Little Wars ☆ Steve Rogers

03

Then—"Actually, how old is she? She's not still in college, right? Isn't she here full time?"

"Are you trying to sleep with my intern?" Bruce asked tiredly.

Steve wanted to nap indefinitely. He wanted to be asleep to the very brink of death, the furthest reach of living unconsciousness. Then he wanted to wake up with selective amnesia, losing any recollection of having ever encountered a Stark in his life. But maybe that was just the exhaustion talking.

Tony paused. "No," he said slowly.

Bruce groaned, unconvinced. "You didn't even know her name."

"I'm smitten."

"Please leave her alone," said Bruce. "I don't want to have to find another intern when this goes south."

"Cap, don't we have Avenging to do?" Tony asked loudly. "I have a press conference in an hour, so if we could wrap it up soon..."

"We have a lead," Steve began.

★☆★☆★☆★☆★

"WAS THIS JUST...a spur of the moment idea, or...?" Natasha asked, watching Steve from her perch on his desk an hour later.

"Not quite," Steve said. The noise of the drill he'd stolen from Tony's workshop paused as he dropped another screw onto the filing cabinet beside him. He was kneeling in his doorway, dismantling its hinges. "That hallway's busy out there. It should really open the other way. Nearly ran over somebody on my way out today."

A pause. "Who?"

Nat's eyebrows were raised like she knew something.

"Don't look at me like that," he said.

"Shelby? From the mail room?" she asked. But when Steve opened his mouth, she shook her head. "No, don't tell me. Not her."

Steve stood up to work out the last, top hinge, turning his back to her again. She didn't speak for long enough that he thought she might actually have dropped the subject. He dropped the last screw onto the cabinet.

"Bruce's intern," she said suddenly, with a satisfied snap of her fingers. "Tell me I'm right."

"Yes," he said shortly. "I told her I'd switch it. I was joking." Then he glanced at the door in his hands. "Sort of."

"What's her name again?"

"Not sure." He propped it against the wall and returned to the doorway, where he'd penciled in markings for the new placements.

"Tony just asked earlier, didn't he? Why can't I remember?"

"Molly, I think."

"Maisie, that's right," Natasha said. Then she grimaced, an expression which Steve could hear in her tone without looking at her. "You should ask her out before Tony does."

"I'm not interested in doing that," he said. "And this conversation is inappropriate. She's an intern."

"She's just Bruce's assistant. It's not like she's on Avengers payroll. It's not like we have a payroll. I think you could sleep with her ethically."

Steve glanced at the gaping, doorless doorway and back at Nat. "Did you want to say that a little louder? Assemble the team, ask everyone to weigh in?"

"I think they'd agree with me."

"She's also a lot younger than me."

"Well, that's a problem you're going to run into at your age."

"Even—" Steve was about to argue, but cut himself off. Maisie looked nice in the shade of yellow she was wearing. He hadn't had time to notice that this morning. Also, she was approaching them from across the hallway.