CHAPTER FIVE
( OVERTIME )
TODAY MARKS DAY four of her overtime. After receiving the bill from her mother's doctor on Monday, Quinn actually had the gall to ask Edith for overtime for the next few weeks. She explained her situation, that she's in desperate need of hours to get in overtime since she's just a grunt I.T. and not salary. As heartless as Edith appears to be she actually found a soft spot for Quinn's situation once she explained it - she even taught her how to lock up the office. A simple code but one that kept most intruders out. She contemplated on getting another job, perhaps something on the weekends that would absorb all her time.
Granted The Joggernauts weren't going to be pleased, scratch that, Maddox wasn't going to be pleased but, she didn't care. There were a handful of people she held dear to her and were important enough that she'd care for their judgment and his wasn't one of them. Truth be told, she hadn't really spoken that much to him since their spontaneous "date" (at least that's what Jo liked to call it) last weekend.
She debated on disbanding from The Joggernauts to focus more of her time on her work, but she hasn't officially made that decision yet. She's testing the waters right now, if her check came back slightly higher then she would definitely quit running for fun and spend all her livelihood at work. No matter how sad it sounded. She had a responsibility, she had no obligation to keep anything except that.
"Ow," she groaned to herself as felt a tiny shock in her index finger. Absentmindedly she placed the tip of her finger in her mouth to try to dull the pain. The communicator was giving her more hassle than what she thought it would, but it also came in half broken. Instead of getting a new communicator the agent submitted the half broken device, claiming that this piece has been with him for years and he'd hate to see it just tossed away when he knows there's some good use to it. Edith had forwarded the email on to her and placed it in a bin for her to take a look at. It would keep her busy for most of the night, that's for sure.
Most of the department has headed home for the night, including Edith, only three remained including herself. A rubber thimble-like piece was tossed over the edge of her cubby, she peered up to see Dustin looking down at her. "Rubber deflects electricity. You won't get shocked - as much," he informs her. She replies with a thank you and a smile as she places the cover over her index finger.
She begins tapping at the wires again, hoping to hear some form of static through the earpiece but she gets nothing. She lets out a huff of air, in frustration. She's been working on this piece for hours. "Who's it for?" Dustin questions, his voice muffled from behind the divider of the cubby. Quinn stops working with the wires for a moment trying to process who he was talking to until she realizes that it must be her. "Agent Barton," she replies, continuing to fickle with the earpiece now.
"Oh, the Hawkeye," Dustin purrs out before making a bird chirping sound, causing Jack Trautman - the only other individual in the office - to snickering from across the way. Quinn rolls her eyes. "It came practically in two, he's sentimental about it. I've been working on the hearing processor for the past hour and a half and I'm not getting anything," she explains, she can hear her voice echo off against the wood of her desk from how close of proximity she is with it.
"Is he a sentimental guy?" Jack questions over his shoulder, causing Quinn to shrug. "I literally have no clue about who this guy is except he's part of the Avengers," she answers honestly. "He likes to keep to himself, I think," Jack casually says, earning a wry chuckle from Dustin. "Yeah, of course, he does. He's an agent. They all keep to themselves," Dustin leers.
"Just because he's an agent doesn't mean he can't talk about his life," Jack protests.
"Yes, it does. He is a covert agent. I'm pretty sure he's got several targets on his head. Why would he talk about his personal life all willy-nilly?" Dustin argues back.
Quinn slams the wooden rod she had been using to replace wires with on her desk, ending the fickle dispute between her two coworkers. "How long are you two going to be here?" Quinn questions, a slight edge in the tone of her voice. "I'd actually like to get some work done and it's almost twenty-one hundred," she points out, pinching the bridge of her nose in irritation.
There's a small silence in the office before Dustin perks up, "In about a half hour. I'm almost finished." Jack also agrees with him. Quinn nods her head as her desk and whispers out a faint, "Perfect." under her breath.
She pulls up the email that Edith had forwarded and scanned it over once again, Agent Barton did seem fond of the small gadget, it was going to be hard to try to fix and she wasn't sure how happy he'd react if she gave him a new communicator. Perhaps he'd be nonchalant about it, from what she's seen of him she could only imagine that he would but she didn't want to take the chance.
She closed her email and began looking for a way to try to reduce the stress of the flow of electricity between the hearing processor and the mic transmitter. It was going to be tricky as the wires were frayed from it being almost split in two but she can manage to find a way. Time seems to fly-by as she continues to work on the communicator.
