The Shield Job

He was surprised to receive her text message inviting him to dinner; she rarely initiated contact when he said he would be out of town. It wasn’t because she didn’t like to hear from him, she just thought they’d both be better off if she didn’t interrupt something sensitive, dangerous, or both. He could appreciate her feelings on that, although he was working with Hardison on a way to make it easier for her to find him without anyone’s position becoming an issue. And also because he just liked to hear from her; she was one of his favorite people. He didn’t get the number of people who thought it was weird that he liked to hear from his girlfriend on a more than occasional basis.

<Jones>: Are you inviting me to cook at your house? Because I don’t mind. Tell me what I need.

<Peaches>: No, that would be totally rude. I’ll call for pizza?

<Jones>: Without anchovies and pineapple?

<Peaches>: I’m going to pretend that’s code, and not the worst combination I’ve ever heard. You’re in town, right?

<Jones>: See you at 7.

She still had no idea whether he was in town or not, but smiled anyway because she was going to see him at 7 tonight. Probably tonight. He probably would have mentioned if he’d meant the one the next morning.

It wasn’t exactly customary, as he’d only done it a couple of times, but he brought her a snow globe (Moscow, where he had not been)(this time) and received effusive thanks in return. He’d also happened to meet (followed him from the pizza place) the pizza man, so had brought dinner in with him too, which meant Devil was more thrilled to see him than usual.

“Welcome home!” she exclaimed, grabbing him in a kiss that made his brain buzz after he set down the pizza. “How was Nepal?”

“Cold,” he answered. “Did you miss me?” He held her tight and tried not to wince as her hand brushed over a bruise on his side. Most of his side. All of his side. And part of the other one. He usually waited a couple of days to see her so the bruises could die down, but found he’d been unable to resist a direct invitation. If she asked for an explanation, he wasn’t sure what he’d do.

“I super did,” she confirmed. “But don’t let it get out. I have a reputation to protect.” She pulled back, just a little bit, to look at him more closely. “Do you need something for that scrape?”

“It can wait, Princess,” he assured her. “You hungry?”

“Starving,” she answered. “I had a student with a crisis today, so I skipped lunch to try to talk him down. What kind of Coke do you want?”

It must have been a rough conversation; her Georgia only slipped out like that when she was feeling off balance.

“Regular,” he answered, having learned from previous experience what to say so that she handed him an actual Coca-Cola. “Literally talk him down? Like out of a window?”

“Nothing that severe,” she answered from the kitchen. “He just today, for some reason, started panicking about his ability to get a job somewhere with a master’s in history. He was in a state. Breathing into a paper bag and everything.”

Before they met, he’d never heard anyone described as being in a state where geography wasn’t the primary focus of the discussion. He had decided to find her colloquialism charming, especially after he looked it up and confirmed what she meant.

He had to phrase his next question carefully, because he had no idea what someone did with a history degree if they didn’t plan to teach, and how many places could possibly need a history teacher? He didn’t doubt Ophelia did a quality job at teaching, and she appeared to love it, but Eliot didn’t see a path to financial well-being ahead of any of her students. Not that he’d advocate becoming a hitter either.

“Did you have something to tell him? Like, offer to mentor him for your job or something?”

“I called a friend who works in the research department of a museum,” she said. She set their drinks down and ineffectually shooed at Devil to get his nose away from the table. “We all talked for a while about the possibilities being a researcher or a curator has to offer. And I gave him an email address for another friend who used their history degree to become a business analyst, and another one who became a park ranger.”

“Really?” he was actually as surprised as he sounded.

“Sure,” she shrugged. “A lot of park rangers come out of the more scientific majors, like Forestry or Environmental Science Studies, but there are plenty of people in the parks service who are historians. It’s a neat job if you don’t mind dealing with tourists.”

He ate and considered, conscious of Devil’s eyes on his rapidly disappearing pizza slice.

“You minded dealing with tourists?”

