2012-08-24 Slyffindor

So last night, Wisdom went down to the park where the rock troll thing had been summoned and he and Clint and flagged-CIA-AWOL-girl had kicked its ass. Sue Storm'd asked about it, and since Pete had actually been there and was /available/-- and it's always nice to get off the Helicarrier-- he was more than happy to give her a tour of the wreckage and a summary of events.

Then Doug Ramsey got a call from a girl in the park saying Pete'd gotten fried and he needed medical help.

Now? Now Wisdom's in the medbay, and he's been giving the poor medical staff shit the /entire time/ because (for obvious reasons) they won't let him smoke in there. Or drink. Or have his pants back.

Right now, he's not fighting with anyone-- he's crankily playing Robot Unicorn Attack on his phone, in his medical bed, in his glassed-and-curtained little room, looking rather like he got hit by lightning.

"Your reputation precedes you, Pete Wisdom," comes a female voice from the doorway of his room. It's a redhead. A redhead in her own costume with a red hourglass symbol as a belt buckle. That should require no introduction on her part. "Barton said you got yourself locked up in here. What'd you do, tell Super Girl she had nice tatas?" she asks with a faint smirk. Her arms are folded over her chest, leaning against the door frame with one shoulder, her head cocked to one side.

Female voice versus continuing to irritate the medical staff with the haunting soundtrack of a tinny rendition of 'Always' by Erasure-- Pete's getting his unicorn's head accidentally chopped off as he gives his first answer. "They're *lovely* tatas," he says with a back note of indignation. And then he makes a 'tch' sound as the FAIL notice comes up, and finally his gaze lifts to the owner of the voice.

Pete Wisdom's jaw drops, and he makes a sound like he was /totally/ going to say something-- but his voice fails just as hard as his phone game.

(Abort, retry, fail?) Mouth shuts; the young man's blue eyes (in the middle of his fading twin shiners) are wide. "Agent Romanova," he says after a second, voice somewhat strangled. "No. Magic lightning. Always have to be so bloody /specific/ when you're negotiating payment to spirits."

"Did you tell /Thor/ he has nice tatas?" Natasha asks, one brow arching. She pushes off the doorframe and makes her way inside, plucking up the medical char at the end of the bed to look it over. "I try not to mess with the magical hoodoo. It always makes my hair frizz," she deadpans.

Tash sets the chart down again, satisfied her get well present isn't going to kill the guy. She tosses a small flask of scotch onto the bed between his legs. "I recommend cutting a slit in the mattress to hide that, or Nurse Ratchet will confiscate it on you." She should know.

Relaxing slightly at Tasha's Thor comment-- and delivering a 8.9 on the 'inelegant snort' scale-- Wisdom shakes his head ruefully. "I hate magic. And it keeps sodding /finding/ me," he says, putting the phone on the tray table next to the bed. It's while his attention's briefly off the redhead that she takes out the flask, so it takes him by surprise when she makes a tossing gesture in his peripheral vision.

Tossed object. Headed for him. Reflex starts to kick in and he lifts his hands-- and identifies the object midair, which is awesome for at least a couple of reasons. First, because exploding a gift in the medlab would be very poor form indeed. Second, because *it's scotch*. This, then, is a look of unreserved delight. "Noted," he says breathlessly, immediately leaning to pick it up. "And you're a godsend, Romanova. They won't give me my /trousers/, they know I'll /leave/--"

"I'd give you your trousers but," Natasha shrugs. "Where's the fun in that?" She crosses to perch in the single uncomfortable guest chair. "You were MI-13, correct? Isn't magic sort of your schtick to deal with?" So this is a getting to know you session apparently.

"I'd give you your trousers but," Natasha shrugs. "Where's the fun in that?" She crosses to perch in the single uncomfortable guest chair. "You were MI-6, correct? Isn't magic sort of what you Brits deal with? All Stonehenge and loch ness monsters and such?" So this is a getting to know you session apparently. Or she's teasing him.

