#vextant

My art for @vextant fic 'Kickstart My Heart' for capbb 2019!

Meet Steve, an illustrator & part time vigilante who signs up for a health study and Sam, his doctor, who soon begins to question the suspicious activity on Steve's heartbeat tracker!

Read it here: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21135725/chapters/50298380

I know this says “this week” but I’m imaging this all happening over the course of one eight hour workday like a zany comedy webseries

I had the chance to work with @vextant on this, and we had a great time.

Belgrade, 1958

Creak.

She crouched by her window, a knife in her hand, ready. The intruder was good, but she was lucky—if she hadn’t been awake and passing by at the exact right moment, she wouldn’t have heard a thing.

The window slid open, a couple of centimeters, and metal fingers closed around the windowsill.

Natasha let out a relieved laugh and reached out, pulling the window the rest of the way up. “So dramatic,” she teased as her soldier climbed through the window. “Do you think I wouldn’t have opened the door if you had knocked?”

He smiled sheepishly. “Sorry. It’s a habit.”

She pulled him into her arms and drew him in for a kiss, then lightly slapped the side of his head. “What are you doing here?”

“I promised I’d take you dancing while we were here, didn’t I?”

“I didn’t think you meant it! We’ll be caught for sure!”

“Come on, Natalia,” he pleaded, taking her hands in his. “We have five full hours where we don’t have to account to anyone. I want to take you out, just this once.”

“Oh, all right.” Her tone was resigned, but she couldn’t stop the excited goosebumps running up her arms. She couldn’t even remember the last time she’d stepped foot in a nightclub. And going just to dance, no assignment or mark to worry about? “I’ll find a dress.”

His face split into a grin. “I’m so glad you said yes. This is going to be the best night of your life.”

Nick Fury is the Captain of the precinct. He’s got an eyepatch, and it’s an ongoing thing to come up with absurd ways he could have gotten it. So far, the squad believes that the person to have come closest to figuring it out is Natasha Romanoff.

Tony Stark is from the Forensic Science Division and works for the precinct to solve cases. He’s slightly obnoxious, loud, over-caffeinated, and he sometimes blows things up rather than fixing them, but it’s usually a mistake. He came from a rich family, but after his parents died, he decided to go into the Criminal investigations to help others.

Clint Barton is the annoying secretary. He wears hearing aids, because he got injured in the line of duty in the military (his Medal Of Honor sits on his desk), and he makes it a personal mission to pull out his hearing aids when he’s asked to do something that he really doesn’t want to do. He’s got a service dog called Lucky who just slumps around the office, and is usually not much help. Except in stressful situations when he manages to keep his mind clear.

Thor Odinson and Loki Laufeyson are from the Norwegian police force and are in working on a case with the precinct that involves stolen medieval artefacts. Thor looks like he could break anyone in the precinct into pieces, and Loki just looks... weird. They’re fun though, and always buy a round at the bar. They like badmouthing the others in Norwegian, but they’re fucked when Natasha Romanoff catches them badmouthing her. (Loki got a black eye because of it).

Bahaha – thank you very much for your comments on Bruce. I actually find him the most difficult character to nail down, as I feel like what we’ve seen of him in the films is very reductive in one direction or the other. In the case of maskfic, it was important to me to involve Bruce because of the dynamic in play between the world’s three super soldiers: Steve, the Soldier, and Bruce. I found that to be a very interesting dynamic, and of course this little nugget as well:

[content warning: references to torture]

“He looked at ‘em, the films I mean, for about two seconds.” Tony lifted his shoulder in a half-hearted shrug, and gave Steve a smile that was all teeth and utterly humorless. “Almost a full Code Green.”

Steve closed his eyes. “The evidence of torture…?” JARVIS had walked them through it, later, shown them the areas of accelerated bone growth, the odd precision of those healed over breaks—

“No. He’d seen them before.”

Steve blinked. Before he could open his mouth, Tony bowled him over with a torrent of words. “Not all of them. Not the arm, not the—implants. Nothing identifiable, like the replaced ribs. None of that. But photographs of cell regrowth over time, after—injuries, films showing bone density, that kind of thing, yes. He’d seen it before. Old scans, data, research notes, all of it was part of a docket of research materials he got access to when he won the grant from the MRMC. The, uh, the Army Medical Research and Materiel Command.”

It took Steve a second before the pieces clicked. He chest went cold. “The serum. His research on the serum.”

“Bingo.” Tony over-enunciated and drew out the word, and then hesitated briefly. “They told him—they told him the materials were from the 40s. They told him it was you.”

So yeah, I am way more interested in Bruce than I am the Hulk, because I think his perspective on somebody in the Soldier’s situation is going to be unique.

As for the last two chapters – 😈😈😈 – glad you “hate” it. Things are really ramping up!

DEFINITELY

“Clint why did you turn, we’re not supposed to for another four miles,“

“Trust me, Kate, I know where I’m going.“

“And the GPS doesn’t?!“

“No, actually, it doesn’t. I do. The circus used to tour around here all the time, I know this place like the back of my hand.“

“Clint, you literally screamed two days ago because there was a freckle there that you didn’t see before. Don’t give me any of that “back of my hand” crap.“