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The first time Maria Hill meets Sam Wilson, she wonders if he’s a budding superhero or just an idiot whose ass she’s going to have to save. Maybe the two aren’t mutually exclusive. Maybe, if she’s being honest with herself, he deserves some credit for risking his life to fight alongside Steve Rogers and Natasha Romanov when the rest of the world was trying to kill them. And, okay, maybe she finds that attractive. Really attractive. Not a lot of people are that selfless, or that determined.
She doesn’t get around to making much of it though. They’ve got helicarriers to blow up and people to save, and then she’s more than a little preoccupied with finding a new job and keeping her name off the CIA’s terrorist watchlist. On her six month anniversary at Stark Industries, Tony builds an AI that wants to destroy the world, and then he’s begging her to quit her very legitimate, very satisfying, very well-paying corporate job and manage the Avengers Initiative instead. It’s all a bit of a whirlwind. At least, that’s her excuse when she realizes that she’s been attracted to Sam Wilson for more than a year and done nothing at all about it.
On the day Sam strides into her office with bloody knuckles and tells her a child trafficking ring is off the streets, she remembers that she’s a woman of action and not a coward. She’s going to ask him out, she tells herself fiercely. She makes good on her promise; she always does, even when it’s only a promise to herself. The trouble is, it doesn’t go very well.
***
In hindsight, she probably shouldn’t have asked in his office, an untidy white cube at the back of the Avengers Initiative. His eyes go wide when she walks through the door. His mouth is working frantically around an enormous bite of a Reuben, and he’s trying to sweep the papers on his desk into some kind of order, but he’s only making the mess worse. He’s thinking, no doubt, that this office doesn’t pass inspection -- which is not at all what Maria’s here for.
She starts to think that flowers behind her back are just slightly overkill. But, in her defense, Sam seems like a traditional kind of guy. And, well, she hasn’t actually done a lot of dating. It’s mostly been hooking up. Occasionally, if she hooked up with someone often enough, it turned into a relationship, which she’d always broken off as soon as it got in the way of her job. Now here she is, thirty-seven years old, and thinking she might like something -- or rather, someone -- stable in her life. Hence the flowers, and the proposal for a good old-fashioned dinner date.
In retrospect, both are a terrible idea. But she’s committed now, and she’s not a coward, so no backing down.
Sam doesn’t choke when he sees the flowers, but it’s a near thing. Maria’s absurdly grateful that his mouth is still too full to actually say anything. She clears her throat.
“I wanted to ask you out. For dinner. Saturday, I thought, if it’s good for you, but I’m flexible.” She stops there before she adds something even more awkward and robotic, like how they can coordinate their schedules to find a mutually agreeable time.
But now she’s standing silently, clutching a bouquet of roses, and Sam’s not saying anything to fill the silence. He swallows dryly, coughs a little, still says nothing. She slides the flowers across his desk, which is a strategic mistake, because now she hasn’t got anything to keep her hands busy.
“A date,” he says, in the same slow, careful, nobody-panic voice he would use to announce that Chechen separatists have obtained nuclear material.
Maria resists the urge to respond sarcastically. Yes, asshole, that’s what it means when someone brings you flowers and asks you to dinner.
She keeps her voice carefully level and says, “Yes. A date. With me. Dinner.” She shrugs. “Or a movie, if you prefer.”
More silence. Maria’s just about to excuse herself when a slow smile spreads across Sam’s face. Then he bursts into laughter. “I gotta admit, you almost had me there. The way you were all awkward. I mean, I knew you could shoot, Agent Hill, but I had no idea you could act. Damn.” He shakes his head, looking admiring “You tell Rogers payback is on the way.”
Maria blinks. She can feel a blush blooming across her cheekbones, which is not a sensation she’s used to experiencing. “Sam, I’m not -- I mean, I’m really --
“Give it up, Hill, you’re caught,” Sam says. He leans out the door and shouts, “Rogers, you’re an asshole! You hear that?” Then he turns back to Maria, still smiling. “No need to keep the charade going. It was mighty nice of you to get involved in our little prank war, but I know you’ve got better things to do.”
Maria nods and starts backing out the door.
Sam picks up the flowers and waves them jauntily. “Hey, these are pretty. I get to keep ‘em, right?”
