Destroying the Planet to Save It Chapter 2: Another Damn Emergency
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“A what now?” Bucky cried.
Everyone in the back of the panel truck, including three Avengers, four S.H.I.E.L.D. agents, seven Secret Service agents, two Presidents of the United States and a First Lady, started shouting. Tornadoes were rare enough in Washington D.C., and if Clint Barton’s eyes were to be believed, this one was a monster. As a result, Steve found himself amid a large group of people simultaneously and collectively losing their shit in an enclosed space. The cacophony went on for several minutes before the assault on his supersoldier hearing finally overcame his innate politeness and respect for authority. Bigtime.
“SHUT UP!”
Steve’s enhanced strength and lung capacity ensured that the ears of everyone else in the truck now hurt as much as his did. It didn’t even occur to him to be sorry. In the stunned silence that followed, each person heard whatever Natasha whispered in Russian over the comms.
“What is it, Natasha?” Steve asked in a surprisingly calm voice.
“Uh, I see it, Rogers. The tornado. It’s… Huh. Not sure I want to be here right now.”
Former President Lattimore whimpered.
Current President Everett Burke scoffed at him, his voice quiet but clearly heard by all. “Oh, for the love of… Pull yourself together, Adam. At least pretend you got a sack on you.”
Lattimore, an ostentatiously church-going Christian, gasped. Everyone else in the truck tried to look somewhere else.
“Natasha,” Steve said. “The tornado, is it between us and the jet?”
“No, and it’s not heading that way. No reason to deviate from the plan.”
“Then don’t.”
“Listen,” President Burke said to Steve, “There’s going to be a lot of damage. I need to get somewhere where I can do my job.”
“Sir, right now the best thing you can do is make sure you remain able to do your job. And that means letting me get you to safety.” Bucky hid a smile at the heavy dose of Captain America Steve pumped into his voice. “You can do anything you need to from where we’re going.”
“Which is where?”
“I’ll tell you once we’re in the air.”
Tony spoke up. “Sir, I can assure you, you’ll have everything you need.”
“I am the President of the United States! I can’t just haul ass when the Capital’s in trouble!”
“With all due respect, Sir, that’s exactly what the President should do in this situation.” This was Craig Thomas, the senior Secret Service agent in charge of security at the event they’d just fled. “I have to agree with Captain Rogers. Only difference between what we’re doing now and what we’d be doing otherwise is, the decoys will be on Air Force One.”
“And us? Where will we be?”
“I admit yours is bigger, Sir,” Tony smirked, “But I do know how to kit out a plane.”
President Burke grinned, giving in to the wisdom of the plan. “I’ll just bet you do, Stark. What kind of scotch you got on board?”
“You won’t be disappointed. I promise.”
*****
Sam looked around at what he could only describe as a bunker. The limousine they’d arrived in had pulled into what appeared to be an industrial park, but as soon as they passed the roll-up door from the outside, all resemblance to a normal building ended. The driver crossed the garage-like first room to enter a steeply-angled tunnel that took them what Sam estimated was at least two stories underground. He wondered how far away from the actual entrance the tunnel took them. It was impossible to know, but he guessed they had to have driven at least two blocks from the building they’d entered.
“The fuck?” He whispered to himself.
There were a number of vehicles in the cavernous space that opened up at the end of the tunnel. Sam saw another limo, two mid-range sports cars, at least five utility trucks of various types, and probably a dozen ordinary sedans.
“What, exactly, is this place?” Sam asked.
Jarman Arias swished a hand dismissively through the air. “Washington is a dangerous city. I like to have a place of safety. Just in case.”
Sam and Agent Herrera were all eyes as they were guided from the limousine to a door nearby, and Sam had time to wonder how wise it was to follow when he saw that the door was made of metal and wouldn’t have been out of place on a bank vault except for its industrial ugliness. The door was set into the thick concrete of the walls. Sam noticed other doors and a few concrete hallways leading off of the massive garage space. He had no idea what to think, and Herrera didn’t appear any less confounded. He swallowed his misgivings and stepped through the door into what, surprisingly, appeared to be a fairly ordinary conference room. Luxurious, but not quite so evil-villian’s-lair as the space they’d just left.
