Agent Romanov isn't entirely sure what horrendous evil she committed against humanity that would earn her babysitting duty with Tony's daughter. But here she is, in the younger girl's apartment in Stark Tower, holding a makeup brush to the younger woman's eye. Lee cannot stop fidgeting. Earlier it was her picking at her cuticles. Now, she's chewing the inside of her lip as Natasha struggles to even out the light smokey eye she's trying to achieve.
"Stay still."
Lee obeys, but both of them know it won't last for very long. Her voice is apologetic and her words are spoken through barely parted lips.
"Sorry."
Natasha remains detached, her response uninterested and uninvested. Her fingers swipe gentle powder onto Lee's eyes, giving them the pop that the Russian was looking for. Any great number of people could have done this, make Tony's daughter look all pretty for the Spider kid. Pepper. Betty. Literally anyone in this building. Natasha knows there are half a dozen things that someone with her talent and expertise could be doing, but here she is, assisting with the long con that will be Lee and Peter's relationship. Her face is stone.
"Don't apologize, just do what I say," she mutters.
A deep gulp of air fills Lee's lungs and she grinds her jaw in every effort to do what the Russian says. She knows how to do her own makeup, a fact that she reiterated time and time again during Romanov's initial entrance into her apartment, but Natasha assured her that this command came from the top. An odd order, Lee thinks, to be coming from Fury, but it seems that they are taking no chances with Lee and Peter's relationship. And, apparently, no one thinks that her normal, regular face is good enough, so they had to hire experts. Her heart splinters a little bit at the thought, but doesn't say anything by way of protest. Eventually, she just sits and submits to the will of the powers that be, not even bothering to ask why the hell they're putting her in makeup if Peter is going to meet her at night, while she's getting mugged. Doesn't seem like the most necessary time to be all dolled up, but whatever. She'll let them make the plans.
"Alright," she concedes.
But moments tick away, brush stroke by brush stroke, and all Lee can think about is the file that she fell asleep reading last night and the bubbles popping in her stomach at the thought of it all. Her knee starts bouncing.
"Stop shaking."
Nerves. Nerves, nerves, nerves. What if he doesn't like her? What if she fails? There is so much riding on this first interaction and the pressure is starting to create an itch beneath her skin. She doesn't want to let anyone down. She can't let anyone down. There's too much at stake and things have only just begun.
"I can't," she protests.
The room is quiet and Natasha merely pulls her stool closer to Lee, pulling the mascara wand out of its tube before leaning in to fix her eyelashes.
"Can you walk me through this again?" Lee finally bucks up the courage to ask.
Natasha doesn't allow her annoyance to show. When she first arrived in this bedroom, she briefed Lee on the entire plan. Several times.
"You're gonna walk down Webster and cross 194th at precisely 10:47. Think you can do that?"
It's a condescending question, but Natasha's noble manner makes it almost seem nurturing. Lee does her best to refrain from nodding, and instead settles on tugging on the knees of her jeans with her hands to pull away wrinkles that aren't there.
"Yes."
The mascara brush moves to the other eye and Natasha notices that the girl's skin is flushed and feverish. She's terrified. Her voice softens, if only in the slightest, as she realizes that this is an untrained soldier going out on her first mission for a cause she probably doesn't even believe in.
"And Agent Barton will rendezvous at the second alley on the south side of the street, and begin the mugging. At which point, Peter Parker will be crossing the street without any time to change into his suit to save you. And you can't tell him who you are. Remember that. Don't mention Tony or S.H.I.E.L.D."
"Isn't this a little played out? The damsel in distress thing, I mean."
Neither of them pretend to understand why their only inherent value within S.H.I.E.L.D. seems to be what they can do for the men they work for. It's a man's world and they're both learning to transcend that system as best they know how: by working within it.
"Sometimes the old ways are the best," Natasha replies, simply.
She puts down the mascara and picks up a lipstick tub and a lipstick brush, knowing that this young woman won't get any sickness on Natasha's favorite red lipstick, but not caring either way. Agent Romanov is talented at sharing, but not with this.
"And Agent Barton isn't actually gonna hurt me, is he?"
Lee doesn't want to end up with a black eye or a bullet through her skull, and she doesn't yet know these people well enough to trust them.
"It'll look convincing. He won't hurt you. He's good at his job. Open," Natasha commands.
Doing as the older woman asks, Lee holds in the question she's dying to ask until after heavy red paint coats her lips.
"And how are you so sure this Parker guy will be there at that exact moment? Seems pretty shoddy, to me."
A laugh almost escapes Natasha. This poor girl really is an amateur, isn't she?
