This fan fiction takes place after Avengers: Age of Ultron and before Civil War. Just go with me.
Crossposted in Archive of Our Own
Something told me today was going to suck. Call it female intuition or a gut feeling, but the second Nick Fury called me in to his office at the new Avenger's headquarters, I knew it was going to be a bad day. Just how bad remained to be seen.
I opened the shiny metal door to Fury's office without knocking. He had windows, and even I wasn't short enough to miss when there was floor to ceiling glass. Granted, I'm not incredibly short. I'm about five-foot-three, which is close to average height for females, but, you know, sometimes I just couldn't see through windows without a boost. I had a feeling that Fury had taken short people in to account when he'd had the offices decorated. After Hydra had almost killed him, I didn't blame the guy for being a little paranoid.
Without being told, I closed the door and faced my director with my hands clasped behind my back like the good soldier I was. Well, the okay-ish soldier I was. I had the stances down pat, at least.
"You called for me, sir?" I asked, looking him in his one good eye.
He leveled his usual gaze at me, the one that said he didn't have time for bullshit, and said, "Yes, Agent Ryan. I did. I have a mission for you. You're going to accompany Captain America while he searches for a missing person, and you're going to give him access to our technological databases while you do it."
"Sir?" I asked.
I put every ounce of confusion in to that one word that I could. Fury didn't seem to care that I thought he was pulling my chain, or that I thought he'd gone just a little bit bonkers. He stood and made his way around his desk, moving past me to get to the door. Was he being serious? He couldn't be serious. Me, accompany Captain Steve Rogers? I mean, I'd been loaned out to "accompany" other people. Accompany, to Fury, meant bodyguard, by the way, or at the very least meant to help keep the person I was with stay alive since. He wanted me to be Captain America's bodyguard? I could understand Fury wanting me to help the Captain with technological equipment. Some of our databases and systems were difficult to navigate even if you hadn't been taken out of an ice block a few years ago. But being his bodyguard? That was ludicrous.
"You can't be serious," I said, following him out in to the hallway. "Who in the world would try to kill Captain America?"
"Anyone who wants the man he's looking for. Once he finds him, the only thing the Captain is good for target practice."
"Rogers can definitely handle nameless goons," I argued. "He's Captain America for godssake."
"Even Captain America needs help. During the war, he rarely worked alone. Even today he rarely works alone," Fury explained.
"He single-handedly broke in to a Nazi Hydra base, freed over four hundred soldiers, and destroyed the base, but you think he can't handle a search for a single man?" I asked.
"No," was the succinct response.
"Why me, sir? There are plenty of people that Captain Rogers' trusts who are far more capable of protecting him than I am."
"They're all too busy or too inexperienced. And you know damn well you're capable."
I closed my mouth and walked next to Fury in silence, practically biting my tongue to keep from telling him that he'd sustained a serious head injury when the hit had been put out on his life. The times when Rogers had needed military help, he'd been on a time crunch. World War II, the alien invasion, the Hydra infestation of S.H.I.E.L.D., taking out the Hydra bases with the Avengers. He could have done all of that single handedly if he hadn't been on a time limit. Okay, maybe I was a tad biased, but he wasn't on a time limit now. Besides, Rogers didn't deal in missing persons cases because he wasn't on that task force. This had to be personal, and personal doesn't usually have time limits. Usually.
"Who's the missing person, Director?" I asked, using long strides to keep up with the significantly taller Fury.
"Sergeant James Buchanan Barnes," Fury replied.
"Hold on a second," I scoffed. "We're searching for the guy who was engineered by Hydra to be a killing machine? The one who was hired to put you six feet under?"
"The one and the same," Fury replied. "Turns out Hydra wiped out Barnes' memory. Took him damn near killing Rogers for him to remember who he was."
I was being sent on a bodyguard mission with Captain America to find a super-human killing machine who had almost murdered Fury and his own best friend before remembering that he shouldn't do that. Great. Yep. Today sucked.
"Wonderful," I sighed, sarcasm dripping from every letter.
We came upon the mirrored hallway that was big enough to fit the Hulk and found Steve Rogers standing smack dab in the middle of the room. This was my first time meeting him face to face, and I had to say that I was a little star struck. Well, I was more than star struck. I was a female who hadn't gotten laid in forever, and he was both hot and a national hero. Fury and I walked toward him, and he walked toward us, giving me a much better vantage point to see if he really was as attractive as pictures portrayed him. The closer he got, the more I could see that he absolutely was.
He was in civilian clothes, though I was certain that was going to change soon. He wore a blue and green plaid button down that brought out the icy-coolness of his long-lashed blue eyes. The fabric was somehow both tight and loose, straining at his shoulders while the buttons in front hung loose, as if they weren't concerned that the rest of the shirt was in immediate peril of being ripped apart by a shrug. A pair of jeans and brown boots completed the outfit. His blonde hair was styled, in a way that said he took pride in his appearance, but that he wasn't vain. I realized I was staring as he opened full pink lips to speak. Jesus, I needed to get out more.
"Did Sam give you any more information on Bucky?" Rogers asked.
He stepped forward, close enough that I had to lift my chin a little to look up at him. He was six foot two, after all. My eyes were level with his collarbone and the slightly tanned skin that disappeared under the top button of his collared shirt. Hey, at least he wasn't any taller. I'd have gotten a crick in my neck like I usually got with Fury. It was only a two inch difference, but those two inches still hurt a little. Ha! That's what she said. Ugh, I'd have to mentally slap myself for that one later.
"No. Barnes seems to have fallen off the map again," Fury replied.
Rogers looked down, a sigh catching in his chest, making it puff out a bit further than usual. I watched the buttons strain, their little plastic selves suddenly clinging on for dear life, but was careful to catch his eyes when he looked up again. Mustn't gawk at the Captain. Shit like that had gotten me in trouble when I was younger. Turns out, some people didn't like to be gawked at and some people see it as a flat-out invitation for "a good time" later on.
