Fic for igrockspock: Time and Place | Maria Hill/Nick Fury | PG
Title: Time and Place
Author: circ_bamboo
Recipient: igrockspock
Rating: PG (language)
Universe: Movie
Pairing/Characters: Maria Hill/Nick Fury, Natasha Romanov
Word Count: 4200
Disclaimer: I do not own anything, nor am I making any money off of any of this.
Summary: Maria Hill gets tapped for a society gig, with Nick Fury as her dinner partner for the evening.
Warnings: Nick Fury's mouth
Notes: Thanks to A for beta work.
“Hill, what size bra do you wear?”
Of all the things that Director Fury had asked her over the intercom, that was . . . not the strangest, but certainly in the top ten. She blinked at the speaker for a moment before touching the button and saying, “It’s in my file, Director.”
A moment passed, and then Director Fury’s voice came again, saying, “My office, Hill.”
“Be there in a moment.”
She appeared in Fury’s office a moment later to find Agent Romanov pulling her catsuit back on, apparently completely unconcerned that the door had opened and that Director Fury was a few feet away. Not that Maria herself would have cared, having been in the military, but still. She at least recognized that it would be the standard response. “Director,” she said, turning to him.
“Agent Hill,” he said, and gestured to a dark-green pile of fabric on the back of a chair. “Try that on.”
‘That’ turned out to be an evening gown, with a close-fitted bodice, satin giving way to sheer fabric above a sweetheart neckline, and a full skirt below. Maria held it up to herself; it looked like it was a tad short, but that otherwise it would probably fit. “Right here?” she asked.
“You’re going to need help getting into it,” Natasha said, adjusting the zipper.
Maria could have pointed out that there were approximately ninety-seven rooms in the building that were empty, or close to empty, or at least didn’t have Director Nick Fury in them, but it wasn’t worth it, and she sat down to unzip her boots.
A few minutes later, Natasha was helping her zip and hook up the bodice, and Director Fury was pointedly not looking her direction. “Can you breathe?” Natasha said.
“Yes, it’s fine,” Maria said, reaching into the front to resettle her breasts. “Actually, it seems to fit perfectly.”
“Oh?” Fury said, and turned to look. “It’s a little short.”
The hem of the dress just touched the ground; if Maria put on shoes with too much of a heel, it would, actually, be too short.
“That doesn’t make sense,” Natasha said. “If they mistook my measurements, shouldn’t it be all my measurements?”
“You’d think,” Fury said, and shook his head. “No, clearly Maria’s the better choice.”
“The better choice for what?” Maria asked, and added a belated, “sir.”
“Agent Romanov was supposed to be my dinner partner for the Children's Relief Fund benefit tonight,” Fury said. “That dress was supposed to be specially tailored for her. The tailors failed, and it would take more than the four hours we have to get another dress worked up like that one.”
“Worked up how?” It seemed to be a normal ball gown, if ‘normal’ and ‘ball gown’ were things that Maria usually dealt with. Natasha usually got the high-society undercover gigs. Maria got to argue with the military and holler at new recruits until they stopped being useless. It played to their strengths: Natasha was a spy, and Maria was a soldier.
“Check the seams,” Natasha said.
There, just below her hips, were two pockets, sealed with some sort of material that came apart at her touch and then resealed, invisible when closed.
“The pockets are lined,” Natasha said. “You can get into any building, even through an airport, with whatever you want in there. Also, all four of the stays come out; you can use them as stilettos. The trim around the edge of the bodice pulls out and you can use it as a rope or garrotte or whatever you need it for. Last, but not least--” She smiled, showing a few too many teeth. “--the crinoline is pre-slitted to rip into a long strip that will easily twist into a rope about twenty yards long.”
Maria picked up the end of the skirt and looked at the crinoline, which looked innocuous enough. “Cool,” she said. “How much weight will the rope hold?”
“Enough,” Fury said. “Meet me out front at seven-thirty; we’ll get to the benefit at eight.”
“Should I pick you up a boutonniere, sir?” Maria asked.
“That’s enough from you, Agent Hill.” He pointed to the door. “Go. You’ve got three and a half hours, and you probably need to buy shoes or something.”
“Sir, that’s a profoundly sexist stereotype,” Maria said, completely straight-faced.
“Yeah, well, I’m an angry black man, so go.”
“Just for that, I’m taking Natasha with me, sir.”
“Good. Get her out of my hair, too.”
Maria picked up her clothing and boots and marched out of the room without looking back.
Walking through the halls of SHIELD HQ wearing a ball gown was, again, not the strangest thing she’d done recently, but was still odd. Once she got out of earshot of Fury’s office, she turned to Natasha, who was behind her but somehow not following her, and said, “I do actually need shoes, but you don’t have to come with me.”
“You also need hair and makeup,” Natasha said. “We have barely enough time for that, let alone that plus shoe-shopping. At least your underwear is acceptable.”
Maria flushed. She was wearing black boy-cut shorts because they showed marginally less under the catsuit than other options, and she hated going commando. The dress didn’t need a bra, thank goodness, because she certainly didn’t own a strapless bra. She patted her hair, up in its usual flat bun, and said, “It’s going to take three and a half hours for hair and makeup?”
Natasha raised an eyebrow at her. “How many of these have you gone to?”
“Um.” She’d skipped her senior prom and had never regretted it.
