I know this looks similar to the story I had up before, but there are some minor changes as well as some major ones. Please just keep patient with me. Happy reading!
1. Smoking
"Melanie Fraser," the secretary called in a bored tone.
The tall woman seated near the desk shot her hand up with an excited smile. "That's me!" She called. Melanie bounced up, her blonde ringlets bouncing with her, and handed the secretary—Justin Reedy, as the name plate on the desk said—her file. He looked taken aback by her jovial attitude. Justin Reedy was clearly not a morning person.
He looked through her file briefly and then handed it back. "Director Fury's office is at the end of the hall on your left, you can't miss it." The file was swiped out of his hands and Melanie took off like a rocket down the hall. Justin rolled his eyes and opened his mountain biking magazine to a page on a new lighter bike frame.
Melanie was scurrying down the hall, her long curly hair in tow, when she suddenly smashed into someone. She fell painfully onto her tailbone and the papers in her file went all over the floor. "I'm so very sorry!" She said in a squeak of a voice, as she shoved her glasses up on her nose and began to gather her papers to put them in the right order. "I was just in such a hurry to—" She stopped as her eyes met a pair of long legs. Melanie felt the breath go out of her as she looked up to see the most beautiful woman she had ever laid eyes on. Shiny red hair, intense eyes, flawless skin, and delightful curves, all in a black pencil skirt.
Mother of god, Melanie was in lesbian heaven.
"I... I'm..." She stuttered, looking for words, "I'm sorry, ma'am... Or, agent? Are you an agent? You're probably an agent, I'm sorry ma'am—agent! I'm sorry, I just..."
"Slow down," the woman said in a voice as smooth as honey. She smiled warmly. Melanie hoped this woman couldn't read minds. "You're clearly applying for a position here, so you wouldn't know to begin with." The beautiful woman stooped down and helped Melanie pick up her papers. "I'm just an agent in training. Nothing special yet. My name is Natalie, good to meet you, miss...?"
"Uh, Melanie! Melanie Fraser!" She said quickly, hopefully not too quickly. "I was on my way to an, um... well, I mean, to an interview, with—"
"With Director Fury?"
"Yes! That's the guy!" Oh god, she was making an absolute fool of herself. She gathered up the rest of her file quickly. "Well, he's probably expecting me, so I'm just going to uh, get going, so I can... um... It was very nice to meet you, so..." Without another word, Melanie spun around and hurried down the hall, her heels clicking rapidly as she ran to Director Fury's office.
Natalie—the alias of Natasha Romanov (and fully certificated agent), meanwhile, looked after her with a perplexed expression on her face. "Tasha!" She looked up to see Clint jogging towards her. He stopped when he saw her face and her stance. "What are you doing on the ground like that?"
"Helping someone pick things up. She just ran off," Natasha said, getting out of her crouched position. "Odd woman..." She shook her head and smiled at her fellow assassin. "You wanted to spar this morning, right?"
Melanie knocked feverishly on the director's door, and without waiting for a response hurried in, slamming the door behind her. She breathed a sigh of relief and let her head fall back against the door as she steadied herself.
"Miss Fraser, I take it?"
Melanie's head snapped back upright and she looked into the eyes- or rather, eye, of a large, bald black man sitting behind the desk. His other eye was covered by an eye patch and that didn't help the situation; the man was already terrifying. Dressed in what appeared to be a leather trench coat with the SHEILD eagle insignia on the shoulder, this had to be none other than Director Fury.
He looked at his watch and then back to her. "You have impeccable timing, Miss Fraser; 8:45 on the dot. Punctuality is a good trait to have here at SHEILD. Please have a seat," he motioned the chair in front of the desk.
"Thank you sir," she said and seated herself, patting her hair to be sure it wasn't out of place. "I brought my transcripts from high school and college as well as my resume and a list of—" Melanie was cut short as a mid-height man with spiky dark hair strode through the door, rambling as he walked.
"...have to get something done about the algorithm calculators in the lab, Cyclops." The man seems to radiate aggressive self-confidence and in an instant, Melanie recognized him.
"Tony!" She gasped. "Tony Stark!"
He turned to look at her. "Hello, sweetheart," he said, backtracking to stand next to her and lean down to have his face within inches of hers. "Have we met before? I'm sure I'd remember a dazzling beauty such as yourself." Tony flashed her a gleaming smile. "What was it? Last year's St. Jude's charity gala?"