***
Natasha sits down on the folder Maria was reaching for and says, “You’re trying to get in Sam’s pants.”
Maria tugs on the folder. It’s firmly pinned under Natasha’s ass.
“Anyone ever tell you you’re like a badly behaved housecat?” she asks. “Always sitting on stuff people are trying to read? Bringing home dead things nobody wants?”
“I don’t bring corpses back to our secret headquarters. I bury them in the woods, like a normal person,” Natasha says, making a face. “ And I repeat: you’re trying to get into Sam’s pants.”
“No, I’m not.” She’s not not trying to get into Sam’s pants. She’s just maybe not going to do that on the first date, and she’s maybe going to ask Pepper to explain when to have sex with someone you actually want to keep. Pepper’s good at explaining normal things to people who’ve made unusual lifestyle choices.
Natasha smiles and crunches the ice from her drink, just because she knows Maria hates it. “You actually like him. That’s the most exciting thing I’ve heard all year.”
“I sincerely doubt that,” Maria says. She gives up on the folder under Natasha’s ass and opens a different one. Supply inventory. Not as urgent as the expense reports, but still important.
Natasha leans forward and accidentally-on-purpose plants a hand on the inventory. “So, what you like about him? Other than the wings and the biceps. Those are obvious.”
“What is your obsession with other people’s love lives?” Maria asks, but she can already feel herself softening. She’s going to have to talk to someone about this, and rumor has it that Romanov dispenses surprisingly useful dating advice.
Natasha just shrugs. “Everybody needs a hobby. And you haven’t answered my question.”
Maria looks around her office - clean white lines, glass walls, not even a single piece of paper out of place. “Drinks at five. You name the place.”
***
Maria changes into a T-shirt and jeans from the stash of emergency clothes in her locker and leaves the office at 4:45. She could swear Sam watches her go, but that’s probably a case of the wish being the father of the thought. He’d made his feelings very clear.
Natasha’s waiting for her in a little booth at the back of one of the bar -- not that Maria recognizes her at first. Her hair is blond, and for some reason, she’s dressed like a pin-up girl.
“I got bored,” Natasha says by way of explanation. She peeks at her winged eyeliner in the mirror above the booth. “Do you think I got it even? I tried a trick from Pinterest. The one with the scotch tape.”
“You know I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Maria says. Makeup, the only thing she hates discussing more than her feelings.
Natasha smiles over her artisanal cocktail. “Guess we’ll just have to talk about Sam.”
Maria takes a sip of her Jack and Coke, grateful she’d had the foresight to order on the way in. “Fine. What is it you want to know?”
“Well, it’s a little random,” Natasha says. She holds up a hand before Maria can protest. “I’m not saying you’re wrong to like him. I just didn’t see it coming.”
“Really?” Maria asks. “He’s very responsible.” Surely nobody would surprised she likes responsible men.
Natasha snorts. “Is that what you’re after? Because I could’ve set you up with a SHIELD accountant years ago.”
“And half of them would have been Hydra plants,” Maria points out. She takes another sip of her drink. “Look, it’s not just the paperwork -- although you know me well enough to know that doesn’t hurt. He doesn’t take stupid risks because he’s not trying to get attention or feel better about himself. He’s in it for the team.”
Natasha nods thoughtfully and says nothing, which Maria knows is an interrogation tactic to keep people talking. It’s annoyingly effective.
“And I know he’s got issues -- everybody in our line of work does -- but he got therapy and worked through them. He’s mature enough to deal with his shit. Unlike some members of our team,” Maria finishes. There’s no way she’s talking about the other thing they have in common: losing a best friend. It doesn’t matter that Phil came back from the dead. After the deal she’d made with the CIA, he stopped speaking to her. Natasha probably knows all that anyway. It’s one of the perks of being friends with a spy.
“Alright, I’m sold,” Natasha says. If she knows Maria’s thinking about Phil, she’s nice enough not to say it. “Now how do we get you two together?”
Maria rolls her eyes. “If I knew the answer to that, we wouldn’t be here. Frankly, I don’t know why we’re here anyway. He’s not interested. That was very clear.”
Now it’s Natasha’s turn for an eyeroll. “Maria, that’s not what happened. You ambushed him. In his office. With flowers. How many conversations have you had with him in the last year that weren’t about work?”
