Title: Dance Steps
Fandom: Agent Carter
Author: sholio
Rating: PG
Word Count: 2100
Pairing: This fic ships all the ships, which is going to be tricky when it's time to figure out how to tag it on AO3. But let's go with "gen, mostly".
Content notes: n/a
Summary: Peggy never got that dance with Steve. But there are other dance partners.


Peggy wasn't sure what made her go to the Stork Club on the night of her date with Steve. He wouldn't be there, of course. How could he possibly be there?

And there were a thousand other things she should be doing -- a hundred thousand things. She'd hardly slept in the last week ... the last month ... the last year, perhaps. It was the height of madness to waste an entire evening on -- whatever this was. An idle fancy, a superstition, a desperate hope.

But she rescheduled three meetings (with a four-star general, a member of Parliament, and an American war correspondent representing their foreign press bureau, respectively), stuffed her briefcase with plans and paperwork to review in her flat later, and slipped out of the SSR offices just before 6 p.m. She knew Colonel Phillips saw her go, and would be forever grateful that he didn't try to stop her or ask where she was going.

At 7:30 p.m., she walked into the Stork Club in a red dress and her only remaining pair of unladdered stockings. More than a few heads turned. There hadn't been time to properly curl her hair, but it was wartime; she'd had plenty of practice at making herself look decent with little time and even fewer proper cosmetic supplies.

There was no one in the room that she knew.

She ordered a drink for herself at the bar. "Meeting someone?" the bartender asked, and she smiled and nodded.

It was three drinks later, and after 10 p.m., when she finally got up to go. "I'm sorry your lad didn't show, miss," the bartender told her.

"Me too," she said, putting on a smile. She had not cried all evening, and was not going to cry now.

"For what it's worth, he's a fool."

She kept her smile in place, and reached for her handbag. The bartender waved it off. "On the house, miss. You brightened up this place tonight."

Really? she thought. She didn't feel bright. She felt like something dark, on the verge of collapsing inward. She left the money on the bar as a tip instead, and started to turn away.

"Miss, you want to wait a few minutes, I can get someone to walk you home? That bloke at the end of the bar, he's an off-duty copper. He'll get you home safe."

Peggy glanced over her shoulder. "Pardon?" She felt confused and slow, unsure if he was clumsily trying to hit on her. He'd been quite gentlemanly all evening, helping her fend off the constant parade of servicemen trying to buy her drinks.

"The blackout, miss," the bartender said. "It's not safe out there for a young woman alone."

"Oh." After all she'd seen, all she'd done, the idea that a little darkness might threaten her was so ludicrous that she had to choke down an inappropriate burst of laughter. "No, I thank you for your concern, but I'll be fine," she said gently. "I don't live far away."

In truth she was glad of the darkness, as she made her way unerringly back to her flat. It meant that no one could see her foolish and inappropriate finery, and no one could see her cry.


***

A year and a half later


The New York nightclub was loud, crowded, and jammed with Americans, most of them so shockingly young that it made Peggy herself feel old and jaded. Her mother would have had a fit to see her in an establishment like this. Therefore, she was determined to enjoy it, even if the jazz band was making up for their lack of talent with sheer volume.

"And what's wrong with the usual place?" Daniel asked, balking. Clearly Peggy wasn't the only one who was put off by the noisy and youthful crowd.

Angie threw an arm around his neck. "I've seen that dark hole where you SSR guys like to drink after work. You can't celebrate properly in a place like that."

In Peggy's opinion, the SSR's favorite bar would have been more appropriate given the situation. The SSR had just wrapped up a difficult case involving arms smugglers trafficking in stolen HYDRA weaponry. It was a dark victory, though -- they'd lost two agents, and nearly lost more. The bandage on Daniel's forehead attested to a bullet that would have had far more tragic consequences if it had been a few inches to the left, and Jack's arm was in a sling. Peggy herself was all too aware of the tug and pull of bandages on her side, beneath her dress, a lingering legacy of the heat backwash from a HYDRA energy weapon that she suspected would leave a scar.

But they had done it, they'd won, and somehow Angie had managed to co-opt their quiet round of victory drinks and instead dragged them all to an uptown jazz club where she liked to go with her actress friends.

A couple rounds of drinks helped blunt the edges of the loud music and make the crowd less oppressive, and somewhat to her own surprise, Peggy allowed Angie to drag her out for a round of jitterbugging. "Don't tell me you don't know how to dance!" Angie cried when Peggy tried to demur.

"Not like this, I don't!"

But Angie was a force of nature when she had her mind set on something, and soon Peggy was breathless and laughing as she tried to emulate Angie's moves. She finally managed to escape, pleading pain from her burns -- which was sort of true, but mostly, she was fairly sure that she was about to fall over. Angie instantly turned into a solicitous mother hen, shepherding her back to her chair and bringing her a fresh drink.

Daniel smiled at her, and Jack clapped in a way that managed to stop just short of sarcasm. "Didn't know you had it in you, Agent," he said.

"Nice dance moves," Daniel told her sincerely, while she was still (semi) playfully scowling at Jack.

"For a woman with two left feet, you mean? I hope Angie will forgive me for the bruises."

Angie poked her. "I'll call it payback for those torture sessions you consider self-defense training. Okay, who wants to go next?" She hardly even seemed out of breath.

