Title: Needle Arts
Fandom: Agent Carter
Rating: PG
Length: 1400 wds
Content notes: n/a
Author notes: n/a
Summary: Peggy discovers an unexpected talent in one of her coworkers. Or, the one in which Jack learns to knit.



It was not a sight Peggy had expected to see, walking into her boss's office to find him sewing a button back on one of his shirts.

Jack looked up, quirked an eyebrow, but didn't pause his needlework as Peggy placed the files on the edge of his desk.

"I hope those are your reports on the Wentworth case that I've been asking for since last week. I also hope they're typed, not scribbled."

"They are very neatly typed, thank you." The two of them had been going through a mellower period lately, one of the periodic calms in their stormy relationship, which made Peggy almost reluctant to say anything ... but the temptation was too great. "I had no idea you were so skilled at the womanly arts."

"A man who can't sew on a button and darn a sock is a man with holes in his socks in combat, Marge."

"I suppose I can't argue with that." And, having spent more than a little time in the field with the Howling Commandos, she'd seen most of them mending their own clothing at one point or another. She'd made it very clear that she wasn't to be commandeered for those duties.

It just wasn't something she had ever thought she'd see Jack doing. He so thoroughly inhabited his modern-man-of-1946 persona that she sometimes forgot -- in spite of all she'd seen, all they'd done -- that he, like all of them, had lived a life before.

She later learned that Daniel was a deft hand with a needle as well. That was less incongruous somehow.

However, it wasn't even a patch on the surprise of walking into the west guest bedroom in Howard's L.A. mansion during Jack's convalescence and finding him in bed knitting.

In this case, his reaction was all she'd expected the other time: he jumped violently, and the mass of yarn, needles and all, vanished under the blanket while Jack desperately tried to rearrange himself to look natural and failed utterly.

"Do you understand the concept of knocking, Carter?"

"I suppose I should be grateful I didn't discover a far worse scene," she admitted. "I've no one but myself to blame. May I see it?"

"Does Sousa know you're asking --"

"You know what I mean, Jack. I should point out that my own skills in this area are negligible, which means if you're expecting informed commentary, you won't find it here."

This admission of her own (slightly exaggerated) lack of expertise was, as she'd expected, encouragement enough for Jack to unbend a little. Slowly, inch by inch, a very lumpy beige and green mass emerged from under the blanket. There were several feet of it at least.

"Scarf?" Peggy ventured.

"Sweater."

"Ah." She tried to discern which part might be the arms, but gave up. There seemed to be at least three different neck holes.

"Mrs. Jarvis taught me," Jack admitted in the tone of someone who had been caught in the middle of doing something a lot more compromising. "Figured it'd pass the time, since I'm not much of a reader and there's not a lot else to do. Pretty similar to darning really."

"Well, I must say it's very ..." She groped for an adjective.

"Large," Jack suggested.

"That is a word which applies, yes."

"She tried to explain knitting gauge to me but I think I must have either missed something in the explanation, or counted wrong."

"I'm sure it'll be quite warm."

"Yes, except we're in Los Angeles and it's a hundred and fifty degrees in the shade, so warm is the last thing we need." This despite the fact that he was huddled under a couple of blankets and wearing a heavy robe, looking vaguely miserable in spite of the gentle, flower-scented breeze coming in through the half-open window.

Recovery wasn't being kind to him; he'd already had multiple surgeries and one setback involving his lungs that had landed him in the hospital again. Peggy hadn't really expected him to survive any of it, not that she was ever going to breathe a word, any more than she was going to say that if he wanted to knit tent-shaped sweaters, he could make a hundred if he liked.


***

Four years later


"Look who's here, Peggy," Daniel said, opening the door to her hospital room with a mix of amusement and weary resignation.

Peggy looked up from the tiny bundle of humanity nestled in her arms -- even two days into the motherhood experience, not to speak of the interminable nine and a half months that had preceded it, she was still baffled that she and Daniel had somehow created this -- to see Jack coming through the door. He looked like he'd come here straight from the airport; he was scruffy, unshaven, and carrying a duffel slung over her shoulder.

It was probably the drugs they were still giving her, it must be, that made her grin so widely at him. "I didn't know you were in the States."

"Well, I am now." He stopped out of arm's reach and inspected the baby curiously. "Is it a Jackie or a Jacqueline?"

"Neither; it is a Caroline Emma, thank you," Peggy said primly, while Daniel mouthed "it?" from behind Jack. "I do not recall you having a role in this process at all."

"Hmmm, well, in that case I should probably keep the thing I brought, but I'm going to give it to you anyway because otherwise I'd have to carry it all the way across town to my hotel."

With that curious lead-in, Jack knelt down to unzip the duffel. Peggy craned forward as well as she could without dislodging anything (most of her lower internal organs felt as if they'd been forcibly rearranged and might fall out at any moment). Daniel was also leaning over Jack's shoulder to see what was going to come out of the duffel, which turned out to be a soft-looking mass in various shades of gold, purple, and red.

Jack shook it out. Peggy thought at first it was a scarf, which seemed like a vaguely inappropriate gift considering that she was married to the point of actual childbearing, but Jack explained tersely, "Baby blanket," as he held it out.

"Oh," Peggy said, surprised and pleased. She shifted the baby to rest in one arm so she could take it. It was unexpectedly soft, almost featherlike on her fingertips. Tasteful and well made, which was more than she'd come to expect from Jack's idea of gifts. "Jack, this is very nice. Thank you. It's wool, isn't it?"

"Yeah, the advantage to being stuck in a listening station on the Albanian border for five months -- thanks so much for that, by the way, Director Carter -- is that there's a lot of time for knitting, and a whole lot of wool."

"Wait, wait, what," Daniel said. "You made that?"

No one in SHIELD's upper echelons was completely oblivious to the knitting hobby Jack had acquired during his convalescence -- he made increasingly lackluster attempts to hide it, but you couldn't really do any sort of long-term surveillance with him without noticing -- but this was the first time Peggy had seen him finish something. And she'd had no idea he had gotten good at it. The blanket was not only competently made, but quite attractive, the colors bright and pleasing to the eye. She'd assumed he had bought it in a market somewhere.

She brushed her cheek against it, and frowned. "This smells rather strongly of cigarette smoke."

"Yes, look, I made most of it while I was staying up all night listening to radio reports from behind the Iron Curtain, and the last three inches on a damned turbulent trans-Atlantic flight," Jack said testily. "It also had low-grade booze spilled on it at least twice and got to know my hostess's cat pretty well too. You might want to wash it before putting it on any babies."

"So you tell me after handing it to me while I'm holding a baby." But Peggy was already arranging the soft purple-and-gold folds around the little scrap of a brand-new human being she held in the crook of her arm. "Don't worry, she's a Carter-Sousa. I'm sure she'll cope just fine."