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captainsophiestark · 2 years

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Fallen Angel

Jack Thompson x Reader

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Written for Fictober 2022! Requested by @islayosterholt

Fandom: Marvel

Prompt: “No, anything but that”

Summary: Y/N has been working with Peggy since the start of the Howard Stark case, and now she's sitting in an interrogation room facing Daniel, Dooley, and the man she thought she might love, Jack Thompson. But when he disappoints her just like all the other men in the office who made assumptions about her and her association with Stark, is there any chance for him to repair the relationship? Or are they done forever?

Word Count: 2,551

Category: Angst, fluff at the very end

Putting work into an AI program without permission is illegal. You do not have my permission. Do not do it.

I huffed and stared up at the ceiling, trying not to completely snap as the door to the interrogation room swung open. The past few weeks had been nothing but complete chaos, largely caused by Howard Stark. After being wrongly accused of turning traitor and robbing his own vault of crazy, terrible inventions, he'd asked Peggy to get involved and help prove his innocence. And, as Peggy needed help and we'd spent quite some time bonding over being two smart, capable women who were completely ignored by our idiotic male coworkers, she'd come to me.

And now we'd both been arrested, literal feet away from the real culprit. Three cheers for the SSR, who couldn't apprehend a Russian spy if she looked them in the eyes and smiled.

Peggy and I were occupying separate interrogation rooms, but I could imagine she was going through the exact same treatment as me, if in a slightly different order. I'd gotten Daniel as an interrogator first, then Dooley. Then Jack. Jack Thompson, who seemed to snap at everybody in the office but me. Who'd stopped telling me to file things and take lunch orders after I snapped at him about it, and who I thought might have been working towards asking me on a date.

Much like Daniel and the Chief, he'd completely disappointed today.

He'd come in here with the same attitudes as all of them. It wasn't even that he thought I was guilty, it was that he thought I was some weak-willed, swooning damsel who'd, with Peggy, fallen for the charms of Howard Stark and crossed lines under his influence. If I really wanted to go rogue and take down the SSR, I would've done it, and none of them ever would've caught me. But when I'd said as much to Jack, he'd just scoffed and rolled his eyes.

So now, here I was, staring at the ceiling in an attempt to keep from completely losing my mind.

"Y/N."

I sighed heavily and finally dropped my stare from the ceiling to Jack. I fixed him with a very unimpressed look, and he looked right back with a grim expression of his own.

"You need to talk."

"Okay. Let's see... this is stupid, you're all terrible, sexist detectives-"

"No. You need to give me something I can use about this case." I just stared back at him, completely deadpan, as he leaned forward across the desk, closing the distance between us. "C'mon, sweetheart. You've been on the other side of that glass behind me before, you know what I can do. And any minute, the Chief's gonna come in here and order me to do something I really, really don't want to do, if you don't give me something."

I rolled my eyes. "No, anything but that," I said, my voice dripping with sarcasm.

"Y/N-"

"No, seriously Jack, come on. Does nobody here realize that I've taken a punch before? That I was an intelligence operative working behind enemy lines? That I was caught, and I survived it? Trust me Jack, you've got nothing on a fucking Nazi. And contrary to your apparent belief, I'm also not some breakable doll that got wooed by Howard Stark and has since been cast aside, ready to shatter at the prospect of some questions and fists. You bastard."

"Well, sweetheart, excuse me for not quite buying into your whole act when Stark had enough of a hold on you to convince you to betray your country. And ALL OF US."

I scoffed, absolutely no humor in my laugh.

"Holy shit, I can't believe I ever liked you," I said, mostly to myself as I shook my head. The anger had almost reached a boiling point in the pit of my stomach now, and it was taking all my self control not to flip this table just to make a point. "All you fucking see when you look at me is a doll. Some pretty, breakable thing that you wanted to play with, but now that you think she's got a dirty dress, you've decided she's trash, and it's time for you to move on."