"We've been tailing him for weeks," she assures her, "We know his schedule better than he does."
Then, Lee says something she isn't sure she means.
"You are horrible people," she mutters.
Agent Romanov takes no offense.
"You say that like it's a bad thing," she teases.
With a wave of her hand upward, Natasha beckons the Stark kid to stand. Lee chuckles and extends her hands as if to say, "This is the best I've got."
"How do I look?" She asks.
Natasha has to give the kid some credit. She's tough. She's nothing but terror and yet she stands and carries on as best she knows how. That takes guts, and it earns her respect. For the first time, Natasha rewards the younger girl with a smile.
"You'll do."
And Lee believes her. And the butterflies in her stomach quiet down.
She can do this. She can do this.
Peter Parker is on schedule. He tutors Physics until 10:30 and walks homeward with a police scanner and skateboard in his backpack. His headphones are firmly in place, giving him all of the latest information from the police dispatch center downtown. Everything is minor. The city is quiet tonight. Earlier this evening, there was a drizzle which left a slight sheen of silver across the dimly lit pavement. Perhaps it is the static of the quiet, or perhaps it is the slight haze the rain left over the bustling metropolis that is New York City on a Thursday night, but Peter feels an intuitive sense of discomfort settle into his bones. He whistles a low tune as he walks through the dark back streets of The Bronx and wishes that he had thought to put his suit on under his sweatshirt instead of inside his bag. Swinging back home would put him at so much more ease than walking.
Car A1743, I got a 10-2 out on you. Return to station. I repeat, return to station.
Copy that.
I got a 10-99 T-4 out near the George Washington.
Dispatch, I got a 10-93 Q on Frederick Douglass and 135th.
It wasn't a hard day today. He turned in obligatory assignments and paid obligatory niceties to the teachers who demanded them. But there was an impatience to him the entire day that seemed inexplicable. There was an itch to begin something else, to go forward to something new, though he isn't entirely sure what it was that his body was expecting of him. Perhaps it was a sixth sense associated with his powers that influenced that. He may not ever know.
All he knows is that one moment, he is walking in the tense darkness of Webster, and the next, the sounds of static-laced dispatch orders are cut by a sharp, feminine scream.
"Come on," Peter groans under his breath.
If he were anyone else in the world, Peter might have kept walking. He might have turned around in his tracks and walked the other direction, content to living a life where he does not know the outcome of such an interaction. But he's Peter Parker. He's a hero, with or without his suit. So, he turns down the alley way, that familiar and metallic taste of adrenaline coating his dry mouth. And then, he sees it. There, at the back end of the alley, is a woman pressed up against the brick wall by the blade of a knife, held by a small but finely muscled man who looks like he could snap a tree in half.
There's no time for the suit. Breaking into a dead out sprint, Peter lunges for the man's wrist, straight for the knife. He hears the woman drag in a sharp intake of breath as her throat is released. A trickle of blood trails down her neck, but Peter doesn't see. Instead, he lowers his shoulder into the man's side, shoving him to the ground. The ski mask on the stranger's neck hides him from sight.
"Get out of here," Peter shouts back at her as he grapples with the man, squeezing his wrist unnaturally tight until the knife clatters to the ground a distance away.
The young woman doesn't budge. She's rooted to the spot; he can hear her heavy, shocked breath from his place on the wet ground. Peter kicks the knife even farther out of her assailant's grasp and attempts to pin him to the ground, but the bastard has a second wave of strength. With one fell motion of his arms, the black clad man tosses Peter off of him, forcing the younger man's body into the brick wall of the alley, before leaping to his feet and taking off toward the street. Ignoring the pain, Peter scrambles to stand and run after him, to do something.
But then he sees her. Having collapsed against the wall somewhere between his freeing her and the mugger disappearing. Arms wrapped around her knees, her lungs fight for panicked breaths as she stares straight ahead at the wall across from her. Her panic attack conducts a wild symphony against the rain-soaked pavement. And all his plans for turning the man into the police are quashed. He can't leave her. He just can't.
He's never been good at this part. What to say to someone. When he has the mask on, it's easier. He can hide. But now, he's in the open. There is no Spider-Man. It's just Peter Parker and this strange and somehow beautiful woman sitting in an alley together. He shoves his hands into the pockets of his hoodie and slides down the wall to sit beside her. He approaches her like a child might approach a wounded animal.
"Are you alright?" He asks.
It takes the woman a moment before she can even manage to stammer out a weak and breathy protestation. Peter notices that she keeps her hands clasped around her neck and thoughtlessly he assumes that it's a nervous tick of hers, something her hands manage just to have something to do but shake.