“I’d much rather be one than answer questions from them,” she said. She gave a piece of her pizza crust to Devil. “I know you think you’re not begging, but you are.”

Eliot looked up, about to apologize and a little surprised at her ability to read his thoughts (which he would not have defined as begging so much as persuasively, repeatedly suggesting something he knew she liked.), when he realized she was speaking to Devil, who was not at all chastened.

“If you didn’t give him pizza, he might not want it,” Eliot offered. She laughed sarcastically.

“We spend a lot of time here discussing eminent domain,” she explained. “He’s having none of it. In his mind, if he claims it, it’s his. I don’t have the teeth or authority to dispute that.”

“Can he have pepperoni?”

She huffed out a sigh that ended in a laugh.

“He can now, because he’ll just take it if you don’t give it to him. He loves pepperoni.”

Devil pulled back his lips into something between a grin and a threat. Eliot handed him two pepperoni slices with a warning glare, because he wasn’t afraid of the big dog.

His questions about why she seemed so unusually happy this evening were answered when she picked up their freshly emptied plates to take them to the kitchen, where she dropped them unceremoniously into the sink.

“You were done, right? I mean, you can wait for dessert?”

Dessert hadn’t been on the menu, as far as he was aware. The night was looking up.

“I can,” he answered, leaning the chair back on two legs. “Something you want to talk about?”

“It’s more of a show and tell kind of thing,” she said, grabbing his hand and pulling him out of the chair, which clattered to the floor. She didn’t even look back; Eliot tried to temper his expectations, because his luck did not work in such a way that his girlfriend would invite him over for an evening of adult playtime that didn’t include something other than pizza as dinner. Every night at her place wasn’t prom night, but she liked fancy food and fancy clothing and tried to convey that him staying at her place was an event, even if it was a quiet one. Of course, she was just as likely to pounce on him after sandwiches at a picnic, which he supposed was just a different kind of event. Although she had a tendency to be wildly unpredictable in a way that made him lose focus a lot, and a man could dream.

She almost bunny hopped into the living room, where he was confronted with a massive box sitting on top of the coffee table and also everything else that had been on the coffee table.

“It’s here!” she announced.

“What’s here, Peaches?” He was willing to be excited, but felt like he’d forgotten something she would think was important. “Did you order something?”

“Your shield!” she crowed. “It’s finally here!”

He had, in fact, forgotten that she had drunkenly negotiated her way to a shield for him at the Faire. Well, not forgotten the drunken fairy part, but forgotten that there had been a tangible gift on the way to him. She still didn’t know, because he hadn’t found a way to say it that spending the entirety of day with her in a fairy outfit in the outdoors in a completely pressure-free situation had been gift enough in his mind. And it was in his mind a lot.

The box, which was much larger than he had envisioned, took up most of the coffee table. It was huge, if he had to pick a word. He didn’t know why when he pictured a shield, he thought of something slightly larger than hand-size.

He studied it for a moment while she vibrated in place next to him.

“Did you look at it yet?” he asked.

“No. And the suspense is killing me!”

That got his attention.

“Really? You don’t know what it looks like?”

“I know what it’s supposed to look like,” she replied. “Open it! Hurry up! I can get Devil to help.”

The dog perked up at that; a good dog never knew when a box might hold surprise kibble.

It was certainly well packed, Eliot thought. Not only did it have custom made Styrofoam pieces to protect the top and bottom point, but the body was supported from underneath, and an opaque sheet covered the top. Ophelia gasped when he pulled the paper away; he didn’t know what to even say. It was the single most thoughtful gift anyone had ever given him.

He reached for it twice before he pulled it out of the box. Ophelia pulled the protective pieces from the top so he could get a better sense of its size, which was far larger than he had expected. The silver gleamed dully in the afternoon light. But he was sure the best part was the baying wolf on the front, caught in profile on a blue mosaic background. It was a stylized, ancient-looking wolf. He loved it.

“Did you know it was going to look like this?” he asked, mesmerized by the light reflecting on the surface.