“That’s what I thought. Come on.”
* * *
“Why can’t I wear nude pantyhose?”
“Haven’t you even passed by the covers of fashion magazines in the last two years?”
“...Maybe?”
“Ugh. No. No nude pantyhose.”
“Suntan?”
“Maria.”
* * *
At seven-fifteen, Maria was pacing around one of the conference rooms with Natasha sitting in a nearby chair, watching her walk. “They’ll be fine,” Natasha said. “Enough heel that you’re still noticeably wearing heels, low enough that you won’t trip and the skirt isn’t hanging in midair. I’ve seen you wearing higher heels around here.”
“Yes, but they’re new shoes, and I usually wear socks under my boots,” Maria said, wiggling her heel in her left shoe to check the elastic around her ankle. She wasn’t wearing any hose at all, Natasha having rejected the black pair as ‘unnecessary,’ and she was afraid the straps on the shoes were going to pinch.
“Besides,” Natasha said, “if something happens, you’re just going to rip the shoes off anyway.”
“It’s true,” Maria said, forcing herself to forget about the shoes. “And you promise my hair won’t go anywhere?”
“With the number of pins and the amount of product I used, it’s not moving.” Natasha sounded so final that Maria was forced to believe her, despite the fact that it just plain felt precarious, what with the little bits around her face. “Just remember not to rub your eyes before you get there, and you’ll be fine.”
“I feel like I’m in the school play,” Maria said, one last gripe, and clapped her hands together. “Okay. Hair, makeup, shoes, weapons.” She had a knife and a small gun in her pockets, and surprisingly they didn’t ruin the line of the dress. “Do I need anything else?”
Natasha looked at her critically, and said, “Jewelry.” She dug in her bag and came up with a pair of small, sparkly earrings, and a pendant on a very thin gold chain. “The chain will break if you tug on it. If you lose it, that’s fine.” She helped Maria with the necklace and let her put in the earrings herself. “There. You have ID on you, right?”
Maria nodded.
“Here’s the lipstick; that’s about all you can repair yourself. If you need a wholescale fix, call me. I can’t imagine why; if your makeup goes south, the whole op is probably going to be called, but still.”
Maria nodded again and put the small tube in the tiny purse that went with the dress.
“You’ve read the folder? You know who we’re looking for?”
“Natasha, technically I outrank you,” Maria said. “I’m pretty sure I can handle this.”
Natasha gave her a look that would have been thoroughly insubordinate if it were anyone else. “Yes, sir,” she said under her breath. “Next time I’ll leave you to do your makeup on your own.”
“Now, wait a second,” Maria said, and they both chuckled.
* * *
“Well, you clean up pretty well, Hill,” Director Fury said.
“So do you, sir,” Maria said. It was true; he’d shed his leather for a black-on-black tuxedo. Silver cufflinks and a tie tack sparkled, and she suspected they weren’t actually what they seemed.
(Sometimes it amused her that she lived in a world where James Bond-like spy gadgets were the norm, and then she remembered that she had to put up with Tony Stark to get a surprising number of them, and she was significantly less amused.)
“Nick,” he said. “And you’re Maria.”
“Right. Nick.” Because he was invited to the benefit as Colonel Nick Fury, and she was there as his plus-one, fortunately as herself. There was no way she could pretend to be any of Natasha’s aliases, even if she’d had red hair. “Shouldn’t you be wearing your dress uniform?”
He snorted. “I could have,” he said, “but I didn’t. Let’s go.”
Well. Okay then.
* * *
They took a limo, driven by another SHIELD agent; on the ride over, they went over a few details of the op. It wasn’t that complicated; some terrorist organization calling themselves the United Damage Front had made a veiled threat made against several of the important people who were all to be attending the event that night, but it wasn’t big enough to bring in the full resources of SHIELD. (Which--honestly, had they not bothered to Google their acronym? UDF made Maria think of the ice cream place near her Nana’s house, not explosions.)
They needed a couple of people on the inside, and Nick Fury had been able to wrangle an invitation for himself. It was very professional, and when they arrived at the hotel, Maria went to open her door, but stopped when Fury’s--Nick’s hand came down on her arm. “Nope,” he said. “My side.”
She frowned at him, but a moment later, the driver opened Nick’s door, which was facing the sidewalk. Nick got out, and held his hand out for Maria. She took it, sliding across the seat and getting out of the car--and then she froze.
Nick Fury was smiling at her, and it was genuine. It was also profoundly unsettling. “Come on, Maria,” he said, and he sounded warm as he held out his arm.
She took it, still hesitant--had his brain been hijacked?--and before they reached the door, he leaned over and murmured, “Step it up, Hill. This is an op.”
Oh. He was pretending like they were actually on a date date, instead of just two people together at a party. Well. She could do that. No, really. Even if it was her boss--Nick Fucking Fury, Director of SHIELD and class-A badass--with his hand over hers on his arm. She turned to him and smiled.
His look turned from warm to warmly amused, and he chuckled. “You don’t have to try that hard.” By then, they’d gone through the door and turned the corner to find the ballroom.
“I don’t do society gigs, Nick,” she said through a half-smile. She didn’t. If SHIELD needed seduction and then ass-kicking in high heels, they went to Natasha or, well, basically anyone other than Maria. She was ex-military, with twenty-odd years of being a tomboy under her belt. Analysis and impersonation of other law-enforcement officers she did very well; playing the ingenue, not so much.
