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Fic: Advances in Thermodynamics (3/6)
Title: Advances in Thermodynamics (3/6)
Fandom: Firefly/Iron Man (movie)
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: Tony Stark/Kaylee Frye
Necessary explanation: I asked for prompts, and![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
agonistes told me to write Tony/Kaylee. I said 'MWAHAHA' at the time and happily started writing in things designed to make Sweeney twitch, but I think that she officially gets the last laugh, because this is eating my brain alive, and, God help me, there are more parts forthcoming. I'm thinking the final count will be somewhere around five parts, though I'm unsure. Part 1 can be found here, and Part 2 here.
One week.
Osiris is the prettiest thing Kaylee’s ever seen.
It’s all high towers and shining metal; she pastes her face to the window as they fly in low through the city. Mr. Stark tells her if she doesn’t watch it, her face is going to stick there; Kaylee tells him she wouldn’t mind if it did, ‘cause that’d mean she’d get to fly all the time, watch the stars in the black and the shiny new places. She catches Hogan’s quick, faint smile in his reflection. Colonel Rhodes doesn’t laugh, but she can hear the grin in his voice as he tells Stark – Tony, he calls him – that’ll teach him to be a cynic.
Sights like Osiris, they almost make Kaylee feel better about leaving Three Hills and her family behind.
They land in a private hangar. Kaylee knows Mr. Stark is rich, real rich, but she doesn’t know how rich til she sees that huge, empty hangar; all that wasted space on a world where you gotta elbow somebody when you wanna move enough to breathe.
It takes twenty minutes to drag her away from the couple of ships in that hangar; it’s only accomplished by Mr. Stark threatening to order Hogan to throw her over his shoulder, and promising that she can come back.
Kaylee meets Mr. Stark’s personal assistant right quick. She’s the one who walks Kaylee through the employment paperwork, the visa paperwork, all that stuff. She shows her to her apartment, takes her shopping.
Kaylee don’t like her much.
She’s a regular beauty alright, with legs that go on for days and real shiny teeth, but she’s a cold fish, and Kaylee can tell she looks down on her. She doesn’t exactly try to hide it, with all that staring down her nose and those snooty remarks.
Kaylee’s face might fall an awful lot, but she doesn’t say anything back. “Thanks, Miss Wilmer,” she says, and she holds back as much of her hurt expressions as she can, til the brunette’s back is turned.
Her apartment’s small, compared to her folks’ sprawling place in Jefferson, but it’s just fine for just Kaylee; she likes to think it’s Kaylee-sized. It’s just about the fanciest thing she’s ever seen. The chandelier in the lobby floats; she stares at it in transfixed awe, til Miss Wilmer nudges her along. Her apartment has got all kinds of tech that Kaylee has never even dreamed of, much less seen.
First thing she does is put up fairy lights.
Two weeks.
“Wèi!” chirps Kaylee, extending a hand. The dark-haired man stares at it for a minute, then at her. “Kaylee. Kaylee Frye.”
“It’s – nice to meet you, Dr. Frye.” The man’s handshake is significantly less exuberant than Kaylee’s; he adjusts his glasses with his free hand. “I’m Eli Lynch, project leader.”
She grins. “It’s just Kaylee. Don’t got no fancy titles.”
The lone woman in the little group steps up to shake Kaylee’s hand. “Lise Hsu. You’re a doctoral candidate, then?”
“Nope,” says Kaylee. “No fancy schoolin’, neither. I’m takin’ night classes at Williams.”
“…Oh,” says Lise Hsu faintly.
The rest of the engineers introduce themselves by their full titles.
Two months.
“It ain’t right,” says Kaylee Frye from the far end of the table, and every person in the boardroom turns to look at her.
Eli Lynch says, “You’re going to need to be more specific than that, Miss Frye.”
“It don’t feel right,” she says, and Lise quits frantically trying to gesture for her to be quiet, and covers her face with her hands. “When you kick that engine in gear, it oughta purr like a kitten’s getting the best pettin’ of its life, and it don’t. There’s somethin’ catching on the inside.”
“That would be a very serious flaw. Can you wave us all the read-outs?”
“It doesn’t come up on read-outs,” says Kaylee, and she can hear people shift in their chairs. “That don’t mean it ain’t there!”
