A/N: Everything except Ida and Jax belong to Marvel.
Co-written with riboflavinb2.
I'd love to hear what you think! Thanks for reading.
Ida Emerson of Brooklyn, New York was getting real sick of the quarantined cephalopod-escape-artist. Already, the octopus had fled his tank four times and ended up in various dark corners of the aquarium's back rooms. It was quite tiring tracking him down all the time, but what choice did Ida have? The octopus had to be found.
Ida was searching the turtle habitat for the devil when she heard her phone buzz. She hoped it was Jax. Her best friend was in Santa Monica or wherever-the-fuck for yet another business trip. It was the third one this month. Ida knew pharmaceutical salesmen were busy, but couldn't Jax take a few seconds to send Ida a freaking text?
Ida plunged her hand into her blazer pocket and yanked her cell phone from within its depths.
It was not, in fact, a text. But rather an email from The Correll Center for Aquatic Animal Health. She'd look at it later. She reached for her necklace out of habit, and fingered the small shark fin charm Jax gave to her years ago. She wore the necklace everyday.
But back to the finding the octopus.
0400.
Jackie "Jax" Foster looked around at the crumbling buildings of the rural Syrian village, browns and grays blurring together in the haze of the afternoon sun. A group of extremists had been using the area as a base while they amassed a stockpile of dangerous high-tech weaponry.
Which was why Jax currently had sand in places sand should never be.
Why did so many criminals do their dirty work in blistering desert regions? What happened to the good old days when bad guys did their business out of lavish villas on tropical peninsulas? Give her a James Bond villain any day.
This group had been on SHIELD's radar for awhile now, but their whereabouts were unknown up until a few days ago, when they'd received intel from an agent that was undercover nearby.
And (because the universe never made things easy) the village was full of innocent Syrian locals that would no doubt become collateral damage if SHIELD sent in a full tactical team or attempted any kind of standard raid procedures. The extremist group had to be taken down quickly and efficiently, before they even realized that they were under attack. Zero chance to retaliate.
So SHIELD sent its best.
Natasha Romanoff, Clint Barton, and Jax Foster.
The spider, the hawk, and the shark. Or as they were otherwise known: Strike Team Delta.
Jax, Clint, and Nat had arrived in Syria a week ago. After being airdropped a few clicks away, the trio had traveled to the village on foot and spent two days surveilling the village as a whole, then the next four days surveilling the extremist group and their base.
They'd finally made their move in the early morning of day seven, while most of the men were asleep. It took them about two hours to take down the almost thirty insurgents. Nothing too difficult, especially for Strike Team Delta. And after fighting Chitauri aliens in New York a few years ago, eliminating a terrorist group felt like a walk in the park.
After they'd finished taking the base, Nat had radioed for the SHIELD team waiting on standby in a nearby town. An hour later, the place was crawling with black-clad agents tasked with clean-up. They handled the locals, collected and secured all the weapons, and prepped the terrorist members (those that had survived the earlier fight) to be transported to a SHIELD facility for interrogation.
Jax nodded to a few familiar agents as she headed for the quinjet, trudging onboard up the back ramp. Clint was already in the pilot's chair, adjusting the controls as he prepared for takeoff.
"Where's Nat?" Jax asked, roughly plopping into the co-pilot seat next to him.
"She's on the phone with Fury to get the okay to head home."
Jax groaned. "We better get the okay. I miss my bed!"
Clint grimaced. "You and me both, kid. If I have to spend another night on a rotted cot, I might put an arrow in myself."
"Wouldn't be the first time." Jax laughed and headed back to one of the metal benches, but not before pulling her cell phone out of the hidden compartment in her mission bag. She laid down and waited for the phone to boot back to life.
Heavy footsteps clunked up the ramp and Jax lifted her head to see Natasha finally coming onboard.
"We're good to go." Nat told her before she could even ask.
Jax mentally filed that away as further proof that Nat could read minds (a long-standing theory of hers). The redhead took her spot as co-pilot next to Clint, and within minutes they were in the air.
Jax opened up her phone and immediately went to messages.
"Hey Clint, what time do you think we'll get back to the tower?" she asked.
"With clear skies?" Clint checked the console for the current New York time. "Around 1pm."
Perfect. Jax quickly typed up a text.
BAE! I'm finally headed home! I missed your face. Late lunch? 3PM? :)
Pressing send, Jax closed her eyes and tried to get a few hours of decent rest.
"Miss Emerson, I think I found him!" Johnny called from the otter quarantine.
Ida hoped the young intern had really found him. She had at least twenty things to prepare for the day, including the latest batch of dilute ammonium hydroxide for the research project the aquarium was sponsoring. Not to mention, she hadn't even gotten to feed her cichlids yet, and that was obviously the best part of her day.
Ida rushed to the otter quarantine, brushing past several unused tanks and buckets. She saw Johnny in the back of the room, his gaze firmly planted on the ceiling above him.
Oh, shit. That really only meant one thing.
Inky, the devilish Giant Pacific Octopus was suctioned to the ceiling like something from a Mission Impossible movie. Totally ridiculous. And also totally cool. She hoped that when cephalopods finally took over the world that they would remember how much she loved her mollusk overlords.