“I knew which one I ordered,” she said. “And I sent a note about what I’d like. Looks like he went all out on this one, because that’s not what the sample looks like.”

He flipped it over to find a sturdy set of working handles, placed exactly where he would have put them had he designed it. An envelope addressed in fancy writing to Mistress Robin Goodfellow was taped to the back. Very carefully, he pulled the tape off, making sure there was no sticky stuff left behind, then handed it to Ophelia. She read the note while he tried it out, watching his reflection in the window.

“Phee: I know this took longer than you expected, but I hope you’ll think it’s worth the effort. I tried a new inlay technique for the front. If the pieces come loose or fall out, let me know and I’ll fix it. Since you mentioned your boyfriend fights as a hobby, instead of using the usual heat application, I …,”

She tuned out for the three paragraphs of technical description about the build. His shields were some of the highest quality at the Faire, and while it was interesting to watch him working on one, reading about it was dreadfully boring if you didn’t plan to build one. Not that his description of the process was that specific. She skipped to the bottom.

Hope you like it!—James

“PS: Benedic was so mad that you got one over on him that he was really an ass about paying me when I brought him the certificate to cash in. Since he was such a jerk, I included a harness and charged him for that too. You’re welcome.”

Eliot was slashing the air with the shield, testing the heft and the balance, while Devil watched from a safe distance. Ophelia glanced into the box again before tugging at what turned out to be another layer of cardboard in the bottom.

“What’s this for?” Eliot asked, tapping a piece of round metal affixed to the back of the shield. “If I didn’t know, I would think it was…”

“It’s a magnet,” Ophelia finished. “For this harness. So you can carry it around all day without having to carry it around all day. So you don’t break your arm.”

“No way!” Eliot couldn’t remember the last time he’d been this excited about something. “Man, that’s some nice leather. And that’s…” he fitted the shield onto the harness with a satisfyingly heavy click, “exactly where that goes.”

“Here,” she offered, taking the shield by the edges and holding it up. “I know from experience this process goes better with help.”

He started to protest, because his own knowledge was that he could do this perfectly well by himself. In the end, he decided tonight was not the night for that discussion, that she was just trying to help, and that she was clearly relieved he liked her gift. While he probably would not have sought out nor bought this, he deeply appreciated that this had been her only thought.

“How’s that?” she asked, coming around to check the straps. “Oh, wait. You know how to do this, don’t you? You’ve parachuted out of things, right? So you can totally put this on so you don’t inadvertently choke yourself with it.” But she smiled.

“I do, Princess. But you’re right: it’s nice to have help. What do you think? Is it me?” He turned in a circle so she could view it from every angle.

“I think it’s fantastic,” she confirmed. “And definitely you. You like it, right?” She chewed nervously on a thumbnail.

He leaned in close to whisper, “It’s perfect. I don’t know what else to say,” before planting a kiss on her chin.

Which of course wasn’t true; if he wasn’t careful, everything currently on his mind would come spilling out of his mouth. But she was satisfied with that answer.

She held the shield by the top while he slid the harness off, mostly so it wouldn’t bang into the floor and dent the point. Or the floor.

“Wait,” he said suddenly. “What are you up to?”

“Me?” she asked, the picture of wide-eyed, utterly false, innocence. She even put one hand to her heart, as if to allay the shock his statement had caused her to experience. “Up to something? Sir, you have offended my honor!”

He grinned, as she had intended. Her fake Southern Belle act was by far his favorite. Her real Southern Belle act was his next favorite, a fact he decided to be at peace with so he didn’t have to think any more on it.

“You’re trying to get me back to that crazy Faire, aren’t you?” he laughed accusingly. “I knew it would be something! You said I didn’t have to go back, and I knew it was a trap. I knew you’d think of something!”

“Well, it’s closed for this year,” she said, sitting down on the couch. When he set the shield carefully back on the box and joined her, she extended him the note from the shield maker. Having very little interaction with shield makers (probably), she guessed he would like the details of the process. “So my evil plan will take a little longer to put in action.”

