The Great Prank War of Agent Carter Season 1 (Patreon)

That was, as soon as Tab got off her ass and booked another role. But once she did, Bridget was really going to miss weekend hikes with her friend, musing on the unfairness of going rock climbing with an Australian. Because she was from Australia. She could probably skin those rocks and eat them while looking like Lara Croft in her short pants and tight tanktop. Bridget always worried that her height made her lanky.

“So new job?” Tab asked, jabbing her walking stick into the ground to keep herself effortlessly aloft on the uneven terrain.

“New job. The Marvel Universe!” Bridget enthused wickedly.

“So you’ve given up on being Wonder Woman?”

“Maybe I can play Lynda Carter in one of those unauthorized biographies Lifetime does.”

“Hey, we had a deal. No Lifetime. We’re too young for those vultures. Our breasts are too perky.”

“I promise my standards will only dip so far as the Hallmark Channel,” Bridget promised, one hand raised in a Boy Scout salute.

They stopped for a rest, Tab taking a petite sip from her canteen before passing it to Bridget for some undignified gulping. Damn Australians. Wouldn’t surprise her if Tab had worn that leather catsuit for clubbing.

“So let me guess,” Tab said. “Your character is fiercely amoral and vaguely lesbian and you get into a catfight with the Black Widow?”

“It’s not one of the movies. It’s a TV show. You remember the chick from Captain America? She’s getting a spin-off.”

“Oh.” Tab nodded approvingly. “Good for her. So you get into a catfight with her?”

“It’s a proper fight,” Bridget insisted. “We don’t fall into a pool or anything.”

“For a complete and total peach, you play a lot of villains.”

“Rose isn’t a villain,” Bridget declaimed. “She’s a very passionate woman with a poor decision-making process.”

Tab laughed and gestured for her canteen back. “That’s what makes you such a great actress, Bridge. You see the best in every character.”

“Including Cara, as I recall.”

“Of course. Cara was awesome.”

***

She liked the energy of the Agent Carter set. After the nerve-rackingly secretive audition process, where you had to nail the character while knowing virtually nothing about the character, she was relieved that things lightened up with them. The cast and crew and sets were an interesting mixed drink: the production design and polish of a big study enterprise, with technicians confidently setting up special effects and markers for CGI, but with some of the plucky underdog spirit of a college film or low-budget indie pic. This wasn’t going to be Iron Man 3, after all. Just a scrappy miniseries that would air between seasons of a proper 22-episode show. She hoped the balance didn’t tilt too far in either direction.

On Seeker, everyone’d been professional enough—that’s what you got with a New Zealand film industry that had pretty much a hundred percent gone through Lord of the Rings training camp. But it’d also been something of a party. They were doing a bunch of cheesy adventure episodes based on a series of cheesy novels, with enough fans for there to be real excitement (they trended on Twitter) but not enough for there to be a brigade of feet fetishists petitioning the producers for a barefoot episode or anything.

Carter was less relaxed. They were making eight episodes of female-led entertainment. They weren’t, as the EP said, Marvel’s first movie with a female protagonist. They were Marvel’s first four movies with a female protagonist. Even if it was just a job, no one wanted their show to be an example as to why people just wouldn’t watch a female lead.

They were already well into filming the first couple episodes when she got there, and still building a few of the sets for future ones. No one had much time for introductions. She had time to drop her luggage off in her trailer—nothing against indie movies, but she loved having a trailer—and then was hustled over to costume testing, where the concept department had been busy coming up with numerous looks for her. Nothing really snazzy; she was a spy meant to blend in after all. But she liked wearing anything from the forties. It made her feel like a kid again, playing dress-up in her grandma’s clothes.

That was when she met Hayley Atwell—changing from one proposed outfit to another behind a dressing screen.

There she was, minding her own business, when a curly-headed hellion popped over the top of the screen. “Oh, are those those new Spanx? The moisture-absorbent ones? I’m still on the old ones, how are they?”

“They’re… very well for me… thanks.” Bridget blinked. “You’re not a stunt double, are you…?”

“I do my own stunts,” Hayley claimed. “Unless they’re dangerous. Then I don’t. Sorry, have we not met? I thought we’d met at one of the premieres—“

“We might’ve. They all tend to blur together for me…”

“Did we sit together at Thor 2?”

“I don’t think I went to Thor 2. Was that the one with Loki?”