"I can't-" She mutters.
Peter's seen this scene before. And he hopes he knows what to do. His instincts guide him as he turns to give her his full attention. Their eyes lock.
"Breathe. Breathe," he smiles a gentle, gallows smile at her before continuing, "My name's Peter. What's yours?"
Something in him screams that he has to just get her talking. She doesn't take her eyes off of him and he chuckles lightly at their proximity. Taking in trembling air, the young woman attempts to match his normalized breathing patterns before looking down at the ground.
"Lee. Lee McCarthy," she finally states.
Peter tries his best to be reassuring. Gentle.
"Alright, Lee. Are you okay?"
She nods an uncontrolled, wild nod.
"I think so."
But tears are welling in her eyes and Peter desperately tries to dispel them. He reaches out for her shoulders.
"It's okay. He's gone. You're alright."
His hands never meet her skin, though, because the light glints on something slick and menacing dripping between her fingers. His heart stops and fear runs through his eyes.
"Oh, God," he breathes.
She immediately senses the shift in him. Her entire body stiffens and he curses himself. Now, he'll never get her calm.
"What?"
He takes a hand of his own and points it at her neck, hoping on hope that she doesn't remove her hands. One, because he knows that the sight of that much blood will send her into fits, but also because removing the pressure from it could be dangerous. Pulling his backpack off his shoulder, he slides it into his lap, frantically reaching for the zipper. He says prayer after prayer that he put the suit in the front pocket and not the back one he is currently opening. A sigh of relief falls from his lips when he opens it and begins digging without a stripe of red or blue lyrca in sight.
"That is a pretty nasty cut."
It's more than pretty nasty. It's diabolical. And she's in such shock that she doesn't even realize the blood is spilling from her wound through the spaces between her fingers. The cut from the mugger's blade is deeper than Peter first thought. Not deadly, but dangerous. Not life-threatening, but enough to scare him. He keeps digging in his bag, looking for something to stop the bleeding. The girl doesn't look at her bloody hands or even think about the pain in her neck, apparently. Instead, she just nods at him, her eyes set on an injury of his.
"And your lip is busted," she says with quiet courage.
Peter hadn't even noticed. His head snaps up from his backpack.
"Is it?"
His free hand flies up to his lip, and sure enough, it's busted straight open. But he doesn't have the time to deal with that. He goes back to his backpack and finally finds what he was looking for. Ah-ha. His Winter formal t-shirt.
"Here. Take this."
He was going to cut the shirt up to use as bandages anyway. She takes it from him, carefully avoiding looking at her fingers. He knows she's in shock. He thinks of her and her injury and that look in her eye that is so confusing and intriguing to him and his house and he's thinking these things and his adrenaline must kick in because he doesn't even realize that he's suddenly saying with a voice urgent and nervous,
"Look, my house is only a few blocks from here and you need to wrap up that cut soon. Are you okay to walk?"
The question hangs in the air. His concern. Her fear. It's all there in the balance. So, he rises to his feet and waits for her answer. She gulps hard.
"I think so. Yeah," she agrees.
He extends his hand to her with a, "look, nothing up my sleeves," sort of smile. The wheels in her head start cranking and turning in time with one another. She hesitates. Reason reminds Peter that they don't have much time before the blood loss starts making her loopy. He needs to get her inside. He lets his smile get wider and he offers his hand.
"My Aunt May's a pretty good cook. If worst comes to worst, at least there are some good leftovers in it for you."
She carefully avoids holding his hand for support, not wanting her blood all over him. The bleeding is slowing with the added pressure of his t-shirt, but her hands are still slick with it. When she's finally standing on her own once more, she lets her knocking knees carry her in pace with his conscientiously slow steps before offering a joke of her own.
"Leftovers? Is that the regular cure for blood loss?"
If he were poetic in any sense, Peter might look at her smile and call it bewitching. Because if there's a word for what he's feeling right now, that would be it. He just shrugs and keeps up the rapport, not knowing, not even then, that this chance encounter in an alley would change his life.
"Well, it definitely can't hurt."
He's never brought someone he's saved back to his house. It isn't something he'll realize until he gets her into his kitchen a little while later, but it's a nettling truth that colors this first meeting with gold edging.
Anything could happen from here.
Yay! They have met! Please, please, please tell me what you think! I love to hear from you guys and get any thoughts/feelings you are having! You all always have great insight and I'd love to hear them! Also, any predictions or thoughts for the next chapter? ;) I've been known to drop some hints for people who review...
Also, would anyone be interested in a Harry Osborn/OC fic? Just out of curiosity? After I finish this one, of course!