Chapter Text
Hawkeye's gone before Peggy wakes up, and she knows not to expect him when she gets home. She learned early in her teaching career to consciously manage her personal life, which is to say that for the good of the order, she tamps it down fiercely from the hours of 7 am to 4 pm (or 7 pm, as the case is tonight). It means that when she has time to process things, they come roaring back like she’s uncapped a shaken soda bottle. This is generally fine; she has a good network of friends and isn’t too proud to cry on the train if she needs to. The apartment she shares with Hawkeye has an immense claw-footed tub that she can fully submerge herself in easily. But she’s barely slept, too irritated with herself for pining over her if-not-gay-then-disinterested roommate, confused at his sudden exodus. She’d shoved it all down to teach all day with exhaustion pulling at her, rallied herself for two hours of sanctimonious parents who wanted her to give out As like Halloween candy, and she's too frazzled on emotion and sleeplessness to remotely enjoy the bath. She hauls herself out and called Max.
She does not ask Max to show up with Lebanese leftovers twenty minutes later, but she should have known better—they hate talking on the phone. “Peg!” They cry, pulling Peggy in for a kiss on both cheeks. “Pearl among women, angel of the educational profession, she of the flaxen hair, caretaker of wayward queers!”
Peggy snorts. “Isn’t that a nice way of saying ‘fag hag?’”
Max casts her a knowing look before exaggeratedly studying their perfectly shaped fingernails. “Is it? Anyway, I figured that if you haven’t eaten, I’d bring dinner. If you have, I’d bring tomorrow’s lunch. I labeled it so Hawkeye will keep his paws off.”
She grins. “You’re sweet, Max.”
“Don’t tell anyone. I have a reputation to maintain.”
“Anyway, Hawk’s not here, he has a date. Didn’t he tell you?”
Max shrugs, sinking into the sofa. “Probably, but I’ve got so many people telling me their business that I can’t keep up.”
“Fair. Sorry that I called you over to talk about my business,” she says a little guiltily, sitting beside him.
“Ah,” they say triumphantly. “But I can sense that your business, at least, is something that I can help with, perhaps even solve!”
Peggy sighs all the way down to her toes. Does she really want to do this? Well...no. But did she really want to pine for a disinterested party forever? More ‘no’ than the alternative. She takes a deep breath to steel herself. “Want to help me set up a dating profile?”
Max’s eyes light up like they’d been delivered Christmas early. “Oh, dear one. I thought you’d never ask.”
Peggy covers her eyes and hands them her phone. “Just try to make it at least sort of sound like me,” she begs. “I’d hate for them to find out how boring I really am in real life and be disappointed.”
“This is why you’re letting me do this,” Max says sagely. “Why now, may I ask?”
Peggy curls her feet under her. “Well, you know how I’ve been, as Margaret says, pathetically pining away over someone?”
“Ah, yes. Secret Agent Man.”
“He’s not a secret agent.”
“No, but he must do something terribly exciting, otherwise you’d tell us something about him. Anything! His hair color, maybe. Or his credit card number.”
No, Peggy thinks, I just don’t want you to realize it’s someone you know. “Anyway,” she shrugs. “Maybe Margaret’s right.”
“I generally find it’s safer to say so, yes.”
“And maybe I’m wasting my time. I mean, if he’s not interested, he’s not interested. And he’s not.”
“So you have implied.”
“So maybe I should see who’s out there, but as you know, my social circle is you and the hospital gang and oh yes, sixteen-year-olds.”
Max pauses from their tapping on her phone, looking at her calmly, not with pity or sympathy. “I’m proud of you.”
Peggy grimaces. “Thanks, I think.”
“Hey,” they chime, handing her phone back. “Remember that window shopping ain’t mean you gotta buy. Notice that I’m not doing any swiping for you. And even if you make a match, it doesn’t mean you have to do anything with it. This is that app where the lady-identifying-person has to talk first, so no sleazeballs.”
True to their word, they don’t comment as she swipes through, only making noncommittal noises unless she specifically asks. She feels shallow and ridiculous making snap judgments based on a handful of pictures and a short bio (assuming the guys managed to fill it out, which most didn’t). She feels mildly vindicated when she sees the occasional guy who is very obviously not the age he claims to be. She abandons the app in favor of Max’s excellent company and largely forgets about it for the next few days. Most of the guys put up a pretext of being interesting and interested, only to ask when they could hook up in ten exchanges or less. She also has a few instances of matching with guys that she was on her way to enjoying talking to, only for them to disappear. She halfheartedly revisits it a few weeks later while she waits for the train. Most of the guys don’t seem like they’d be her type—anyone who lists ‘the gym’ as their hobby is definitely too much for someone whose primary sustenance is black coffee.
And then she pauses. The guy smiling at her has lovely eyes—gray, she's pretty sure—and seemingly more teeth than normal people tend to have. He has kind of a big forehead, but the longer she looks at him, the more she likes it. It keeps him from being stereotypically movie-star handsome. He’s filled in that he's seeking something casual to start, he's taller than her by a margin that would probably be hilarious, and he likes Chinese food and melted ice cream, which are two of her most favorite things. Oh, what the hell, she thinks, swiping right. It’s a match, the app cheerfully tells her. God, being on this feminist dating app meant that she has to talk first. Crap. She shakes her head and tries to play it like she would in person.
Hi, BJ! What do the initials stand for?
She regrets it immediately. The guy's going to respond ‘blowjob, obviously’ and then she's going to be so disappointed, because he's really cute. Her phone dings.
Hi, Peggy. Normally I’d say ‘anything you want,’ and I promise I’d be saying it with a straight face, but it doesn’t come across quite the same in text, does it? So I’ll just tell you. It’s kind of embarrassing. My parents’ names are Bea and Jay. They named me after themselves.
Peggy laughs out loud. Bless him, he's at least as bad at this as she is, if not worse, but he sounds so sincere.
That’s okay, Bea and Jay. I’m named after Peggy Sue, like the song.
See, that’s cool! He responds. You’re named after a girl Buddy Holly loved enough to write a song about.
Peggy blinks in surprise, a slow, reluctant smile working its way across her face. She’s found that generally only people over the age of sixty know the song she's named after. Maybe this won’t be so bad.