Pound of Flesh

With a long stretch and a sleepy whimper DJ nuzzles into the firm warmth against her cheek. When she realizes her pillow is gently rising and falling, she reluctantly flutters her eyes open to a face full of soft white cotton stretched over a nice set of abs. Her gaze flickers upward and she almost gasps at the sight of those gorgeous blue eyes. She could really get used to waking up this way.

“Steve? Wow, you really didn’t have to sit here all this time.”

“It’s no problem,” he shrugged genially. “Bruce brought me a book to read.”

She squints her eyes to read the title and nearly laughs out loud. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. “Why are you the most perfect human being I’ve ever met?”

“Well, there was this serum a while ago,” Steve joked with a crooked smile. “That might have something to do with it.”

DJ abruptly sits up, and Steve has to resist the urge to wrap his arms around her and lay her back down. His compulsion is moderately satisfied as she presses up against his side, letting his arm rest around her shoulders. “Speaking of that nifty serum, what all did it effect? I mean besides making you Mr. Muscles?”

“What?” Steve’s brain gets a little sidetracked as DJ walks her fingers up his bicep, and he’s not proud of the way his voice cracks.

“Oh don’t look at me like that. It’s not like I was talking about your penis or something.” She laughs as his cheeks flare up with heat and his eyebrows twist in horror. “I just meant, like, weird stuff- trivial, even. Like are you ridiculously ticklish now?”

Steve watches with amusement as her fingers dance a path across his pecs. “No. I’ve never really been all that ticklish in the first place.”

“What?!” DJ pulls a scandalized face. “That’s no fun! That’s unheard of. I’m very upset by this news… But I guess there’s no room for sensitive skin with all this rock hard muscle.” She runs the flat of her palm low over Steve’s stomach, reveling in the ripple of his abs. It’s only when he sharply curls his hand around her wrist that she realizes that she’s still being a complete moron as far as Steve is concerned. “Oh! I’m… I’m sorry. Sometimes I don’t even realize I do things like that. I’m a very touchy-feely person, always in peoples’ personal space. It freaks people out sometimes.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Steve’s face goes a little slack with dopey contentment, instantly pleased to know that the way DJ bumps and cuddles everyone doesn’t hold much significance. “I don’t mind.”

“Great.” Steve might be a little biased when he thinks that her laugh is one of the most angelic things he’s heard. “Note to self: Steve is up for being groped.” And wow is she not an angel. She misinterprets the pinched look on his face and grimaces. “Yeah, I say dumb shit all the time, too. I should come with multiple warning labels.”

It’s like his fingers have a mind of their own when they lace through hers. “I like surprises. A little mystery never hurt anybody.”

“Would this be an awkward time to bring up the fact that one of your shady uniformed friends handcuffed me to a chair and tried to intimidate all the mystery out of me?”

Steve shyly toys with the end of one of her springy curls with his free hand. “That’s my fault. Fury was right- I shouldn’t have left you alone. If not for security, your safety is a pretty good reason.” The pure and earnest look on his face melts DJ on the spot. “I know you had nothing to do with the breach. I hate that I helped you out of one bad situation and pushed you right into another. If I could fix it, Daisy, I would.”

“Again with that Daisy nonsense,” she whispers a little shakily. Goosebumps rise at the memory of that name falling from someone else’s lips not all that long ago, in a voice not nearly as pleasant as Steve’s. Not pleasant at all…

She shakes away the storm clouds brewing over her head and forces a sardonic smile onto her face. “Don’t you worry your pretty little head of yours over my ‘bad situation.’ This is nicer than any hotel I’ve ever been in, and I only have to pay via being antagonized. Plus I made all these shiny new friends. I mean, Natasha’s kind of got the super-bitch thing going on, and Clint has these shifty weasel eyes around me, but they’ll warm up to me eventually.”

“I won’t be surprised if they do.” Steve’s a little distracted by DJ’s small, soft hands and the gentle curve of her pink lips. “You’re like a dog.”

“Um…”

Steve winces and his hands fall away from her hair and her fingers to rest in his lap. “Like a puppy, I mean. Because you’re so happy and energetic and-“

“Swell?”

“I was going to say hard to ignore. You’re not going to ever forget the ‘swell’ thing, are you?”

DJ grins roughly pats his cheek. “Nope. I’m not going to forget you called me a dog, either. Or that ‘energetic and hard to ignore’ sounds suspiciously close to obnoxious.”

“I didn’t realize dames were so hard to compliment.” The way Steve’s face screws up in frustration makes DJ want to pinch his cheeks. Or mount him like a horse, but it’s that train of thought that always gets her on shaky ground with Steve. “Tony always makes it look so easy.”