Hayley rolled her eyes. “They’re all the one with Loki.” She offered her hand. “In case we haven’t met—Hayley Atwell. Lovely to meet you and I hope to be a wonderful arch-nemesis.”

“Bridget Regan,” she replied, trying hard to shake Hayley’s hand without bumping it into the screen. The last thing she needed was to knock it over while half-dressed. “Thank you for getting your own show and needing someone to fight in the last episode. I do make it to the last episode, right?”

“It’s all a bit seat of the pants. I’m not even sure I make it to the last episode, but Tara says she has a plan. You’ve met Tara?”

“She sat in on my audition.”

“Meeting the boss-lady already! Well, I mean, never just one boss these days, but she tends to be the last woman standing. I think even Feige’s afraid of her. You’ve met Feige?”

“Yeah. He seemed nice.”

“Crikes, who’s going to show up in the next movie, me or you? Oh, don’t listen to me, I’m a terror. And you’re still half-naked. Best of both worlds, isn’t it—Mad Men aesthetic with comfy underwear? Anyway, I just wanted to bop in while they reset the… sets, give you a warm welcome, wish you luck, pip pip cheerio and all that. Also, quick suggestions—do not party with the SHIELD cast. Ming-na will outdrink you. She will.”

“I’ll keep my distance,” Bridget assured her.

“Also, Lyndsey and I would love to hang with you, but if you hang with us, you have to prank the boys.”

“The boys?”

“You know—Dominic, James, Enver. Chad’s a bit sensitive, so we leave him out of it—and Whigham cannot be pranked, he is a machine—but other than that, yes, pranking.”

“I’m sorry, is this summer camp?” Bridget asked, before worrying that was too caustic. She’d possibly only just met the woman, after all.

Hayley shrugged. “Sort of? It’s a method thing. Puts some oomph into portraying the chauvinism of the period and all that. Besides which, Dominic will literally hit a high note if you scare him.”

“Like an opera singer?”

“Like an opera singer. Do you film your first scene today?”

“Tonight,” Bridget confirmed. “I think it’s with you.”

“Cool! I’ll tell Lyndsey. You’re not one of those—you know—real solitary actors? Because Lyndsey would love to meet you, but if that mucks with your vibe…”

“No, no, it’d be fine.”

“Good. Excellent. And not to pressure you, but try to think up a good boy-prank. Nothing crazy, but—opera singer.”

***

Her first scene was pretty much just a cameo—no reason for her to even be in on the table read. She just showed up, hit a few marks, said a few lines, easy-peasy lemon squeezy.

Dottie was one of those characters she loved to play. Not just surface stuff—the girlfriend, the evil bitch—but layer after layer to play and to inform her acting. She was the innocent farmgirl, but then she was the Russian assassin pretending to be the farmgirl, but then she was the traumatized child underneath the Russian assassin. It gave her so much to work with and sometimes, she wondered how an actor could ever play someone without a double life. Wasn’t it just so rote, only being who you were on the page, reading the lines as if that was all the character was?

She met Fonseca briefly during set-up—Lyndsey pumped her hand and said “Don’t you dare hurt my bestie, now, you hear?” and watched, beaming, as Dottie and Peggy exchanged their first few lines on camera. An inauspicious start to the rivalry between hero and villain, but when they wrapped it in two takes (three for safety), Lyndsey clapped wildly, nearly jumping up and down before wrap was called and she was free to run up and take Bridget’s arm.

“You’re going to fit in here just great, I knew it, I cannot wait to do cons together.” Bridget was Californian too, but Lyndsey was so Californian that Bridget wanted to set her up on a girls’ night out with Tab, just to see how grouchy Tab could get about varieties of mineral water and the best kind of mud to slather on yourself to eradicate free radicals.

Hayley stepped in, wrapping an arm around either one of them. “Enough of that, we have much more important business to attend to. Regan, just so you know, Dominic is going to be doing a guest spot soon and he has been conspicuously unpranked.”

“Bridget’s gonna help us prank?!” Lyndsey asked, nearly a dog whistle with excitement.

Hayley gave Lyndsey a squeeze. “If she wants to. If you think it’s unprofessional, we can just get some wine coolers and do some research.”

“What other job do you get where your homework is reading old comic books?” Lyndsey asked. “By the way, Enver will pay you five bucks for any comic that’s accidentally homoerotic, but it has to be good.”