“You’re very right. Can anyone else corroborate what Miss Frye is hearing? Anyone?”
No one can.
“Miss Frye, we work on scientific fact here, not guesswork. Do us all a favor, please, and don’t bring this up with your–” The door opens and Tony Stark steps in, as smooth and yōumĕi as the first time she ever saw him, only slicker in that suit and tie. “–Benefactor, alright? Mr. Stark!”
Kaylee’ll ordinarily gladly pay attention to what Mr. Stark’s doing (he’s never boring, even from the distances she’s been spotting him at ever since they hit Osiris, and he’s still got a nice rear), but she’s a little preoccupied with wilting.
Pete – a mere doctoral candidate, her fellow junior engineer – shoots her a sympathetic look across the table, and pushes one side of his mouth up with a finger. Kaylee smiles a little, game but fake, at him.
Her smile turns more genuine when Stark takes Eli’s chair at the head of the table.
An hour later, when Stark is standing over the display unit with his sleeves rolled up, the engineers gathered around with datapads full of frantic revisions, Mr. Stark says, “Okay. Any other issues I should know about?”
Lise looks at Kaylee, quiet and warning. Eli shakes his head at Kaylee in a fierce ‘Don’t’ over Stark’s shoulder. Kaylee clamps her mouth shut and traces a nonexistent pattern in the surface of the boardroom table.
“Fix the gravity boosters and the discrepancies in the shield generator, and we should be good for launch.” Stark picks up his jacket and slings it over his shoulder. “Gentlemen – ladies – it’s been a pleasure. Call me; we'll do lunch,” he says flippantly, all in one breath, and he steps outside.
The room empties. Kaylee’s one of the first out the door. She bites her lip, looking around to see if anybody’s watching her, and then she slips down the hall, walking fast enough that it’s almost a run. As she turns the third corner, she sees two familiar figures up ahead. “Mr. Stark!”
He exchanges a brief word with his assistant and turns around. “Well, if it isn't Miss Frye. Don’t tell me: I forgot my stylus. You can keep it. Really.”
“No, you didn’t. Look, I know you’re awful busy, but – you got a minute?”
“No, he doesn’t,” says Miss Wilmer coldly.
“Yes, he does,” says Stark, and he lays a warm hand on Kaylee’s arm and steers her around the corner. “What’s on your mind, Frye?”
She studies him for a minute, a little more hesitant than she means. “You don’t come down here real often, do you?” she asks.
“Here? No. It’s all a little—” He gestures. “Gray, for me.”
“But you said—”
“I said I’d be putting you on a special team that builds my designs.” He’s still got the freakiest ability to tell what she’s thinking, and he still looks like nothing ever surprises or bothers him. “You're on it.”
“I don’t…” says Kaylee, and she sighs and stops. “Can I talk to you mechanic to mechanic, ‘stead of mechanic to boss?”
He peers at her, in what she suspects is equal parts bemusement and interest. “Sure,” he says. “Hit me.”
“What’m I doin’ wrong?” she bursts out. “I don’t got a fancy piece of paper sayin’ how much know-how I got, but I know machines, and I ain’t mean, and—”
“No one will give you the time of day.” She nods, quietly. “I hired you for your considerable skills, Frye, and because I thought you could shake things up around here.”
Kaylee isn’t entirely certain that he isn't talking to somebody standing behind her who happens to be called Fry. “…Me?”
“Yeah, you. They’ve gotten awfully suǒ rán around here lately, and you know your stuff inside and out, and maybe even upside down, and you had the whole – frighteningly happy all the time, thing, going for you,” he illustrates with a sweep of a hand, “and I figured you’d be a real shot in the arm around here.”
“You’re not helpin’,” she tells him.
He talks with the tilt of his head almost as much as he does with his mouth. This particular head-tilt, combined with a flick of his eyes, is facetious as all hell. “If you really want me to help, I can go back in there and order them all to listen to you.”
Her mouth sets. “Still not helpin’.”
“Then you’re just going to have to tough it out, Frye,” he says. “They’re academics. Tectonic plates change their minds faster than those guys do.”
Kaylee doesn’t like dramatics, but the only thing she hates more than shoddy work is shoddy work that puts people at risk. She takes the shot. “You really want me to wait when there’s lives in danger?”
