No. 11: SEEING DOUBLE
Convenience Store | Loneliness | “Leave no trace behind, like you don’t even exist.” (Taylor Swift, Illicit Affairs)

Posted on AO3 (Agent Carter, post-season two)


Late Night Convenience

It was dark, Peggy drowsing in the passenger seat, when Jack pulled off at a service station. He hadn't expected to find anything open so late, and the car had been running on fumes for the last few miles, but the lights were still on and a yawning attendant came out to check the oil and pump the gas.

Peggy woke with a little snort. Jack didn't ever want her to find out, but he found her genuinely adorable when she fell asleep like that, face pressed against the window and her hair tousled and falling in her face, making the undignified little noises that all sleeping people make. It was nice to see her occasionally without all her armor in place, muddled and human and drowsy.

"Ugh," she groaned, rubbing her eyes. "Where are we?"

"Somewhere west of the Kansas border, I guess. D'you want anything?"

"Yes, I need to see if they have a ladies," Peggy declared, and launched herself out of the passenger seat.

Jack decided not to wait and see how that search went; instead he left the job of pumping gas to the attendant and went inside to pay. The station had a variety of other small items in addition to oil and gas, including maps and snacks. Jack was browsing when Peggy came in, looking a bit more put together. She had combed back her hair and dabbed some water on it to keep it there.

"It's almost midnight," she said testily. Another thing Jack didn't plan to bring up was that Peggy was extremely cranky when she hadn't had enough sleep. He pitied whoever had been immediately under her in the command structure during the war. "I thought we were going to trade off driving at the border."

"Figured I'd let you sleep." In honesty he had been enjoying the almost-solitude, the vast darkness of the central part of the country and the long stretches of well-maintained road that had sprung up everywhere after the war.

Peggy sighed and gazed at the chewing gum and maps with the bleary stare of a person awakened too soon from a nap. Jack could relate to the way she was blinking under lights that felt too bright. "I wouldn't expect this place to be open so late," she said at last.

"America has everything nowadays," Jack said wryly.

The attendant came inside, wiping his hands on an oily rag. He really was a kid, maybe nineteen or twenty; too young to have served in the war that had shaped both of their lives so completely. "We close at midnight." He glanced at the clock. "Five minutes."

"Yeah, yeah. Just looking. You got coffee?" He found it, poured the dregs of the pot into the cup he'd brought in from the car. Peggy inspected the coffee, and with even more disdain, the two wilted tea bags in a box next to it, and shook her head.

"We got pop over there," the kid at the counter said. "Cold."

Peggy picked out a bottle of Coca-Cola, looking mildly dubious. Jack paid for the gas and the drinks. As they walked back out to the car, the lit-up GAS sign went off and the light over the door went dark too.

"Jack, do you have a bottle opener? I forgot to ask, and it looks as if he's closing."

"Gimme." Jack traded her the cup of coffee for the bottle. He opened his pocket knife with a flick of his thumb and cracked the top off with the blade.

It was hot and drowsy in the Midwestern night, and very dark and empty, no lights anywhere besides the service station lights and a few scattered house lights way out there in the dark. A pair of headlights passed on the road. Another change since the war, Jack thought; you just didn't used to get people driving around like that in the country at midnight, at least in his experience. In the city, yeah. The bustle was part of city life. But now, even country people were in a hurry to get from one place to another, driving on brand new roads from one side of the country to the other.

Like he could talk, he thought wryly, under the circumstances.

He handed the open Coke back to Peggy. She took a drink and winced.

"Bad?"

"Probably what I need just now," she said with a sigh. "Sugar and pep. I'll drive for a while."

"We could stop. Get a motel."

"No -- not yet. Let's cover some more miles." She stifled a yawn and swallowed a resolute swig from the Coke bottle.

Jack took the passenger seat, pushed it all the way back, and watched with amusement as Peggy adjusted everything -- seat, mirrors, and so forth.

"You are too bloody tall," she complained.

"Stay on the right side of the road."

Peggy rolled her eyes and put the car in gear. Jack sipped his coffee, and held her Coke bottle for her, handing it to her when she wanted it. They should put some kind of contraption in cars to hold a drink, he thought, like a little basket or something. Get Stark on that -- no, that was a terrible idea, it'd probably end up predicting the weather and having surface-to-air lasers too.

Peggy turned the radio on -- another change from the cars of his youth, Jack thought sleepily, but this one he liked. There was nothing except static in the middle of the night, of course, until she finally managed to find a station playing staticky jazz, cutting in and out. Peggy tapped her fingers on the wheel, and Jack found that he enjoyed watching her in the backlit glow of the headlights, focused and intent as the car ate up the miles, carrying them towards the other side of the continent.