A shrill, ringing sound echoed through apartment 407 of Dank Housing, a complex that fit its name more than the residents could have imagined. The tenant of apartment 407 shoved her face deeper into her pillow and groaned, willing the ringing to cease and sleep to consume her once again.
After about ten more minutes of torture, the woman flung herself from the comfort of her bed, throwing on one of her large sleeping shirts before she padded into the kitchen, grumbling the entire way. The dark skinned woman jerked the phone off of the receiver, giving a curt almost rude "Hello."
"Finally," a familiar voice commented from the other end, "I've been calling for, like, ever. Where've you been? Honestly I didn't think you'd have super important plans after being uncovered as a super-secret spy. Also, Rose, sweetie, I'm all for tradition and having a landline, but you should really invest in a cell phone. I've got a few cool models I've been working on if yo-"
Rosa almost hung up at this point. Her cell had been lost in the events of the past few days and she had a feeling he knew that very well. It took an immense amount of effort to resist the temptation and stop clenching her jaw long enough to clear her throat. With exercised patience, she addressed her boss.
"Mr. Stark, what a pleasure," she said dryly. "How can I help you?"
Rosa glared at a chip in the plastic of the old microwave as she waited for a response, eyes narrowing as the pause grew.
"I was just, er, wondering if you were coming into work today," Stark said, sounding rehearsed. "Lots to be cleaned and all that." There was something off about his voice and Rosa had the vague notion that he was nervous. With a glance at the stovetop clock, she cringed. It was well into the night. Of the next day.
"I thought, given the circumstances, I would have the night off." She said wearily.
His pause this time was significantly shorter.
"Sure, sure, if you need it, go ahead. I was just calling because Brucey here has made a complete mess of his lab. Mhm, what with all the testing and experimenting and coffee and his general lack of cleanliness, which may or may not be a side effect of living in a dilapidated bungalow for nearly a year, but I think it's just because he's not a very neat pers-ow, that hurt!" Rosa could hear someone muttering lowly in the background and she had to fight the corner of her mouth from tugging upward.
Rosa, who at the start of Starks mindless prattle was toying with a stray string hanging from her underwear with annoyed disinterest, now stood wide eyed and on the verge of smiling. It became clear why Tony Stark was calling. In his own tiring way, he was checking up on her and inviting her back. Even though his actions two nights prior were not forgotten, not with a purple bruise dusted onto her knuckles, she realized this was a half-baked but oddly endearing attempt at an apology.
"I guess I'll be there soon," Rosa said with a false sigh and a smile.
"Awesome," Tony replied, clearly pleased. "Oh, and bringing your guard dogs too. I miss their coldness and lack of respect for true genius." More incoherent murmuring in the background. "Well I mean me, of course."
Rosa would've chuckled if she wasn't completely frozen. A small shuffle behind her made her spin around and yelp in surprise, coming face to face with a very imposing figure. It wasn't as if she'd forgotten they were there. Rosa didn't forget things. It had just slipped her mind is all.
Clint Barton leaned against the doorway, still much taller than her and extremely muscled. I single eyebrow rose at the sight of her shocked face as he watched her intently. Despite the fact that it was the middle of the night. And he was eavesdropping on her conversation. And that she, oh god, wore only a billowy shirt that barely covered her waist.
Rosa quenched the urge to squeal and run to her bedroom like a little girl. Instead, with flaming cheeks and eyes to the ground, Rosa placed the phone back on the receiver before quickly shouldering past Agent Barton who moved aside even before her weak "perdóneme." As she retreated, Rosa stretched her shirt as far down as she could, hoping he wasn't watching her walk away.
Once she was dressed in a dark purple blouse and jeans, she packed her purse with few wads of cash, painkillers, and a black can of MACE she'd bought impulsively during her first week of living in New York. There was a moment, just a split second as she stared at the pepper spray, when fear latched onto her. The types of people, of beings, she might come in contact with wouldn't be stopped by burning eyes. The unstoppable Hulk would sneeze away what could down a grown human and the thought reminded her how human and weak she was.
With a shake of her head she tucked the thoughts away along with her only form of protection. Outside her door Natasha stood at the ready. She was dressed in dark brown slacks and a leather jacket. It was casual but Rosa knew the typical spots to find a hidden weapon on the Black Widow and she held no doubt that she was fully weaponized.
"Ready?" Romanoff asked curtly. Rosa nodded and joined Barton in the black car he'd pulled around, making their way to Stark Tower.