Once the group had shuffled in and Arias had taken a place at the large, mahogany table that dominated the room, he offered Sam a cigar. Sam wanted to refuse. He meant to. Had he chosen to, he could have rattled off half a dozen reasons why he should, without even having to engage his brain. But Sam knew a little about cigars, and when he saw what was in the small humidor Arias was holding, he found himself absolutely incapable of declining. Fuck it. The dude was either a crazed megalomaniac who could manufacture a tornado, or he wasn’t. Whether Sam accepted a once-in-a-lifetime cigar wasn’t going to change that. He saw Anita Herrera’s raised eyebrow and shrugged. “I’m sure he’ll give you one, if you want.”
She smiled at him again, and Sam thought he might be a little in love already.
The room had five doors, including the one through which they’d entered. A couple were open, and another was ajar. Again, they were all metal, and all fitted into the concrete walls in a way that let Sam know how thick those walls were. He was interested in the fact that this place was underground, just where you were supposed to go in a tornado. Had Arias known there would be one? From what Barton had said, the tornado was massive. Sam wondered how well the huge hotel they’d left would have withstood something like that. He scowled, deep in thought, as one of Arias’s lackeys lit Sam’s cigar for him. Shit, he thought as he inhaled a mouthful of delicious smoke. Arias may have been a complete choad, but damn, that was a nice stogie. He looked around and indicated the room with a sweep of his arm.
“So you’re seriously tellin’ me this fucking doomsday silo is just you tryna keep from gettin’ mugged? I don’t think so.”
“Mr. Wilson, I don’t believe I have to answer to you,” Arias said smoothly, putting his cigar back in his mouth.
“I ain’t say you do. I’m just… interested.”
Arias smirked around his cigar, but said nothing.
“You got cable or somethin’ down here?” Sam asked, seeing he wasn’t to get anywhere with straight-up questions. “I’d like to see what’s going on outside.”
The worst of the destruction was north of the city, around Bethesda and Chevy Chase, although as tornadoes do, this one had skipped across the landscape, done some heavy damage in Rock Creek Park and even touched down as far south as Adams Morgan. So far, there were only three deaths reported, but it was early. The tornado itself had been accompanied by serious winds which had damaged a lot of buildings, including the National Cathedral and a number of historical sites.
*****
Stark’s Gulfstream G450 was at capacity, even though Pepper Potts and three of the S.H.I.E.L.D. agents had stayed behind in Washington to deal with the threat. They’d put out the word that there had been a bomb scare, because that was the most plausible and the least surprising story. Tell people what they expect to hear, and they won’t ask questions. But Steve, Tony, and Bucky knew that nobody had any idea what had happened in D.C. Not really. Bruce Banner was still hard at work trying to make sense of the data. He would meet them in New York with Clint and Natasha as soon as they could get there.
In the meantime, President Burke was already talking on several phone lines at once, even as he sipped Tony Stark’s fine scotch. He was aboard with only eight Secret Service agents and the First Lady, which meant a fucking horde of functionaries were pissing their pants right now. The President simply did not get to leave Washington without months of planning and a 747 full of people with him.
“It’s the damn twenty-first century, Clive,” the President was saying. “You don’t need to see my face for us to get work done. But if it’ll make you feel better, I’ll text you a fucking selfie when we get off the phone here. Spine up, would you?”
Tony, sitting across from him at the small galley table, smiled and nodded, amused.
At the front of the cabin, Former President Lattimore and Agent Emerson sat in seats facing one another, with two of Lattimore’s usual Secret Service detail in seats across a little aisle from them. A healthy slug of very expensive gin had helped Lattimore calm himself, although the real reason he wasn’t as put out as he had been initially was the realization that he had been whisked away with the current President. Although Joss Emerson seriously doubted that was anything more than circumstance, she’d been the one to point that out, and encourage Lattimore to think that was due to his own continued importance, because it kept him pacified. She’d learned very well how to keep President Lattimore happy over the four long years of his administration. She’d voted for Burke more to make her work life better than for any political reason, and she had to stifle a groan at finding herself here, again, babysitting Lattimore. Thank God Mrs. Lattimore was basically a cipher. Her husband was enough work.