“—Well, that’s spectacularly cryptic. By all means, continue to be vague.”
She doesn’t like dramatics and she doesn’t want to tell tales out of school, take advantage of the fact that she knows Mr. Stark (sort of), get anybody in trouble, but there’s things that need saying. “The starboard air filter on the Tiān é, it’s—”
“Mr. Stark? Mr. Stark!” Dignified Lise Hsu comes scrambling up the hall, her hair out of its tie and flinging everywhere; Kaylee’s eyes widen. “Sir, you had better come back.”
The second they open the sound-proofed door, the design bay screeches, several alarms going off at once and blurring together. Kaylee’s immediate instinct is to clap her hands over her ears, but she freezes partway there, because there’s a stream of smoke trickling out of the Tiān é’s open ramp, and a dazed-looking Pete is sitting on the floor several feet away, as Eli shouts something she can’t hear, and techs run from here to there.
Stark steps up. “Override code 93-WILC. Voice activation: Stark, Anthony.” The alarms stop mid-shriek.
“Alright,” says Stark into the sudden stillness. “Don’t everybody start explaining at once.”
“I, um,” says Pete. “I thought Kaylee might be right, so I opened the access panel and switched it on, and something…” He makes an explodey motion with his hands.
Kaylee’s fingers are covering her mouth.
“Who’re you?” Stark says.
“That’s – that’s Peter,” says Kaylee around her hands. “He’s gonna be a doctor in biochemistry – Pete! Are you okay?”
He shoots her a shaky thumbs up.
Stark turns to her. “You have something to do with this?”
“I—”
“Kaylee tried to tell us that there was something wrong with the air filter, and none of us believed her,” says Lise, and Kaylee could kiss her. “Except Peter.”
“That’s because he's smarter than the rest of you combined,” says Stark. “Now, can someone please confirm that the rest of my ship isn’t about to spontaneously combust?” He heads toward the ship; Kaylee’s about to follow, but Eli pulls her to the side.
“Miss Frye,” he says, his mouth tight. “How convenient, that the air filter just happened to malfunction while Mr. Stark was here.”
Kaylee stares at him a minute, and then she yanks her arm back. “Are you sayin’ what I think you’re sayin’?”
“All I’m ‘ sayin’ ’ is that you now look very good while the team looks very bad, and if I found out that you had anythi—” His low voice breaks off, abruptly, when someone else cuts in.
“I’m going to have to insist that you include me on any consultations here,” says Tony Stark as he steps in, clearly aware that consulting is not what’s happening. He looks at the distress in Kaylee’s face, and he shifts his weight sharply. “Private, then? Alright, I'm no buttinski.” He turns his back on Eli just as the engineer is about to speak. “Miss Frye. I have something I’ve been meaning to say to you for a while now.”
“Yeah?” says Kaylee, her eyes over-bright. She crosses her arms preemptively.
“Come work with me.”
She stares at him. So does Eli and half the team, who’re all gathered around and have given up pretending they’re not listening. “ ‘Less I’m missin’ somethin’ real important, I do work with you, Mr. Stark,” says Kaylee.
“No, you work for the company. I want you to come work with me. Subtle yet important distinction.”
She watches him, slow and careful. “What’s that mean?”
“It means, Miss Frye, that the good people here, their job is to make my designs suitable for consumption, public or otherwise. My job, among other duties, is to come up with ideas that’ll knock the ‘verse on its pìgu, and then execute them.”
“Execute the pìgu,” she says dubiously.
“No, the ideas.” He shifts again, folding his arms over his chest to mimic her posture. “Look – I spend a lot of time building and fine-tuning prototypes, and I could use a mechanically-minded girl Friday.”
“…Huh?”
“For God’s sake— a mechanic, Frye, I need a mechanic to help me out, and I think you’re just the ticket, as long as you’re quicker on the uptake when the conversation involves circuitry. You’d be working with me, full time, in my personal lab.” Most of the engineers are pretty quiet in their astonishment, but Pete’s poker face isn’t so great; he sucks in a loud breath. “Think you can handle it?”
“You gonna be a gentleman?” Kaylee counters, and Stark laughs.
“Cross my xīn zàng and prefer not to die.”
She eyes Stark slyly. She may be starting to grin. “You really got a five-power energy converter with double flux in there?”