"If Wilson does come up with anything new, it'll be directed to your new bodyguard, Agent Dani Ryan," Fury said.
He didn't have to motion to me for me to catch the hint that I needed to step forward and introduce myself. Rogers looked as perplexed as I'd felt when Fury mentioned that he'd be getting a bodyguard, and he turned his confused gaze to me as I stepped forward. The confusion only got worse. He'd seen me when we'd walked up, right? I was short, but god damn, I wasn't that short. So why was his confusion deepening as he looked at me? Had he just dismissed me until the time was needed, or had his own personal problems about Barnes narrowed down his vision to include only Fury? Rogers didn't seem like the dismissive type, so I was hanging my hat on him having tunnel-vision.
I admit, I certainly don't look like I should be named Dani, and I sure as hell don't look like a bodyguard. Bodyguards aren't usually shorter, or skinnier, than the person they're trying to protect, nor are they usually women. Yet somehow, there I was, a short, skinny, green-eyed woman with black hair half-way down my back and skin so white it could blind people. Sure, I was the muscly kind of skinny and was well trained in all sorts of combat, but most bodyguards haven't been handed business cards by fake producers saying they were pretty enough to be in the movies. Whether "movies" meant porn or not remained to be forever unseen.
I held my hand out to Rogers as he gave me a quick once over. The look had nothing to do with sex, like it might with most men who were sizing up a female. No, it was all professional, and it ended with him having one big question behind his eyes: how was I going to be his bodyguard when I was significantly smaller than the body I was supposed to be guarding. Fair question. I clearly got it a lot.
He took my hand like a gentleman and I gave him a firm handshake. He had the good grace give my hand a solid shake in return and not hold it like it would break, like most men did to me, but I knew that his grip was only the tip of the iceberg when it came to his strength. They didn't call him super-human for nothing. Hell, one time I'd overheard Tony Stark say that Rogers had pulled apart a log with his bare hands. Mr. Stark then proceeded to call Rogers a showoff and said that anyone could pull that stunt with the right leverage. Yeah, right.
"I'm Agent Dani Ryan," I stated as I pulled my hand from the warm circle of his fingers. "And I'm not your bodyguard. I'm more of a technologically savvy companion more than anything."
"She's your bodyguard," Fury corrected.
I flashed him a glare over my shoulder that I knew Rogers would catch, because there was no way he couldn't, and stepped back beside my boss. Not many people got to glare at Fury, but I was a particularly special person and I got certain benefits that others didn't. Benefits I should probably stop using in front of others.
"I don't need a bodyguard," Rogers said, his brow furrowing in mild frustration and confusion.
"We agree on something already, Captain," I said with a smile. I turned that smile on Fury and made it a baring of teeth. "I'm a tech savvy companion."
"Don't argue with me, Agent, or you'll be pulling desk duty for a year," Fury said. Gods help me, he meant business. I hated desk work. After my first screw up as a new agent, I'd been relegated to desk work. Me, and everyone around me, was happy that I'd made it out with my sanity intact. I was not a pencil pusher by any means, and I'd sooner shove a pen in my eye than spend another year in a chair.
"I'm arguing with you," Rogers stated suddenly. "I don't need a bodyguard. I-"
Fury cut him off by holding up one hand. Slowly, he turned his head to level one perfect brown eye on me. I could almost hear his neck creaking. I was tempted to tell him he was old and needed to be oiled like the Tin Man, but I was betting that would get me sent to machine maintenance, regardless of how much he liked me.
"Agent Ryan, please demonstrate why Captain Rogers would be at an advantage if he had you for a bodyguard," Fury said.
I looked at him, utterly confused. He couldn't possibly mean that he wanted me to- no, he wasn't that crazy. Was he? I searched his face, looking for anything that might tell me he wasn't telling me to do what I thought he was telling me to do. Everything I came back with told me that he'd gone mental. Maybe he'd spent too much time working behind a desk. Or maybe that hit really had given him brain damage.
"You can't possibly mean-," his gaze stayed the same. I frowned. "Sir, we agreed that I would never use-," he didn't so much as flinch.
I cut myself off with an angry sigh. He wasn't kidding, and his patient waiting would only last so long. The sigh thinned my lips, pulling them to my teeth in frustration. I spared a glance at Rogers, who looked even more befuddled now, before glaring at Fury. That glare would have made lesser men piss their pants. Fury was not lesser men, fortunately for him.
"Fine. But for the record," I jabbed a finger in Fury's direction, "I don't like you right now."
"I can live with that, Agent Ryan," Fury said calmly, as if he weren't breaking a promise.
We had agreed, dammit. He'd said that if I didn't jump the sinking ship that had been Hydra-infiltrated S.H.I.E.L.D. and run off to the CIA and stuck with him, my original recruiter, instead, that I'd never have to do this. And he was reneging on our deal. I was an idiot. I should have taken my chances with the CIA unencrypting my S.H.I.E.L.D file and used the Avengers base as my second option. I could strangle him right now.
I turned back to the Captain and took a step to the side so I could have both him and Fury in my sights. My eyes settled on Rogers and he looked back at me, wordlessly asking me what the hell was going on. Poor guy. He'd just been thrown in to one hell of a situation without even being asked if it was okay first. I guessed he was used to it, though.
"How do you feel about heights, Captain?" I asked, lifting my chin slightly. It was a slight show of dominance, because in this field, I had almost everyone beat and I damn well knew it. It was also a show of dominance toward Fury, my way of letting him know I wasn't happy about his decision and could totally kick his ass if I felt like it. Yes, I could kick his ass if I felt like going to prison and getting fired, but I could level him in to the ground if I really wanted to, and it would be real fuckin' easy, too.