Joss’s mind was whirling. Of course, she’d known that S.H.I.E.L.D. was worried about something, and that whatever it was, it was serious enough, and strange enough, to warrant the unheard-of move to actually use the Avengers for security at tonight’s event. She had been well-briefed on the bizarre plan to evacuate if that threat emerged, and clearly instructed not to ask questions. Joss had been Air Force; she knew how to keep her head down and her mouth shut. But they couldn’t keep her from seeing, or thinking.
So Joss knew some things. She knew that this was no bomb threat. You didn’t need the Avengers to deal with something like that. She also knew that, like President Lattimore, she was only here on this plane through coincidence. Joss knew enough about the Avengers to know that, ever since they’d been back from Wakanda, Steve Rogers never went far without Bucky Barnes. If Captain America was tasked with protecting the President, he wasn’t going to do it without his Sergeant. Which meant that, when the threat they feared had emerged, Barnes had instructions to just bundle Lattimore and his entourage up and bring them along so he’d be on hand to help Rogers with the real mission.
She shivered a little. Although she would die rather than let him know it, Joss had always kind of had a thing for Bucky Barnes, ever since Captain America had defied the whole world to rescue his lifelong friend from Hydra. Sure, Steve Rogers was a gorgeous hunk of heroic muscle, the personification of bravery and patriotism and all that crap. She wouldn’t kick him out of bed. But Bucky Barnes? That man was an absolute filthy-hot badass. Joss’s kryptonite. She’d spent more time on YouTube than was perhaps entirely normal, watching video of him making impossible shots and fighting with that stupid-sexy metal arm of his, pulling knives out of God knows where and flipping them around too fast for her to follow with her eyes, let alone try to emulate. Joss found the whole package so ridiculously erotic that she was, at this moment, squirming in her seat. And it wasn’t only because of the damn wildly uncomfortable thong she’d worn because she’d known she was going to meet him tonight and fuck if she was going to do it wearing granny panties.
She didn’t fool herself that The Avengers would let her help save the world, whatever the threat was this time. But she was here with them in an enclosed space, and this was her one chance to be close to them, so she decided to find out what, if anything, they’d tell her. And maybe, just maybe, get a chance to see if Bucky Barnes really smelled as good as she’d always imagined he would.
Making her way back through the jet, Joss saw him standing with Steve Rogers and Sharon Carter in the little galley at the rear of the jet’s cabin. Both Steve and Bucky had shed their tuxedo jackets and their bow ties hung down their chests from unbuttoned collars. As she approached, she saw Bucky look up and notice her, and felt a dirty roll low in her body, accompanied by a shocking jolt of nerves as he grinned at her.
As soon as Bucky moved a little forward to talk quietly with the Secret Service agent he’d been partnered with, Steve moved a little closer to Sharon.
“You all right?” He asked quietly.
“Of course,” she smiled. “Plan worked flawlessly. The President’s safe, and we even got a bonus President. What’s not to like?”
Steve frowned a little. “A lot. It’s getting a little hard to imagine that the energy signature we’re seeing, whatever it is, isn’t causing these phenomena.”
“You’re saying you’re afraid somebody’s figured out how to cause natural disasters.”
“I’m trying not to say that. But after this...”
“Well, if it’s true, then Captain America will stop them. Like always.” Sharon smiled up at Steve, and he felt the thrill he always did when she looked at him. He was getting very fond of the seemingly unshakable confidence she always showed in him. At the same time, Steve wished he shared that confidence. Or that the responsibility to stop somebody with the power to cause earthquakes and tornadoes rested on somebody else’s shoulders. That kind of power was terrifying. Steve sometimes wished he could afford to be terrified.