“That sounds fun. But I’ve actually been thinking about it and I think I know how Dominic Cooper must be pranked.”

“What’d I tell you!” Lyndsey asked excitedly, slapping Hayley’s boob with the back of her hand. “What did I frickin’ tell you?”

***

Bridget felt bad for whoever Lyndsey was dating. She lifted Dominic’s cell phone like it was nothing; they could’ve gone through all his phone stuff if not for being wonderful people who all agreed he probably sent dick pics and didn’t want to see his dick pics. All they did was disable his alarm, slip him his phone back, and wait.

Hollywood wasn’t quite nightly cocaine orgies. Not when you had to film in as much light as you can get, so you shot all the exteriors you could from dusk till dawn, then maybe let people sleep. Without his alarm, though, Dominic missed his call—and there Bridget came in.

“You know how Eddie Murphy can play more than one role?” Bridget gestured to herself for the director. The man’s suit, seventies wig, and pasted-on (yay) goatee made her a Howard Stark fit to challenge anyone’s sexuality. “I’m just saying—“

When Dominic finally made it to set—in record time for a guy who’d had to be woken up by PA—he was still so bleary that they had him convinced for ten solid minutes that Howard Stark had been recast.

Hayley made a Vine of him asking how was he going to tell his wife he wasn’t Howard Stark anymore. The woman was ruthless. Ruthless.

***

Out back of her trailer, Bridget went through her rotes again, still a little concerned she’d gone too far despite how Dominic had laughed it off when he’d seen her. As usual when she needed comfort, she went with the Desecrated fight scene. She’d done a lot of fight scenes on Seeker—the choreography had often blended together or faded from memory. But she recalled Desecrated well. Performing with Tab for almost the first time, trying to act while nailing the stunts, being graceful without looking graceful. She knew it was a silly fight scene on a silly show, but pulling it off with Tab had felt like performing Swan Lake in Carnegie Hall.

“So who’s winning?” Hayley asked, shortly after Bridget had taken a swinging backhand from an invisible Tab and responded with a stiff kick.

Bridget broke jarringly out of the routine. Hayley was clearly in civilian mode—wearing sweatpants and a sweetly fanmade shirt of herself duked out as Queen Elizabeth, with a trenchcoat over it for a modicum of plausible dignity. The kind of thing Britney Spears would wear to go to a 7-11 at 2 AM. She sat on the steps to Bridget’s trailer.

“Old fight scene,” Bridget explained nervously. She felt a case of the giggles coming on, like she was going to the front of the class in elementary school. “It’s familiar. In a good way. I rehearsed it a lot with Tab.”

Hayley nodded sagely. “That woman who favorites all your tweets?”

Bridget nodded. Tabrett had, reluctantly, joined Twitter, but she was about as able with it as Bridget’s grandma. “We’re friends,” she said, then felt like an idiot.

But Hayley just looked wistful. “Yeah… I wish I’d had a fight scene with Chris.” From the way Hayley texted him like a teenage girl between set-ups, it was clear they were tight.

“I bet he doesn’t.”

Hayley looked horrified at the reminder of her continuing rampage through stuntmen. “As God as my witness, I thought the last one was wearing a cup—“

“Dave’s taken punches from the Rock. I think he can handle pain.”

“Anyway, if I were fighting Captain America, I wouldn’t go for a crotch shot. Hardly cricket, now is it?”

“Yeah, you wouldn’t want to damage that.”

Hayley broke out in titters. She had a laugh like a tinkling bell. Bridget was rooting for her to snort, just once. Tab had been absolutely fine with snorting around Bridget. The two of them had sounded like a herd of piglets when they got into their cups.

Hayley snorted, then covered her mouth with an abashed grin. Bridget smiled reassuringly at her.

“Oh, by the way, package from Dominic on your porch.”

Bridget widened her eyes in exaggerated suspense. “You don’t think it’s a custard pie on a big spring, do you?”

“Bees, I think. Most likely bees.”

***

It was kittens. A lot of kittens.

“Does… does he understand what a prank is?” Bridget asked, falling to the floor to allow the curious little buggars to paw all over her. “Or is this like what counts as a prank in Hogwarts?”

“Britain is not Hogwarts,” Hayley insisted. “They’d never let a gay man run the place.”