"I have no problem with them. Why?" he asked. His brows knit together again, and even in my anger, I couldn't help but think that it was a rather adorable action. I also instantly wondered how many other women had thought the exact same thing. Probably too many to count.
I didn't answer Rogers' question. Instead, I gave a single nod and said, "Good. Hold on to your butts."
Without any further warning, I lifted my right hand and effortlessly lifted the two men in to the air. Fury was still and calm. He'd known what was coming. Rogers hadn't. Whatever tiny bit of sadism lurked inside of Fury had seen to that. Fury liked his secrets sometimes, and this was one of the times we had to let him have them for his own fun, even if it came at the Captain's expense, even if it pissed me off. Rogers' eyes widened as his feet left the ground. He looked down, as if establishing that what he felt was real before looking back at me. To his credit, he adjusted rather quickly, and his eyes narrowed back to their normal shape.
If I wanted to be honest with him, I'd have told him that I'd lifted my hand purely for his benefit. Also, it looked really cool. In actuality, I could lift a yard full of semi-trucks without so much as twitching an eyelid. All I had to do was throw out the hot tendrils of my power and lift those suckers in to the air.
Next came the really fun part. Well, it was fun for me. For others, it was a little too hot to handle. I lifted my left hand, my palm facing the ceiling, and willed those hot tendrils of power to become tangible, metaphorically forcing as much of my anger into it as I could. A ball of fire formed in my hand as Rogers watched. He did a good job of not widening his eyes again. He'd already had heaping dose of weird by this point in his life, let alone the past five minutes, so nothing that I did was going to shock him for very long. But he sure as hell wasn't expecting a fire vortex to rise between him and Fury, which is exactly the weirdness that I threw at him next. I flung the fireball between them and spun it around until it had flattened itself in to a circle on the floor. With a flick of my wrist, the fire spun upwards, reaching toward the ceiling as if its only mission was to consume the shiny material above our heads. Rogers' eyes followed the vortex, the flickering flames reflecting in drowning pools of blue. With a clench of my fist, the fire vanished, leaving the floor and ceiling intact. I lowered the pair to the ground and stepped next to Fury again.
I expected quite a few things to come out of Rogers' mouth, but for some reason, I wasn't prepared for what he asked.
"Are you like Wanda?"
Just like I suspected, he was back to business after being lifted off the ground and having a flame swirl mere feet from his face. Hooray for dealing with freaky shit on a daily basis.
"You mean lab-grown? Yes." I said the last word with finality, the kind that says the topic was no longer open for discussion. I might have been a little bit bitter about more than just Fury. It also seemed that burning off my anger in my fireball hadn't worked exactly as I'd planned. Dammit.
Rogers blinked in surprise, as if, of all the things I could have said, that was the one thing he hadn't expected. Boy, we were just tit-for-tat on a bunch of things today, weren't we? Okay, two things so far, but that had to count for something.
"You'll receive Agent Ryan's file in your hands before you leave," Fury said.
Oh, would you look at that? The anger was back and building to rage. I knew, logically, that in order for Rogers to know what was being placed upon him and for him to trust me, he would have to read the entirety of my file, but that didn't make me any less upset at the fact that he had to read it at all. I took a deep breath into my diaphragm and counted to twenty.
"Agent Ryan, you will leave this building when Captain Rogers does, whenever he decides that will be," Fury said.
"Yes, sir," I replied.
"I'm sorry to do this to, you Agent Ryan," Fury said suddenly, snapping my eyes up to his, "but I have no other choice."
Okay, that made me want to strangle him a tiny bit less. He was doing his job of trying to protect an Avenger and national icon. I could see the reasoning behind his decision, and I knew it probably hurt him to make it. Still hated it, though.
"I understand," I replied, looking forward. Looking at the Captain. "Let me know when you're ready to go, sir. If it's not immediately, and you need to find me, I'll probably be at sparring practice." For which I was very late.
"I still have some things to take care of before we go, Agent," Captain Rogers said, his brow furrowed and his head probably spinning from my rapid change from unprofessional to so professional I'd basically iced him and Fury out. "But the gym is on my way. I'll walk you."
That was an invitation that was going to be really difficult to say no to, so I gave him a single nod and said, "Thank you, sir. I appreciate it." I nodded once to Fury as well, a touch of angry disappointment behind my eyes as I said, "Director Fury."
Fury nodded back, dismissing us with an, "Agent Ryan. Captain," before turning away to go do whatever Fury does. Play chess with fighter jet figurines? With actual fighter jets? I dunno.
Despite wanting to walk away and leave him in the dust, I politely waited for Captain Rogers to walk toward me before I turned around and took my first steps toward the gym. I shouldn't take my anger out on him. Professionally, I couldn't. Hell, morally, I couldn't. How could anyone with half a brain cell take their anger out on Captain friggin' America, the guy who stood as a pillar of moral strength for decades? So, I was nice and walked with him, my wide gait matching his step for step despite our height difference.
"I have to ask, Agent," Rogers said out of nowhere. "What's in your file that Fury wants me to see?"
"You'll have to wait and read," I replied lightly. I shoved my irritation further down, trying to drop it somewhere near my toes so it didn't come out as malicious snark toward a superior who didn't know me enough to like me. I don't know if his walking me to the gym started out as a play to get information or if it turned into that, but it was grating on my already annoyed nerves.
"I'd like to hear it from you first. In your own words, not the words someone edited to go on paper. I like to know who I'm working with before I work with them and a file isn't going to tell me everything," he replied.
"Technically, it was edited to go in a computer document," I said. Yes, try to sidetrack the conversation with semantics.
"Agent Ryan," Rogers said, his tone making it clear that wasn't going to allow me to try to detract from his line of questioning with dry, almost-humor. Should have known that wasn't going to work. Okay. Different tack.