“What’s that look for?” She asked.
“Ask me again when we get to New York. Or maybe when this is over.”
Sharon’s eyes clouded a little. “I will. You can talk to me, you know.”
“I know. Just… not now.”
“OK. Can I kiss you, though? You look like a man who needs a kiss.”
“I am most definitely a man in need of a kiss.” His half-shy smile gave Sharon delicious chills down her spine.
She stepped into Steve’s arms, noticing as always how warm he was with that supersoldier metabolism, and reveling in the feeling of his rock-hard body against hers. Sharon was sometimes overwhelmed by how absolutely, spectacularly beautiful he was. But it was so much more than that.
Sharon knew what the look on Steve’s face had been about. It was about the crushing weight of responsibility Steve carried with him every moment of every day. Steve did everything he could to keep anyone from seeing how exhausting that was. But Sharon could see it. It was why she had come back to S.H.I.E.L.D. Sure, she’d responded to Director Coulson’s request, and understood his need for Agents around him he could trust implicitly. But she hadn’t come back for Director Coulson. She’d come back because she was in love with Steve Rogers, and S.H.I.E.L.D. was where she could be of the most help to him. She’d come back because, with the seemingly unhealable rift between the Avengers, Steve had needed all the friends he could get, and Sharon Carter was damn well going to be there for him.
She made no secret of her attraction to him. Hell, she was kissing him at this very moment. But Steve kept a wall around him that might as well have been made of vibranium. Theirs was the most casual possible dating relationship. Sharon had become Steve’s go-to when he needed a plus one for some event or other, but that was basically it. They had never even been on a real date. They’d certainly never slept together. They had meals together when they were both working in the same place. They talked, sometimes even about actual feelings and experiences and shit. But it was all so superficial.
She hated it, and not only because it was damn cold in the fucking friend zone. Sharon ached for how lonely and encumbered with his sense of obligation Steve Rogers was, knowing that he thought no one could see. That maybe he would be angry that she could see. She craved the chance to just hold him, run her hands through his hair and tell him it was OK to lay it all down for a while. To kiss him and caress him and make him forget, at least for a little while.
Sure, Steve had Bucky, and they were closer than brothers. But right now, Bucky was just beginning to integrate into the team, and even though his mind was clean again, his wounds weren’t something that were going to heal anytime soon. Steve would never burden Bucky with his own pain at a time like that. No, Steve would be there for him, lending him his own strength and doing whatever he could to help Bucky recover and build a life for himself, without any regard to what Steve needed.
Sharon wasn’t sure whether he would ever let her in, but she knew that whatever he needed from her, she would give. Steve was an icon of strength and bravery to the world, but to Sharon, he was a bruised, overtaxed man, trapped and tormented in a prison of his own making, feeling responsible for the safety of the whole world, and everyone in it. It frightened her, how much she loved him. She would give anything to be able to ease his pain, if only a little.
As she held back all the feelings she was so afraid to share with him, settling for a tender caress of his lower lip with hers, Sharon tried to will some of her confidence into Steve. She tried to pour some of her strength into him through the hands she splayed on his back under his jacket, sliding them across his bunched muscles with a little thrill. OK, maybe a larger-than-average thrill. Not that Steve needed strength, exactly. What he needed was the will to keep taking the fate of the world onto himself, crisis after crisis, day after day. Like today. Another damn emergency, Sharon thought. When he was already exhausted. When would he get a break?
“You get him settled?” Bucky asked Agent Emerson as he slid lazily onto the credenza just outside the galley where Steve and Sharon were having a moment. Joss sat next to him, willing herself not to lean in and press her nose to his neck. Because damn it, he did smell as good as she’d always imagined. Shit.
“He’s fine. Got a drink into him, started him telling Agent Thomas stories of his glory days.”
Bucky grinned. “You’re good with him, Agent Emerson.”
“Joss. Please.”
“Joss.” Ok, now she was wet. Bucky Barnes had said her name, just said her name, and that was all it took before her idiotic, miserable thong was soaked and she was ready to lay him out on the floor in front of the President of the United States. Two, in fact.