She jumps as Dustin lays his hand on her left shoulder. He raises his hand up in surrender, showing he was doing her no harm. "You've been pretty jumpy lately," he notes, the same tone of concern in his voice as Jo's has been lately. It irritated her core. She frowns as she looks up at him. "Tends to happen when you sneak up on me," she gruffly notes, feeling a gnawing sensation of exhaustion in the back of her head. "Try using the soldering tool to place the hearing processor one the chip near the transmission," he suggests lightly. "That may help,"
"What time do you plan on leaving?" Jack asks her, placing his laptop case over his shoulder. Quinn runs a hand across her face as she lazily looks at the time before she returns her attention back to the older gentleman. "Hopefully twenty-two hundred," she softly answers. Dustin rolls his eyes at her. "English-"
"Ten. It is English, it's just military time. I'm sorry, I grew up telling time like that," she hastily spits out at Dustin. "Hopefully, we'll see if Agent Barton's communicator will let me."
He clasps his hand over her shoulder endearingly. "Go home and get some sleep tonight, kiddo," his tone is soft and lulling. It must be the same tone he uses on his kids to get them to go to sleep at night. "I'll try," she hums out in response before bidding the two goodbye. She returns her attention back to the communicator sitting on her desk, she's made some progress since Edith gave it to her. It's not all the way complete yet, not even halfway, but now that she's alone she hopes she can crank it out.
~ BOOK ONE: WINTER SOLDIER ~
THE KNOCKING ON the front office door startles her from her deep focus on working on the communicator. She narrows her eyes at the door, raking her mind as to who could be knocking on I.T.'s door at this time. She turns off the music that was helping her stay awake and cautiously heads towards the door, grabbing her stapler in the process - just in case.
The person raps on the door once more, Quinn is just inches away. Her hand trembles as she places it on the handle and opens it. Her eyes widen at the sight of the person, she feels relieved but the tightness in her chest only seems to increase. She's looking in the eyes of Captain America himself.
"Oh my," she gasps out, dropping the stapler from behind her back. He questioningly glances down at stapler, she follows his gaze. She picks it up off the ground with a nervous chuckle. "I'm so sorry, I'm glad it's just you," she states as she picks herself up to look at him again.
"I'm sorry, it just gets super nerve-wracking around here at night and I'm the only one here, and we usually don't get a lot of people knocking at twenty-two hundred, so I thought if I was in actual trouble I could at least do some damage with the stapler-" her rambling trails off as she continues to gaze into his eyes, sensing how awkward he's feeling. She lets out a long sigh and rubs her hand over her face. "Let's just start over," she suggests, embarrassment flooding her voice. "What can I do for you, mister...America?"
"Rogers," he corrects her, sticking out his hand for her to shake. "Steve Rogers,"
"Quinn Cruise," she introduces herself, shaking his hand. She felt starstruck, she knew her cheeks were flushed and making it obvious that she was in shock. She points to the clear baggy in his hands, "Is that for me?" she questions. He looks towards the plastic bag in his hand and pushes it forward towards her.
"Yes, it is actually. It's my commlink. The hearing part is kind of messed up," he begins to explain. "They said I could just email you guys and send it in for you to take a look at but it's still somewhat of a mystery to me," he jokes, getting a nervous chuckle out of the both of them. "So I figured I'd just drop it off with note attached, but, I saw the light on in here and heard some music, I figured someone must be in here. Here we are," he states, handing over the clear plastic bag with the comm link inside.
Unlike Agent Barton's this communicator wasn't split in half, it was perfectly intact. This would be an easy fix, which was exactly what she needed. "So if no one was here, would you have just put the comm link down beside the door? Because no one is here until Monday," she teases, watching his lips curve into a small smile. "I hadn't thought that far ahead," he sheepishly admits. She examines the comm link once again before placing it under her arm to take into the office.
"I should have this ready in no time, it appears to be in better condition than most. We usually email people when their devices are ready to be picked up. Is there a better way to reach you?" she questions rolling her hands with implication. He lets out another nervous chuckle as he pulls out a small black notebook from his back pocket along with a pen from his tan leather jacket.
"Yeah, can you just call me?" he asks as he begins flipping through the pages of his book for a clear page to write down his number. Quinn inadvertently gives him a strange look as he begins writing down on the bottom of a sheet of paper. She flinches when he rips it out of the book and gives it to her. "Wow," she awes as she takes the number from his hands. "It's like I'm back in high school, I haven't exchanged numbers like this in a while," she teases, causing his cheeks to become flustered.