“I’m sure it was a breeze way back when. A guy could probably call a woman pretty without her thinking he was only after getting her into bed. Then again, that probably was all he was after. Men don’t really change. But women are different now, and well, I’m just different in general. There’s a lot of different happening here and it’s not working out so well for you.”

Steve’s face takes on an intensely serious face and it makes DJ squirm uncomfortably the way all serious things do. “When I try to compliment you it’s not because I’m after…”

“Ripping my clothes off, tossing me onto any flat surface, and ravishing me?” Steve twitched and DJ softly sighed. “Yeah, believe me, I know you’re not.”

The sudden click of heels on the floor has DJ pushing up off the couch alert and anxious. Natasha never makes a sound when she enters the room, and the last time she checked none of the guys have taken up cross-dressing. The likelihood that it’s Agent Hill strutting in to arrest her again seems all too high, and DJ’s not willing to be so passive about it this time. But instead of Mega Bitch it was a tall, slender redhead whose impeccable clothes were disheveled, ripped, and dirtied.

“Pepper?” Steve’s voice was low with concern as he stood up and approached her like she was a battered animal on the side of the road.

A small smile of relief twitched on her pale lips. “Steve!”

“DJ!” Tony strolls into the room, intently focused on the phone in his hands. “I’ve taken the liberty of setting up the bedroom across from Steve’s. I’ve also ordered you a whole new wardrobe. You can only wear Cap’s sweatpants so many days in a row, and-“

“Tony?” DJ cuts him off mid-rant. “Kind of a thing happening here.”

He looks up in disinterest, but that quickly gives way to surprise. “Pepper!”

“Tony. I’d like to talk to you in private, if that’s okay.” The way it was phrased wasn’t really a suggestion, but a command that still managed to sound polite.

DJ narrowed her eyes in suspicious little slits as Steve intently watched Pepper leave with Tony in tow. “Who the hell is Pepper?”
_________________________________________

“Who is this DJ?” Pepper asked suspiciously as soon as they were sequestered away in Tony’s workshop. “I leave for a couple of days and suddenly there’s a strange woman moving in?”

Tony’s fingers itch for something to do when faced with that perfected disapproving look of hers, and he’s never been one to show restraint. His hands fly to the nearest screen where he starts modifying something which- to Pepper- looks unsettlingly like a cross between a torture device and an angry alien tree. “Not so much moving in as being held prisoner. Semantics, you know. And there’s this whole Stockholm syndrome thing going on, because she’s all smiles and sunshine and cuddles. But it goes both ways. For the most part. Natasha is definitely anti-smile. But Steve is all for the cuddles.”

“I wasn’t very happy when you decided that being a superhero was your calling, but I accepted that and dealt with it. It’s a part of who you are and that’s a part of why I love you.” Pepper steps in front of the screen Tony is rapidly tapping and forces him to look at her. “But there’s a huge difference between catching the bad guys and being the one to punish them.”

“Very little punishing going on. Investigating? Yes. Laughable attempts at wooing? In abundance. No whippings or waterboarding. Yet. You never know what women are into these days.”

Pepper looks wholly unamused. “Is she dangerous?”

“Unlikely. It’s mostly a lavish display of Fury’s authority. There is zero chance that she’s the one that hacked into our system. But somebody did, and that somebody is going to be very sorry, because I don’t take failure well.” Tony gestured to the ominous viney-contraption that he had been fooling with on his computer. “Hence this.”

“And what is this?”

Tony gives a smug, tight-lipped smile. “New security measure. DNA based safeguard.”

“Which means?”

“Once this puppy gets installed in the walls anyone without my genetic code that tries to disable my manual security precautions will have to say hello to a whole hell of a lot of booby-traps.”

She would look impressed if she didn’t look so disturbed. “This looks like something out of my nightmares, Tony. How does it read your DNA?”

“Blood. Just a tiny bit. No more than you’d give at a blood bank.” At Pepper’s sick look Tony quickly cleared his screen. “Joking. Just a finger prick. Besides, there really shouldn’t be any reason to shut it down, anyway.”

“I still don’t like it.”

“It’ll grow on you,” Tony assured her as he placed a hand on her lower back and ushered her towards a chair to sit down. “So what’s the story?”

Pepper uselessly brushed off her tattered blouse and gave a sigh. “I was beginning to think you wouldn’t notice.”

“I notice. Of course I notice. Why wouldn’t I notice? You’re always so neat. Orderly. Every hair has its place. You’ve walked away from explosions looking perfectly composed. It’s a little unsettling. Now, not so much.”

“Thanks, Tony,” Pepper replied dryly. “I was attacked. By robots.”