"A doll can't usually take out agents like you did. We still have guys in the hospital-"

"Whatever, Jack! The point is, you don't see me as a person! You just seem me as some tragic, fallen angel, caricature of a woman that you don't actually know anything about. You think you do, sure, but you only know the version of me you made up in your head."

Jack opened his mouth to speak again, but I didn't give him the chance.

"You wanna know what the worst part is, by the way?" He hesitated, looking at me warily, and I decided that was enough of a yes. "I actually, really liked you. And I thought you liked me too. That you saw me, and respected me, and liked me as a person. But you didn't. You don't know anything about me."

Jack actually took a step back as he blinked a few times, floundering like a fish. He stared at me, actually looking a little hurt, but I couldn't have cared less. Any hurt he felt was of his own making. I'd just woken him up to the truth.

Before Jack could get himself together enough to speak, the interrogation room door swung open and the Chief walked in. He clocked the look on Jack's face, but didn't comment on it as he spoke.

"Stark's butler just showed up with a signed confession," he said, and I frowned. Whatever Jarvis had just done, I had a feeling I wasn't particularly going to like it. "He's flying here now to make a deal, that includes her and Carter going free."

Jack managed a nod as the Chief came over to me and unlocked my cuffs, then pulled me to my feet.

"You, Carter, and Jarvis are gonna wait in the conference room until Stark gets here," said the Chief, taking my arm and firmly leading me to the door. "And in the meantime, you can clean out your desk."

I gritted my teeth and tried to keep it together as I let him lead me out. I could only imagine what picture Howard's confession painted of me and Peggy, and just thinking about it was almost too much for me to stand.

As I passed Jack, I could see him staring at me out of the corner of my eye, clearly trying to get me to look at him. I stared straight ahead, my expression making one thing perfectly clear: I knew he was looking at me, and I was intentionally not going to give him so much as the time of day.

****************

I swirled the amber liquid of my favorite drink around in its glass, staring at it with my shoulders hunched as I sat at the countertop of my favorite bar. The place was pretty dead, but I certainly wasn't complaining. I'd come here because I wanted to be alone, anyway.

After Jarvis had tried to get me and Peggy out of trouble with a forged confession, Peggy had taken matters into her own hands and told Daniel, Jack, and the Chief about the vial containing Steve's blood. It was enough to convince them to believe us, at least slightly, and we quickly realized just how close at hand our problems actually were.

Everything had gone down hill very quickly, with Dottie taking down a few agents and Dr. Ivchenko, the scientist we'd 'rescued' from Russia, killing the Chief before completely escaping us. The next 48 hours or so were filled with a frantic attempt to save New York City and Howard Stark along with it, and by some miracle, we'd pulled it off. We'd been in the middle of a crisis, so I'd worked with Thompson without making a fuss about it, but I also hadn't spoken to him any more than absolutely necessary. He'd tried to engage me in conversation a few times, but I'd always shut him down.

Now, I was here, sitting in my favorite bar and trying to come to terms with everything that had happened lately. I'd asked Peggy out for a drink to commiserate, but she apparently had something pretty important to do tonight, and so had regretfully turned me down. Even though Daniel had apologized to me earlier, I was still coming to terms with my frustration at how he and everyone else had acted, so I didn't really want to go out with any of them. Which left me sitting here alone.

A sorry sight if you looked at it from the outside, but after the absolute rollercoaster I'd just gotten off of, I really didn't mind.

I took a deep breath and raised my glass to take another sip when someone took a seat at the barstool directly next to me. I looked over to see none other than Jack Thompson, a cautious smile on his face as he stared back.

"Hey, Y/N. Fancy seeing you here."

I stared back at him with a completely blank expression. Out of everyone in the office, he was the number one person I was trying to cope with my feelings about tonight. I was still very, very pissed at him, and I refused to give him an inch.

Jack cleared his throat and glanced down, and I noticed a slight blush rising on his neck and cheeks. Good, he should be embarrassed.

"Listen," he said, finally looking back at me, all traces of the joking attitude gone. "I'm sorry, alright? You... were right, about a lot of things."

"Like?" I demanded, showing no signs of warming up. Like hell I was letting him off easy.