"I'm joking," she notes with a smile, softly tapping his elbow playfully. "Someone will be in touch with you about your commlink," she wraps up. "But in all seriousness, Apple does offer some classes to help people learn about the internet, and email, and computers, and phones," she looks up at him to see a brow arched up looking bored. "I'm not interested in learning all that,"
"It's the twenty-first century, Cap. You have to learn these things," she protests, once again looking into the bored gaze of Captain America. "If you don't want to learn from those people, I'm more than willing to help you," she offers softly, hoping he doesn't hear the last part of her sentence. He perks up his brow in question at the bold I.T. girl. "Do you know other turn of the century things that aren't related to the internet?"
"Like?" he deepens her question.
"Well, like," her cheeks burn with embarrassment at the conversation. She doesn't know what she's doing right now. "The Berlin Wall coming down? The Berlin Wall being built? The moon landing-"
"We went to the moon?" he interrupts.
She scrunches her face up in surprise that he's never heard of that. "Are you serious? You've been out of the ice how long now, and you've fought aliens from space and you don't know that we've been to the moon?" her voice is incredulous as she watches him flip to a clean page in his black notebook and write down the words "moon landing". "Moon landing and what else did you say?"
"The Berlin Wall?"
"Berlin...Wall..." he mumbles out as he writes down the words across the lines paper. Quinn is surprised that he hasn't been informed of these things, either no one told him nor did he go to the library to at least learn about the things that have happened in the past century he's been absent. He looks up from the desk he was writing on to her for more things to write down, but she shakes her head.
"You need a teacher to bring you up to speed," she softly states, grasping on to his forearm. "If you just use the internet to explore these kinds of things you'll be introduced to one-sided views," she licks her lips anxiously, she fights herself as she thinks of the next words to say but before she can stop herself the words tumble out. "I'm busy, but I can make time. I can help you, Mister Rogers. If you'll let me," He looks up at her with inquisitive eyes, lingering on what ploy she was trying to get at. His lips pressed in a firm line as he gazed into her eyes.
"I don't want anything, I don't want money, I don't want fame, I don't want your affection like most women do. I just want to help, I believe I was put here for a purpose and it was to help people and I can't do that as much as I want to sitting behind a desk all day making codes to create firewalls that hold in secrets," she explains in a tangent.
She looks back up at him to see that he seems to be taken back by these words. She gnaws on her bottom lip, recuperating from her small explosion. She feels embarrassed, too embarrassed to speak anymore, she didn't want to make herself look even more foolish than what she already did. She half expected the infamous Captain to turn and haul it the other way but instead, he stayed. She cautiously raised her gaze back up to him.
"I'll think about it," he simply states, while placing his notebook in his back pocket again. Her heart falters for a moment at his statement, giving her a false sense of hope that she needed. She thanks him, and informs him that she'll get working on his comm link as soon as possible.
He turns to leave but abruptly stops in his tracks, his shoes squeaking in protest at the sudden movement. Quinn looks back over her shoulder to see what's going on as soon as she heard the squeak of his shoes. She meets his gaze once again, his eyes searching hers for something. "I've seen you before," he says, pointing his finger in her direction.
She smiles softly, throwing him another offsetting look. "I work here?" she stresses, as she looks from side to side, her cheeks heating up immensely as she sees that he's looking fondly at her. "Outside of here," he specifies. She laughs nervously, so he has seen her out running before. She always thought he was too fast to even see her. "I usually go for jogs in the park by the Washington Monument-"
"You run with that group," his voice is filled with satisfaction as he realizes why she looks so familiar. Quinn nods her head as she bites her bottom lip. "I do run with the group," she confirms. "Actually, my dog ran after you one time - he actually got loose and tried chasing you, not sure you noticed though since you're always so fast,"
"I didn't, but the next time I see anyone with a dog, I'll try to slow my pace to avoid that from happening again,"
"Don't blame yourself. He's big and stupid, but I love him,"
Steve smiles at the I.T. girl before waving goodbye to her and shutting the office door for her. Quinn returns to her seat, comm link in hand along with his phone number. As she slides into the leathery cushion of her chair she recollects the interaction that just happened and mentally slaps herself for how outrageous she acted. "Why are you so stupid?"