“So. What can you tell me?” She asked, taking a breath she hoped would stop the hormones flooding into her system.
“Not much. We don’t know much. Just enough to be concerned about the President at that event. What we were afraid of happened, so here we are.”
“And what was that? What were you afraid of?”
Bucky hesitated over his next words. “I’m sorry. I can’t say.” He watched Joss Emerson absorb that. She didn’t look any happier about it than he’d be in her place.
“Right.” She nodded stiffly. “Just… I know whatever the threat is, it’s not a bomb. And I know that I’m no Avenger. I’m not even S.H.I.E.L.D. But I am Secret Service, which means I’m trained and I know how to keep my mouth shut. It also means I’m sworn to protect him.” She indicated the President over her shoulder. “Just don’t forget I’m here. We, I mean. We’re here.” She blushed and indicated the other Secret Service agents on the plane with an embarrassed flick of her hand.
“Don’t worry. You’ll get him back to yourselves quick enough.” Bucky grinned. He could relate to her wanting to get these interlopers out of the way of her job. He’d have felt the same way.
“It’s more than that. I’m offering to help. With… whatever this is.”
“Well, I hope we won’t need it. But if we do, I know where to find you. And your two guns and five knives.”
“Three and seven, actually,” she said with a smirk that Bucky could feel in his chest. “I picked up a few on the way out of the ballroom.”
“Huh. I saw the MP5. What else?”
She looked at him for a second, then apparently decided he was serious and poked two fingers down into the thick French twist at the back of her head. And pulled a Gerber 06 from inside it.
Bucky broke into an intrigued smile as she handed it to him but, rather than look down at the folding knife, he watched her smooth out her dark hair again. He realized he really liked it. The way she was wearing it right now was all business, but he could tell there was a lot of it and he kind of wanted to pull out whatever was holding it and let it fall around her shoulders. In fact, now that he really looked at her, Bucky was suddenly struck by the fact that Agent Joss Emerson was actually a bombshell. And the way her brown eyes sparkled as she pulled a tac knife from her hair – a Gerber 06 switchblade, no less – suggested that she had a wild streak. Interesting.
But it was when she pulled a Benchmade Infidel from one of the cutouts at her waist that Bucky started to think this was a girl he’d like to get to know. He whistled low and took it from her, flicking the long, thin blade out the front. “Sweet,” he breathed.
“Yeah. It’s my favorite, actually.”
“The President know you have one of these? They’re illegal in some states.”
“You kidding? I’m sitting like this so he won’t see it. If he does, he’s gonna want to play with it some more.”
“I guess he was a SEAL. Probably isn’t afraid of a little steel.”
“Just the opposite. The press gives him a hard time about his guns, calls him ammosexual. Uh-uh. Man’s all about knives.”
“Speaking of SEALs, I just got this,” Bucky said, pulling his new SOG Seal Strike from a sheath at the small of his back.
Joss’s eyes went wide. “Oh, that is nice…” She took it from him and he watched her test the weight and balance. Just the way she handled it showed Bucky that this was a woman who knew knives.
“Wanna see the best one?”
“Yeah,” she gushed.
Suddenly, out of nowhere, Joss could feel a point pressing against her ribs. She looked down to see that Bucky was holding an evil-looking, matte black push dagger against her. She wasn’t sure whether it was the fact that she hadn’t even seen him move, or the wicked grin on his face that made her heart stutter. Either way, she was pretty sure somewhere a cardiologist was feeling a disturbance in the Force.
“You think my switch is illegal? I’m pretty sure I’m not even supposed to be looking at that.”
Bucky liked her reaction. A lot. For the next ten minutes, they admired the small knife, meant to be held in a fist and punched into the body. Bucky had designed this one, and had a lot to say about it.
Aft of them, in the galley, Sharon bumped a hip against Steve and pointed at the weapons show and tell happening a few feet away. Turning, Steve took in the scene and raised an eyebrow, then laughed quietly. He was shaking his head when he turned back to Sharon, but his fond grin and the warm note in his voice belied his attempt to appear to disapprove. “Believe it or not, that’s flirtation for Bucky.”
