The Spider And Gambit

Steve Rogers scowled as he hit the punching bag so hard knocking it off its chain and destroying it. He pants from the exertion as he walks over to a pile of punching bags and grabs another to use.

"Trouble sleeping?" Fury asks in place of a greeting. Gambit without his blacked-out glasses on stood to the side of Fury lost in thought.

"I've slept for 70 years, sir. I've had my fill," Rogers replies and, starts hitting the punching bag.

"Then you should be out, celebrating, seeing the world," Fury says.

Rogers stops and looks at the two men. His eyes lingered on Gambit and his unusual eyes, but chose to ignore it. He removes the tape from his hands and sits on a bench.

"I went under, the world was at war, I wake up, they say we won. They didn't say what we lost," Rogers says.

"We've made some mistakes along the way. Some very recently." 

"You here with a mission, sir?"

"I am," Fury nods as he walks towards Rogers. Gambit looks over at them and walks up to the punching bag.

"Careful, that's not exactly an ordinary punching bag..." Rogers trails off in shock as Gambit's hand glows purple and he punches the punching bag so hard, it launches to the other side of the room and explodes into nothingness.

Gambit looks down at his hand and flexes it a few times. He sighs running a hand through his hair and walks off.

"Who was that? What was up with his glowing hand?" Rogers asks staring at Gambit's back as he walks out the door.

"Gambit and he was born with special abilities," Fury answers staring at the door contemplatively.

"What was that about?" Roger nods to the scorch marks left behind by the destroyed punching bag.

"It has to do with this," Fury says as he hands a file to Rogers. He reads through it.

"Hydra's secret weapon. Who took it from you?" Rogers hands Fury the file back.

"He's called Loki. He's not from around here. He mind-controlled Gambit using a special sceptre. Gambit's been for lack of a better word, pissed since the incident," Fury replies

"He gonna be okay?" Rogers asks in concern for the young man.

"He'll be fine," Fury reassures him.

"There's a lot we'll have to bring you up to speed on if you're in. The world has gotten even stranger than you already know," Fury adds.

"At this point, I doubt anything would surprise me," Rogers shoots back as he gets up to gather his things.

"Ten bucks says you're wrong. There's a debriefing package waiting for you back at your apartment," Fury says as Rogers walks away with a punching bag over his shoulders. "Is there anything you can tell us about the Tesseract that we ought to know now?"

"You should have left it in the ocean," Rogers calls back as he walks out of the gym.

[Line Break]

Rogers is sitting inside the Quinjet with Coulson and Gambit across from him.

"We're about forty minutes out from the base, sir," A pilot informs Coulson.

"I gotta say, it's an honour to meet you, officially. I sort of met you, I mean, I watched you while you were sleeping. I mean, I was... I was present while you were unconscious from the ice. You know, it's really, it's just a... just a huge honour to have you on board," Coulson swoons at Rogers who just smiles at him.

"Well, I hope I'm the man for the job," Rogers nods while glancing at Gambit who seems to be staring off into space.

"I'm sorry, we didn't really have much of a greeting yesterday. Steve Rogers," Rogers holds out his hand to Gambit.

Gambit blinks from his thoughts and looks at Roger's outstretched hand. "Adrien LeBeau," Gambit shakes his hand.

"So long have you been with S.H.I.E.L.D.?" Rogers inquires.

"About a week, more or less" Gambit shrugs pulling out his cards and doing shuffle tricks.

"Oh? Then what were you doing before this?"

"Enjoying my retirement," Gambit replies with a glazed look as if his mind wandered elsewhere.

Rogers opens his mouth to ask another question when the pilot announces that they've arrived at the base. The Quinjett lands on the runway of the Helicarrier. The three men exit the aircraft and are greeted by a red-headed woman.

"Agent Romanoff, Captain Rogers..." Coulson introduced them.

"Ma'am" Steve greets.

"Hi," Natasha smiles ignoring Gambit and then looks at Coulson. "They need you on the bridge. They're starting the face-trace,"

"Right, I'm off then," Coulson walks off, sensing the tension between the Gambit and Natasha.

"We'll ain't you a sight for sore eyes, my dear Spider," Gambit grins, giving Natasha a once over.

"I can assure you the feelings not mutual, Mr LeBeau," Natasha smiles coldly.

"Come now Spider, no need to be so cold," Gambit smiles charmingly, moving to stand in her personal space.

"The last man to stand so close to me lost a finger," Natasha looks up at him innocently. "I wonder what you'll lose?" She tilts her head curiously.

Gambit feels the press of a gun barrel on his crotch and smiles widely having finally gotten a reaction out of Natasha. 

Steve stands off to the side, eyes shifting between the two in alarm not knowing whether to intervene.

"Really?" Gambit questions and leans down to whisper huskily. "After all the pleasure he gave you in Paris all those years ago?"

Natasha's glare hardens and she pointedly presses the gun harder against his crotch causing him to wince slightly. "Maybe if I remove this head, you'll think carefully with the other before running that disgusting mouth of yours,"

Steve loudly clears his throat getting their attention with Gambit still looking amused by the situation and Natasha about ready to go through with her threat of castration.

"I'm guessing you know each other then?" Steve asks shifting uneasily, looking at the gun still pointed at Gambit's crotch while the man himself is completely unfazed.

"No."

"Yes."

Natasha rolls her eyes, holsters her gun and starts walking away. Gambit chuckles following after her and Steve shakes his head bemused following after them.

"It was quite the buzz around here, finding you in the ice," Natasha speaks glancing at Steve. "I thought Coulson was gonna swoon. Did he ask you to sign his Captain America trading cards yet?"