He glanced over the letter, mostly because he was curious about her relationship to the shield maker. He doubted that many people could send a blank check and a note to anyone and get back exactly what they wanted. The two of them must have been good friends, he supposed. It’s not that he was suspicious, he told himself, or jealous. It just struck him as a little weird. But then the note turned out to contain a lot of technical details. He’d read them later.

“Why do I think you have an idea anyway?” he teased. She pulled her iPad from, apparently, between the couch cushions.

“I’m glad you asked,” she smiled. “I do have some ideas.”

She opened a picture file and handed the tablet off to him. He flipped through a stunning number of pictures, but had to admit that he liked what she was thinking.

“Parker mentioned that you might like to be a knight,” she said shyly. “Is that true?”

“When did Parker say that?” Context was everything with Parker. Most of the time, anyway. There were times nothing helped.

“When I introduced her to the queen. They were just finishing up with the knighting ceremony when we got there. She said I should call.”

“You didn’t call me,” he said, puzzled. He had about three seconds to wonder if Hardison really had inadvertently blocked his number that day before she went on, undeterred.

“I didn’t, because I think the cut-off age to be a knight there is 10 or 11 or 12. It’s for kids, anyway. It’s kind of a money maker for the Faire, because there’s a charge. But they get introduced by the queen to the royal court and the entire audience, and get a certificate and a NERF sword and they get to be a knight for the day. Or, you know, whatever. Plus a lot of times the knights wander over from the joust, so they get to have their picture made with a real knight, which is cool no matter how old you are.”

“You don’t think that’s a gimmick?” he asked skeptically.

“It absolutely is, but kids really like it. Some of them have been coming with their parents for years. And for them it’s exciting, because it something to look forward to between losing your first tooth and getting your learner’s permit,” she offered. “Some of them get to the Faire and see other kids doing it, and if your kid really likes it, you’ll probably come back next year.”

Continuing to scroll through pictures, he decided he could play along with this for a while.

“Can you ever have your status as a knight revoked?”

“If you could, there wouldn’t be a joust,” she answered, distaste clear in her voice. “I don’t know how some of those guys stay in the saddle.”

“Drunks?”

“God, yes. Can you imagine who would do that sober?”

He detected something else in her tone that was just off enough to return his attention to her face.

“You have a problem with one of them?”

“No,” she said hastily, “but I try to stay about arm’s length away from them. Let’s just say if your main goal in doing Faire work is to hook up with as many random people as humanly possible, you want to apply for a position as a knight. If your goal is anything other than that, you want to make sure your shots are up to date.”

“They have trouble taking no for an answer?”

She chuckled. “I doubt it, because I doubt they’re familiar with the concept of ‘no’. There are plenty of people who are willing to throw themselves at the knights; they don’t have to pursue anyone.”

“You keep saying people,” he pointed out. “You mean women, right?”

“Sir Justin the Incorrigible gave me his number,” she replied, waiting for him to unclench his jaw before she proceeded. “In case you found yourself single.”

“I…I…,”

“Anyway,” she continued, changing the subject. “If you want to be a knight and Parker wasn’t wrong, I can probably make that happen.” She reached over to tap the screen and bring up another picture. “I liked that look, because it conveys the idea of knight but it’s still kind of minimal.”

He studied it for a long moment. She had, in fact, captured his style (such as it was; he didn’t think he necessarily had a style) very well.

“Did you put all this together today?”

“Oh, my deluded darling, no. I’ve been working on this for weeks. You think these costumes just fall together?”

He fought back a smile.

“I wondered what you do in your free time,” he mumbled. “Princess, I love the idea, but this is going to weigh a ton. And by the way,” a thought occurred to him. “How do you know how hard it is to put on a harness like that by yourself?”

“I went to Comic Con last year as Captain America,” she said, hopping up from the couch to offer him a hand. “Come on. You need to see my dressing room.”