“That’s terrifying.”
“Yeah, well,” Steve chuckled. “Buck’s got a very particular type.”
The way Bucky’s grey-blue eyes looked at her over his wide, easy smile made Joss wonder whether they’d lost cabin pressure. She actually thought she might lose consciousness, the way her head was spinning. She realized suddenly that this might have been a mistake. Maybe she shouldn’t be sitting here, her leg actually touching Bucky Barnes’s knee, their hands touching repeatedly as they examined the custom push dagger. It was one thing to do a little bit of – OK, a not unobsessive amount of – fangirling over a good-looking famous dude. But this was The Job. She started to question the wisdom of offering her services in this situation, because she couldn’t be sure she would be able to concentrate the way she needed to with Bucky Barnes around.
When he saw her face change, Bucky figured the reason was fairly obvious.
“Listen,” he said, sliding the knife back into wherever he’d pulled it from. “I understand you wantin’ to be in the loop. Believe me. Nobody’s tryin’ to cut you out of anything; we got nothing but respect for you guys. It’s just… shit tends to get weird around us. Well, that’s not exactly right. We go where shit’s already weird. Anyway, the point is, you don’t want any of this.”
Joss nodded. “I don’t want anybody to fuck with my President, either, but if they do, I’ll be there. That’s all I’m saying. I’m here.”
“With an O6 in your hair,” he grinned. “Got it. If there’s a role for you, I won’t hesitate. Promise.” Huh, Bucky thought, realizing he actually meant that.
*****
Sam Wilson could be a charming guy. An entertaining guy. A guy who could catch the attention of a roomful of thugs and keep it, if the need arose.
The need arose.
He could see Agent Herrera looking around whatever this place was, and it was obvious from the way her eyes took in everything that she knew what she was doing. Twice now, one of Arias’s goons had noticed her basically casing the joint and rudely barked at her to sit back down at the table.
She never did. She’d stand there for a while, but Sam watched her in his peripheral vision and recognized her gradual, inevitable drift away again, always toward one of the doors. He decided to help her, launching into a long, somewhat fact-based series of stories about his early days testing the EXO-7 for the Air Force. The more Sam crashed, the more they laughed. Even Arias was diverted for a while. It wasn’t until he saw Herrera glide silently back into the room from one of the open doors that Sam finally stopped spinning tales. Her timing was good; he was running out of lies. But the look Herrera gave him told Sam that she’d found what she’d been looking for.
Two hours after arriving at Arias’s bunker, or whatever it was, Sam and Agent Herrera were chauffeured back to the hotel where the Presidential event was to have taken place. They sat next to one another on the back seat, saying little, and nothing important. Sam had no doubt that whatever they said would be recorded, or at least reported back to Arias. He also had no doubt that Herrera had seen something. She was almost bursting out of her skin, vibrating with excitement even as she schooled her expression to seem bland.
The hotel was unscathed by the night’s events, other than the unholy mess left behind by the herd of overgroomed assholes trying to push their way out when the evacuation began. Sam led Agent Herrera past the doors to the ballroom and down an out-of-the-way hall to a small conference room where a S.H.I.E.L.D. agent they both knew stood guard. They all nodded to each other, and the guard stepped aside to allow Sam to guide Agent Herrera in with a hand on the small of her back.
Sam didn’t even wait long enough to acknowledge anyone in the room. The second the door closed, he had a hand around Herrera’s upper arm and pulled her around to face him.
“What?” He asked, standing too close to her in his eagerness to hear what she had to say. She didn’t seem to notice, because she was just as eager to tell him what she’d seen. She was actually panting a little, her deep brown eyes shining with excitement. Sam’s body noticed. He was a professional, sure, but he was still a man, and… Holy shit.
“That place,” Herrera began. “Arias’s lair, or whatever you want to call it. It’s got an insane amount of power running to it.”