“Tonight you do, sweetheart,” Nick said right as they walked the door into the ballroom.
Which, well, looked like a ballroom with a several-thousand-dollar-a-head benefit going on inside. A bar was set up on one side, a line of tables with different kinds of food and chefs on the back, and tables lined the third side. The middle was taken up with a dance floor of sorts, and a band occupied the corner. Maria thought she recognized Mayor Bloomberg dancing with his girlfriend, and a pair of Hollywood stars who were currently on Broadway were doing shots at the bar.
She was terrified, but she’d faced down worse with less backup.
“Something to drink?” Nick said.
“Yes, please,” she said, although she knew he didn’t mean the fun kind.
Before they even made it to the bar, they were accosted by the governor; Nick kept his hand on Maria’s waist as he introduced her, making obvious the purported relationship between them. Maria did her best to smile and be polite but essentially not memorable.
Three conversations later, Maria finally had her drink--cola and grenadine syrup, nothing interesting--and Nick had a gin and tonic, hold the gin. There were two or three hundred people in the room, and they all seemed to want to talk to him and ogle her, which was a little strange, but it did give her an opportunity to observe. So she did.
She might not have been much at being a society lady, but she was still trained in observation and analysis. The group of men by the second table from the left were undoubtedly engaged in some sort of illegal transaction, but Maria would guess it was either cocaine or insider trading and nothing that they were interested in. The grande dame next to the bar was mixing alcohol and painkillers, and she was hoping to sleep with the attractive young man on her arm, who clearly wasn’t interested.
More importantly, there were twenty-five different kinds of chocolate truffles at the tables of food, and Maria was definitely going to have to try those before the evening was over.
“Oh, shit, it’s Ross,” Nick said in her ear in between conversations. “I don’t want to talk to his ass.” He backed off a couple inches and said, “Maria, they’re playing our song. Want to dance?”
The song was “Beyond the Sea,” which Maria mostly knew because it had been in Finding Nemo. She really hoped if she were ever in a relationship with someone, that “Beyond the Sea” would not be their song. “Sure,” she said.
She wasn’t much of a dancer, but fortunately, neither was he; he rested a hand on the middle of her back and steered her around in circles, no fancy footwork required. “Do you even know this song?” she asked.
“Yeah, of course,” he said. “It was in that movie, with the clownfish.”
Well.
“There’s a lot of weird motherfuckers here, but no one suspicious yet,” he said a couple minutes later, his lips yet again by her ear, holding her almost to his chest. “You see anything?”
“That depends, sir. Do you want to bust the numbskulls in the corner for cocaine, or maybe insider trading?”
He chuckled. “Probably both. Not my turf.”
“Then I got nothing.”
“Keep an eye out.”
“Always, sir.” She barely resisted saying, You too.
“Nick.”
“Nick.” It was never going to be normal to call him by his first name, but it was somehow getting more normal to dance with him, to see him smile at her, to have his hand at her waist or his shoulder bumping into hers. That was, well, really strange. “You know,” she said, “there’s a whole table full of chocolate about twenty feet that way, and I’m certain that the people who are standing at it are very suspicious.”
“Chocolate? Seriously?” His shoulder quaked under her hand as he laughed.
“Let me have my hundred-dollar truffles, Nick, and I won’t tell anyone about the bag of peanut M & Ms in your desk drawer.”
“Don’t think I didn’t notice that the bag spontaneously becomes lighter when it’s evaluation time.”
“I always replace it,” she said.
“Which means you can get your own damn bag.”
By then they were at the table full of truffles, and Maria thought she would possibly explode with joy, just looking at the table. Nick stood beside her, looking for all the world like an indulgent date, but she could feel the tension in his arm as it brushed hers as he watched the room. “Couple of guys with earpieces just walked into the room,” he muttered. “Oh, shit--there’s another one by the exit behind the band--get down!”
Just as he said ‘down,’ gunshots rang out, and Maria threw herself under the table, hidden by the tablecloth. Nick--no, Director Fury--joined her a moment later, cell phone already in hand as he frantically dialed. “Shit,” he said again, barely loud enough for her to hear over the chaos in the main part of the ballroom. “They killed the cell, or they’ve got a blocker or something.”
“So backup’s on its way, but no intel?” Maria had dropped her purse on the other side of the table, so she didn’t have a cell phone or her lipstick, but everything else was in her pockets. She pulled out the knife and the gun, for now.
“Right,” he said. “What do you have on you?”
“One gun, one knife, and the stuff in the dress, plus my SHIELD ID.”
“I’ve got three knives, another gun, two of these--” He pulled out an object about the size and shape of a film canister; Maria recognized it as one of the mini smoke bombs that R & D had cooked up recently. “--and the camera and sensors.” He tapped the tie tack and cufflinks. “But they’re useless now. What’s on the table above us?”
“Truffles,” she said. “I doubt they’re flammable, and they make lousy projectiles.”
“They’re not,” he said. “Also, I don’t have a lighter; do you?”
“Nope,” she said. “Stupid.”
Over the din of the crowd, she heard, “--where is he?--eyepatch!”
Obviously Fury did, too, because he looked at her and rolled his eye. “Amateurs,” he said. “I bet we could take ‘em out in thirty seconds, flat.”
“With two guns, three knives, two smoke bombs, some lengths of rope, and four stiletto-type blades?” Maria said.