“Captain America? You dressed up as a guy for that too?” he followed her up the stairs. Devil, who had heard her mention dessert, declined to follow them upstairs. Although he reserved the right to go get them if they stayed upstairs too long. Ice cream didn’t get itself out of the freezer, no matter how much a dog barked at the door.

“Not exactly,” she said, pushing open the door to a room she had previously only referred to obliquely. Eliot didn’t know where to look first, but his attention was drawn by the shield apparently affixed to one wall. She took the tablet from him to open another folder. “I mean, nobody thought I was dressed up as a man,” she explained. The pictures didn’t lie: she was obviously a girl, and just as obviously Captain America. From her helmet to her boots to her bright red lipstick, there was no question about who she was. And he’d bet she’d been popular, too, just based on the number of people standing around looking at her in that picture.

“You went by yourself?”

She chuckled again. “Nope. Melanie went as Bucky.” She swiped to the next picture, which showed the two of them grinning into the camera. There was Melanie, dressed as a girl version of Bucky, wearing a frilly skirt that was nearly long enough to cover her ass. Had he asked, Ophelia would have told him that she had silver undies with a red star that coordinated with her metal arm. Since he had met Melanie, he didn’t bother to ask.

He was familiar with the character, and not just because Hardison had put the Captain America movies on his tablet before setting it so he had to watch them to get it to do anything else.

“It’s for your own protection,” Hardison had argued that night in the bar. “You’re gonna date a girl who’s into pop culture, you need to know what she’s talking about some of the time.”

“This will do that?” Eliot had asked, furious.

“It’s a start,” the hacker grinned. “You won’t be as lost. Come back when you finish those, and I’ll load you up with some more. Or, you know, you can ask your girlfriend if she wants to watch them with you. Girls dig that. Especially that kind of girl.”

“You met her tonight,” Eliot seethed. “How do you know what kind of girl she is?”

“You wanna try this, see how it works? Then we’ll talk about what kind of girl she is. Bet I ain’t wrong.”

To Eliot’s continued frustration, he had not been wrong. And she had, in fact, been thrilled when he asked if she’d like to watch a particular movie. Somehow, it was less annoying coming from her than it had been from Hardison. He still wouldn’t call himself a fan the way either of them did, but he did enjoy watching movies while she whispered trivia in his ear.

“Where did she get that arm?” he asked.

“We built it!” she sounded quite proud of them. “I found a tutorial. Which is how I’m sure we can build you armor that won’t weigh as much as carrying another person around. And won’t make you sweat your body weight.”

She opened a drawer to pull out the arm in question, which was two component pieces, then tossed them at him as if they weighed nothing. Surprisingly, they didn’t. He sat down on the day bed (chaise lounge) to examine the pieces more thoroughly. He doubted both pieces weighed a pound between them. Then he looked around the room again; it looked like everyone from the Faire had returned their garments here, and in no particular order. There was clothing everywhere.

“If you wanted to, I mean,” she said, suddenly realizing that he hadn’t actually agreed to anything so far.

He set the pieces aside carefully, so they wouldn’t slide off onto the floor, then grabbed her into his lap, tipping her backwards, smiling at her laughing shriek. Sure, he hurt everywhere, but pain was temporary. An appreciated girlfriend could be forever.

“How did you end up with that?” he asked, pulling her back upright and settling his arms around her. “Does Melanie just leave her clothes here too?”

“The whole costume is mine,” she explained. “She cleaned it and brought it back. It’s hanging on the Marvel rack over there.” She jerked her chin towards a rack of costumes whose only distinction was the number of primary colors. The room was full to bursting of colorful, fluffy fabrics. The only thing that stood out about that particular rack was the strikingly bold colors. Boxes lined the shelf above it.

“What’s in those,” he asked. “Shoes?”

“Some,” she said. “But also accessories. Wigs, belts, hats, gloves, weapons.”

“Peaches,” he started.

“Fake ones,” she clarified. “No con lets you in with real weapons. It would be anarchy the first time someone cut in the food line. And you’ve never seen hostility like you see between hungry nerds who’ve forgotten they’re not really bullet proof.”

