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Phil settled at the table across from Jasper and sipped his coffee, then sighed as the usual twitch and tension swept through the cafeteria. “So, which one?” he asked conversationally.
Jasper glanced up. “Her.”
Phil nodded and sipped his coffee again. One agent, obviously new to the building, did him the favor of watching openly or as near as he needed, since Coulson could track his agent’s progress through the room by the awe in the junior agent’s half turned face. A leather clad arm appeared over his shoulder, dropping a flash drive and two handspans of discolored canvas on the table before him.
“Transferring physical evidence, per protocol, sir.” Romanov said.
“Barton won the toss?” Coulson asked.
Her mechanical tone shifted to something a bit darker. “He is in the shower already, while I am playing courier and shedding foreign soil over the carpeting.”
Phil leaned back and lifted both the generic black thumb drive and the scrap of canvas toward the security camera in the corner. “Consider yourself relieved of physical goods, Agent. Debrief at your leisure.” He glanced at the poker face failure at the next table to verify she’d walked away and sipped his coffee again.
“Do they really use a coin toss?” Jasper asked, as Phil pulled the corners of the canvas straight.
“Coins, knives, severed thumbs, dice. …” Phil mused. “Does that look Dutch to you?”
“Dutch?”
“The way the light falls on the sleeve, here at the edge.”
Jasper poked at the canvas. “That’s part of a painting.”
“I’m thinking 1800’s and Dutch.”
“She brought you a chunk of historically valuable art.”
“Don’t be silly. She brought me a forgery of an antique painting with … chemical equations written on the back. Hmmm…”
“You going to put it on the fridge?”
“What refrigerator?”
“Isn’t that what you do? Put the art that the kids bring home from school on the fridge?”
Phil allowed himself a smile, a small one, business appropriate, but still … anything that let the others see Romanov as human was to be encouraged. She’d spent the first six months of her tenure at SHIELD isolated in practice, if not in theory. He downed the rest of his coffee and pulled the thumb drive and canvas into his free hand as he stood.
He wasn’t entirely surprised to find a souvenir magnet attached to his filing cabinet that afternoon. Of course Barton asked about it. Of course Romanov ignored the answer. Of course, a day later, there was artwork under the magnet, two stick figures, one with a quiver and the other with squiggly red hair and a bright yellow circle above them.
--::--
Fury paused as the door opened. “I thought you two were in medical.”
Romanov said, “We were.” He narrowed his eye at her, but Barton just shrugged as they took seats. Phil could see Barton’s hesitation in his movement, and the look Fury gave him said he had, too, but he nodded at Sitwell to continue his briefing.
Barton made his normal contributions in two words and digressions in half sentences and Romanov was precise and analytical and the debrief went as they always did except when Romanov, as she was leaving, pulled a pebble out of nowhere and placed it carefully in front of Sitwell. She left the room with a nod, but Barton was fighting to hide a grin and that worried Phil.
Sitwell poked at the pebble. “Is this like a kiss on the forehead or a bullet with my name scratched on it? Is it radioactive?”
Phil tucked the tablet under his arm and carefully didn’t make eye contact with anyone as he headed to the door.
“Is it a special rock? Did she give you a rock? Coulson, wait!”
He didn’t. He dodged Jasper for the better part of an hour and returned to his office to find Romanov at his desk, Barton standing behind her, as she tapped at the keyboard.
He took her other side, rather than displace Barton, and read the monitor over her shoulder. He was unsurprised to find that she’d hacked into the computer surveillance and was reading a list of what seemed to be search terms. The word combinations at the bottom, the early searches, seemed to be a mish mash of “rock” and “Russian” and the ones in the middle ran along the lines of “Russian meaning of stones” and the ones at the top had flurries of profanity. The very latest read, “Why do I work with crazy motherfuckers?”
“That’s going to trigger a red flag with IT.” Coulson said, as he leaned over her to set the tablet carefully on his desk.
“Motherfucker?” Barton asked. “They haven’t said anything to me.”
“Crazy,” Coulson answered and stepped out of the way as Romanov rolled his chair back and stood.
He let them get to the door before he yielded with a sigh. “Agent?” She paused and turned. He asked, “What is it? What’s the significance of the pebble?”
She fluttered her eyelashes in a parody of innocent confusion and Barton, beside her, let his grin show. “It was there. It was shiny. He seemed jealous of your painting.” She looked up to face him fully with her default expression of cool disinterest until he gave in to laughter. She smiled in return, unexpected and more girlish than he’d seen on any of her personas.
This then, was her sense of humor. Good to know.