“Miss Frye, I invented the five-power energy converter with triple flux.”
Kaylee has heard legends about the kind of equipment that Tony Stark has in that lab, and she knows what kind of pretty comes out of it; her smile takes a turn toward dazzling, threatening to take over her entire face. “Wŏ de mā, yeah, okay, I’ll work with you!”
“Good.” Stark turns to Eli, shooting him an unimpressed look. “Lynch, consider Miss Frye poached, and consider yourself lucky that I’m taking her instead of handing your job to her. The next time something explodes that isn’t supposed to, on one of my prototypes, I’m going to be a very unhappy man.” Stark glances at the crowd of engineers and twirls his finger for a moment before pointing at Pete. “Parker.”
“Peter,” Pete corrects, hesitantly.
“Same difference. Nice work.”
Pete smiles, surprised and bright. Eli Lynch’s mouth opens and closes like some kind of deep-sea fish. The engineers stare.
Kaylee graciously accepts Stark’s offered elbow and sweeps out of the design bay, feeling like a queen in coveralls.
“Thanks,” she tells him earnestly in the hallway, squeezing his arm, “Xièxie nĭ, you won't regret it, I promise,” and he snorts a laugh.
Stark slips his sunglasses on. “Don’t thank me til you’ve worked with me, băobèi.”
Chinese translations [from here and a translator]:
Wèi - Hi
Yōumĕi - Elegant
Suǒ rán - Complacent, dull
Tiān é - Swan [ship classification]
Pìgu - Ass
Xīn zàng - Heart
Wŏ de mā - Mother of God
Xièxie nĭ - Thank you
Băobèi - Sweetheart
Part 4
Fandom: Firefly/Iron Man (movie)
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: Tony Stark/Kaylee Frye
Necessary explanation: I asked for prompts, and
agonistes told me to write Tony/Kaylee. I said 'MWAHAHA' at the time and happily started writing in things designed to make Sweeney twitch, but I think that she officially gets the last laugh, because this is eating my brain alive, and, God help me, there are more parts forthcoming. I'm thinking the final count will be somewhere around five parts, though I'm unsure. Part 1 can be found here, and Part 2 here.One week.
Osiris is the prettiest thing Kaylee’s ever seen.
It’s all high towers and shining metal; she pastes her face to the window as they fly in low through the city. Mr. Stark tells her if she doesn’t watch it, her face is going to stick there; Kaylee tells him she wouldn’t mind if it did, ‘cause that’d mean she’d get to fly all the time, watch the stars in the black and the shiny new places. She catches Hogan’s quick, faint smile in his reflection. Colonel Rhodes doesn’t laugh, but she can hear the grin in his voice as he tells Stark – Tony, he calls him – that’ll teach him to be a cynic.
Sights like Osiris, they almost make Kaylee feel better about leaving Three Hills and her family behind.
They land in a private hangar. Kaylee knows Mr. Stark is rich, real rich, but she doesn’t know how rich til she sees that huge, empty hangar; all that wasted space on a world where you gotta elbow somebody when you wanna move enough to breathe.
It takes twenty minutes to drag her away from the couple of ships in that hangar; it’s only accomplished by Mr. Stark threatening to order Hogan to throw her over his shoulder, and promising that she can come back.
Kaylee meets Mr. Stark’s personal assistant right quick. She’s the one who walks Kaylee through the employment paperwork, the visa paperwork, all that stuff. She shows her to her apartment, takes her shopping.
Kaylee don’t like her much.
She’s a regular beauty alright, with legs that go on for days and real shiny teeth, but she’s a cold fish, and Kaylee can tell she looks down on her. She doesn’t exactly try to hide it, with all that staring down her nose and those snooty remarks.
Kaylee’s face might fall an awful lot, but she doesn’t say anything back. “Thanks, Miss Wilmer,” she says, and she holds back as much of her hurt expressions as she can, til the brunette’s back is turned.
Her apartment’s small, compared to her folks’ sprawling place in Jefferson, but it’s just fine for just Kaylee; she likes to think it’s Kaylee-sized. It’s just about the fanciest thing she’s ever seen. The chandelier in the lobby floats; she stares at it in transfixed awe, til Miss Wilmer nudges her along. Her apartment has got all kinds of tech that Kaylee has never even dreamed of, much less seen.