Daniel nodded ruefully to his crutch. "Sorry, I don't think jitterbugging is quite my style anymore. Thompson, on the other hand --"

"Hey!" Jack protested, but Angie pounced on him and dragged him off to the dance floor with her.

Daniel's eyes followed them wistfully. He wanted to, Peggy thought, and she thought he was probably as capable of dancing as of anything else; she'd seen how deftly he could handle the crutch in a fight. He just wasn't willing to try it in front of this many people.

As she reached for her drink, she was struck by a sudden shock: that jitterbug she'd just danced with Angie was the first time she'd danced with anyone since Steve's death. She waited, braced, for the pain that always caught her like a fishhook snagged in her throat, as any reminder of Steve did. But it wasn't quite as sharp, this time -- more of a dull, sad ache.

By the time Angie and Jack came back -- both of them flushed and sweating and cheerful, though Jack looked a little pinched around the eyes because of the broken arm -- she'd made a decision, and asked Angie, "Do you think the band knows any slower songs?"

Angie winked at her. "I could ask."

She vanished before Peggy belatedly realized what it sounded like, and felt her cheeks heat. Now she was committed, though. Onward and through! A moment later, the band switched into something slow and sweet. Peggy didn't know the song, though it was vaguely familiar.

"Oh, hey, wait," Daniel said when she rose and held out a hand to him.

"Come now, it's only a dance."

"I don't dance," Daniel protested, going limp and heavy against her attempts to drag him with her, like a recalcitrant toddler.

"Can't, or won't? If you don't know how, I can show you." Again, the ghost of the past breathed gently down her neck.

Angie and Jack seemed to be enjoying the scene. "If you don't wanna dance with her, Sousa, I will," Jack said cheerfully.

That got him up, at least. "Don't blame me if we make a spectacle of ourselves," Daniel muttered as she led him onto the dance floor.

"Oh hush. No one is looking at us. Besides," she added, looking up at him until she managed to get his attention on her instead of the crowd, "if they are looking, why don't we give them something to look at?"

They had to fuss around a little trying to figure out how to arrange themselves, since his right hand was taken up with the crutch and her whole side was bandaged and therefore off-limits for touching. Peggy got her feet briefly tangled up with the crutch, and after momentary awkwardness they both laughed, breaking the ice somewhat. Once they got themselves settled, the song was nearly over -- but enough couples were swaying gently together now that the band went into another slow song.

Because of the crutch in Daniel's right hand, there wasn't the subtle guiding pressure at her spine that Peggy was used to. But that's all right, she thought as they glided and turned more slowly than the couples around them, more carefully. It was different from what dancing normally felt like. He wasn't leading, exactly, but neither was she. Once they settled into the rhythm of it, they were able to anticipate each other's movements just as they did in the field. It was slower, and a little awkward, but it worked.

We all came back from the war broken, she thought, and tipped her head to rest against Daniel's shoulder. But we don't have to stay that way.

Between the next set of songs, Jack cut in. "You gonna hog Carter all night, Sousa? Give someone else a turn."

"What am I, a carnival prize?" Peggy retorted.

Angie swooped in from the other side. "Does this mean I get Daniel for a while? Why, thank you!"

Daniel by now had given up protesting; he just shared a commiserating look with Peggy before getting into a tussle with Angie over her insistence on showing him a new dance step that she was convinced even a person with one-and-a-half legs could manage.

Peggy, meanwhile, had her hands full with Jack. Since it was his right arm in the sling, it turned out that he couldn't do the leading part any more effectively than Daniel. Unlike Daniel, he wasn't quite so willing to settle into letting Peggy subtly direct their moves, which left the two of them in a polite but tense power struggle. After they nearly collided with two other couples, a table, and the bandstand, she got exasperated, planted her hand firmly at the small of his back, and took over the man's part.

"This is embarrassing," Jack muttered as she twirled him around the dance floor.

"You're the one who wanted to dance."

"I should have known it'd turn out this way. Should have known." But he didn't try to escape, and there was a sparkle of humor in his eyes.

They'd come a long way. They all had.

The band segued into a faster song, and Peggy noticed Daniel disengaging himself from Angie, over her protesting body language; Peggy could fill in Angie's half of that conversation even without being able to hear them. ("It's not that hard! I'll show you the steps!") Peggy took Jack for a spin in Angie's direction, passed him off to her friend -- who delightedly took over Peggy's male-dance-partner grip, ignoring Jack's protesting squawk -- and then went to join Daniel at their table. "Having fun?" she asked.

Daniel grinned at her. His hair was sweat-plastered to his forehead, but he looked relaxed and cheerful. "Looks like Jack's got his hands full," he said, nodding to the dancing couple.

"Really? I'd say my sympathies are rather more with Angie."

They paused a moment to watch the not-so-subtle power struggle taking place on the dance floor, which was resolved when Angie kicked Jack in the shins. With a pained look, he allowed her to dip him.

"It's good, though," Daniel added. "To get out and -- just be alive, you know? Does that make sense?"

"It does," she said, smiling back at him. "It does."

And she waved the waitress over for a refill on her drink. She'd already had more than she ought to, but why not? The night was still young, and so were they.