Flask, uncapped. Scotch, summarily sampled. Now the Englishman actually relaxes the rest of the way, sinking back against the folded-up hospital pillow he's jammed up to pad the wall. Or headboard. Whatever. He waves his scotch-free hand in a disgusted gesture. "When I signed on my eyes were starry with visions of Bond girls," he admits unreservedly. "No one said shit-all about magic. It's when magic has bloody great teeth that I wish I'd got the desk job my training partner was assigned." Half-grin, and another swig of scotch; he caps the bottle and starts fishing along the side of the bed for where to temporarily stash the flask. "I was MI-6, though, yeah. Covert ops, generally deniable; only about a fifth of it dealt with Harry Potter. Thankfully."

"Is that so? Does that make you a Gryffindor or a Slytherin?" Natasha quips. She leans back in the chair, crossing her legs. "What will you be doing for our illustrious organization? Being a magical speedbump to save the frayed nerves of my hairdresser?"

"Slyffindor," answers Wisdom decisively. And then he grins, sitting back after jamming the flask between layers of uncomfortable mattress; he laces his fingers over his midsection and leans his head against the wall. "No offense to your hairdresser, but I hope to god I'm not on magic detail. Barton was saying he hands a lot of that shit off to SHADE, and that's fine with me. I can just barely deal with a Star Trek medical bay."

A breath through his teeth, then, and Pete lifts a hand to rub carefully at the corners of his bruised eyes. "I'll be doing whatever gets put on my plate, so long as it lives up to SHIELD's standards of doing business-- or it needs doing anyway. I expect most of what I'll be assigned is covert, if not all; it's my background, it's what I'm proven at. What I'll be doing when no one's telling me to go in somewhere and wreck everything--? Looking for inconsistencies. Finding patterns. Investigating. My da, he was a detective inspector, serial murderer profiling. Was him I learned from first, figuring out what makes people tick, where their heads are, what makes them do things. Motivations. I like mysteries, I'm /good/ at mysteries. I'm just also good at killing people."

"Sounds like you'll be an asset training the new ones too," Natasha notes. "I have a recruit, Douglas Ramsey, that I think has some untapped covert potential. The kid knows languages. Not a lot of languages. All languages. I know you can appreciate the value of that." She watches him carefully, reading body language herself. She's been in the spy game for so long, she's not even really sure who the real Natasha is at this point.

Not nearly as long in the business as Natasha, is Pete, but he's not new, either-- he can tell he's being evaluated, just as Barton and Coulson evaluated him before, but the notorious Black Widow's as difficult to read as a Kindle Keyboard in the woods on a moonless night. And, as such, he -- clearly to Natasha -- has to keep reminding himself that he's where he /wants/ to be (medbay notwithstanding) and avoid bottling his responses. When you're talking to a superior officer who can out-lie you on your best day without even trying, you don't /hide/.

So, then, it's with perfect, open honesty that he answers, that he continues to answer. "We get on like a house on fire. I told him if he introduced me to you I'd take him on a proper pubcrawl," he says with a crooked grin. "That ship's sailed, but I owe him for pulling my fat out of the fire last night. I mean, aside from the fact that I want to see him on a pubcrawl anyway. I'm familiar with his talent, and I've seen him read body language like it's his mother tongue-- so, agreed. He's so... /nice/, though, I..."

With this last, Wisdom's glanced away; he's studying the curtain. The fascinating, brilliant curtain. "...I s'pose, I hope you don't have him in mind for black ops."

"No. Not for a good decade probably. Have to wear the shine off his sparkling halo first," Natasha agrees. "But I can't promise SHIELD won't shove the kid into black ops missions now and then because he is just /that/ valuable. So we need to train him well, right, and fast as hell, Wisdom. Can you help me with that?" she asks simply. Does Tash have a soft spot for the sweet boy next door? She hates seeing the good ones splatted early.

That's an outlook Wisdom apparently considers perfectly acceptable, or at least realistic; he looks back at Tasha when she starts replying, and there isn't any joking, only business. "I can," he says seriously, simply, "and will. He's here, so he can't afford coddling. Just have to work up to hell on earth instead of starting there, yeah?" Rhetorical question, by the look and sound of it. He lets out a puff of air, blowing his messy hair off his forehead for a second, then straightens his shoulders. "Does SHIELD assign partners?"

"They do in most cases. Mine is Barton. If I kill him at some point, I'll request you," she says flatly. Joking! Maybe. Um. Possibly? With a faint smile, she gets out of the chair and heads out the door, calling back, "Get well soon."