Flowers
On Thursday afternoon Tony comes strutting into her office, holding a huge and undoubtedly expensive bouquet of flowers.
Maria takes them from him without much thought. He had brought her flowers before, to Pepper’s dismay. (“you have got to learn to let women alone, Tony!”)
At first she does not notice the huge grin on his face. A grin that, in universal language, meant “guess what I did to get myself thrown into the fiery pits of hell today”.
However, this was Tony. And his expression for “guess what I did to get myself thrown into the fiery pits of hell today” looked a suspicious lot like his “wouldyouliketogooutonadatewithme?!” face.
She only notices when she falls back into her desk chair, after she had nonchalantly thrown the bouquet over her shoulder into the trash can in the corner. Tony ignores it.
“Let me guess, Stark. You’re either here to apologize for going on an unauthorised leave to go quad biking in Dubai, or you’re here to ask me on a date.” She places her elbows on her desk. The first guess was made up completely. Stark had not taken an unauthorised leave to go quad biking in Dubai, or at least not that she knows of.
“If I were to apologize for taking an unauthorised leave, I’d go put myself on the right foot with Fury, buy him a new eyepatch or something- hey, do you think he would appreciate a Hello Kitty eyepatch?”
“You’d be better off buying him a new mug with a snarky quote followed by the word “motherfucker”” Maria interrupts. She doubted that Stark would apologise for, well, anything. Technically he didn’t answer to S.H.I.E.L.D., but she and Fury had the Avengers a little more under their thumb than the public would ever know.
“Do you know how expensive customised mugs are?”
“You’re a billionaire.”
“Oh yeah, sometimes I forget.”
“I doubt you do. Get to the point, Stark.”
“I was, in fact, about to ask you on a date before you were so rude to me.”
Maria rolls her eyes.
—————
“Stark did WHAT now??” Natasha half-snorts, half-huffs. The redhead spins around in her chair.
“I know.”
“You said no, right?”
“Of course I did.”
“Well did he listen?”
“He did not.”
A grin creeps onto Natasha’s face. “Soooo did you-“
“Yep.” Maria smiles with her, remembering
the sweet, sweet pleasure of punching Iron Man in the throat. She’s pretty sure she can hear Tony’s only slightly overdone gagging echoing from a higher level of the building if she were to listen close enough.