“None,” Maria admits. She sighs. “It’s the biggest thing we have in common.”
Natasha, to her credit, doesn’t laugh. “I get it. We don’t exactly have lives outside our jobs. But if you never show someone you’re interested, and then you suddenly ask them out, they might get confused. You have to hang out, drop a few hints, flirt by the water cooler once or twice.”
Maria drains the rest of her drink in one long gulp. “Romanov, do you have some kind of Machiavellian plan?”
Natasha shakes her head. “If I told you, what would be the fun?”
***
On Friday, Turkmenistan explodes. Not the whole country. Just more of it than strictly should explode. Maria’s relieved. Things have been awkward with Sam since the whole failed proposal; a mission will get them back on track, and help her stop worrying about whatever plan Natasha’s cooked up.
All in all, the weekend is a success. The Hydra agents encamped at Oguzkhan Palace are captured, their explosives are confiscated, and Stark is persuaded not to build anything out of them. And since Maria had taken out her share of hostiles, she can look Sam in the eye again without turning red. Win for everyone.
She’d intended to tell Natasha to back off the plan. Now that she’s thought about it, dating someone she works with probably isn’t smart, and maybe she’ll let Natasha set her up with some other guy as a consolation prize. But she’s too late. She’s laying out papers for the Monday briefing when Natasha strolls by and gives her a thumbs up.
Sam appears a few seconds later, staring at the Galaxy phone she can only assume he bought to spite Tony - a gesture she supremely respects, even if it results in owning inferior technology.
“I’m gonna give you the benefit of the doubt here and assume you didn’t really move the meeting to 9:48,” he says, holding up a calendar alert so she can see it. “But if you did, let the record show I’m here to give you hell.”
Maria shakes her head. She figures Sam will wander down to the lounge and get a cup of coffee, just like anyone else who discovers they’ve accidentally come early to a meeting. Instead he strolls in, grabs a stapler, and helps finish the briefing packets. Just then, Natasha appears in the doorway and winks. She’s gone before Maria can even give her a good eyeroll.
She knows this is the kind of opening Natasha was talking about, a chance to make some casual conversation in a low-pressure setting. Well, let no one say Maria Hill is a coward. She can ask the boy she likes a question.
“How was your weekend?” she asks. She winces as soon as the words come out of her mouth. Luckily, she’s bent over the holo console, and she doesn’t think Sam can see. But seriously, what a stupid fucking question. Turkmenistan had exploded. They were both there.
When she looks up, a slow smile is spreading across Sam’s face. “You know, I think I’d give it a seven out of ten. Could’ve done with fewer explosives, but on the bright side, no evil robots. You?”
Maria finds herself smiling back. “Acceptable. I only had to take on three armed hostiles by myself.”
Stark’s damn holo projector dies just then, and Sam reaches for the reset button just as she does. Their fingers brush together, and she definitely doesn’t imagine his smile. If this is Natasha’s plan, Maria thinks she can live with it.
***
Fake meeting alerts are sadly not the whole plan. On Wednesday, Maria’s making an omelette in the communal kitchen, and Natasha turns the heat all the way up when she’s not looking. Her perfect eggs turn into a burnt mess on the bottom of the pan, and Natasha smiles sweetly and says, “Sam, do you have some cooking tips for us?”
“Maybe don’t turn the heat to max,” he says, deadpan. “Who do you think you are, Tony Stark?”
Maria doesn’t stick around for casual conversation. She corners Natasha in the hallway and says, “Make me look incompetent again and I’ll kill you.”
Natasha nods. “Point taken. But if we got into a fight, I’d win. Just for the record.”
Tony picks exactly that moment to stroll by. “And I’d sell popcorn,” he says. Then he wriggles his eyebrows. “Any chance it could be a mud fight?”
“I hate you both,” Maria says, looking back and forth from Natasha to Tony. “That’s not hyperbole.”
***
Accidental dates are phase three of Natasha’s plan. She invites both Sam and Maria to coffee, then shows up half an hour late. Then she asks them to go drinking with her, but she abandons them at the bar while she dances with a handsome stranger. Sam’s eyes follow her every move, which is so not the point. Maria drains her beer fast and gets the hell out. Maybe she shouldn’t have chosen the most attractive person she knows as her wingman. That’s probably Dating 101.