"N-No, Tony, don't you remember? We were in the same particle physics and applied chemistry classes at MIT. You, you tutored me in both classes," she shifted in her seat and smiled, "and if you remember from the Snapple machine incident our sophomore year, I'm also not in to guys?"
Recognition flashed across his face. "Mels! Mels Fraser!" He said with a smile. "That's right! Goddammit, how did I not see it? Haven't seen you in years! You look great, by the way, Mels." He turned to Fury. "If you're interviewing her, hire her. She can work with me."
Fury raised a single eyebrow. "Making my decisions for me now, are you Stark?" He asked in a cold voice. Melanie felt her blood curdle at that voice.
"Oh for crying out loud, Fury, the woman is a genius, I practically taught her myself," Tony turned back to Melanie. "You're hired, and you're in my division now."
"Now just you hold on a minute," Fury rose to his feet, and Melanie's face drained of all color. Director Fury was massive. As if he wasn't imposing enough. "She needs to go through all the screening processes and the background checks first before she can even think about going within ten feet of your lab, let alone working there, Stark," he pointed an accusing finger at the smaller man. "And you damn well know it too."
Tony rolled his eyes and made a mocking mouth with his hand. "Rules, rules, regulations, rules... C'mon, Fury. Can't you just do that later? Mels is amazing at what she does, we worked on our advanced robotic engineering final project together." Tony turned to look at Melanie. "I still have that old thing, by the way."
"You still have Dum-E?" She giggled. "That thing barely managed to function in the demonstration to Professor Kaiser, let alone during the how ever many tests we ran on it."
"That may be, but considering that everyone else's robots were kinda half assed and there was a giant curve in his class anyway, we still passed top of the class," Tony retorted.
"You done walking down memory lane?!" Fury thundered. Tony and Melanie both went quiet at the voice of the director. "I make the rules here, Stark! And until she's gone through the proper protocol, she isn't allowed in your SHIELD lab!"
There was a lapse of quiet and then Melanie spoke up, "So does that mean I have the job?"
Fury sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose, something he seemed to be quite practiced in. "As of now, yes. You have the job. Mr. Stark here seems to be very adamant about you working for him. If you were really in the same courses in school, then that must mean you're just as bright as he is, if not more so."
"I'm standing right here!" Tony protested.
Director Fury continued, "However, your file still needs review. And mark my words, if your reports come back with a single scratch, you're out of here with a memory wipe faster than you can say 'SHEILD.'" He muttered.
Melanie sat at the kitchen table in her apartment that evening, sketching. The lines curved over the paper in a nearly perfect drawing of Natalie, the woman Melanie had run into in the hallway at SHEILD. When the drawing was complete, Melanie tore it out of her sketchbook and looked at it at arm's length. She had always been good at drawing, but she was surprised at the details that she had incorporated. There was the faint glimpse of laugh lines around Natalie's eyes, along with the subtle way that her smile curved upwards, like that of the Mona Lisa. That sort of smile was illegal in several countries, Melanie was sure of it.
Satisfied with her work, she put down the paper and got up to find some dinner. Melanie opened the cabinet, pulled out a can of soup and a pot, and set them on the counter. Then she turned to the stove. After a few clicks, it was obvious the stove wasn't going to light on its own. "Piece of shit stove," she muttered.
She knew there wasn't a lighter in her apartment. She knew there wasn't a single matchbook. Melanie looked around, thinking there might be prying eyes in the apartment. For good measure, she drew the curtains over the window above the sink and triple locked the door. Then she went back to the stove and stood there for several seconds.
She extended her index finger, and a small blue flame appeared.
"How many times do I have to tell you?!" Mother screeched, slapping Melanie across the face. The fires that had been sputtering harmlessly on Melanie's fingertips extinguished instantly. "Fire is EVIL! Fire will only hurt!" Mother pulled Melanie's hair back so that she would look at her. "The fire that consumes your soul is a mark of the devil! Fire is evil, you stupid girl! Never use it! NEVER!"
Melanie waved her hand through the air, putting out the flame. She held her hand close to her chest and looked around the tiny apartment, as if she expected her mother to burst through the door. But for nearly three years, her mother had been six feet underground in a cemetery in upstate New York.