Bridget buzzed with pleasure as a kitty tried to cross her forehead and fell down. Belly fur, apply directly to forehead. “Oh, God, how am I going to take care of all of them?”

“You could always take some back to the pound,” Hayley pointed out.

“But doesn’t the pound put down kittens if no one wants them?”

Hayley met Bridget’s eyes for a moment before looking off into the distance. “The man’s an evil genius.”

***

“This is not at all what I expected when I got that text,” Lyndsey complained half-heartedly.

“Don’t whine, you are getting pussy in Bridget Regan’s trailer,” Hayley said.

Bridget spoke up, being as serious as possible by not petting a kitten while she spoke. “We’ll share the load. If we all cat-sit for each other during each other’s scenes until we find them all homes, it’ll be fine.”

“What if we all have a scene together?” Hayley pointed out.

“Three women talking? On ABC?” Lyndsey asked.

“Good point.”

***

(They got James D’arcy to take a few off their hands, even though Dominic called him a traitor and Enver said he had always liked Paul Bettany better.)

***

Bridget scratched Mr. Mittens with her left hand, unable to use her right because Maestro Meow-Meow was holding tightly to it. Hayley had joined her in trying to think up a suitable revenge for Dominic, though this was complicated by the cats using her jeans as a climbing post. One of them had made it to her defensive sweater.

“What if you ‘accidentally’ clocked him in the balls during an action scene?” Bridget asked. “It would be the perfect crime.”

“Nah, I’ve used that one too many times. Anymore and we’ll lose our insurance.”

Maestro Meow-Meow relinquished Bridget’s hand, allowing her to scratch her nose. “What if we did something with the script?”

“Mess with a Marvel script? You spent too much time in Hobbiton.”

“Not the script itself, just Dom’s copy of it. Gave him a script where he got killed off or something.”

“Too mean. It’ll dizzy him up, his morale will plummet, that’ll hurt the show—this is an important show, Bridge. I don’t want to cock it up.”

“Right, right—what about he gets a script, he opens it up… Howard Stark’s gay?”

Hayley blinked. “That would be amazing.”

“Yeah, hilarious, right?”

“Yes, that too.”

***

Bridget fancied herself something of a writer. At the very least, reading every novel in the Sword of Truth series had taught her what not to do, and she’d gone through enough rewrites and ab-libs to be able to mock up something half-way convincing in Final Draft. She showed the results to Hayley, once she had compelled Frankenstein’s Fluff off her laptop.

“’I wish I knew how to quite you’?” Hayley read in the disbelief that only a British accent could convey. “Brokeback Mountain jokes? A little passé, no?”

Bridget shrugged apologetically. “Sorry. All I know about gay men is that they love Joe Jonas and they hate Star Trek: Into Darkness.”

“Why would gay men hate Star Trek: Into Darkness?”

“Well, who doesn’t?”

That got a full-throated laugh from Hayley that Bridget felt downright whimsical about. It struck her—one of those perfect, crystalline thoughts that was destined to be a memory—how nice her life was. Being healthy, young, beautiful, reasonably well off and well-regarded, and able to pretend to be a Russian super-spy with a good friend and strong woman like Hayley Atwell. It was the kind of feeling that tagging #blessed on an Instagram post fell woefully short of.

“Let me try,” Hayley said, gesturing for Bridget to remove herself from the laptop, prompting an instinctive cringe over what tabs she’d left open deep in Bridget’s soul. She didn’t watch clown porn or anything, but Tab had e-mailed her a fanfic where Kahlan and Cara were both furries and their attempts at lovemaking were so hilarious that Bridget could’ve peed herself.

Nonetheless, Bridget trusted Hayley not to go snooping beyond the innocuous Final Draft window. And just in case, she picked up Pretty Chris, cradled him like a baby, and occasionally buzzed him at Hayley’s face like a biplane going after King Kong.

***

Once it was done, of course, they had to see how it played.

***

“Will that be all, sir?” Bridget asked, playing the role of Jarvis, mainly through the expenditure of wearing a men’s jacket over her distinctly feminine clothing.

She was quite proud of her British accent.

Hayley turned around, displaying the caterpillar-like hairpiece that had transformed her for the character of Howard Stark. “Get out!” she slurred, her American accent distinctly Texan. “You can’t give me what I want! No one can!”

