"Eva!"
"Alvie?" she said, surprised. "I don't remember giving you my number."
"Really? That's weird. Listen, I need a break from work. Do you want to go shopping?"
"Um-"
"Great. Meet you at the head of Fifth in ten." She hung up, and Eva stared at the wall as her brain processed what had just happened.
"Well," she said to Rachel Carson, "I guess I'm about to engage in some retail therapy."
%
"I don't actually have any money," Eva told her new companion as they worked their way through the crowds at the fancy mall. "Like, at all."
"Don't worry about it, whodi," said Alvie vaguely, her restless eyes flicking from storefront to storefront as she kept out of the main crowd of people as much as possible. "this is me paying you back for the ballet. Hella loud in here, ain't it? Shoulda come later. Ooh, this place looks posh."
She dragged her into an indeed very posh looking clothes store, wherein they both looked ridiculously out-of-place. "Alvie?"
"Yeah?"
"D'you ever wear, like, normal stuff?"
Alvie looked down at her miniskirt, fishnets, Doc Martens and patterned silk shirt (she had left her WWI-era trench coat in the cloakroom. Eva was in silent awe that mall was posh enough to have a cloakroom). "This isn't normal?"
Eva shook herself a little. With Alvie, you had to talk a certain way to get an answer that made sense. "I mean, all from the same decade. Maybe even this decade, too."
"Oh, no. I just put on what I like," she said, "and I like lots of stuff."
"I know," said Eva, "I just had an idea." She nodded at a sign- PERSONAL SHOPPERS AVAILABLE ON DEMAND, it read. "Humor me, will ya?"
Alvie chewed her lip, talked indistinctly under her breath for about half a minute, then- "sure. I kind of wanna hide from the crowds for a while, anyway. They give me a headache, all the people talking and being here at once, together like."
"Completely understandable," Eva lied.
She ended up trying on a pair of black pants with a green shirt, translucent enough both to show off her tattoos and which put her in mind of leafy canopies. More importantly, her butt looked amazing in the outfit, and she spent a solid ten minutes staring at it while waiting for Alvie to finish getting changed. She could hear her in the compartment next to her, humming tunelessly as she clattered about.
"Okay," said Alvie eventually, raising her voice high enough to be heard. "I'm ready. Don't laugh."
Eva doubted that she could be surprised by whatever she chose to wear (or rather, what the shopper chose for her), since the two times she had already seen her had led to her having absolutely no expectations of the woman's attire. However, when they both stepped out of the changing room on the count of three, Eva's jaw dropped.
She was dressed normally- or at least, normal for a very rich woman going to a fancy dinner. She was wearing a blood-colored dress that clung to her body, accentuating the curves in all the right places while still being demure enough to look fancy. A younger Eva would have been jealous of her new friend's looks, but now she just admired her. There was, however, an important problem.
"Nah," she said fervently, "'s weird. Ya look weird 'cuz ya look normal. I don't like it."
"It's so uncomfortable," she wailed, "I can't move my legs, I had to jump out here and I nearly fell over."
Eva sniggered. "You look very hot, but very unlike you."
"That's because I am very hot. But I am also a lot like me, so it's not gonna work." Eva snorted with laughter in a very unladylike manner. "I'll buy it anyway, though. I'm rich. You look cute too, by the way. Your butt looks amazing."
"Thanks," said Eva. "That's what I thought." She was actually enjoying herself, she found; she loved Vision and Sam, but it was nice to get away from superheroes for a while, and she doubted Alvie had a secret alter ego.
A/N if you're wondering about that last line, I'd recommend reading Finding Bucky. And while we're on the subject of my other terrible MCU stuff- you all seemed very eager, so expect the Civilian Files to come out within a couple of weeks. :)