The next week, Natasha invites them both to play pool, then texts at the last minute to say she can’t make it after all. Sam’s way more disappointed than he should be, and Maria sinks every ball without missing a shot. She’s about to stalk off, but Sam catches her elbow.
“Hey, stick around for a drink,” he says. “I wanna talk to you about something.”
Maria follows him to the bar reluctantly. She supposes this is where he lets her down easy. The fact that he’ll be so nice about it actually makes it worse.
But when their drinks come, he says, “We need to talk about Romanov. I’m worried.”
“You are?” Maria repeats stupidly.
“Look, I know you’re mad about tonight. I don’t blame you, but hear me out, okay?” His eyes are so wide and sincere Maria wants to hug him. Or, well, maybe something a little less G-rated. She settles for a nod instead.
“Canceling at the last minute, showing up late, ditching her friends to dance with some weird guy at a bar. It’s not like her,” he says. “The last year’s been pretty rough on her, and I think we owe it to her to try and help, even if she doesn’t really want us to.”
“You’re an excellent friend,” Maria says, somehow managing to keep a straight face. At least now she knows he’s not falling for Natasha.
There’s really no way she can shut down the conversation without sounding like an asshole who doesn’t care about her friend, so she nods along while Sam diagnoses Natasha’s probable mental health issues. He kind of has a point about getting her to see a therapist -- but then, the last time Natasha had a shrink, she’d spent six months testing cover identities on him and gotten a borderline personality diagnosis for her trouble. Then she and Maria had had to break into his office and set his records on fire before SHIELD found out.
***
For once, Maria takes the weekend off. On Monday morning, she tells Natasha to stand down and resolves to come clean with Sam. The whole matchmaking scheme is getting out of hand, and anyway, life is short -- if she likes the guy, she should just tell him and be done with it, come what may.
Of course, by then, Sam’s in the middle of the Caspian Sea. Maria does a double take at the geotracker on her computer screen. But no, there he is, floating in the water, not an island or a rescue chopper in sight. She puts her head down on her desk and tries to massage away the headache she can feel building behind her temples. This is what happens when she takes two days off work?
Her comm link chimes, and Natasha’s voice crackles over her computer speakers. “Hey, don’t freak out, but we kinda lost Sam. Not lost lost. I mean, he’s not dead. Just...he’s not where he’s supposed to be. We’ll get him back though, okay?”
“I’m so annoyed with all of you right now that I don’t even have a bitingly sarcastic rejoinder,” Maria says. “Get him out of the ocean. Now.”
She cuts off the transmission before anyone tries to remind her that Sam is technically lost in the sea.
***
The day they come back with Sam is the third anniversary of Phil’s not-really-death, which is a shitty fucking day for everyone. They all get broody and snappish, and underneath the argument about whose turn it is to take out the garbage, Maria can feel a familiar debate simmering. Who deserves more of their rage: Nicky Fury for concealing Phil’s resurrection, or Phil for not calling them immediately when he rose from the dead?
Maria really doesn’t need to hear it again. She knows that Natasha has a flexible relationship with the truth and isn’t mad at anyone, but she’s worried about Phil. Clint hid his family for a decade, so he’s not prepared to judge Phil for keeping secrets. Tony’s pissed at everyone because Phil’s death made him feel emotionally vulnerable, Steve’s bitter about SHIELD’s secret keeping, and Maria can guess Vision’s asking awkward questions about mortality while Wanda circles warily around everyone.
She needs exactly none of that shit, so she retreats to her office on the pretext of doing work. In reality, she looks at a file for seven seconds before opening her bottle of emergency whiskey. She does not, however, lock the door, which is a strategic mistake because somebody opens it before she even finishes her first drink.
She decides against actually looking at the intruder. “If you’re Tony, I don’t want to hear it. If you’re Steve, I also don’t want to hear it. If you’re Clint, you can’t have my good whiskey unless you plan to replace it with equally good whiskey. If you’re Natasha, bring your vodka, we’ll drink silently. If you’re Vision, congratulations on remembering not to walk through the wall, but I’m not answering questions about the nature of life and death today.”