It was statements like that which made Eliot curious about these con things at all.

“Were you thinking of using the stuff you used on the arm to make armor?” he asked. “Because that doesn’t sound easy.”

“I found a tutorial!” she said, reaching for the tablet again. “It looks like it might take a weekend or two, but not longer than that. If you know what you’re doing.”

“And you know what you’re doing?” But he smiled when he asked. “I bet you do this for every guy you date.”

“I would never build armor with someone if I didn’t want them to eventually rescue a dragon for me,” she answered. She’d said it flippantly, but the words hit with sniper-like precision at Eliot’s heart.

He took the tablet from her hands and placed it on the end of the chair.

“Tell me more about this whole knight thing,” he requested. “Exactly what’s in your head. Don’t leave anything out.”

Devil started barking from in front of the kitchen (Eliot could tell by the echo. Ophelia could tell from experience) an hour later.

“Dessert,” she shrugged. “It’s his favorite food group.”

Following her back downstairs, he had to admit (at least to himself) that it was his, too. Although he and Devil were going to talk about the dog’s uncanny timing later.

Much later that night, after she’d applied something anti-bacterial to his face and listened to his detailed story about a car wreck that she never thought to question, she slept. He didn’t.

“What would you wear?” he asked.

The noise she made was definitely confused; she didn’t think she talked in her sleep, but surely his question hadn’t just materialized out of thin air like that.

“If I was a knight carrying that shield,” he expounded, his hands behind his head as he stared at the ceiling and tried to anticipate what she was going to say. “And wearing armor at your crazy Faire.”

She recognized that it was henceforth going to be known as “her crazy Faire”, but as Parker said, he didn’t hate it. But neither had she realized he would be a good enough sport to play along.

“I’m sure I can put together a medieval Red Riding Hood.”

Pensively, he considered that for a while without speaking.

“But then you wouldn’t have wings,” he pointed out.

She blinked awake at that, surprised.

“It sounds like that’s important to you,” she said sleepily. “Is it?”

He hadn’t gotten this far in life by saying exactly what was on his mind when a woman asked. And while he was more certain about her feelings than he was a lot of other things, he still wasn’t sure his unfiltered emotions wouldn’t spook her into a retreat.

“It is,” he found himself saying. “I liked them,” he continued, much to his own surprise.

“Like, those wings in particular? Or is it just the idea of wings?”

It was just the idea of her with wings, he thought imprudently. He pictured her with them more often than he didn’t, and was often surprised that she didn’t really have them.

“You know,” he stumbled. “Just, wings. Like. Yeah. That.”

“A lot of wolf packs work with crows,” she offered. “What if I can put together a crow costume?”

“Wouldn’t that be mostly black? Because it would be hot, I mean. All black is hot in the sun.” He was babbling. His first instinct was to be mad at himself, because as an intelligence agent he knew better than to just say things out loud and let the chips fall. His second thought was that pillow talk with his girlfriend, an unlikely double agent, was pretty safe, and that if he couldn’t trust her by now, maybe he didn’t need to be seeing her, and that couldn’t possibly be right. His final thought on the subject before he just agreed to disagree was that arguing with himself like this was counterproductive, and he would deal with it later. His fourth and absolute final thought was that she arrived at that after being woken from a dead sleep, and that everyone who said he was in over his head was right.

She gave a sleepy chuckle and moved closer to him.

“I think I can be a little fancier than all black, if you’d like it.”

He wrapped his arms around her, pulling her closer. He couldn’t remember the last time someone had done something just because it would make him happy. And not just in way that was pandering or too much like begging for his attention. If she was just trying to impress him, she could have stopped at simply wearing her original fairy costume again. And that thought had clearly not crossed her mind.

“It’s perfect, babe. Go back to sleep.”

She yawned into her arm.

“You sure?” she mumbled drowsily. It never took her long to get back to sleep, especially on a school night.

“Positive,” he whispered.