I sped up and stepped in front of him, stopping him in his tracks as I stared him down. His eyes widened a little again, his lips parting this time, and I swear I saw his shoulders tense the tiniest bit. Maybe stepping in front of a war-hardened man without warning wasn't my smartest move, but I didn't know how else to make a man listen, and make the message stick, without asserting some sort of dominance over him first. His surprise at my insubordination quickly turned into a frown, his eyes cautious yet curious, clearly wondering what I was doing but not sure he was going to like it when he found out.
"Do you tell anyone about what you saw during the war? What you did?" I asked.
"No," he replied, realization quickly dawning upon him.
"Why not? It's pretty well documented."
He looked at the floor and sighed. "Because what happened over there, what we did, it's not something you talk about."
I locked eyes with him when he looked up, intent and unblinking as I said, "Then you know why I don't talk about it."
I saw the regret in his eyes as I turned away, this time giving myself permission to leave him behind, driving the point home even further that he'd stepped over the line. I heard his footsteps come up behind me, quickly catching up with no effort until he was at my side like nothing had happened.
"I'm sorry, Agent Ryan. I didn't mean to push you and I should have realized that what's in your file might be a sensitive topic for you," he said.
Yes, he should have. He was an allegedly intelligent man and he'd been given plenty of smack-you-in-the-face hints that my file might not be the prettiest flower in the bouquet. However, he was trying to be nice and I wasn't really angry with him in the first place. Projection sucked.
"Thank you for your apology, Captain," I said, my tone subdued. "Just, please do me a favor and don't ask me about it again."
"I can't promise that, but I promise I won't ask without a reason to," he replied.
I guessed that was the best I was going to get, seeing as how he literally said he likes to know who he's working with, so I let it go.
"So, what's our destination?" I asked. Best try to learn a little about the mission now, before we even left the building.
"The gym," he said. "Unless you do your sparring practice in the kitchen."
I looked up at him and couldn't help the shocked chuckle that escaped my throat. Had he just made a joke? After all of that? I guess I couldn't blame him for wanting to relieve a bit of the pressure building between us, pressure being built up by me and my issues. I did need to chill the fuck out. We were going to be spending an untold amount of time together and I couldn't be bitchy for all of it.
"You know what I meant," I said, giving him a little half-smile. "Our destination for this mission."
"I'll find that out when I get back to my office. I'm sure Fury has had everything sent over by now."
"Yeah, probably by a damn ninja robot," I muttered. "Paranoid bastard."
Rogers chuckled at that and I whipped my head around again. Holy shit, I'd made him laugh. This felt really fucking weird. It was kind of surreal, but mostly weird, to be walking down a hall with Captain America, making him laugh immediately after making him feel guilty. What had my life become?
"Yeah, that sounds like him. But he has good reason to be paranoid," Rogers said.
"I never said he didn't, but if he's paranoid to the point on ninja robots, someone is going to have to have a talk with him. Or get him to give one to me, because that's a really cool idea," I said.
"An idea that you just can up with," Rogers pointed out.
"Nothing wrong with being a little self-congratulatory in an underhanded way," I responded.
"I'm just saying, a little humility can go a long way," Rogers said, clearly teasing me. Good lord, what was happening?!
"That is a little humility."
"Not really."
I sucked on my teeth to make a quick noise of distaste. "You…" I started, my argument dying on my tongue before it had really even lived, "probably know more about that than I do, so I'm going to shut up."
He chuckled again and I caught him looking down, his eyebrows raising as if to say he got that a lot. When he looked back up, some of the humor was gone, lost to his thoughts but not so lost that he wasn't still in good spirits.
"We'll leave in two hours," he said, making it sound more like information than an order. And yes, it was definitely an order, whether either of us wanted it to be or not. "That should give you enough time to do everything you need to do and pack a bag. I'm not sure how long we'll be gone, so pack accordingly."
"Yes, sir," I said, my reply as light as I could make it while still being professional and hiding a brand-new level of discomfort. "There's a problem with that, though."
"What problem?" he asked.
"I don't live on base."
Rogers took a breath and nodded, almost to himself, as if he should have seen that one coming. Jeez, looking for Barnes must've had him really distracted for him to not remember that most agents don't reside on base, that the only people that did permanently reside on base were Wanda and Vision. Everyone else, like Thor, Natasha Romanoff, and even Fury sometimes, would crash there if they needed to, but it wasn't a home for most of the people who went there every day.
"Of course. We'll have to stop by your home so you can pack."
"Right," I said, drawing out the word a little more than I meant to.
"Is something wrong?" Rogers asked, sounding genuinely concerned.
"It's just…" I paused, looking for the right words to say. Unsure I would ever find them, I decided to screw it and let my lips move. "How comfortable are you with letting someone you just met into your safe space?"
He nodded once again in understanding, this time giving me a little apologetic smile. "Not very."
"You. Me. Same page," I said with an almost imperceptible smirk. My eyes landed on the gym doors a few yards ahead. We didn't have much longer to discuss this, as I was pretty certain he didn't want anyone outside of his circle to know about his mission to find his homicidal bestie. "Something tells me we won't have to stop by your place."
"That something is correct," Rogers said. His voice softened a little, suddenly going distant as he added, "I've been looking for him for over a year. I wanted to be ready to leave the second I found out where he was."
Aw, hell. I was going to have to cancel my sparring practice, wasn't I? I knew he didn't say that to intentionally make me drop all of my plans to immediately go on this personal side quest with him, but I couldn't even imagine what it must be like to be in his shoes. Sure, his friend had straight up murder-rampaged all over Washington DC, but according to all of the Captain's files, Barnes had been his best friend since he was a skinny Brooklyn teen, and if the guy had truly broken out of Hydra's mind control, he was going to need all the help he could get. As soon as he could get it.
"I'll see what I can do about cutting my sparring practice," I said. "Get us on the road faster."
"Oh, no, I didn't mean to-" he started, turning to me, his hand going out as if to stop my mind from cooking up any miscommunication between us.