"Oh, he did swoon. It was funny watching him get all flustered," Gambit cuts in.

"Playing cards?" Steve asks confused and intrigued.

"They're vintage, he's very proud," Natasha smirks looking ahead.

They spot a brown-haired man dressed like a science professor looking around like a lost child and awkwardly moving out of the way of other people milling about.

"Dr Banner," Steve greets as they approach Banner.

"Uh, hi. They told me you were coming," Banner says shaking Steve's hand.

"Word is, you can find the cube?" Steve says.

"Is that the only word on me?"

"Only word I care about," Steve answers smiling slightly.

"So...What's his deal?" Banner nods back to where Gambit is seen whispering something to Natasha, who is trying to feign indifference.

"Just met the guy yesterday," Stever shrugs and smiles in amusement, watching Gambit take off his blacked-out glasses to wink at Natasha. Natasha for her part looks shocked and intrigued at his peculiar eye colour.

"He goes by Gambit and seems to have special abilities. That's about all I know," Steve says.

"What kind of Special abilities..." 

"Gentlemen, you might want to step inside in a minute. It's gonna get a little hard to breathe," Natasha with Gambit's glasses still on, interrupts the two men's conversation. Both men look confused as the Helicarrier starts to shake.

"Is this a submarine?" Steve asks feeling the Helicarrier shake and seeing agents strap down the aircraft and wear oxygen masks.

"Really? They wanted me in a submerged, pressurised metal container?" Banner asks with incredulous sarcasm.

"Oh, Dr Banner this is much worse," Gambit says squinting at the four huge lift fans mounted on the sides.

"You're right. This is much worse," Banner shakes his head.

[Line Break]

The four of them walk into the command centre. Steve and Banner look around in awe at everything. Natasha smiles amused at their awestruck expressions. With his glasses back on, Gambit shuffles his cards, looking thoughtfully at Natasha.

Fury smirks when Steve hands him a ten-dollar bill for their bet yesterday.

"Doctor, thank you for coming," Fury greets Banner shaking his hand.

"Thanks for asking nicely. So, how long am I staying?" He asks.

"Once we get our hands on the Tesseract you're in the wind,"

"Where are you with that?"

"We're sweeping every wirelessly accessible camera on the planet. Cellphones, laptops. If it's connected to a satellite, it's eyes and ears for us," Coulson answers from the floor below.

Natasha glances at a console displaying Barton's file. "That's still not gonna find them in time,"

"You have to narrow down the field. How many spectrometers do you have access to?" Banner asks Fury.

"How many are there?"

"Call every lab you know, tell them to put the spectrometers on the roof and calibrate them for gamma rays. I'll rough out a tracking algorithm based on cluster recognition. At least we could rule out a few places. Do you have somewhere for me to work?"

"Agent Romanoff, would you please show Dr Banner to his laboratory," Fury says.

"You're gonna love it, Doc. We got all the toys." Natasha smirks walking off with Banner.

Fury looks at Gambit, who is staring out one of the windows with a pensive expression while absently shuffling his cards and sees Steve approach him.

"Amazing view, yeah?" Steve starts conversationally.

"Hmm?" Gambit snaps out of his musing and glances at Steve. "Yeah..."

Steve moves to stand next to him and they both fall into somewhat awkward silence. Gambit didn't really mind Steve, his mind was already wandering off to unpleasant memories. Steve subtly glances at Gambit and notices the glazed-over blank look on his face.

"So...?" Steve starts awkwardly, gaining his attention. "You and Romanoff? There seems to be some history there?"

Gambit smiles fondly remembering the day he met her, "...I was invited to an auction in Paris. I arrived a week earlier so I could do some sightseeing before the event started." He chuckles amused. "I was hailing a cab when this beautiful green-eyed, blonde-haired Russian girl walked up to me asking to share a cab with me in this heavily accented broken English."

Oh, yeah" Steve says invested in the story.

"Yeah. My little Widow was spinning her web, not knowing I willingly walked into it," Gambit grins widely, just thinking back on it.

"Wait... So you knew who she was?" Steve asks slightly baffled, that Gambit would try to play with someone as dangerous as Romanoff.

"Yeah, lucky for me she didn't know who I was," Gambit shrugs. " She just saw Adrien Lebeau, an easy way into the auction."

"Why would she--"

"Storytimes over gentlemen. Loki's been spotted in Stuttgart, Germany!" Fury calls out getting the two men's attention.

"You want us to go?" Gambit asks as Natasha walks onto the bridge.

"Captain, you're up," Fury nods at Steve and turns to Gambit. "Romanoff will show you the new suit,"

Natasha nods and walks off with Gambit following behind her not before sarcastically saluting Fury and Steve.

"So, my little Widow--

"Don't call me that," Natasha cuts him off flatly.

"Ok then, Alia." Gambit smirks when that gets him a glare. "I was thinking..."

"Don't hurt yourself now," Natasha smirks teasingly.

"Very funny." Gambit rolls his eyes but is secretly delighted at her teasing. "Since it's been a while. How about a date? So we can catch up,"

Natasha stops at the locker room and opens the door. She looks up at him with a seductive smile. "Hmm...". She walks closer to him until their bodies are pressed together. She smiles at him at him as she slowly rakes her fingers down his shirt, all the way down and stopping at his crotch.

"No," She smiles darkly and gives his family jewels a hard squeeze causing him to yelp and double over in pain. "You don't get to ask for a date after you robbed and ghosted me,"

"Fair enough," Gambit grunts in pain holding onto his bruised nuts.

"Now go and suit up Adrien," Natasha lightly slaps his cheek and walks away to get ready.

"... God I love that woman," Gambit smiles watching her walk off.