CHAPTER SIX
( BASIC KNOWLEDGE )
ONCE AGAIN QUINN gives herself the reward of sleeping in for the second Saturday in a row. She wakes up in time to see her clock turn to eight hundred. She takes in a deep yawn before rousing herself out of her comfortable bed.
As she walks out into the living room, she rests her eyes on Jo who is sleeping on the couch in a black cocktail dress, her shoes still clutched in her hand. When Quinn had arrived home last night at twenty-four hundred she had noticed the absence of her roommate, which meant she had the great pleasure of taking Rudolph outside in the middle of the night despite her yearning for sleep.
Quinn crosses over to her and taps her shoulder. No response. Quinn shakes her shoulder until she groans and wakes up bug-eyed, looking around the living room and wondering what happened. "Don't you have to work today?" Quinn questions furrowing her brows as she continues to look down at her exhausted and hungover roommate.
Jo squints her azure colored eyes as if she's scraping the back of her mind to remember if she actually had a shift or not. She groans in frustration once she realizes she does, causing Quinn to give her a tight-lipped smile. However, instead of waking up like Quinn thought she would, Jo face plants back down on the couch, breathing in heavily.
"'m just call off..." she muffles out from the cushion of the couch. Her roommate, in turn, gives her a stern look; for anyone else, they would've had to have her repeat what she just stated but Quinn has played this game for years with her and has finally been able to get it down. "Absolutely not," she tells her.
Jo whips her head out from the cushion to look at Quinn, the audacity in her eyes means she was right about what she was saying. "If I can work overtime all week and still be able to wake up in time for The Joggernauts, you can go to work after a night of partying,"
"I can't. I'm not strong like you are," Jo whines in protest, trying her best to suck up to her.
"My sweet barista," Quinn's voice is sweet as if she were talking to Rudolph. "You need to get up to go to work. You're twenty-seven, we have bills to pay." Quinn pats her back several times, before standing up and heading into the kitchen.
Trying to cope with a hungover Jo was like trying to steer a herd of cats into something. It usually ended up with Quinn being right about something and Jo feeling immensely guilty for the things she said to her. Although, Quinn didn't take most of it to heart, or at least tried not to. When Jo was tired she was a completely different person, not the roommate she adored.
"I deserve a day off," Jo deems from the couch, taking her phone out of her clutch where she had stored it from last night. She attempted to click it on, shielding her tired eyes from the bright glare of the screen, instead she got the low battery sign and it shut off instantly. She tosses her phone on the ground in frustration, with a thud, causing Quinn to turn around. "I'm not going in," Jo states, raising her voice, it cracks wildly.
Jo fiddles with the nail polish on her thumbnail as she states she's not going in again. "Jo, you need to at least call-"
"I'm not going in!" Jo raises her voice to cover Quinn's, causing her to get annoyed. Rudolph has now made his appearance out of Jo's room, where he usually sleeps. He stretches his front legs while letting out a yawn that half sounds like a whine. He's come out to investigate why Jo is making a racket in the loft. He paces over to her and plants his big head on Jo's chest, forcing her to pet him.
"Say it with me, Ruddy, I don't want to go to work," Jo sings out, causing Rudolph to look inquisitively at her, cocking his head from side to side as Jo repeats the words. Quinn rolls her eyes at her theatrics. Finally, it boils over and Rudolph begins howling with Jo as she sings she doesn't want to go to work.
Quinn's blood is boiling with annoyance, she quickly crosses the room and scolds Rudolph, telling him to stop. Her eyes turn to glare at Jo, who sheepishly yet bravely returns the glare. "Please get ready for work," Quinn's voice sounds defeated as she shuts her eyes and pinches the bridge of her nose in frustration.
It takes her a moment to look at Jo in the eye after listening to her say she's not going to work for the eighth time. When she looks at her she's met with her sheepish gaze again, a coy look coming across her features. "I'm-"
"'Not going to work', yeah I get it. Just don't blame me when you turn thirty and you have to explain to everyone that you live in a loft with a roommate still."
"I could say the same for you,"
Quinn feels her blood boil over in anger at this point, Jo has finally pushed her annoyance over the edge. She turns to stomp away into the kitchen, looking into the fridge for her ingredients for a smoothie. It's not all her fault that she has bills to take care of, especially with her mom's condition.
It was hard to save any money for whatever future she wanted, she could only hope that overtime at S.H.I.E.L.D. would give her the right push to the path she wanted to go down in the money department. She didn't need to take life lesson's from a twenty-seven-year-old who still worked as a barista at Starbucks.