"I know," I said, trying to soothe his new anxiety. "You're right, though. You've waited long enough. If I were in your shoes, I wouldn't be nearly as nice."
I kept my eyes on the gym doors, wondering exactly what I could say that would make this a quick an easy process, and I desperately tried to not focus on Captain Rogers's eyes intently boring into the side of my head.
"Thank you," he said, gently.
"Thank me if I can manage to pull it off," I said.
My reach for the handle was halted when Rogers got there first, his hand making the bent metal bar look much smaller than it did when I held it. Jesus, this guy was big. I would not want to be caught in a back alley with him. Okay, that depended in the context, but I wouldn't want to get in a fight with him. His hand looked like it was the size of my face. It probably wasn't, but I was feeling over-indulgent in my comparisons today, it seemed.
"Whether you pull it off or not doesn't matter," he said. "I still appreciate it."
With that, he opened the door for me, ending the discussion while being a perfect gentleman. The sounds of masculine laughter, chatter, and grunting flowed from the room, and I walked in to see about ten guys ripping out bicep curls, sparring on the mat, or just sitting off to the side chatting while they dabbed at their necks with towels. Rogers followed behind, letting the door close with a soft hiss.
One man stood alone, almost putting himself in a corner, checking his watch and tapping his foot like a mother waiting for her kids to hurry up and get downstairs because the bus was about to leave. Sean McIntosh stood tall at about six-foot-three, and he was wiry, so thin you'd think he couldn't fight a balloon much less a human, but that skinny frame was deceptive. He was all lean muscle, and those long arms of his gave him the upper hand, no pun intended, in a fight, making him an excellent hand-to-hand fighter. His curly dark brown hair was cut short and fighting hard against the gel he'd slicked through it, and he already had both sweat stains and a food stain on his grey shirt. For someone who ate so sloppily, you'd think he'd be sloppy in everything else, but he wasn't. It was a weird dichotomy he had going on. He looked up as I made a beeline for him, bringing Rogers in my wake, and those big, sapphire blue eyes settled on me. His handsome face scrunched into a frown and he threw out his arms.
"Where the hell have you been?" he asked, peeved.
His eyes slid behind me then, and his frustration changed to respect as his arms slowly lowered to his side. I realized that the entire gym had gone kind of quiet as I'd made my way toward McIntosh, realizing that a superior and a hero was amongst them before the chatter resumed. Whatever Rogers had needed to do to get them back into a talking mood had taken him a moment, too, otherwise McIntosh sure as hell wouldn't have said shit to me first.
"I've been busy," I said, drawing his attention back to me for a split second.
Rogers came up behind me, staying to my right so I could see him in my peripheral vision, and Mcintosh's eyes flowed away from me to follow the Captain. I might as well have been one of the Century BOBs.
"Right," I said. "Introductions. Captain Rogers, Agent Sean McIntosh. Agent McIntosh, Captain Steve Rogers."
McIntosh held out his hand, which Rogers immediately took, and said with such reverence that I was almost certain the man thought he was talking to a god, "It's nice to meet you, Captain."
"It's nice to meet you, too, Agent McIntosh," Rogers said politely.
It probably wasn't. The lanky man had stars in his eyes to the point of damn near looking like a cartoon character. And I thought I had been bad.
"Look, man," I said, bringing McIntosh's gaze back to me and hopefully saving both men some discomfort, "I hate to do this to you, but-"
"If you want to extend our time because you were late, no can do, Pufferfish," McIntosh said, suddenly back to his normal self. Okay, maybe it was slightly exaggerated since he was openly calling me nicknames, but at least he wasn't fawning over the Captain anymore. He looked at his watch again and said, "I have to be at the gun range in ten minutes."
"The gun range doesn't close until lights out," I pointed out.
"Yeah, but today they have those gelatin blocks and it's first come, first serve, and I'm not missing out because your skinny ass was late."
"I was busy, Papercut!" I argued. If he was going to pull out nicknames, so was I, dammit, and I wasn't the only skinny one around here. If he stood sideways and stuck his tongue out, he'd look like a zipper. "Besides, you don't think you can beat me in ten minutes?"
Curse me and my need to push things! Here he was telling me he had to go, giving me the perfect out so Rogers and I could start our friend-finding mission, and here I was goading him into a sparring match. A therapist would probably tell me I didn't really want to go on this mission as much as I said I did.
"I know I couldn't," McIntosh replied with a smile.
"Oh-ho," I grinned. "Smart man."
"I bet I can beat you in ten minutes," a voice said.
As one, McIntosh, Rogers, and I turned to see a man standing not fifteen feet away, a cocky smirk on his unfortunately good-looking face. I say unfortunately because he was a massive fucking douchebag. His name was Dirk Tannen, a name so close to Biff Tannen that it could be the only explanation for him being such an asshole. I mean, your parents had to hate you if they gave you a name that sounded close to both Biff and dick, right? That had to cause some psychological issues. A black t-shirt was stretched tight over his heavily muscled chest, though not nearly as muscled as Captain Rogers', and black basketball shorts swung loose around his thighs, both of which showed off the kind of tan you only got from good genes. He was of average height for a guy, about five-foot-eight, which some women would say was the perfect height so they could get a good look at his whiskey colored eyes and get their fingers in his short blond hair. Those women didn't know a narcissist when they saw one.
"Idiot," McIntosh muttered under his breath, and I couldn't help but laugh, forcing myself to suppress it so it came out a weak snort.
"What? You think I can't?" Tannen said, indignant from my laughter. He was trying to impress Captain Rogers, we all knew that, but he'd also pulled shit like this before with other female agents just because he could. Douchebag.
"I know you can't," I replied.
"Twenty bucks says you're wrong," he said, lifting his chin in challenge.