“What do you mean?”
“Did you notice all the pipes and tubes running along the ceiling in that underground garage? Some of them were for water, steam, whatever, but a lot of them – most of them, were conduits for electrical wires. There were way too many of them, and some of them had to have high-voltage electrical wiring in them. And those doors from that… conference room or whatever. Two of them led to corridors, just basically concrete hallways with more pipes and conduits running along them. It’s underground, and it’s concrete, right? So there’s no way to hide them, and why would you in a place like that? So I got a good look at them, and I’m telling you, that place has more power running into it than most skyscrapers. There’s something big and power-hungry down there to need that much electricity feeding it.”
As she was speaking, Natasha and Bruce had come over to listen. They both had questions that began general and very quickly got technical enough that they left Sam in their dust. He looked over at Clint, who was squatting on a table watching something on a monitor. Strolling closer, Sam saw that it was video of the tornado. He gasped.
“Mother of- Is that the one here?”
“Yeah, but don’t get too excited. As tornadoes go, it’s kind of a piece of shit. Only an EF-2, and it wasn’t on the ground for more than ten minutes.”
“Well, you sure sounded excited when you saw it,” Sam noted.
“I know, and it’s kinda buggin’ me. It looked big. I mean, it was dark and all, but with the city lights illuminating the clouds, I could still see it pretty good, and it seemed… I don’t know. Something’s off about it. Something about the whole storm just doesn’t look right. Bruce has some fancy-ass meteorologist working on it. She’s meeting us in New York.”
Sam watched the video, thinking that if this tornado didn’t impress Clint, he definitely wouldn’t want to see one that did. It looked wicked.
“Hey,” Clint said quietly, nudging Sam with his elbow and sliding his eyes over toward the group who were excitedly discussing the power lines Agent Herrera had seen in the underground facility Arias had called “Site B.”
“What’s she like?” Clint asked in an amused undertone, indicating Agent Herrera.
“She’s a professional woman doin’ a job, is what she’s like, you sexist shithead.”
“Uh-huh,” Clint grinned. “You got nowhere with her.”
“I wasn’t tryna… Man, shut the hell up,” Sam screeched, trying to stay quiet. He gave Clint the dirtiest look he could manage, then stalked back over to the group to rejoin the discussion of what Herrera had seen.
Clint just laughed.
*****
The flight from Washington D.C. to New York was just over an hour long, but the general atmosphere among those who piled into the obscenely luxurious vehicle for the drive from the private airfield to Stark Tower was one of exhaustion. Joss wasn’t sure what to call this thing; the closest thing she could come up with was “Limo Bus”. Everyone from the plane sat on the plush, curvy seats that lined both sides of the vehicle, while Tony Stark offered them a variety of drinks from the semicircular bar – an actual damn bar - that curved out between two of the long seats on one side. Everything that wasn’t black was red and gold, including the neon light that poured out from under the seats and across the ceiling.
Joss must have shaken her head, or made a face, because Tony stopped his manic bartending and pointed at her accusingly.
“You don’t like my bus,” he snapped, keeping his finger in the air, directed at her, as he scowled.
“I’m expecting strippers any moment,” she blurted before she could think better of it.
President Lattimore, on her left, sucked in his breath in disapproval. “Joss, for heaven’s sake. The man is our host.”
Joss, appalled and mortified, began to sputter. “I’m sorry, Mr. Stark. I didn’t mean to… I just… It’s… a lot.”
“I’m a lot, Miss Secret Service. And just for that, no cocktail for you.”
With that, he turned his head and began taking drink orders from those on the other side of the bar, dismissing her entirely.
Joss suddenly liked the red neon light very much, because it hid the deep blush she knew was the reason her entire face was burning. It didn’t help that she could hear Bucky Barnes snickering on the other side of President Lattimore.
The former President held his drink out to her, leaning in too close. “I’d be happy to share mine with you.”
“Thank you, Sir, but I’m on duty anyway.”
Joss didn’t say another word for the rest of the way to Stark Tower.
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