Fury raised an eyebrow at her.
“Fifteen seconds, at most.” She grinned at him, and he grinned back.
Big words aside, they really needed to know where everyone was in the room in order to do anything. “Move over, sir,” she said, and lay flat on her back, twitching the tablecloth out of the way so she could see into the room.
Her angle was bad, but she could see well enough. The bulk of the guests and staff had been herded into the space right in front of the band, crowding together. There were three men with large black hats--definitely amateurs, Maria thought--and guns keeping everyone together, and another two who were standing in front of the main door.
“Five,” she said without moving. “Well, five that I can see: three keeping the group together, and two in front of the main door. None by the emergency exit, but they all appear to have guns, so they probably think they’ve got it covered.”
“So what’s the plan?”
“You’re the director; you figure it out,” she said, grinning before she sobered. “I think we can’t go out there without a smoke bomb, but if we do that, we’re probably going to lose at least one of the people in the fight. I can probably pick two or three of them off, total, before we lose the element of surprise. I didn’t see anyone in the crowd who could help us, but I bet at least one of them will try.”
“If it’s Bloomberg, I’m gonna kick his scrawny ass,” Fury muttered. “If you can pick two of them off, I can get the other three, but we have to take them alive since they haven’t done anything other than be vaguely threatening yet.”
“I can do that, sir,” she said.
“I think we’re going to need your rope before we get out there, though,” he said. “What’s happening?”
She looked back out again, and said, “They’re going through the crowd and taking Rolexes and diamonds while they’re at it, sir. We’ve got a couple minutes.”
“Okay,” he said, and reached for her feet.
Curling up to her elbows, she watched him poke around the edge of her crinoline, trying to find the end where the rip would start. She thought about protesting, saying that she could do it herself, but it was a little cramped under the table and it was probably best if she let him help, even if it meant he’d be, well, up her skirt.
Which he was, about thirty seconds later, hands close enough to her bare skin that she could feel a faint wash of heat. She drew in a sharp breath and he looked up at her, face intense. “Don’t think I didn’t notice that, Hill, but this is neither the time nor place.”
It was on the tip of her tongue to say, “I have no idea what you’re talking about, sir,” or to make some sort of acidic remark about fraternization, and for the life of her, she had no idea why she didn’t. Instead she just gave a short, sharp nod and started twisting the strip of fabric into a rope.
Really, was there ever a time or place to realize one’s completely inappropriate attraction to one’s boss? Who already bent or flat-out ignored all the rules he didn’t like?
She finished twisting the rope and looped it around her left wrist; pulling the other, smaller rope off her bodice, she stuffed it into a pocket. “What’s next, sir?”
“Smoke bomb still needs a light,” he said, picking up the tiny canister and turning it over in his hands. “What do we got for that?”
“The nearest fire, if it hasn’t gone out, is a chafing dish right above our heads,” she said. “And I think--” There was a bag of marshmallows on the floor next to her, and she grinned. “I got this.”
She lay back down flat, reached into her bosom, resolutely ignored the muffled noise coming from Fury, and pulled out one of the corset-top stays, careful not to nick herself on the edge. Spearing a marshmallow, she crept out from under the table, towards the wall. The bad guys were still monologuing--where did they get their training?--and no one appeared to notice her as she gingerly stuck the stay out . . . just a little bit farther . . . And seven years of Girl Scout camp stood her in good stead as she lit the marshmallow on fire and pulled it back under the table.
From there, everything went rather quickly.
Fury lit the smoke bomb, and threw it to land just behind the crowd. Maria stood up and shot both men by the door in the knees before they could get off a shot. The crowd panicked, of course, and gave cover for Fury and Maria to go get the other three by the band. He tackled one, she tackled the other, and the band had apparently had time to put their instruments down because when Maria looked over, the bass player was sitting on the third guy’s chest and two of the horn players were holding down his legs. The pianist was holding his gun with a look on her face that bordered on horror, and Fury barked, “Set it down.”
She did, jerking her hand away as soon as the metal touched the floor, and then ducked out of sight.
“Did anyone get the assholes by the door?” Fury called out.
“Yes, sir!” someone replied. The smoke bomb wasn’t clearing out very fast in the closed-off ballroom so she couldn’t see the person speaking, but she heard the military in his voice clearly.
“Well, good. Somebody call the police! And give me a goddamn hand with this guy.”
An hour later, SHIELD and the NYPD had showed up and had things well in hand. The terrorists were en route to either the hospital or the police station, the crowd was dispersing, and Maria was free to collect her shoes and about ten truffles, carefully wrapped in a napkin.
On second thought, she grabbed five extra. She did owe Natasha, after all.
As she headed for the door and her ride back to HQ, she heard Fury call her name out, and she turned. “You forgot this,” he said, holding out the stay with the remains of the burnt marshmallow at the end of it.
“Thank you, sir,” she said, taking it from him, still straight-faced. Then (and she would never know why she said it): “About that other thing--”
“Still not the time, Hill,” he said. “But the time might be tomorrow at 2000. You know where the place might be?”
“Angelo’s on 55th, sir.”
“See you then, Hill.”
“Yes, sir.” She had to work very hard to keep the smile off her face.
“I gotta go convince Bloomberg to stop trying to speak Spanish now.”
“Good luck, sir.” She gave up and grinned.