I raised an eyebrow at that and looked at McIntosh, who looked back at me, his eyebrows trying to touch his hairline. He was impressed the guy was throwing down bets, too. Good to know. I cocked my head at him a little, a question of if I should take it. He shrugged his eyebrows and pulled his lips into a deep frown, or what I liked to call sturgeon mouth, and tilted his head as if telling me to go for it.
Pretending the Captain wasn't there, I said, "Make it fifty."
"Deal," Tannen said, an annoying glint of satisfaction in his eyes.
I took a deep breath through my nose, pursing my lips and bringing my shoulders high, as if in thought. "You know what? Nevermind."
"What?" he asked, the sparkle flickering and dying as confusion and anger set in.
"I changed my mind," I said.
"What, are you scared I'll kick your pretty little ass all around this big gym and make you look bad in front of your fuck buddy?" he spat, jutting his chin out at McIntosh.
I felt both McIntosh and Captain Rogers stiffen in indignation. Oh, this was going way better than I'd expected it to! Tannen had hoped to make himself look good in front of the Captain, and now he'd just alienated himself in a single sentence thanks to his need to feed his ego and misogyny. Brilliant!
"No, sweetie," I said in most pleasant voice I could. "I've just already proven I'm better than you multiple times and I have other things to do than cater to your fragile masculinity. How about you spend that fifty bucks on therapy for your gambling addiction instead?"
It's amazing just how loud various soft utterances of "oh, shit" can sound when the room has mildly okay acoustics. Tannen's face turned bright red, embarrassment and rage flashing in his eyes before he whirled around and stalked out of the gym, probably to go to the shooting range. Ooo, I really hoped McIntosh ran into him. McIntosh was going to lay into him about the fuck buddy comment. Everyone with a brain could see we were more like brother and sister. Unfortunately, Tannen didn't have a brain.
"What the hell?" McIntosh griped in fake exasperation. "I could have used that fifty bucks!"
"So you fight him," I said, turning back to both him and the Captain so we stood in a little triangle. Rogers had an odd mix of confusion, disappointment, and curiosity on his face. "Besides, hitting him in the bank account won't sting for long, but hitting him the pride should shut him up for a while."
McIntosh nodded his head to the side and made a noise that said it made sense to him. Rogers, though, still looked confused.
"Is he always like that?" Rogers asked, nodding where Tannen used to be.
"Yes," McIntosh and I said together.
Rogers looked between us, seeming somewhat surprised. Whether it was over how in synch we were or how much of a dick Tannen was, I wasn't sure.
"Why does he still work here if he acts that way? Behavior like that shouldn't be tolerated," Rogers said, his brow furrowing.
"Unfortunately for everyone, he's really good at his job and his dicketry isn't egregious enough for the agency to lose his skills," I replied, loosely paraphrasing what Fury had told me when I asked him the same question about Tannen. Fury said he was actively looking into a replacement, but he had red tape and bureaucrats to go through to both fire and replace Tannen, who was beloved by everyone who didn't actually know him.
Rogers made a face, the one people usually made when I said something they found funny yet odd, and took a breath to say something. McIntosh beat him to it.
"You're the only person I know who can use both 'dicketry' and 'egregious' in the same sentence and somehow make it work."
I gave him a little half-smile and shrugged. "I'm versatile."
"Oh, you can say that again, Pufferfish," McIntosh quipped.
This time Rogers held a hand up so he could get a word in edgewise and asked, "Why do you call her Pufferfish?"
"Oh! Well, you know how if you're careful, you can pet a pufferfish?" McIntosh explained.
"Yes," Rogers nodded.
McIntosh pointed at me, his palm open and coming down in front of him in an arc to snap to a stop in front of his chest.
"She's as sweet as can be, but if you catch her at the wrong time, she'll stick you," he continued.
"I'm not sweet," I muttered, mostly to myself, my almost unfocused eyes staring straight ahead at a rack of dumbbells.
"Sweet as a peach," McIntosh teased. "But then you look at her wrong and-" he closed his fists and knocked his knuckles together, bringing them apart like an explosion as he puffed his cheeks out, the tiniest wisp of air escaping his lips before they sealed shut. I wish they'd seal shut until he left the room.
As much as I wanted to look up and see what the Captain's expression was, I wanted to sigh at the rack of dumbbells more. "I swear, if that nickname catches on, I'm going to kill you."
McIntosh flashed his fingers out just in front of his chest, pulling his bottom lip under his teeth and releasing it quickly to sound like a cartoon arrow lodging in a tree. "Ffft! Spines."
I pursed my lips in a frown and shook my head. "Nevermind. I'm killing you now."
I had barely begun to turn toward him when he levitated back ten feet amid his own cry of protest.
"Nononono! See?! See what I mean?! Spines!" he exclaimed, looking at the Captain but pointing a perfervid finger at me.
"Yeah, spines," I said, taking a step toward him. I put my hand just behind my back as if I were reaching for a knife and added, "Come here. I'll show you where I keep them."
"Ah ah ah!" He danced back a few more feet and looked at Rogers again. "Captain, can you do me a favor and please hold her! You're the only one who can stop her now!"
"As if I can't find you later," I said.
McIntosh stopped, looking thoughtful for a moment before he said, seriously and calmly, "You know, you have a point."
"Oh, I know," I said. I motioned a hand toward him, essentially shooing him away. "You'd better head out before you miss out on the good shit. I'll catch you later, Ent."
"Yeah. I'll stop by Hobbiton later on and we can spar then," McIntosh said, slowly backing away in the direction Tannen had run off in.
"Cool. I'll-" Captain Rogers stepped forward, the motion reminding me I'd had him in my periphery and reminding me that we had other plans, which he clearly knew I'd already forgotten about. "-not be there."
Dammit, my subconscious really did not want me to go on this mission. Well, suck it up, me, because I was going.
