did give off incredibly ditzy vibes sometimes, but he was in a graduate program at the U… for holistic practices or yoga or… psychedelics? Something kind of old-fashioned and wacky hippie-ish. But then they pulled into a small parking lot in front of a walled courtyard, and Sam was scooping her up again, just as easily as he had the first time.

Tammy kept one arm looped around his neck and the other fisted in the faded beach towel as they loped up to the iron gate. Sam scuffled a little awkwardly and touched his pointer finger to the keypad; Tammy turned away so she wouldn’t see the rune he drew to unlock the wards. Wasn’t like she’d be able to recreate it or use it without additional priming on the lock anyways, but it just wasn’t polite.

The gate unlocked and Sam shouldered through easily into a garden paved with gravel pathways laid in precise lines.

“What’s this?” Tammy asked, curiosity overtaking her. “Herb garden?”

“Kinda sorta,” Sam shrugged, or at least as best he was able. He was straining just a bit now, but was determinedly marching forward without any change in pace. Tammy kinda sorta loved him for it. “It’s the Folk Thaumaturgy department’s catch-all work space. We do grow all sorts of neat stuff for the herbalists, but like, the placement of the trees are designed for ritualists and the fountain’s both cool and provides the best kind of purified water for spells.”

“Fountain?” Tammy echoed.

“That one,” Sam said, jerking his chin, and Tammy turned to gawp at a long, deep pool running down the center of the courtyard. At the midway point, the water tumbled down a series of steps until it gathered in a round basin at the very end.

“It’s beautiful,” she breathed.

“Oh, true facts,” Sam agreed enthusiastically, and dropped her into the fountain with a splash.

Tammy yelped at the shock of bone-cold water, twisted, floundered, inhaled half a lung of invigoratingly pure water, and shot up to the surface, clear across to the other side of the fountain. “What the fuck, Sam!”

“Yooo! Your tail did a crazy thing!” Sam shouted back, and then gave her two thumbs up.

Tammy stared at him, overwhelmed, and then glanced down at her own tail, which was waving under the water instinctively, keeping her hovering in the same spot against the current. “Fuck my everloving duck,” she uttered. The itchiness was gone, as was that miserable all-over achey feeling, replaced by a deep sense of refreshment. She’d been dehydrated.

After another moment, she tentatively wiggled her tail and promptly lost her balance. The water closed over her head and she choked briefly before she managed to gasp a mouthful of air.

“You okay, Tams?”

She gulped another breath of air and then, with more purpose, aimed herself back towards the opposite end of the fountain. When she popped back up, Sam crowed excitedly and held out for a fistbump.

“Alright, Tammy!”

Grinning, she gently bumped her knuckles against his. “God I feel so much better,” she sighed, flipped around and propping herself up against the edge of the pool by her elbows. Her tail curled languidly in the running water; properly hydrated, her scales shone a silvery blue.

“It’s ‘cause half of you is fish, and even half-fish need to swim, brah,” Sam said wisely.

“Is this the stuff you’re learning here?” Tammy laughed.

“No, that’s just common sense,” Sam told her. “My buddy once used a chimeric to be a centaur for the day, and he kept asking us to feed him grass.”

“I don’t get people,” Tammy said.

“Yeah, me neither,” Sam agreed. “We got him a shot of wheatgrass from Jamba Juice instead.”

~

For the next hour and a half or so, Tammy swam around the fountain. If she didn’t think too hard, she could pretend this was just a regular workout at the gym; the illusion was dispelled every time she made a circuit that was about thrice as fast as she’d otherwise have gone, but the operating phrase was don’t think too hard.

Meanwhile, Sam wandered through the garden, chatting up the trees and rock formations like old friends and taking an old watering can to the plot of herbs.

By the time a prickly cold chill swept through Tammy and left her floundering again, this time with two legs, it was getting dark.

Alerted by her garbled yelp of alarm, Sam grabbed the beach towel and held it up with his eyes scrunched tight. She paddled to the edge of the pool and hauled herself out.

“Thanks, Sam,” she chattered, ice-cold purified water streaming off her in rivulets. The towel was large enough to hang from her shoulders and still cover everything that needed coverage, thankfully.

“No problem, Tammo,” he said cheerfully. “What’re roommates for?”

She punched him lightly in the arm. “Most people would’ve let me dry out on that couch alone.”

Sam looked confused. “Why would anyone do that?” he asked, sincerely upset.

“You’re a good one, Sam Sing,” Tammy said, and on impulse, leaned forward and hugged him.

“Aw, hey, you too, Tams,” Sam said, patting her back. “Always down to help a homie in need.”

They broke apart, and then stared at the gravel path and her bare feet.

“Do you want…?” Sam gestured.

“Please?” Tammy asked, and Sam obligingly swung her up in his surprisingly strong hold once more.

“Hey, you hungry? There’s a place down the street with a solid bacon burger.”

“Only if it’s drive-thru, Sam.”

“Ohhh, right, right, no pants. Mickey D’s?”

“Sounds good. Hey, why do they call you Doritos anyways?”

“Yo, okay, so like, one time in junior year, there was this Radical Thaumaturgy Theory class and…”