Fury smiled back. “Yeah, something like that.”
Author: circ_bamboo
Recipient: igrockspock
Rating: PG (language)
Universe: Movie
Pairing/Characters: Maria Hill/Nick Fury, Natasha Romanov
Word Count: 4200
Disclaimer: I do not own anything, nor am I making any money off of any of this.
Summary: Maria Hill gets tapped for a society gig, with Nick Fury as her dinner partner for the evening.
Warnings: Nick Fury's mouth
Notes: Thanks to A for beta work.
“Hill, what size bra do you wear?”
Of all the things that Director Fury had asked her over the intercom, that was . . . not the strangest, but certainly in the top ten. She blinked at the speaker for a moment before touching the button and saying, “It’s in my file, Director.”
A moment passed, and then Director Fury’s voice came again, saying, “My office, Hill.”
“Be there in a moment.”
She appeared in Fury’s office a moment later to find Agent Romanov pulling her catsuit back on, apparently completely unconcerned that the door had opened and that Director Fury was a few feet away. Not that Maria herself would have cared, having been in the military, but still. She at least recognized that it would be the standard response. “Director,” she said, turning to him.
“Agent Hill,” he said, and gestured to a dark-green pile of fabric on the back of a chair. “Try that on.”
‘That’ turned out to be an evening gown, with a close-fitted bodice, satin giving way to sheer fabric above a sweetheart neckline, and a full skirt below. Maria held it up to herself; it looked like it was a tad short, but that otherwise it would probably fit. “Right here?” she asked.
“You’re going to need help getting into it,” Natasha said, adjusting the zipper.
Maria could have pointed out that there were approximately ninety-seven rooms in the building that were empty, or close to empty, or at least didn’t have Director Nick Fury in them, but it wasn’t worth it, and she sat down to unzip her boots.
A few minutes later, Natasha was helping her zip and hook up the bodice, and Director Fury was pointedly not looking her direction. “Can you breathe?” Natasha said.
“Yes, it’s fine,” Maria said, reaching into the front to resettle her breasts. “Actually, it seems to fit perfectly.”
“Oh?” Fury said, and turned to look. “It’s a little short.”
The hem of the dress just touched the ground; if Maria put on shoes with too much of a heel, it would, actually, be too short.
“That doesn’t make sense,” Natasha said. “If they mistook my measurements, shouldn’t it be all my measurements?”
“You’d think,” Fury said, and shook his head. “No, clearly Maria’s the better choice.”
“The better choice for what?” Maria asked, and added a belated, “sir.”
“Agent Romanov was supposed to be my dinner partner for the Children's Relief Fund benefit tonight,” Fury said. “That dress was supposed to be specially tailored for her. The tailors failed, and it would take more than the four hours we have to get another dress worked up like that one.”
“Worked up how?” It seemed to be a normal ball gown, if ‘normal’ and ‘ball gown’ were things that Maria usually dealt with. Natasha usually got the high-society undercover gigs. Maria got to argue with the military and holler at new recruits until they stopped being useless. It played to their strengths: Natasha was a spy, and Maria was a soldier.
“Check the seams,” Natasha said.
There, just below her hips, were two pockets, sealed with some sort of material that came apart at her touch and then resealed, invisible when closed.
“The pockets are lined,” Natasha said. “You can get into any building, even through an airport, with whatever you want in there. Also, all four of the stays come out; you can use them as stilettos. The trim around the edge of the bodice pulls out and you can use it as a rope or garrotte or whatever you need it for. Last, but not least--” She smiled, showing a few too many teeth. “--the crinoline is pre-slitted to rip into a long strip that will easily twist into a rope about twenty yards long.”
Maria picked up the end of the skirt and looked at the crinoline, which looked innocuous enough. “Cool,” she said. “How much weight will the rope hold?”
“Enough,” Fury said. “Meet me out front at seven-thirty; we’ll get to the benefit at eight.”
“Should I pick you up a boutonniere, sir?” Maria asked.
“That’s enough from you, Agent Hill.” He pointed to the door. “Go. You’ve got three and a half hours, and you probably need to buy shoes or something.”
“Sir, that’s a profoundly sexist stereotype,” Maria said, completely straight-faced.
“Yeah, well, I’m an angry black man, so go.”
“Just for that, I’m taking Natasha with me, sir.”
“Good. Get her out of my hair, too.”
Maria picked up her clothing and boots and marched out of the room without looking back.
Walking through the halls of SHIELD HQ wearing a ball gown was, again, not the strangest thing she’d done recently, but was still odd. Once she got out of earshot of Fury’s office, she turned to Natasha, who was behind her but somehow not following her, and said, “I do actually need shoes, but you don’t have to come with me.”
“You also need hair and makeup,” Natasha said. “We have barely enough time for that, let alone that plus shoe-shopping. At least your underwear is acceptable.”
Maria flushed. She was wearing black boy-cut shorts because they showed marginally less under the catsuit than other options, and she hated going commando. The dress didn’t need a bra, thank goodness, because she certainly didn’t own a strapless bra. She patted her hair, up in its usual flat bun, and said, “It’s going to take three and a half hours for hair and makeup?”
Natasha raised an eyebrow at her. “How many of these have you gone to?”
“Um.” She’d skipped her senior prom and had never regretted it.
“That’s what I thought. Come on.”
* * *
“Why can’t I wear nude pantyhose?”