"What? Why not?" McIntosh asked. He looked between me and the Captain and I saw the lightbulb switch on over his head. I shook my head the slightest bit and cast my eyes at the few men who were still paying attention after he'd caught their attention with his exaggeratedly fake fear, wordlessly telling him to not make a big deal out of it, to not say anything at all. To his credit as both an agent and a human, he simply said "Oh. Okay. I'll catch you in tiny town when I can then."
I gave him a small smile of appreciation and said, "Careful of low doorways."
"You know I never am!" he joked, turning away.
Rogers and I watched his retreating back for a moment, the lank getting thinner and thinner the farther he got. And he wondered why I'd given him the nickname Papercut.
"Well," I muttered to myself, "that was both easier and more difficult than I expected."
"Were you expecting guard dragons?" Rogers asked, his tone almost completely deadpan, save just the smallest hint of teasing. "Maybe Smaug?"
I looked up at him like he'd just said robots had squid legs, my face a mixture of humor, confusion, and awe. He smiled at me with half of his mouth and a twinkle in his eyes, the kind of look someone gives you when they either know how hot they are and are trying to use it against you or have no fucking clue how hot they are and don't know any better than to flash you knee-weakening smiles. Or maybe he was just trying to make me laugh and make a connection with me since I clearly knew Tolkien.
"It's like we're the same person," I joked, then added seriously, "But no. I expected a bitch fit, and not one from Tannen. McIntosh is a great dude, but he likes to make my life harder just for fun sometimes."
"Hence easier and more difficult," Rogers said, sending his gaze around the gym.
"Exactly," I said.
My gods, he read Tolkien and he said hence? Where could I find a boyfriend like him? All the good ones seemed to be gay, taken, or famous. Okay, okay, now was not the time for that kind of thinking. What I needed to be thinking about was what kind of guns and clothes I was going to pack for this mission. I turned to Captain Rogers, catching his attention in an apparently surprising way as he turned to face me with his eyebrows raised.
"I'll go grab my stuff from the locker room," I informed him.
He looked in that direction, the same direction that both Tannen and McIntosh had gone in, and gave a single nod. "I'll pick up the reports from my office. We'll meet in the carport in fifteen minutes."
"Sounds great," I replied.
Without another word, I turned and walked away, side sweeping the leg of a guy who quietly whistled at me, making him lose balance and almost drop the barbell on his foot. You'd think some of these guys would learn, but they never seem to.
The women's locker room was standard and boring, all the way from the shower stalls with the flimsy plastic curtains to the wooden benches that should have looked new, since they were, but didn't. As I pulled my gym bag and personal items out of my locker, I couldn't help but think of how utterly insane all of this was. Me, help Captain America? What the fuck was I going to do that another agent couldn't? It wasn't like I could flambé random people in the street or Grease Lightning our car into the air. If I saw Fury before I left, I was going to tell him to get another CAT scan, because clearly something was still wrong with him. Maybe I'd e-mail it to him so I didn't have to watch his eye bulge. Eh, I'd figure it out.
I dug a burner phone out of my workout bag and dialed the extension for the carport, requesting that they pull around a decent-sized car for me to use.
"Director Fury has already requested a car for you, Agent Ryan," the man on the other end of the line said.
"Oh, he did?" I asked, trying my hardest to sound genuinely curious rather than vaguely threatening. Fury had reasons for everything he did, but I still wasn't over being mad at him.
"Yes, ma'am. It's already waiting for you," the agent said.
"Alright. Thank you, Agent…"
"Benitez," he man said, filling in the blank I'd left him.
"Thank you, Agent Benitez. I'll be there shortly."
As I pulled the phone away from my ear, I heard his form of goodbye, a very professional "Ma'am," before I pushed the end call button. So, Fury had gotten us a car and I had ten minutes to mosey down the hallway toward the carport. Nah, these halls weren't interesting enough to mosey down, so I'd just walk like a normal human and get there early.
I knew these fifteen minutes were all for the Captain anyway. He wanted to try to cram in as much information as he could before we got on the road, and I had a feeling he could cram a lot in the five minutes he'd probably have in his office. Of course, the dude could also run super-fast, so if he'd sprinted there, he'd have ten minutes to read. Either way, it looked good for the mission and bad for me.
I got to the carport a good six minutes before I was supposed to, only to find Captain Rogers opening a door on the completely opposite side of the carport. The carport basically looked like a smaller air hanger. It was meant to be like a valet station for people going on missions, so it had to be big enough to fit multiple cars for a big task force. The only bummer was you couldn't have them drop your personal car off here. You had to go pick that shit up yourself from the parking garage.
I got to the car before the Captain did and made my way around the back to stand in front of the driver's side door of our black SUV. A man in generic black military garb with the name tag Benitez on his left breast silently walked up and handed me the keys. I gave him a single nod in thanks and he walked off. It was a good thing I'd walked in with an open hand, because Rogers didn't have a free hand to speak of. He had one large duffel bag slung over his shoulder and two more hanging heavy from his hand. Okay, the ones in his hands were smaller, but there was definitely some heft to them. The point was, his hands were full.
"Are you planning on going to Australia for a month? Just how much did you pack?" I joked.
"One of these," Rogers said, his lips quirking in a smile as he lifted the two bags, "is yours."
I gave the fakest, most flowery gasp in the world and in a voice just shy of breathy said, "A present for me? But I didn't get you anything."
He grinned at me that time. "That's alright. I won't hold it against you."
He dropped the larger bag from his hand, apparently having planned this, and handed me the smaller bag, the strap making the car keys dig into my hand. It was weighty, but it wasn't heavy. The issue was that the weight shifted a lot, like there were a lot of unsecured items in there sliding around every time a muscle in my arm twitched.
"Fury left it in my office," Rogers explained.
I frowned at him, confused. Why not leave the bag in my locker? I was one hundred percent sure he had the combination. He wasn't a creeper, but after Hydra infested his sacred workplace like a bunch of cockroaches, he wasn't going to let any new bugs slip by.