She doesn’t get through the rest of the team. Frankly, she’s not sure what she’d do with Wanda right now, Rhodey rarely needs reminders to behave like a human being, and Sam -- is apparently sitting in the chair across from her desk, looking surprisingly alright for a guy who’d gotten dumped in the Caspian Sea less than twenty-four hours ago.
“I wasn’t expecting you to come in today,” she says, trying to manage some veneer of professionalism. It’s 10:15 and there’s a bottle of whiskey on her desk, so she’s probably failing.
Sam gives her a little smile. “Somebody told me you might be having a rough day. That seemed worth coming in for.”
***
To tell the truth, she doesn’t remember much of the rest of the day. She thinks she was hungover by four. She dimly remembers telling Sam, well, everything -- that her best friend got stabbed in the chest by a Norse god, resurrected, and came back drawing alien maps all over the walls, and she doesn’t know if he’s okay because their faltering friendship had died with SHIELD. How Sam had replied is a mystery, but she recalls a feeling of warmth and understanding, so obviously it had been nice.
Her pleasure at the memory is somewhat muted by the discovery that she’s under her desk. According to her watch, it’s 12:24 a.m. There’s a pillow under her head and an Army jacket across her shoulders. The fabric is old and soft, and sure enough, the name label sewn on the front says WILSON. She’s not really surprised to see a trashcan, two bottles of water, and a couple aspirin on the floor in front of her. There’s even a note that says I don’t normally leave people under their desks, but I figured you wouldn’t have wanted the others to see you. Call if you need anything.
So, on the day she’d planned to come clean and ask Sam out again, she’d gotten sloppy drunk, cried about her ex-best friend, and passed out under her desk. How very attractive. Maybe she can avoid him for the next twenty-six days and all of this will become a distant memory and she can start over again.
***
Sam does not let her avoid him. He shows up the next morning with some coffee, and then it becomes a habit. Just five or ten minutes before work, a friendly chat, occasionally they split a muffin. It’s nothing overtly romantic, but every day she mentally ticks off another box on the checklist of what she wants in a man. Not afraid of occasional emotional breakdowns. Capable of speaking at least one foreign language. Not a picky eater.
She really needs to tell him how she feels, but life just never stops. Half the TSA agents at Laguardia turn out to be Hydra plants, and since airport security is awful enough without the evil secret organization, she feels it’s her moral imperative to stop them personally. Then Pepper has an apocalyptic fight with Tony and asks if she can stay with Maria for a few days, which culminates in a surprise trip to the beach. When Maria comes back from that excursion, she discovers that Vision had accidentally opened a portal. Tony thinks it leads to another dimension, so they all panic when it sucks Wanda in. Luckily, it only takes her on a long, strange trip to the basement. They still have to figure out how to close it, because Maria’s certain random, people-sucking portals are a security risk.
On Friday, Sam shows up with a quinoa superfood muffin for himself and an apple cinnamon one for her.
“What was the high point of your week?” he asks. Naming the best and worst parts of their weeks is a game they’ve been playing lately. Maria thinks it was a therapy exercise from the VA group Sam used to lead, but she still finds herself picking and choosing moments while she drives to work.
“Wanda not dying in the portal,” she answers quickly. On Monday, she’d thought nothing could top margaritas on the beach with Pepper. Clearly, she was deluded about what kind of life she led. “Of course, the low point was watching Wanda get sucked into portal in the first place.”
“Yeah. I’m not a fan of threats I can’t fight,” Sam says. He holds out a chunk of the weird quinoa muffin, and Maria shakes her head vehemently. Quinoa doesn’t belong in her breakfast. Or her anything, for that matter.
“What was your high point?” she asks.
Sam smiles. “Right now. Eating muffins with you.”
Maria’s heart skips a beat because apparently this whole sad affair is turning her into a thirteen-year-old girl. But she knows an opening when she sees it.
“I want to talk to you about something,” she says.
That’s as far as she gets before the intruder alert sounds. She grabs her sidearm from her desk drawer and tosses Sam a knife while she’s at it. Then they run together to the nearest gun locker, and the door immediately closes and locks behind them. A second later, the lights go off, leaving them in total blackness.
The comm still works. Thank goodness for small blessings.
Vision isn’t the person Maria had expected to hear. She was also not expecting the nervous way he clears his throat before he speaks.