“Haven’t you even passed by the covers of fashion magazines in the last two years?”
“...Maybe?”
“Ugh. No. No nude pantyhose.”
“Suntan?”
“Maria.”
* * *
At seven-fifteen, Maria was pacing around one of the conference rooms with Natasha sitting in a nearby chair, watching her walk. “They’ll be fine,” Natasha said. “Enough heel that you’re still noticeably wearing heels, low enough that you won’t trip and the skirt isn’t hanging in midair. I’ve seen you wearing higher heels around here.”
“Yes, but they’re new shoes, and I usually wear socks under my boots,” Maria said, wiggling her heel in her left shoe to check the elastic around her ankle. She wasn’t wearing any hose at all, Natasha having rejected the black pair as ‘unnecessary,’ and she was afraid the straps on the shoes were going to pinch.
“Besides,” Natasha said, “if something happens, you’re just going to rip the shoes off anyway.”
“It’s true,” Maria said, forcing herself to forget about the shoes. “And you promise my hair won’t go anywhere?”
“With the number of pins and the amount of product I used, it’s not moving.” Natasha sounded so final that Maria was forced to believe her, despite the fact that it just plain felt precarious, what with the little bits around her face. “Just remember not to rub your eyes before you get there, and you’ll be fine.”
“I feel like I’m in the school play,” Maria said, one last gripe, and clapped her hands together. “Okay. Hair, makeup, shoes, weapons.” She had a knife and a small gun in her pockets, and surprisingly they didn’t ruin the line of the dress. “Do I need anything else?”
Natasha looked at her critically, and said, “Jewelry.” She dug in her bag and came up with a pair of small, sparkly earrings, and a pendant on a very thin gold chain. “The chain will break if you tug on it. If you lose it, that’s fine.” She helped Maria with the necklace and let her put in the earrings herself. “There. You have ID on you, right?”
Maria nodded.
“Here’s the lipstick; that’s about all you can repair yourself. If you need a wholescale fix, call me. I can’t imagine why; if your makeup goes south, the whole op is probably going to be called, but still.”
Maria nodded again and put the small tube in the tiny purse that went with the dress.
“You’ve read the folder? You know who we’re looking for?”
“Natasha, technically I outrank you,” Maria said. “I’m pretty sure I can handle this.”
Natasha gave her a look that would have been thoroughly insubordinate if it were anyone else. “Yes, sir,” she said under her breath. “Next time I’ll leave you to do your makeup on your own.”
“Now, wait a second,” Maria said, and they both chuckled.
* * *
“Well, you clean up pretty well, Hill,” Director Fury said.
“So do you, sir,” Maria said. It was true; he’d shed his leather for a black-on-black tuxedo. Silver cufflinks and a tie tack sparkled, and she suspected they weren’t actually what they seemed.
(Sometimes it amused her that she lived in a world where James Bond-like spy gadgets were the norm, and then she remembered that she had to put up with Tony Stark to get a surprising number of them, and she was significantly less amused.)
“Nick,” he said. “And you’re Maria.”
“Right. Nick.” Because he was invited to the benefit as Colonel Nick Fury, and she was there as his plus-one, fortunately as herself. There was no way she could pretend to be any of Natasha’s aliases, even if she’d had red hair. “Shouldn’t you be wearing your dress uniform?”
He snorted. “I could have,” he said, “but I didn’t. Let’s go.”
Well. Okay then.
* * *
They took a limo, driven by another SHIELD agent; on the ride over, they went over a few details of the op. It wasn’t that complicated; some terrorist organization calling themselves the United Damage Front had made a veiled threat made against several of the important people who were all to be attending the event that night, but it wasn’t big enough to bring in the full resources of SHIELD. (Which--honestly, had they not bothered to Google their acronym? UDF made Maria think of the ice cream place near her Nana’s house, not explosions.)
They needed a couple of people on the inside, and Nick Fury had been able to wrangle an invitation for himself. It was very professional, and when they arrived at the hotel, Maria went to open her door, but stopped when Fury’s--Nick’s hand came down on her arm. “Nope,” he said. “My side.”
She frowned at him, but a moment later, the driver opened Nick’s door, which was facing the sidewalk. Nick got out, and held his hand out for Maria. She took it, sliding across the seat and getting out of the car--and then she froze.
Nick Fury was smiling at her, and it was genuine. It was also profoundly unsettling. “Come on, Maria,” he said, and he sounded warm as he held out his arm.
She took it, still hesitant--had his brain been hijacked?--and before they reached the door, he leaned over and murmured, “Step it up, Hill. This is an op.”
Oh. He was pretending like they were actually on a date date, instead of just two people together at a party. Well. She could do that. No, really. Even if it was her boss--Nick Fucking Fury, Director of SHIELD and class-A badass--with his hand over hers on his arm. She turned to him and smiled.
His look turned from warm to warmly amused, and he chuckled. “You don’t have to try that hard.” By then, they’d gone through the door and turned the corner to find the ballroom.
“I don’t do society gigs, Nick,” she said through a half-smile. She didn’t. If SHIELD needed seduction and then ass-kicking in high heels, they went to Natasha or, well, basically anyone other than Maria. She was ex-military, with twenty-odd years of being a tomboy under her belt. Analysis and impersonation of other law-enforcement officers she did very well; playing the ingenue, not so much.
