NOTES: 30 Days of OTP challenge - Day 10 - 'wearing animal ears'. I'll be putting this series on hold for a bit - Christmas, New Year, and a holiday in Vietnam. I'll be back come the new year, hopefully with the rest of the 30 Days! Thanks for reading!
What Happens In Vegas
Babysitting duty, sir?
Not a hint of anything but professionalism showed on Fury's face as she stared him down. Let's call it cultural acclimatisation with an eye to not levelling cities, Lieutenant.
So, she said, deadpan, babysitting duty.
Thirty-one hours later, exhausted, far more drunk than she should be after what she's had, and with a very good mad building up behind her calm, Maria makes the call.
Forty minutes later, expecting at least two black sedans to pull up in the covered driveway, Maria is confronted by a long white limousine. The limousine's numberplate gives her enough warning that she's unsurprised when Tony Stark emerges, adjusts his jacket and looks her up and down. "Fetching," he says. "I particularly like the ears."
Maria doesn't blink and doesn't blush. This is Vegas, she's faced Tony Stark wearing nothing but a shirt and panties, and she will not be intimidated by a man who's physical and emotional survival relies on a glowing little reactor stuck inside his chest. "Pepper's inside with Jane and Darcy," she tells him, carefully crisp. If she's drunk, he won't know it from her speech.
She's not pleased to see that Stark has Banner with him, although it's not a surprise. Thor is a surprise, since she was under the impression he was off-planet, and Steve and Barton definitely are since they don't usually hang out with Stark in a social sense.
"Sif and Natasha are not with you?"
Maria jerks her head in the direction of the street. "They're looking at the fountains. Natasha and I thought I best to avoid crossing the streams. So Jane is inside and Sif is outside."
Thor isn't the type to blush, but a vague look of discomfort crosses his face. "Ah," is all he says before he follows Stark and Banner into the hotel lobby.
Clint arches a brow. "Do I need a sitrep?"
"I'd say it's more pride than heart. She got used to thinking of him as hers."
"Actually," Clint remarks with a faint grin, "I was talking about the…" He makes a hand gesture over his head and Maria stares him down. "Right. I'll just go find Natasha and Sif then, shall I?"
Which leaves her with Steve, who's looking at her with the kind of look she doesn't usually get from him in public places – the look that says he's thinking some very intimate thoughts about them, moments before he acts on those thoughts.
"Do I want to know what you gentlemen were doing?" She asks the question to head him off – God only knows what they were doing out in Vegas. Steve's blush says quite a bit before he even opens his mouth. Maria gives him her coolest, most contemptuously amused look. "Ah."
"It wasn't—Stark didn't tell us where we were going—"
"Relax, Captain," she says, using the title to remind him that they're in public. "I'm not going to call you on the carpet and demand an accounting."
And even if they weren't, she figures he's allowed to look. Touching, on the other hand, is quite out. She has a gun and a possessive streak. And a headache after spending the last eight hours dealing with two women who have a vested interest in the same demigod and aren't about to give over one iota of that right over to another woman.
"Are you—?" Steve nearly catches her as the world decides to spin about her. "Drunk, Maria?"
"Tired," she says and leans against the hood of the limo for just a moment. "Up too long, out too late, thinking too hard."
"Talking too carefully," he says, still standing in front of her with his hands around her arms to hold her up. Maria feels twitchy – too much alcohol, too much proximity, too many things churning around in her head. She can't deal with him like this, she needs distatance.
And people are staring.
At the limousine at first, but then at the big, handsome man in the suit, and then at the woman he's nearly holding in his arms. Recognition comes swiftly – the Stark Industries numberplate is easily associated with Iron Man, the Avengers, and Captain America, and Steve Rogers is a national hero, his face known to millions.
She eases away from him, just a little, just enough to give him the message that his tactility is not welcome right now. "People are staring, Captain."
His eyes flame with something like hurt, and Maria wishes she didn't have to do this. A better woman – a better woman for Steve Rogers – would probably let him show his affection and her career be damned, but Maria can't do that. It's not who she is.
Sometimes she wishes Steve could be a bastard like Tony Stark. It would make the end so much easier to see coming.
But he lets her go and just folds his arms across his chest. "Tell me about the ears."
Maria exhales. "We won them in a karaoke competition."
"You won cat ears in a karaoke competition?"
"Well, we actually lost. They gave them to us for 'strangling the cat'."
"Right." Steve looks like he wants to laugh, and she feels even more sulky about the whole business. "That doen't explain why you're wearing them."
And this is the part that she doesn't want to explain. Not here, not now. Perhaps not ever. And yet…out of all the people Maria knows, Steve might actually understand her reasons.
Sometimes Maria wonders if that's why she allowed this relationship to start in the first place, when a more sensible version of her would have walked away, or – even better – never given it a look in the first place.
So does she owe him this explanation? Does it matter?
