Man Out of Time - A Captain America / Avengers Fanfiction

Chapter 27

And now it's time to shift back to intrigue, with a little sappy mush interspersed for those of you who would have rather stayed at the party dancing until the wee hours of dawn. Thanks for reading!

X

Chapter 27

Bernice hummed a happy tune, her concept drawing of a Chitauri soldier pointing the long, staff-type pulse weapon the engineering team was taking apart looking downright friendly … other than the fact it was about to blow someone's head off.

"Somebody's got it bad," Ralph said, one of the engineers Bernice worked with.

Bernice smiled and kept right on drawing. At this point, the entire company knew why she was so happy. The usual 'who's who' photographs of any company social event had been included in the Monday morning newsletter, with the expected photo of Miss Potts standing next to Mr. Stark cutting the birthday cake she'd helped him design. Further in had been pictures of company department heads schmoozing with movers and shakers, including elected officials, the mayor, corporate titans, and an African prince. But on the back page had been a picture she hadn't expected. Her …dancing with Steve Rogers. She now had visual proof it had not been her imagination how very close he had held her as they'd swayed together in a slow dance.

Then there had been the unofficial video clips Doctor Nyi had recorded with his camera phone. Bernice surrounded by department heads from just about every lab in the company. Bernice tripping on her fancy, high-heeled shoes, laughing as the Vice President of Arc Reactor Technology caught her. Bernice tearing up the dance floor, shoes off, with the crown prince of some small African nation. He'd even shot footage of Steve standing woodenly in the center of the pack, looking like a trapped animal as scientists and engineering geeks, lubricated by far too much alcohol, flopped around the dance floor like fishes stranded by a receding tide. It was cute, the way the man whose body could defy gravity froze like a deer in the headlights the moment the music got funky.

In typical engineering-geek style, Doctor Nyi had uploaded all of the 'blackmail photos' to his Google+ account and sent out humorous 'ransom notes' demanding a million dollars or he'd post the videos on YouTube. He swore it hadn't been him who'd posted the video of Steve standing like a tree trunk in the middle of a group of women shaking their booties in a country western line dance Bernice had tried to teach him called the Badonkadonk. After that disaster … and the roars of laughter from Mr. Stark and the one they called Thor, Bernice had let the poor bastard off the hook and only dragged him out for the slow dances. Steve hadn't been kidding when he'd said he didn't know how to dance! But he had sure seemed to enjoy watching her do it…

"Bernice…" Huojin called in lilting English, another co-worker. "Earth to Bernice…"

"Hmmm?" Bernice asked, her cheeks turning pink with embarrassment.

"He's supposed to look scary," Huojin said, pointing to the weapon she'd sketched in preparation for disassembly.

"He's not supposed to be anything," Ralph corrected. "She's supposed to be drawing the weapon. Not the alien."

"She's the only one who can figure out how the aliens hold the weapons when they use them," Huojin said. "Unlike you. You thought it was a shoulder-mounted rocket launcher."

"Did not."

"Did too."

"How do we know this ishow they hold the darned thing?" Ralph asked.

The two engineers turned to Bernice. She was getting used to having her ideas challenged and no longer took offense. Lifting her electronic pen from her smart pad, she reached over to hit a button on her laptop and brought up a blurry still-shot of a Chitauri soldier wielding the weapon like a machine gun.