“Tonight you do, sweetheart,” Nick said right as they walked the door into the ballroom.
Which, well, looked like a ballroom with a several-thousand-dollar-a-head benefit going on inside. A bar was set up on one side, a line of tables with different kinds of food and chefs on the back, and tables lined the third side. The middle was taken up with a dance floor of sorts, and a band occupied the corner. Maria thought she recognized Mayor Bloomberg dancing with his girlfriend, and a pair of Hollywood stars who were currently on Broadway were doing shots at the bar.
She was terrified, but she’d faced down worse with less backup.
“Something to drink?” Nick said.
“Yes, please,” she said, although she knew he didn’t mean the fun kind.
Before they even made it to the bar, they were accosted by the governor; Nick kept his hand on Maria’s waist as he introduced her, making obvious the purported relationship between them. Maria did her best to smile and be polite but essentially not memorable.
Three conversations later, Maria finally had her drink--cola and grenadine syrup, nothing interesting--and Nick had a gin and tonic, hold the gin. There were two or three hundred people in the room, and they all seemed to want to talk to him and ogle her, which was a little strange, but it did give her an opportunity to observe. So she did.
She might not have been much at being a society lady, but she was still trained in observation and analysis. The group of men by the second table from the left were undoubtedly engaged in some sort of illegal transaction, but Maria would guess it was either cocaine or insider trading and nothing that they were interested in. The grande dame next to the bar was mixing alcohol and painkillers, and she was hoping to sleep with the attractive young man on her arm, who clearly wasn’t interested.
More importantly, there were twenty-five different kinds of chocolate truffles at the tables of food, and Maria was definitely going to have to try those before the evening was over.
“Oh, shit, it’s Ross,” Nick said in her ear in between conversations. “I don’t want to talk to his ass.” He backed off a couple inches and said, “Maria, they’re playing our song. Want to dance?”
The song was “Beyond the Sea,” which Maria mostly knew because it had been in Finding Nemo. She really hoped if she were ever in a relationship with someone, that “Beyond the Sea” would not be their song. “Sure,” she said.
She wasn’t much of a dancer, but fortunately, neither was he; he rested a hand on the middle of her back and steered her around in circles, no fancy footwork required. “Do you even know this song?” she asked.
“Yeah, of course,” he said. “It was in that movie, with the clownfish.”
Well.
“There’s a lot of weird motherfuckers here, but no one suspicious yet,” he said a couple minutes later, his lips yet again by her ear, holding her almost to his chest. “You see anything?”
“That depends, sir. Do you want to bust the numbskulls in the corner for cocaine, or maybe insider trading?”
He chuckled. “Probably both. Not my turf.”
“Then I got nothing.”
“Keep an eye out.”
“Always, sir.” She barely resisted saying, You too.
“Nick.”
“Nick.” It was never going to be normal to call him by his first name, but it was somehow getting more normal to dance with him, to see him smile at her, to have his hand at her waist or his shoulder bumping into hers. That was, well, really strange. “You know,” she said, “there’s a whole table full of chocolate about twenty feet that way, and I’m certain that the people who are standing at it are very suspicious.”
“Chocolate? Seriously?” His shoulder quaked under her hand as he laughed.
“Let me have my hundred-dollar truffles, Nick, and I won’t tell anyone about the bag of peanut M & Ms in your desk drawer.”
“Don’t think I didn’t notice that the bag spontaneously becomes lighter when it’s evaluation time.”
“I always replace it,” she said.
“Which means you can get your own damn bag.”
By then they were at the table full of truffles, and Maria thought she would possibly explode with joy, just looking at the table. Nick stood beside her, looking for all the world like an indulgent date, but she could feel the tension in his arm as it brushed hers as he watched the room. “Couple of guys with earpieces just walked into the room,” he muttered. “Oh, shit--there’s another one by the exit behind the band--get down!”
Just as he said ‘down,’ gunshots rang out, and Maria threw herself under the table, hidden by the tablecloth. Nick--no, Director Fury--joined her a moment later, cell phone already in hand as he frantically dialed. “Shit,” he said again, barely loud enough for her to hear over the chaos in the main part of the ballroom. “They killed the cell, or they’ve got a blocker or something.”
“So backup’s on its way, but no intel?” Maria had dropped her purse on the other side of the table, so she didn’t have a cell phone or her lipstick, but everything else was in her pockets. She pulled out the knife and the gun, for now.
“Right,” he said. “What do you have on you?”
“One gun, one knife, and the stuff in the dress, plus my SHIELD ID.”
“I’ve got three knives, another gun, two of these--” He pulled out an object about the size and shape of a film canister; Maria recognized it as one of the mini smoke bombs that R & D had cooked up recently. “--and the camera and sensors.” He tapped the tie tack and cufflinks. “But they’re useless now. What’s on the table above us?”
“Truffles,” she said. “I doubt they’re flammable, and they make lousy projectiles.”
“They’re not,” he said. “Also, I don’t have a lighter; do you?”
“Nope,” she said. “Stupid.”
Over the din of the crowd, she heard, “--where is he?--eyepatch!”
Obviously Fury did, too, because he looked at her and rolled his eye. “Amateurs,” he said. “I bet we could take ‘em out in thirty seconds, flat.”
“With two guns, three knives, two smoke bombs, some lengths of rope, and four stiletto-type blades?” Maria said.