“I seem to have set off the intruder alert,” he says, sounding embarrassed. “It appears I walked through a wall containing sensitive equipment while Mr. Stark was recalibrating the alert protocols. I apologize for the inconvenience.”
Tony’s voice comes over the intercom next. “Let there be light!” he says, and the emergency lights click on, filling the room with an eerie blue glow. “So the building went on a more aggressive lockdown than I intended,” he continues, sounding not the least bit contrite. “But the door unlocking operation is well underway, and I promise to have you all out in a few hours.”
“Hours?” Five people exclaim all at once.
“Tony, I’m stuck in the elevator and I have to pee,” Natasha says, her voice sounding tinny over the intercom.
“Alright, you heard it, Romanov’s top priority,” Tony says. “Vision, see if you can bring her a jar. Everybody else alright?”
Maria slides down to the floor as she listens to the roll call. Sam follows suit. It’s a tiny room, so there’s barely enough space for both of them to sit, even with their hips and shoulders pressed together. Well, she’d wanted an opportunity…
But Sam doesn’t give her the chance.
“Hey, there’s something I’ve been meaning to talk to you about,” he says, and Maria tenses. “That whole asking-me-out prank kinda hit me the wrong way, but I just want to say I’m really glad we got over it. It’s been really nice, getting to know you these past few weeks, and you’re a good friend.”
“It hit you the wrong way?” Maria asks. “You were angry?”
Sam looks down at the floor and shrugs. “Well, I tried to laugh it off, but it kinda sucks when somebody convinces the woman you like to ask you out as a prank. I figured Sam Wilson’s hopeless crush was getting to be the office joke, so I kinda avoided you for awhile - till the Turkmenistan thing. I’m glad we got back on the right foot.”
Maria’s still stuck on the hopeless crush part. “I’m sorry. Did you say you like me? As in, like me, like me?” God, she’s terrible at this. Maybe Vision will open a portal and suck her inside.
“Well, I wasn’t going to admit that, but yeah. Kinda have for awhile. It’s not every lady who can rescue you from an armored personnel carrier single-handedly.” Sam shakes his head. “But look, I know it’s not that way between us, and I’m really happy just to be your friend.”
Maria resists the urge to bash her head against the wall. “It wasn’t a prank, Sam. I was asking you out. Why didn’t you just say yes?”
Sam stares at her incredulously. “You gotta give a guy a hint. Does ‘I’ll need that mission report by 1500’ count as flirting on your planet? Cause it sure as hell isn’t on mine.”
“Okay, okay, I’m terrible at this. I admit it. When you said no the first time, I got Natasha to help, and she started making all these plans with the two of us and not showing up so we could spend time alone together -- and then you got all worried about her, so I thought maybe you’d gotten interested in her instead. I am completely ridiculous, I’m afraid.”
“The dating rituals of superheroes,” Sam says, smiling wryly. He catches her hand in his and traces his fingers over the calluses on her palms. “You wanna try again?”
“I can do that,” Maria says, trying to ignore the heat rushing to her face. She takes a long, deep breath and reminds herself this is in no way the most difficult or scary thing she’s ever done. “Sam, I like you. I think you are intelligent, thoughtful, considerate, not picky about food, calm in a crisis…”
Her voice trails off because their faces are getting closer and closer. Their foreheads bump, and she can feel the soft exhalation of Sam’s laughter against her cheek. She tilts her head up --
And sees the glowing green ready light on the security cam. It’s swiveling to get a better angle.
“There was no intruder alert,” she says slowly. She reaches up and jabs the comm button. “Jesus, Romanov, what part of stand down don’t you understand? Did you seriously get the whole team involved?”
She can practically see Natasha’s innocuous little shrug on the other side. “You weren’t doing anything,” she says plaintively. “I had to fix it.”
Tony comes on next. “The part about it taking a few hours to get you out? Not a lie, I’m afraid. You two kids finish talking things through while I learn a valuable lesson about beta testing security protocols.”
***
Sam and Maria considered the morning in the gun locker their first date. They built each other bouquets of hi-tech ammunition, and plotted their retaliation against the entire Avengers Initiative. Step one was locking Natasha and Tony in a closet together and taking bets on who came out alive.