"Well, ain't that something?" Ida said. She wished she had worn practical clothing this morning, instead of her khaki pantsuit. In her casual aquarium polo and shorts, she wouldn't have hesitated to hop on a nearby ladder and wrench the squishy body from its hiding spot. But in her nice pantsuit? Forget it.
"What do we do?" Little Johnny asked. Ida internally chuckled at his inexperience.
"We get him down, clearly. Go grab Robert or Sylvia and help get Mr. Inky back to his tank. I'm not exactly dressed for this occasion."
Johnny nodded. "You got it, boss." The intern left the room, presumably in search of one of the other aquarium keepers, while Ida and Inky stayed put.
"Inky, you've become a real thorn in my side. Can't you just stay in your tank for a little while? Just until I actually get some work done?"
Ida felt her phone buzz in her pocket for the second time that morning. She expected it was just another email, but checked just on the happenstance that it was Jax.
Bae! I'm finally headed home! I missed your face. Late lunch? 3PM? :)
Ida smiled and quickly typed back a reply.
You mean you're finally free of all the druggies? I'll have to cancel my lunch date with hottie accountant, but I guess you're worth it. Come meet me at the aquarium. We'll walk over to DiMaggio's together.
Now Ida really wished she'd been wearing more comfortable clothing. The pantsuit she'd worn for her date was worthless now. Ida sighed. She would definitely have to yell at Jax for that.
As soon as Johnny returned with Sylvia, Ida ventured off to the freshwater tanks. She wanted to feed her cichlids before she cancelled on the accountant. He'd probably be pissed, but Ida hardly cared. There's always more fish in the sea, right?
The quinjet touching down on the landing pad of Avengers tower, jolting Jax awake.
"Wake up sleepyfin," Clint called from the cockpit. "We're here."
"Very funny, birdbrain." Jax yawned, stretching her stiff limbs. "I'm awake. Could've done with forty more hours though."
"I'll take eighty." Natasha mumbled, already gathering her things.
To most people, Strike Team Delta probably seemed as awake, alert, and attentive as ever, always at peak performance. But having been a team for three years now, they noticed the signs of weariness in each other, such as Jax's minuscule body tremor, Clint's tense, stifled yawns, and Natasha's millisecond-slower reaction time. They'd taken to calling it PMB: Post-Mission Burnout.
Each of the them recovered from PMB in their own way. Natasha liked to visit her favorite cafe and spend hours with a new book and a chai latte. Clint preferred the classic gorge-and-crash method (inhaling an ungodly amount of food then sleeping for about fifteen hours). Jax herself had a simple but effective two-step process: taking a boiling hot shower, then spending time with her best friend.
Jax checked her phone to discover that Ida had responded to her text a while ago.
You mean you're finally free of all the druggies? I'll have to cancel my lunch date with hottie accountant, but I guess you're worth it. Come meet me at the aquarium. We'll walk over to DiMaggio's together.
Hell yes, just what Jax needed. Grinning, she typed out her reply.
I'll take anything that isn't airplane food lol. And whaaaat he finally asked you out? I expect all the details! Sounds like a plan, see you then.
Jax spent the next thirty minutes unloading equipment, supplies, and weapons from the quinjet with Nat and Clint. Once finished, they all grabbed their bags and piled into the elevator, Nat directing Jarvis to take them each to their individual living quarters.
Avengers tower had ninety-seven floors in all (because no one ever accused Tony of restraint) and Level 33 through 45 housed all the private quarters. Each of these floors had its own massive bedroom and bathroom, but everything else (i.e. kitchen, living room, laundry machines) was on other levels. It was like living in a luxury college dorm built for rich celebrities.
When rebuilding the tower, Tony had designed it so that each of the Avengers had their own personalized floor, along with a few extra residence levels for any kind of guests. Jax's room was Level 42, right between Cap and Tony.
The elevator dropped Clint off before taking Jax down to her floor. Shifting the duffel bag strap on her shoulder, Jax bid Natasha goodbye and stepped out.
God, it felt good to be home.
Jax immediately dropped her duffel to the floor and did a running dive onto her bed. Her sigh was muffled against the fluffy mountain of pillows, and it was oh-so-tempted to just curl up under the covers and pass out (and if it was anybody but Ida, that's exactly what she'd do). She breathed in the familiar scents, blissfully happy to be on her own bed, a real bed, instead of a dusty cot. Jax lavished in comfort for a few more minutes before finally dragging herself over to the bathroom. If she was going to be seen in public, she first needed to scrub the seven layers of desert off her body.
Jax peeled off the grimy black tactical outfit and tossed it into the basket labeled 'Super Laundry'. All of the Avengers had two laundry baskets: Normal Laundry and Super Laundry. It was a system that Tony implemented after the Battle of New York, thanks to an incident with an exploding washer, ruined armor, and a very upset Norse god. Now any and all mission clothing went straight into what had jokingly been named 'Super Laundry'.
Jax padded naked into her pristine bathroom, one of her favorite places in the tower. She eyed the marble bathtub before deciding she definitely didn't have time and instead turned the shower handle to the hottest possible setting and stepped into the scalding water.