Fury raised an eyebrow at her.
“Fifteen seconds, at most.” She grinned at him, and he grinned back.
Big words aside, they really needed to know where everyone was in the room in order to do anything. “Move over, sir,” she said, and lay flat on her back, twitching the tablecloth out of the way so she could see into the room.
Her angle was bad, but she could see well enough. The bulk of the guests and staff had been herded into the space right in front of the band, crowding together. There were three men with large black hats--definitely amateurs, Maria thought--and guns keeping everyone together, and another two who were standing in front of the main door.
“Five,” she said without moving. “Well, five that I can see: three keeping the group together, and two in front of the main door. None by the emergency exit, but they all appear to have guns, so they probably think they’ve got it covered.”
“So what’s the plan?”
“You’re the director; you figure it out,” she said, grinning before she sobered. “I think we can’t go out there without a smoke bomb, but if we do that, we’re probably going to lose at least one of the people in the fight. I can probably pick two or three of them off, total, before we lose the element of surprise. I didn’t see anyone in the crowd who could help us, but I bet at least one of them will try.”
“If it’s Bloomberg, I’m gonna kick his scrawny ass,” Fury muttered. “If you can pick two of them off, I can get the other three, but we have to take them alive since they haven’t done anything other than be vaguely threatening yet.”
“I can do that, sir,” she said.
“I think we’re going to need your rope before we get out there, though,” he said. “What’s happening?”
She looked back out again, and said, “They’re going through the crowd and taking Rolexes and diamonds while they’re at it, sir. We’ve got a couple minutes.”
“Okay,” he said, and reached for her feet.
Curling up to her elbows, she watched him poke around the edge of her crinoline, trying to find the end where the rip would start. She thought about protesting, saying that she could do it herself, but it was a little cramped under the table and it was probably best if she let him help, even if it meant he’d be, well, up her skirt.
Which he was, about thirty seconds later, hands close enough to her bare skin that she could feel a faint wash of heat. She drew in a sharp breath and he looked up at her, face intense. “Don’t think I didn’t notice that, Hill, but this is neither the time nor place.”
It was on the tip of her tongue to say, “I have no idea what you’re talking about, sir,” or to make some sort of acidic remark about fraternization, and for the life of her, she had no idea why she didn’t. Instead she just gave a short, sharp nod and started twisting the strip of fabric into a rope.
Really, was there ever a time or place to realize one’s completely inappropriate attraction to one’s boss? Who already bent or flat-out ignored all the rules he didn’t like?
She finished twisting the rope and looped it around her left wrist; pulling the other, smaller rope off her bodice, she stuffed it into a pocket. “What’s next, sir?”
“Smoke bomb still needs a light,” he said, picking up the tiny canister and turning it over in his hands. “What do we got for that?”
“The nearest fire, if it hasn’t gone out, is a chafing dish right above our heads,” she said. “And I think--” There was a bag of marshmallows on the floor next to her, and she grinned. “I got this.”
She lay back down flat, reached into her bosom, resolutely ignored the muffled noise coming from Fury, and pulled out one of the corset-top stays, careful not to nick herself on the edge. Spearing a marshmallow, she crept out from under the table, towards the wall. The bad guys were still monologuing--where did they get their training?--and no one appeared to notice her as she gingerly stuck the stay out . . . just a little bit farther . . . And seven years of Girl Scout camp stood her in good stead as she lit the marshmallow on fire and pulled it back under the table.
From there, everything went rather quickly.
Fury lit the smoke bomb, and threw it to land just behind the crowd. Maria stood up and shot both men by the door in the knees before they could get off a shot. The crowd panicked, of course, and gave cover for Fury and Maria to go get the other three by the band. He tackled one, she tackled the other, and the band had apparently had time to put their instruments down because when Maria looked over, the bass player was sitting on the third guy’s chest and two of the horn players were holding down his legs. The pianist was holding his gun with a look on her face that bordered on horror, and Fury barked, “Set it down.”
She did, jerking her hand away as soon as the metal touched the floor, and then ducked out of sight.
“Did anyone get the assholes by the door?” Fury called out.
“Yes, sir!” someone replied. The smoke bomb wasn’t clearing out very fast in the closed-off ballroom so she couldn’t see the person speaking, but she heard the military in his voice clearly.
“Well, good. Somebody call the police! And give me a goddamn hand with this guy.”
An hour later, SHIELD and the NYPD had showed up and had things well in hand. The terrorists were en route to either the hospital or the police station, the crowd was dispersing, and Maria was free to collect her shoes and about ten truffles, carefully wrapped in a napkin.
On second thought, she grabbed five extra. She did owe Natasha, after all.
As she headed for the door and her ride back to HQ, she heard Fury call her name out, and she turned. “You forgot this,” he said, holding out the stay with the remains of the burnt marshmallow at the end of it.
“Thank you, sir,” she said, taking it from him, still straight-faced. Then (and she would never know why she said it): “About that other thing--”
“Still not the time, Hill,” he said. “But the time might be tomorrow at 2000. You know where the place might be?”
“Angelo’s on 55th, sir.”
“See you then, Hill.”
“Yes, sir.” She had to work very hard to keep the smile off her face.
“I gotta go convince Bloomberg to stop trying to speak Spanish now.”
“Good luck, sir.” She gave up and grinned.
Fury smiled back. “Yeah, something like that.”