"Like the fact that I didn't see you as an equal or really a person. And that I didn't see you as particularly strong or smart, despite the evidence to the contrary. And that it was all too easy for me to believe that Stark had suckered you into some scheme you didn't really understand with a few charming words. And I was wrong, on every single count."

I watched him carefully, trying not to show just how much my heart jumped with hope at his words. Jack was never this heartfelt, even in the few moments of sincerity we'd shared before this whole mess, and it honestly meant the world to me. But I also had too much self-respect to completely crumble after a paragraph of an apology.

Jack stared back at me with more vulnerability than I'd ever seen in his warm, brown eyes, then turned to the bartender as he walked past.

"Excuse me, sir? Can we get another rum and coke over here, please?"

The guy nodded and moved off to make the drink, and I raised an eyebrow as Jack turned back to me.

"Good guess on the favorite drink," I said, finally speaking. Jack smiled a little, clearly relieved to be free of the silent treatment, but he managed to keep his excitement in check.

"Not a guess. It's what you drank all night when you and Carter came out with me and the rest of the boys after Russia."

Now it was my turn to fight a smile tugging at the corner of my lip. The bartender came back and set the drink down in front of me, and I carefully took a sip, trying to use the pause to squish the warm feeling in my chest a little bit.

"Listen, you were right about everything you said to me in the interrogation room," Jack continued. I took a slightly longer-than-planned sip of my drink, then set it down on the counter and fixed him with my full attention. "I don't know you very well. But I do like you, a lot, and I'd like to get to know you better. So... can I take you on a date? Hudson's maybe, tomorrow night?"

I shook my head at Jack, even as a full smile finally broke out on my face. I just couldn't fight it anymore.

"Alright, what's your excuse for knowing my favorite restaurant?"

"...I might've asked Carter."

I laughed, and Jack smiled as the sound rang through the bar. It felt good to feel this way again, and to be talking with Jack like we used to when it was just the two of us.

"You know what, Jack? Yes. I'll go out to dinner with you tomorrow night." A massive grin spread on Jack's face, but I held up a hand before he could get too far ahead of himself. "But don't think this means you're officially off the hook forever. This has to be a permanent attitude shift, Jack, not just something you figured would work to get me to stop being mad at you for now."

Jack nodded, his smile replaced by a much more serious look.

"It will be. I've never... I've never actually felt this way about someone before, Y/N. I've been on plenty of dates and found plenty of girls attractive, but... I've never been happy to just talk before. For hours, without doing anything else. But that's what we did the one time the Chief actually let you work the night shift, and... it was fun."

I grinned at him and leaned forward a little, my tone teasing. "Jeeze, Jack, you don't have to sound so surprised that it was fun to talk to me."

"You know what I mean," he said, rolling his eyes. I just laughed. "And by the way... I do know you can take a punch. But that doesn't mean I want to punch you."

That only made me laugh harder. Jack shook his head, looking a little wounded and defensive, but I could see the corner of his mouth tugging up anyway. He turned and got the bartender's attention while I got a hold of myself, then quickly glanced back at me before placing an order.

"You mind if I join you for a drink?"

"Not at all, Jack," I said, giving him a genuine smile. He smiled back, looking seriously relieved, before giving his order to the bartender. I scooted my chair a little closer to his, then met his eyes again, this time from a much closer position.

"So... what do you want to talk about, Jack Thompson?"

"I'm up for anything. As long as it's with you."

I beamed at him and leaned into him, shoulder to shoulder, and he wasted no time wrapping one arm around me. Maybe it was the alcohol making me a little giddy, or the fact that Jack Thompson, the most stubborn man in the office, had just given me a sincere and heartfelt apology while admitting he was wrong, but I couldn't stop a happy laugh from bubbling out of me. I'd almost killed him in the interrogation room a few days ago, but now, I was glad I hadn't.

We had a lot more to do together, after all. And for the first time since all this ridiculous nonsense with Howard, Dottie, and everything between had started happening, I was really looking forward to it.

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