Noise and movement behind them – the clatter of heels and the sound of Pepper and Stark arguing. "—didn't need to come, Tony—"
"Oddly, I like coming for you, Pepper."
"Tony!"
Behind them, Darcy is insisting to Dr. Banner that she's perfectly capable of walking on her own – only to be drawn out of the way of a group of businessmen and their wheeled suitcases without a single word spoken.
And behind them – and also behind the glass of the revolving lobby doors – Dr. Foster and Thor appear to be having an argument. Neither of them look particularly happy at what's being said.
"I'm not paid enough for this," she tells Steve as she pushes off the limousine and raises her voice to command volume. "Ladies and gentlemen, into the limo. Rogers, fetch Thor and Jane and tell them that their ride is leaving and if they wish to leave with it, they'd better stop airing their laundry in the lobby of a Vegas hotel."
Steve doesn't salute, although it comes close. Stark does salute, mockery glinting in his eye. "Aye-aye, captain!"
"Still no fun," Maria hears Darcy Lewis mutter, and can almost feel the steam coming out of her ears. Unfortunately, she doesn't get to be fun. Someone has to be responsible and God knows nobody else is stepping up to the plate.
Rather than say all – or any – of this, she glances over towards the fountains, looking for any sign of Sif, Natatsha, and Clint.
Steve returns. "Jane says to go on without them. They're going to talk."
"By which he means they're going to have wild monkey sex," Darcy announces. "In case anyone can't read between the lines."
"I'm pretty sure I guessed that part myself," Maria says dryly, then silently curses as Sif strides up, her lovely features proud and pinched as she looks towards the lobby of the hotel. "Lady Sif, if you'd like to step into the limousine, we'll be heading back to the Tower in just a moment."
"Natasha and Barton will be making their own way home," Sif says, her gaze resting on Maria before it drifts towards Steve and softens in a way that makes Maria's hackles rise. "Captain Rogers, I presume."
"Lady Sif."
"Tony Stark, I want you in here right now!" Pepper sounds cross, but Tony smirks in a way that always makes Maria's hand itch to slap him as he climbs into the rear of the vehicle.
"In the limo, on your desk, in the elevator… It's all work, work, work with you, Miss Potts…"
Darcy is looking at the open door with something like a grimace. "I'm no longer sure I want to get in the limousine!"
"They'll behave. Just get in," Dr. Banner says, a note of exasperation in his voice, and for once Maria's glad of the Hulk and the subtle threat he represents. She can't deal with all this at once. And yet she has to. It's her job to deal with all this at once and not lose it.
But Sif is looking at Steve with the expression of a woman whose pride has been stung by a man and is looking for a little revenge, and once – just once – Maria would like not to deal with it all.
In addition to which, the world is beginning to spin again.
"Maria?" There's a hand under her elbow, warm and familiar and stable and reassuring and all the things she can't let herself take refuge in. If only she wasn't so tired and frustrated and angry and drunk—
God, have you ever heard of having fun, Lieutenant?
And that simply something inside her throws up its hands and goes, Oh, fuck this.
Steve keeps his balance as she shoves him back. The concern in his eyes is replaced by momentary confusion as his butt hits the side of the limo's hood. "Mari—?"
She silences the last syllable of her name with her mouth. Tastes surprise soften into surrender, into response. Feels his heart thump under her palm. Aches with the gentleness of his hand rubbing gently in the small of her back, hot flesh trapping silken fabric against her skin.
And anger and frustration transmutes into something else as his lips move against hers, taking and returning, sweet and dangerous, seducing her with his tenderness, with the restrained strength that could push her away but doesn't, taking, supporting, giving…
Maria doesn't register the clicks and whirrs of the camera phones around them. She doesn't hear the whistles and cheers of the people watching the spectacle. She doesn't see Sif's brows rise or Darcy's jaw drop. She feels her pulse race and her breathing catch, and her body feel heavy and languorous and they're in public – in the driveway of a Vegas hotel for God's sake—!
His lashes sweep up as she drags her mouth from his, blue eyes lambent with heat and hunger and a tenderness that's nearly as terrifying as the way he leashes it.
"Lieutenant?"
She doesn't know what got into her. She can't think, can't reason, can't take any of it back.
Maria says the first thing that comes into her head. "I am not boring!"
And something too close to understanding flickers in Steve's expression as his gaze lifts to the cat ears she's wearing and drops to the mouth that still hovers over his. "I never thought you were."
From the Desk of Director Nick Fury:
Strategic Homeworld Intervention, Enforcement and Logistics Division
Washington, DC.
To Whom It May Concern:
It is strongly recommended that all SHIELD personnel refrain from accepting Asgardian alcohol under any circumstances.
Yes, even if it's offered by the 'nice' Asgardians.
Nick Fury
Director of S.H.I.E.L.D.
fin