Barton was the first out of the elevator and into the wide open space of the residential portion of Stark Tower. The huge windows revealed the deck that Thor and Loki had fought on not long before and there was a portion of the slab floor that appeared recently replaced. Rosa almost hurt her neck looking at all things new, from the bar to the stairs leading even higher upward, to the blue light emitting from the massive "A" shining outside.
Tony descended from a staircase to their left with Pepper by his side, a glass of amber colored liquid in his hand. He smiled haughtily at the two agents and Rosa could practically hear their eyes roll.
"Do you really think that's the best idea?" Natasha asked, eyeing the liquor. Rosa had only heard of the billionaires drunken escapades in the past but she was also concerned. The teasing smile and slightly glazed pupils of her boss made her aware that this wasn't his first class of the night. Pepper said nothing but seemed to agree.
Tony didn't appear to notice their disapproval. "It's been a long day," he commented. "Lots of work we've done. Databases are churning away with the info we've processed but it's the middle of the night. Let's all just sit down and have a drink. No? Well, I'll have another."
He shook off Pepper's hand on his arm and walked over to the bar, uncorking a container and pouring his glass full once again. Rosa had slept for over 24 hours and clearly missed some vital information. But it was clear Tony was turning in for the night. Why would she call him in if that were the case?
"Barton, c'mon, have a beer." Stark prompted. "Mean green refuses to leave the lab, and even if he wanted to, he doesn't drink anything but tea. I haven't seen you guys in weeks, let's chill, pop in a movie, get Mr. Big Bad away from the science for a bit.
There it was, the reason he'd called them here. JARVIS had told Rosa that Tony loved to work, and when he invested in a new project it consumed him into all hours of the night. He commented on how frustrating it was when his master would forget to eat, let alone sleep. But he was here, alcohol in hand, attempting to relax. The work must have been too much, yet Bruce kept at it. And clearly Tony couldn't get him to quit. He wanted them here, the two agents, to coax him out.
"We're on duty, Stark," Barton commented, looking pointedly at Rosa then at the bar with interest.
"Fury put you on babysitting duty, eh? Well she's fine here. I've got this place on lockdown. What? Don't believe me? Ask Pepper." He'd downed another glass and was refreshing his ice to fill up his drink again. Pepper's eyebrows were furrowed in concern but she just nodded and proceeded to explain all the new security precautions they had implemented. Barton looked to Natasha, not for approval but for opinion, and she shrugged her shoulder. The marksman nodded and made his way over to the mini-fridge, finding a bottle and cracking it open against the countertop, to Tony's dismay.
"W-what about Dr. Banner?" Rosa asked, a bit uncomfortable with the dynamic being laid out before her. They all felt like old friends coming together in a time of need and she was the plus one, welcome but new and hesitant.
"Well that's why you're here kid," Stark slurred, motioning to her with his glass. "You get Brucey out of his lab. He won't listen to me, of course. And he keeps sending Pepper for more coffee so I figure since he thinks you're cute or whatever you can get him to at least take a nap. Or eat. Or do something human and normal."
Rosa let the cute comment slide of her back like pretty much any jibe Tony makes. But now everyone in the room was staring at her with interest and it gave her unpleasant goose bumps.
"I'll just, uh, try to find him then," she jittered, sidling over to the stairs as quickly as possible without appearing rude. Natasha and Pepper's inquisitive gazes made her more uncomfortable than anything and when she turned to climb the stairs she could feel them digging into her back.
"Up four flights, left hallway, third lab on the right!" Tony sung as he opened a bottle of wine and poured two glasses. Rosa climbed faster.
She tiptoed down the hallway with an unexpected sense of excited nervousness. Each large glass door she passed revealed a room cluttered with lab equipment and projects half begun. Coffee cups littered the tables and everything was both out of place and exactly where it should be. Stray shards of red and gold metal and mechanical tools made Rosa glad the inebriated Stark was safe by Pepper's side.
Eventually she found a door that had movement behind it and Rosa peeked around the glass to get a look at the doctor in his natural habitat.
To her dismay, the scene was completely unnatural and heartbreaking. Dr. Banner was huddled over a magnifying glass with on tired eye pressed down closely on it. His glasses lay discarded on the metal table, a long crack splitting through the left lens. His jaw was lined with ragged, untamed facial hair that made him look older and wild, a look to match the frustration in his eyes. The doctor looked up from his work and Rosa slid back away from the door, fear catching in her throat. With shaking hands, Bruce removed the slide from the microscope, a single scarlet dot wedged between translucent plates, and gripped it tightly in his white fingers before flinging it at the wall. On contact, the slide shattered to hundreds of pieces and tinkled lightly on the linoleum floor as Bruce dropped his head into his hands.
