Chapter Text
Maria Hill hates this sort of thing. Standing awkwardly in a bar, holding a ginger ale, pretending it’s actually a whiskey and ginger so no one thinks she’s a total prude. She’s done this before, this “hanging out” in a bar, glancing at pretty girls and handsome girls and girls with spiky hair and girls with short skirts and girls with pink hair as they sashay, stomp, slink by her. But then, she was undercover, unimpressive, unnoticeable, and she can sense the irony in still being entirely invisible to this crowd now, when she is most certainly not undercover at all. She’s thirty eight. Her sisters are married. Her mom has been nagging her for 14 years about settling down with a nice man, a nice woman, it doesn’t really matter at this point, Maria, just someone. You work too much, her mom says, you don’t have a life, her mom says, you don’t have any friends, and it’s all true, but she likes working. And she sort of has a life. She has some friends. Well, they’re co-workers too, but she hangs out with Phil outside of work, and as a matter of fact, it’s his fault she’s here.
She stares down at her phone, thumbing a quick text message to Phil, the instigator of this horrible, awful, self esteem crushing bullshit.
to Phil Coulson: this is awful. from Phil Coulson: Hang in there, kid. to Phil Coulson: whose idea was this, anyway? from Phil Coulson: Mine. to Phil Coulson: motherfucker. come join me. from Phil Coulson: Still at work. And, I can’t hang out in a lesbian bar, dumbass. to Phil Coulson: neither can i, clearly. i’m leaving.
Maria tries to pays her tab, but the bartender waves her off - it’s not really worth his time to ring up two glasses of ginger ale. She sighs, taking one last look around the room, full of women that won’t look at her, and exits the bar.
“You weren’t dressed for this, were you?” a voice says as she steps out of the front door. Maria whips around and a woman is looking her up and down, her face dimly lit by the neon sign. She is small, but lithe, and her mostly impassive face barely disguises a smile.
“What, business casual isn’t the dress code?” Maria answers, self deprecatingly, looking back down at her pressed black slacks and white buttoned dress shirt, tucked in. “Not really my scene, I guess.”
“Not mine either. Do you smoke?”
Maria doesn’t smoke, but she has always kept a pack of cigarettes with her, a habit from her undercover days, where smoking was a good excuse to hang out outside buildings. She fishes it out of her jacket; it’s a bit battered, but it will do. Maria tosses it over.
“Thanks.” The woman says, shifting under the light, and now Maria can see her better. She is...interesting. She is certainly pretty, but there is something hard, and something cold lurking under her surface. Her hair is dark, maybe brown, maybe a dark red, and it is barely contained under her black hoodie. She looks like someone who has stories, Maria thinks, and she’s learned to recognize how those people look. The woman fishes her own lighter out and tosses the pack of cigarettes back to Maria, who holds it dumbly in her hand.
“I can light you up?” the woman offers, holding her lighter up. Her features flicker.
“It’s okay,” Maria says, before realizing that smoking would have given her an excuse to linger, “I’m - I’m trying to quit.” she says, sliding the pack back in her pocket.
The woman laughs. “Me too, but it’s been a rough day.”
Maria thinks it’s probably a good time to leave, and head on home, but instead she leans against the wall, and exhales. It has been a rough day.
“I’m Natalie,” the woman says.
“Maria.”
“So, what’re you doing here, if it’s not your scene?”
“My friend - he’s been trying to get me to leave my house...and meet people.”
“You don’t sound like you want to meet people.”
“Not particularly. Well, maybe.”
“Well, you’ve met me now.” Natalie quirks up one half of her mouth.
“What do you do?” Maria asks, actively preventing herself from going into interrogation mode.
“I’m an actress. A stunt double, mostly. You?”
“I’m a project manager. A lot less interesting.” Technically, Maria thinks, she’s not lying at all. She does manage projects. Projects like storming a HYDRA base to retrieve classified information, or projects that extract civilians out of war zones, or projects that end major drug smuggling rings, but they’re definitely still projects.
“Hmm.” Natalie says, and Maria has to admit that she’s probably going out of her way to make herself boring to the new woman. Wow, Maria, she thinks to herself - you made a “meeting new people” undercover persona, and she’s a project manager who’s trying to quit smoking. Exciting. That’s why you’re so popular with the ladies, I'm certain of it. Maria has always been good with self deprecating inner monologue; her greatest skill is that no one else ever knows.
“Well, I’m off. Gotta work tomorrow.” Maria groans, pushing herself off the wall. No point in embarrassing herself in front of a new person to end an already painfully amateurish night.
“Nice meeting you, Maria.” Natalie says, but Maria is already walking down the street, hands shoved in her pockets.
Maria feels the tension flood out of her as she closes her apartment door. What a humiliating night, she grumbles to herself. She fishes the contents of her pockets, dropping them neatly into a bowl on the coffee table - phone, keys, wallet, cigarettes - cigarettes? Her cigarettes look different. She picks up the pack and stares at it. There’s a phone number written across it, the name NAT scrawled above it in large block print, and underlined twice. Natalie? Where did Natalie even get a Sharpie? She grins. Maybe her night wasn’t so bad after all. She grabs her phone - it’s late, but Phil’s probably still awake.
To Phil Coulson: got a number. :) From Phil Coulson: Lunch tomorrow, my office. Need details.