She knew jobs were hard to come by in her field but she could at least attempt to look, it's not like she couldn't get her foot in the door as practice, that's what she's doing with S.H.I.E.L.D. Although, she didn't have to seek them out, they found her.
Looking over into the living room, she could see Jo, starting to fall asleep on the couch once again. She places all the ingredients she could find for her smoothie on to the kitchen island, just as Rudolph made his way over to her and whines. She scoffs, as she looks down at the dog, reaching into the cabinet to grab a can of wet dog food.
She glares out into the living room once again, the least Jo could do was help and she wasn't even doing that or making an attempt to. As she put Rudolph's food down, she paced back over to the fruits that were placed on the island, grabbing the blending machine from behind her on the counter.
Without warning, and before putting any fruits into the machine, Quinn turned it on as high as it would go. The machine made a startling loud, grinding, noise, half scaring Rudolph and forcing Jo to jump up off the couch like she had been caught in the middle of a tornado unprepared. Quinn could barely make out what she was saying over the noise.
"What?" she questioned loudly. "I can't hear you over the sound of the blender," she jokes, pointing to the blender behind her. Jo flops her arms to the side, giving her an irritated look of disapproval. Quinn turns the blender off for a moment to listen to what Jo was saying. "There's not even fruit in there," Jo notes, an icy tone in her voice.
Quinn looks back at the blender and then back to Jo. "Huh, would you look at that," she sighs out, earning an eye roll from her roommate. "You're so annoying," Jo calls out to her as she leaves the vicinity towards her bedroom down the hall. Quinn snickers to herself in the kitchen. "Right back at you," she calls after her, unsure if she heard her until she hears the door slam in response.
She continues giggling to herself as she put the fruits into the blender, turning it on at a monotonous pace, so it wouldn't be as loud as before. She beat Jo at her own game. She looks down at her feet to see Rudolph sitting beside her, tan leash in his mouth. She takes the leash out of his mouth and places it up on the counter, his tail wagging in excitement.
"In a few, bub," she tells the excited animal. For some reason, she feels a strange pang of guilt. Had she been too mean to Jo? As annoying and irresponsible she was, Jo has been dealing with her shifted overtime, meaning some times she has to decline dates or hanging out with her work friends to stay at home with Rudolph.
Quinn shouldn't feel guilty, especially since she forced her to take out Rudolph last night at midnight after a long day - and an embarrassing conversation with Steve Rogers. She peers down the hallway to see Jo's door tightly shut, the sound of it being slammed rang in her mind like an alarm.
Before she leaves with Rudolph, she raps on the door where her friend resides, waiting for a reply or at least hear footsteps leading over to the door. When she didn't hear anything she bit her lip, before uttering out an apology.
She drops the plate of toast covered with strawberry jam, and fruit by the door that she had made for recompense for her actions earlier. Even though she shouldn't feel guilty, she walks out the front door with a stabbing pain of remorse in her gut.
~ BOOK ONE: WINTER SOLDIER ~
SHE DIDN'T EXPECT Rudolph to be panting so heavily as they neared the Washington Monument, they had barely even come halfway on their walk and his breathing was ragged. She also didn't jog the entire way over. She gazed down at the friendly animal with concern, only to be greeted by his half attempt to jump up on her. She narrowly dodged the jump, his paws thudding against the cool pavement.
"What's going on bud? Have you tired already?" She questions the retriever, crouching down to his level where he sits and pants in her face. "You're the one who was whining to go on a walk," she points out, petting the side of the dog's face.
After looking at her surroundings of people jogging and walking on the pavement near the monument she guides Rudolph over to a patch of grass, out of the way of foot traffic. She reaches into her cinch bag and pulls out a collapsible water bowl and fills it halfway with her own water bottle for Rudolph to lap up.
She begins stroking the dog's golden fur as she begins to let her mind trail off to what she could do to help her mother. It hadn't been too long ago since she last saw her; around Christmas time she had taken time to fly up to New York City to visit.
It pains her to think of her mother in the hospital, especially with her condition. She could barely recognize her and when she was finally able to calm her down her mother asked where her brother was. She instinctively bit the inside of her cheek as she thought of the last time she had seen her brother, it had been years ago. Before everything went wrong.
She was too busy caught up in her thoughts to even hear the familiar footsteps she had gotten used to hearing. She didn't notice she had company until Rudolph starts pulling on his leash, yanking her wrist forward and herself off the ground as she protested. "Rudolph," she warned in a low voice. She wasn't in the mood to play catch-the-dog.