Rosa rapped her knuckles on the glass before letting herself in. The doctor started and looked up at her with embarrassment. His jaw moved like he wanted to say something, anything, to explain his rage but for a moment they just looked at each other apologetically. Rosa moved passed him to the edge of the room and dawned lab safety gear before meticulously cleaning the broken glass from the floor and disposing of it.
"Ms. Hernandez, I'd just like to apolo-"
"Rosa, please."
The rest of Bruce's words seem to catch in his throat and he coughed to release them. "I'm so sorry for the trouble I caused you," he continued gently, exhaustion coloring his voice a muddy grey.
Rosa attempted to look anywhere but his eyes. Her gaze scanned around the room, passing over his cracked lips before landing on a container in the back of the room with an interesting inventory.
"It's my job to clean up after you guys. A little bit of glass never hurt anyone. Don't worry about it," she commented. He, of course, opened his mouth to contradict but she didn't want their relationship, or friendship rather, to be defined by apologies. Before he could protest she pointed at the fleshy substance behind him, inquiring at its origin.
Dr. Banner was disgruntled but distracted. He explained that this was a Chitauri heart given to him by SHIELD for research. She bombarded him with questions until their awkward exchange developed into an intellectual conversation that she managed to keep up with, despite the holes in her knowledge.
"How did that worm thing manage to swim through the air like that? I mean, it sounds like these creatures are both organic and mechanical. To negate gravity without a constant downward force would require substantial control over magnetism right? I'll need to read up on that. Are they carbon based life forms? How is it possible they have individual sentience but collapsed when their base was destroyed?"
She didn't expect him to be able to answer these far reaching questions but one by one he answered with information that made complete sense. His knowledge expanded to encompass multiple fields and she was startled by the conclusions he made based on his experimentation. Smart didn't do the doctor justice at all and as he spoke about things that made sense to him, things he could understand, the tension in his shoulders lifted. Rosa was mesmerized by the way he spoke, following his lips and hands as he explained, trying to divide her attention equally between studying him and processing this information.
"So, as you said, the mechanical portions of their body are highly charged magnetic receivers that simultaneously emit magnetic repulsion in all directions to keep afloat and receive information and share a consciousness via the main ship, I assume to keep them in line and to continuously power the mechanical augmentations given to them in order to use the weapons and gear they were provided. They weren't killed by being cut off from the mother ship, but from the sudden burst of electromagnetic energy that was sent out when the power supply was destroyed. Their "hearts", which were centered somewhere in the upper abdomen, actually functioned more as a brain as they had no circulatory system and therefore no need for a heart. When dissecting the specimen, I found traces of magnesiu-"
Bruce's words cut off abruptly and Rosa blinked hard. Whatever trance the doctor had put her in was broken and she realized she had moved from the wall and stood very close to him, looking up with a slack jaw and wide eyes. His didactic tone was refreshingly calm and she pictured him standing at the front of a classroom wearing a tweed jacket with late afternoon stubble decorating his chin while he explained some kind of theory to a lecture hall. She imagined, if she could ever go to college, sitting in a cramped desk and sighing with how attractive Professor Banner was when he taught.
He coughed loudly and she blinked once again, leaning away and taking a step back. Heat flooded to Rosa's face and she hoped her skin was dark enough to hide the blush radiating from her cheeks.
"I should probably get back to work," Banner mumbled, his voice weary and exhausted once again. She'd messed up, leaned in too close, and made him uncomfortable. Damn it. That wasn't supposed to happen at all.
"Well actually," Rosa said, her voice too high and too nervous in her ears. "Everything thinks it best if you came out of the lab a bit. Agent Barton and Romanoff are here, if you'd like to speak to them. A-and Stark is getting pretty drunk. I understand you're trying to figure everything out but maybe it's time for a break? I could make some late dinner if you're hungry or we could have tea but I'm actually kind of starving myself. What kind of food do you like? Obviously I'm best with Hispanic meals but I can really make anything and I've read so many cookbooks so I've got a lot of recipes and since you lived in India maybe you'd like some curry or… something." Rambling. She was rambling. Again. And he was staring at her like she was crazy and overstepping her bounds.
But then Bruce smiled. A soft, lazy grin that released the tension she'd been feeling and filled her with relief.
"You cook very well," he commented. "I suppose a bit of rest and food will make me more productive. Thank you Ms. Hernandez."
She was grinning like a fool at this point, but felt proud at the outcome of their conversation.
"Please call me Rosa," she insisted.
"Thank you Rosa," he said with a small smile. She turned to leave the room, feeling his presence following her, and tried to ignore the rapidness of her heartbeat.