Bridget stomped her feet on the floor to mime walking away, while Hayley brought her arm over her eyes. “Steve… Steve… how could you die on me, you bastard? How could you leave me all alone…”

Bridget almost burst out laughing at the overwrought emotion in Hayley’s voice—she was going full-on Kirk Douglas with the pathos. But, she had another role to play. Shirking the jacket, Bridget took up a nicely hefty replica of one American’s shield. “Howard?”

Hayley cast her gaze to her, her face contorting with such undisguised emotion that one end of her moustache came loose. “Steve!”

Bridget tried to match Hayley’s intensity, projecting heroic saintliness as best she could. She had to respect Craig Horner; he made this shit look easy. “Don’t give into despair, Howard. I gave my life so you could live. You can’t throw that life away on feeling empty.”

Hayley threw her head downward. Her moustache’s hold on her upper lip took another beating, the majority of it hanging over her mouth. “You can’t know what it’s like without your light, Steve. I’ve never had a friend like you before. I’ve never had… anyone like you before.”

“All I was, was a mirror to the better parts of yourself. What you saw in me, what drew you to me, was the things we shared.”

“No, Steve. I’m a bum! A war profiteer!”

“And a good man. The man I loved.”

Hayley seemed to put all her heart and soul into a two-word line. “Oh, Steve!”

“Howard!”

They ran to each other, Bridget imagining slow-motion cameras and booming music, like Youtube was doing the editing. She kissed Hayley all the harder for feeling a fake moustache sticking into the corner of her mouth.

“Wow,” Hayley said in her normal register, pulling away. “I was not expecting full tongue.”

“I always go full tongue.”

“I wasn’t complaining.”

They were still in a clinch, gripping each other’s upper arms passionately, and as they panted harshly, Hayley’s moustache detached completely and fluttered like a wounded butterfly down to the floor.

Bridget didn’t believe in putting women down, insulting a lady or saying she was less than a beauty just because she had a zit or some cellulite. While she had no false modesty insisting she herself wasn’t a looker, she also fully acknowledged that Hayley was one hell of a beau. Her breasts as full and soft as one could ask for, her hair falling down as straight and as smooth as a light spring rain. But her attention was the most enthralling, intoxicating thing of all. Having her full, good-natured personality turned on you, hanging off your words with her crisp attention or sharing a smile with her amused joie de vivre, must’ve been a pick-me-up whether she was a young girl or an elderly old marm.

Now, in the prime of her life, it seemed radiant. Thoughts of possibilities, phantoms of hope, sprang up in Bridget’s mind like puddles after rain, begging to be splashed through. What would it be that her imagination tromped through next? A kiss? A touch? Seeing more of that perfect body, or getting to hear that rich laugh once more? She had actually met her lips with Hayley’s. A half-measure, a pretending thing, but it didn’t seem like something that would stop. It seemed like a prelude, like she had been admitted into Hayley’s graces and there, something wonderful could happen.

Hayley’s hands were warm on her arms. Bridget tried to transmit some message through her skin, send some pheromone through the galvanized electric current she’d read about on Buzzfeed—she wanted to assure Hayley that whatever she was thinking, it was alright, without the need to resort to clumsy words.

Finally, she tried a smile. A simple, warm smile that she hoped Hayley could read enough into to allow this to keep going, keep picking up speed on its way downhill, and damn what happened when they got to the bottom.

“I don’t suppose you believe those rumors,” Hayley said, her voice so light that Bridget just knew she’d gotten through to her, “that us actors perform a bunch of random, meaningless, kinky sex acts with each other, just because we’re jet-setting physical specimens who need to blow off steam.”

“I never listen to rumors,” Bridget said. She could not see anything but Hayley’s eyes. She heard rather than saw Hayley’s body moving closer, felt Hayley’s hands move up to entwine in her hair. She heard the breaking of a buckle and the opening of a zipper and the rustle of fabric from pants being stepped out of. Then bare feet on a hard floor. And she could smell the sweet musk of Hayley’s womanhood, feel the soft pubic hair tickle against her leg under her shorts. Awakening desire filled her, even though she’d thought she could be aroused no further than she had been. Her thighs were slick and warm and begging to be touched.

“Good,” Hayley said. “Because this never happened.”

“What never happened?” Bridget asked.

And Hayley showed her every little thing they didn’t do, and would never do again every weekend until they bid each other a fond farewell and promised to come back for season two.

It was the first booty call in Bridget’s life that had to get a pass from the Cancellation Bear.