Thankfully, he stopped straining against the least just in time for him to jump up on a figure in greeting. Quinn didn't catch a look at who the individual was, she latches her free hand on to the collar of the retriever and pulls him away from the person. "I'm so sorry," she begins to apologize, pulling back on Rudolph's collar once again as he attempts to jump up onto the person. "Don't worry about it," the individual says.
The familiar sound of his voice catches her attention off, guard. Her eyes widen as she peers up at Steve Rogers. Her mind becomes flustered as she tries to think of an excuse for Rudolph's behavior. Before she can he points to the golden retriever. "Is this my attacker?" he teases with a light-hearted smile as he crouches down next to him, beginning to pet him. The dog rolls over on his back for belly rubs from Steve.
"I wouldn't say he's an attacker," Quinn speaks up finally finding her voice. "More like an avid fan," she clarifies jokingly as she sits next Rudolph, partaking in the belly rubs. "It's a little late for you to be out here, don't you think?" Quinn states, remembering back to the time she had left the loft and estimating the ten minutes it usually takes to get to the park. Steve shrugs his shoulders. "Could say the same for you,"
"I came home last night pretty late, then I woke up late. What's your excuse?"
"I've been here for a while," he admits. "I just lap," he explains standing up, disturbing the dog for his relaxed state. He offers her a hand to help her up off the ground, which she takes. She tries not to notice how easy it was for him to pick her up off the ground. Her becomes dizzy just thinking about the run he takes, the monuments reflection pool is the size of a football field and he laps it like it's nothing.
"Thought about what you said last night," he pipes up, catching her attention. She cringes at the mere thought of the conversation they had last night, she wants to apologize for how she acted - she blames sleep deprivation.
Before she can even utter out a single syllable of an apology he adds, "It takes a lot of time to learn everything that's happened for the past century. Most of the people I know are too busy to even offer," he informs her, crossing his arms across his chest.
It takes all her will power to not look at the muscles tightening in his upper arms, the fit of the shirt he was wearing complimented them well. She could feel her cheeks become flustered as she reminded herself to keep eye contact with him.
"I was thinking, I need a teacher," he says with a smile. It takes a moment for Quinn to process what he was saying. A teacher? Was he actually being serious? "Uh, yeah, sure," her voice cracks as she continues to look at him wide-eyed with shock. "To be honest, I didn't think you'd be serious about it after how I came across last night," she begins to become sheepish as he chuckles about their unorthodox meeting.
He shuffles around to his back pocket, pulling out the small black notebook as he had last night. "I actually didn't get your phone number last night. Figured I'd need it to contact you," he explains, flipping through the pages once again, trying to find a blank page.
Her breath hitches in her throat as she tries not to snicker about how old fashioned this was. She bites her inner cheek to prevent her from rudely smirking at him. Instead, Quinn places her hand over the notebook, causing him to look up at her with confusion. "We're not exchanging numbers like this. It's not nineteen ninety-five," she scolds him, gently caressing the spine of the notebook to close it.
"You should have a phone, all agents are given one," she instructs him. He reaches into his back pocket once again and pulls out the slender black cell phone, placing it within her small hand that she had stuck out for him. He watches as Quinn's brows raise up in surprise. Worry seems to fill him for some reason as he starts to wonder what's wrong.
"Most people have a passcode on their phone," she hums out, tapping on the screen for the dial pad. "As an agent I suggest you put one on for protection," she presses the phone up to her ear to listen to the dial tone, once it starts ringing, she pulls out her phone. It vibrates to life as a strange phone number lights up the screen. Quinn taps the red "end call" button on Steve's phone and then adds her name next to the number in his contacts.
"Here," she hands the phone back to Steve, his eyes flickering down at the screen curiously as he looks at her name, along with the number beneath it. "Consider that lesson point five of your tech training. This way you can save your paper for other things and it's already on your phone and the other person's phone,"
"Smart," he praises.
"Basic knowledge," she corrects with a scoff.
His eyes squint at the screen and then back to her. "How do I put a passcode on this? Can you show me?" he asks, causing Quinn to let out a breathy chuckle. "Can we at least sit on a bench? We can just go over the basics of your phone, together," she suggests, slightly nudging Rudolph with her leg just to make sure he's still responsive.
"Lead the way," he offers her, holding out his arm in a gesture for her to take charge. Quinn smirks as she begins walking beside him at a leisure pace. A new pace that she wasn't sure he knew about.