That didn't stop the waves of emotion that cascaded over her. She clutched at her own hair, to keep it away from the ghostly claws of her mother's hands that seemed to reach her, even now. Melanie's breath hitched and she dropped to her knees, clutching her chest and trying to get her breath back. But the air only came in short, ragged bursts. Frantic, Melanie looked for something to calm herself. Something. Anything. She crawled across the floor and reached up to grab the sketch of Natalie the agent-in-training.
Melanie then lay on her kitchen floor, holding the sketch of the mysterious woman to her chest, and tried to recapture her breath. It wasn't until she heard the sound of her phone ringing and felt the stiffness in her back that she realized that she had fallen asleep on the floor. As quickly as she could without injuring herself, she got up and reached for her phone on the table.
"H-Hello?" She answered, her voice still sounding groggy.
"Mels! Hey!"
"Who's this?" She stifled a yawn as she sat down at the table.
"Tony, of course! What are you doing right now?" He asked in an excited voice that didn't belong in someone over the age of seven.
Melanie looked at the clock on her phone. "Tony, it's one in the morning."
"That doesn't answer my question," he retorted.
She sighed. "I was sleeping on my kitchen floor."
"I'm not going to ask why, presumably because it probably involved massive amounts of booze and I will be very offended because you didn't ask your old college buddy to come have drinks with you," he feigned a few sniffles before continuing. "So instead, I'm going to invite you to my tower where we can drink coffee to sober you up and then drink more liquor and build machines."
Melanie rolled her eyes and massaged her temple. "Tony, we were never really buddies in college. We shared a few classes, you tutored me, and we worked on a final project together. Hardly what I would call a friendship."
"But what about the Snapple machine incident?" He asked, a faint clang ringing in the background of the call. "Dum-E goddammit! Don't make me dismantle you!"
Melanie snorted. "Okay, yeah, I might call us friends after that."
"Alright, see? We're getting somewhere now."
"Actually, I have two questions." She said, holding up her fingers in succession, even though Tony couldn't see her. "How did you get my number, and didn't Fury say that I wasn't allowed to work with you in your lab?"
"That, my dear Mels, is where you are wrong. Fury said you weren't allowed to work in my lab at SHEILD. This is my lab at the Tower," he said. "I can just make some excuse like I was having you over for drinks. Which, if you remember the original plan, is not totally a lie."
She rubbed her eyes. "Okay, fair point, but that doesn't answer my first question."
"Getting your phone number was as easy as getting Jarvis to go through some SHEILD files," he retorted, sounding quite proud of himself. "And before you ask even more questions, Jarvis is my AI."
Melanie sat with her face in her hand for a minute, dozing ever so slightly. "So what you're saying is, is that if I come over there with a bottle of whiskey and a wrench, I can tinker with your high tech machines for a few hours?"
"Were you not a lesbian, I would even ask you on a date," he promised.
She snorted. "Alright, Tony. Deal. I'll be over in an hour. I need to put on more comfortable clothing and buy some whiskey."
From the other end of the phone, she heard the man whoop. "Awesome! Tell the guards the big man up top is holding a phone call for you from the man downstairs." Before she even got a chance to question the meaning of that phrase, the line went dead.
As promised, an hour later, Melanie drove up the front of Stark Tower. (Or was it Avengers Tower now? She didn't really know.) A large man with a pistol on his hip walked out of the tower lobby and up to her little Chevy Aveo. "Ma'am, you can't loiter out here," He said in a bored, but gruff tone.
"I was told to tell you that the big man up top is holding a phone call for me from the man downstairs?" She repeated Tony's odd phrase and hoped that the billionaire wasn't just playing her for a fool. The guard sighed. "Those where Tony's words, not mine," she attempted to clarify, so as not to sound like a total idiot. "I'm sorry if-"
"It's alright, ma'am, this is not the oddest 'secret password' I've heard from him."
Within a few minutes she was parked in the basement garage. From the front seat of her car she grabbed her little Craftsman tool chest and a bottle of whiskey; at the direction of the guard from the front of the tower, she headed to the elevator in the main lobby entrance. Melanie had never seen such a grand place. It was immaculately clean and glowing. Even the plush carpet seemed to shine. The guard got in the elevator with her, scanned his access key, and pushed the unlabeled button that lit up. Then they were soaring up the tower, reaching the destination in little under fifteen seconds.