"Funny," I said, my brows still furrowed together. I tossed my head back over my shoulder at the SUV and said, "He left this here."
Rogers's mouth opened as if he were going to say something, but closed without so much as a click of his teeth, his eyes widening and narrowing at the same time, all ending with a nod as if to say that everything made sense now.
"What?" I asked. I did not like being this out of the loop on something when I was supposed to be protecting someone.
"Look in the bag," Rogers said, gently motioning towards it with a small smile on his face.
My frown deepened as I set both my bag and the mystery bag on the ground. "Did you learn how to be cryptic from Fury or does that come naturally?"
"You'll have to wait and see, Agent Ryan," he replied.
I raised an eyebrow at him and looked him up and down, not out of lust, but out of approval and pulled my lips into the deep frown-looking thing that was sturgeon-mouth. "Well played, Captain."
"Thank you," he said, that small smile coming back, this time looking appreciative.
"Any time," I muttered back, already distracted. Lowering myself down on one knee, I unzipped the bag and found a whole lot of fun. There were several guns, replacement clips, boxes of bullets, a laptop, some flash drives, a couple of file folders, and throwaway cellphones. There was also an Ohio license plate and a piece of paper. I leaned in a little closer. It was a registration paper for the exact car we were driving, only the plate numbers were the ones from the Ohio plate and not the ones from the New York plate that I knew was actually on the back of the car. Goddamn, that man really did think of everything. If you're a bad guy looking for a dude based out of New York, you're going to look for New York plates. It wasn't foolproof, but this would make it easier to throw people off our trail if we had to leave the state, which it was looking like we were going to have to do if Fury had given us a second license plate.
I zipped the bag back up, grabbed the handles of both duffels, and stood. "Well, that was unexpected."
"I've learned to expect the unexpected when it comes to Fury," Rogers said.
"You'd think I'd have learned that lesson by now, but somehow I haven't. I blame falling out of a tree as a kid," I joked, deadpan.
Rogers was suddenly very concerned and intrigued. "You fell out of a tree as a kid?"
"No," I replied, making the word a chuckle. I hit the button to unlock the doors and turned toward the car, adding, "I watched someone else do it, though. I learned to never climb a tree while it was raining. Those things are way more slippery than they look."
Rogers sighed behind me, and I couldn't tell if it was one of those exasperated sighs where he already didn't want to work with me or one of those sighs where he thought the joke was on par with a bad pun. Either way, he was unfortunately stuck with me and my shitty humor, and it probably sucked to be him right now. I threw my bag in the back seat before I opened the driver's door and started to slide in, moving to place the goodie bag duffel in the passenger's side footwell. He could move it if he wanted to, which he probably would, but at least this way he could easily reach all the information he needed.
"What are you doing?" he asked.
I blinked at him, confused. He had eyes, right? "Getting in the car."
"You're not driving," he said, the hint of kindness in his voice not making the sentence any less nonnegotiable. Watch me try anyway.
"Sorry, but you're riding shotgun on this one, Captain," I said, very carefully controlling my face so my half-smile didn't turn into a smirk. "It's my place."
"Steve," he said, suddenly. And then, as if it were completely normal to say your own name apropos of nothing, he added, "Your job, whether we like it or not, is to protect me, and you can't do that behind the wheel."
"I forgot you've never seen me during our driving simulations. I can chew gum and walk at the same time, Rogers. It's not a big deal."
I had just barely had time to drop the bag before he said, "Call me Steve. And of the two of us, only one of us can lift a car with their mind. Leave the defensive driving to me."
I snapped my head around to look at him, more stunned now than I had been when I'd been tasered. He wanted me to call him Steve? I knew I had a habit of being incredibly unprofessional half the time, hence me sometimes calling him by his last name rather than his rank, but calling a superior by their first name was so out of my comfort zone it might as well have been in outer space. I didn't even call McIntosh by his first name and he was damn near my brother.
"Mm, don't like it. Sticking with Rogers," I said, my eyebrows beetled together to show my displeasure. Quickly, before he could even think of getting a word in edgewise, I added, "Of the two of us, only I know how to get to my house."
A quiet sigh strained the buttons on his shirt again, his exasperation staring me in the face this time rather than being aimed at my back. Something in his eyes said he'd been hoping I would easily comply, but that he wasn't expecting me to, seeing as how I'd been as defiant as possible within the limits of my job in the short time he'd known me. That something also said that this conversation wasn't over, no matter how fast I changed the subject.
And bless his large, morally upstanding heart, he tried his hardest to push those thoughts away and make an attempt at teasing.
"You can give me directions, like a GPS," he said.
"Am I really so impersonal that I seem like a machine?" I asked, smiling a little so he knew I was joking too. Might as well indulge him a little.
"No, but I'm starting to understand why you got the nickname Pufferfish."
I pursed my lips at that and popped them in aggravation, not at Rogers, but at McIntosh.
"You know what?" I asked, sliding out of the driver's seat. "It is a good idea that you drive, because I am going to spend the entire time planning a way to kill him."
Rogers took a step back so we wouldn't be in each other's personal bubbles, his eyes roving over my face until I turned away to stalk toward the back of the car. Was I exaggerating my anger? Yes. Was he searching my face and body language to see if I was exaggerating? All signs pointed to absolutely.
"Are you really going to think of ways to kill him?" he asked.
I stopped by the bumper and turned to look at him. "If I say yes, are you going to let me drive?"
The smile he flashed was one that said I'd just confirmed his suspicions of not being a homicidal maniac and that I'd just blown my chances of being in control of the wheel. "No."
"Dammit!" I muttered. Me and my big mouth.
I heard Rogers chuckle as I turned away to walk around the back of the car and take my spot in the passenger seat. Oh yeah. Today was going to be all kinds of interesting