The doors of the elevator opened, and she walked into what looked to be Tony's own penthouse apartment. It took all of Melanie's self-control not to gasp at the grandeur of the place. There were wide black couches that were sunk into the next level of the floor that looked more than just a little bit comfortable. A large art sculpture that let a wall of water flow over a slab of stone was bubbling on the far side of the room, and the large wet bar was stocked with more types of liquor than she could think of or even begin to count. Floor to ceiling glass lined the far wall, creating a beautiful scenic view of New York City that wrapped around half the apartment. It was truly magnificent.
"Wait here until Mr. Stark is ready to come up from his workshop," The guard said in his bored tone. Melanie didn't have a chance to thank him, as the doors to the elevator slid shut and went back to the first floor. She turned back to the penthouse.
"Does all this really belong to one person?" She thought aloud. She had never known what it was like to live in excess like this. Sure, her family had taken trips to amusement parks and gone to the beach every now and again, and she thought she remembered going to Disney World once, but this kind of luxury was something she had never even dreamed of existing outside the worlds of the comic books she had read as a child.
She put down her tool box and the bottle on the wet bar's granite counter and walked to one of the windows that overlooked the city. Melanie put her hands against the glass as she stared out of the window. In all truth, she had never felt more stunned by the view New York City then she did now. She truly felt powerful.
It was only when she smelled it that Melanie realized that her fingers were smoking. With a gasp, she shook off her hands and ran to the sink behind the wet bar. The faucet let loose a stream of frigid water. Melanie let her hands soak under the water until she couldn't feel the tips of her fingers anymore. She hated this, this curse. Her mother had told her that she was evil for having this power, and she was right. All fire could do was destroy. She felt like a monster. In a sudden wave of panic, Melanie whirled back around to the window. There were singe marks on the glass. Someone would see those. They would figure it out and they would lock her away to perform experiments on her. Just like Mother always said. Melanie grabbed a wad of paper towels and got them wet under the water. She dashed back to the window and began to furiously scrub the window.
"I would've hired you as my cleaning lady if you had asked, Mels."
Melanie whipped around and saw Tony, holding an empty glass, standing a few feet away with a smirk on his face as usual. He was wearing a black sleeveless shirt, a blue-white light pulsing slightly underneath. A grease towel hung from his pocket, covered in an abundance of stains.
"I... Uh... I'm really sorry I just... It was..." She fumbled for words, trying to sound intelligent and not guilty.
Tony's brows knit together. "Everything okay?" He tried to lean to look past where Melanie was standing. "Is something wrong with the win-?"
"Nodon'tlookit'snothingIpromise!" She blurted, covering the window as best she could to obscure the singe marks. "Just some fingerprints! I'm a little particular about clean windows, nothing to worry about!" She gave what she hoped was a convincing smile.
Tony simply shrugged. "Alright, whatever. I'll grab the bottle of whiskey after I pour myself a glass. Grab your tools and head down those stairs over there!" He smiled and jogged over to the wet bar, pulling out his own bottles and making himself a drink.
Melanie stepped away from the window cautiously and grabbed her tool box. "This flight of stairs here?" She asked, pointing to a flight that went around the sculpture with the waterfall.
"That's the one!" Tony replied, still pulling glasses and bottles. "I'll meet you at the glass door!" Melanie nodded and headed down the stairs.
Tony glanced up to make sure she had left the room. Then he walked out from around the bar and towards the window. He brushed his fingers over the little black marks that were faded slightly after she had rubbed them. When he pulled his hand away, little bits of the black stuff stuck to his fingers. Curiously, he brought his fingers to his nose and sniffed. "Smells almost like... ash?" He said incredulously. "Jarvis...?"
"Yes sir?"
"Analyze the black stuff on the inside of the window here. When you have a report," he thought briefly on how to be conspicuous about the situation, "print it to the printer in the shop that prints things the quietest."
"Of course, sir."
Tony looked at the marks again. If he didn't know any better, he would almost say... He looked at his hand again, the back to the window. Then he pressed his palm to the widow, lining up his hand with the marks. Though most of it hand been scrubbed away and Mels' hands were not quite the size that Tony's were, there was no doubt about it.
It was a hand print.
So yeah, the better chapter one. Please remember to review, your thoughts are always welcome. Your thoughts, as well as any questions, general comments, concerns, or admissions of guilt. Thank you for reading, see you soon.