First thing she does is put up fairy lights.
Two weeks.
“Wèi!” chirps Kaylee, extending a hand. The dark-haired man stares at it for a minute, then at her. “Kaylee. Kaylee Frye.”
“It’s – nice to meet you, Dr. Frye.” The man’s handshake is significantly less exuberant than Kaylee’s; he adjusts his glasses with his free hand. “I’m Eli Lynch, project leader.”
She grins. “It’s just Kaylee. Don’t got no fancy titles.”
The lone woman in the little group steps up to shake Kaylee’s hand. “Lise Hsu. You’re a doctoral candidate, then?”
“Nope,” says Kaylee. “No fancy schoolin’, neither. I’m takin’ night classes at Williams.”
“…Oh,” says Lise Hsu faintly.
The rest of the engineers introduce themselves by their full titles.
Two months.
“It ain’t right,” says Kaylee Frye from the far end of the table, and every person in the boardroom turns to look at her.
Eli Lynch says, “You’re going to need to be more specific than that, Miss Frye.”
“It don’t feel right,” she says, and Lise quits frantically trying to gesture for her to be quiet, and covers her face with her hands. “When you kick that engine in gear, it oughta purr like a kitten’s getting the best pettin’ of its life, and it don’t. There’s somethin’ catching on the inside.”
“That would be a very serious flaw. Can you wave us all the read-outs?”
“It doesn’t come up on read-outs,” says Kaylee, and she can hear people shift in their chairs. “That don’t mean it ain’t there!”
“You’re very right. Can anyone else corroborate what Miss Frye is hearing? Anyone?”
No one can.
“Miss Frye, we work on scientific fact here, not guesswork. Do us all a favor, please, and don’t bring this up with your–” The door opens and Tony Stark steps in, as smooth and yōumĕi as the first time she ever saw him, only slicker in that suit and tie. “–Benefactor, alright? Mr. Stark!”
Kaylee’ll ordinarily gladly pay attention to what Mr. Stark’s doing (he’s never boring, even from the distances she’s been spotting him at ever since they hit Osiris, and he’s still got a nice rear), but she’s a little preoccupied with wilting.
Pete – a mere doctoral candidate, her fellow junior engineer – shoots her a sympathetic look across the table, and pushes one side of his mouth up with a finger. Kaylee smiles a little, game but fake, at him.
Her smile turns more genuine when Stark takes Eli’s chair at the head of the table.
An hour later, when Stark is standing over the display unit with his sleeves rolled up, the engineers gathered around with datapads full of frantic revisions, Mr. Stark says, “Okay. Any other issues I should know about?”
Lise looks at Kaylee, quiet and warning. Eli shakes his head at Kaylee in a fierce ‘Don’t’ over Stark’s shoulder. Kaylee clamps her mouth shut and traces a nonexistent pattern in the surface of the boardroom table.
“Fix the gravity boosters and the discrepancies in the shield generator, and we should be good for launch.” Stark picks up his jacket and slings it over his shoulder. “Gentlemen – ladies – it’s been a pleasure. Call me; we'll do lunch,” he says flippantly, all in one breath, and he steps outside.
The room empties. Kaylee’s one of the first out the door. She bites her lip, looking around to see if anybody’s watching her, and then she slips down the hall, walking fast enough that it’s almost a run. As she turns the third corner, she sees two familiar figures up ahead. “Mr. Stark!”
He exchanges a brief word with his assistant and turns around. “Well, if it isn't Miss Frye. Don’t tell me: I forgot my stylus. You can keep it. Really.”
“No, you didn’t. Look, I know you’re awful busy, but – you got a minute?”
“No, he doesn’t,” says Miss Wilmer coldly.
“Yes, he does,” says Stark, and he lays a warm hand on Kaylee’s arm and steers her around the corner. “What’s on your mind, Frye?”
She studies him for a minute, a little more hesitant than she means. “You don’t come down here real often, do you?” she asks.
“Here? No. It’s all a little—” He gestures. “Gray, for me.”
“But you said—”
“I said I’d be putting you on a special team that builds my designs.” He’s still got the freakiest ability to tell what she’s thinking, and he still looks like nothing ever surprises or bothers him. “You're on it.”
“I don’t…” says Kaylee, and she sighs and stops. “Can I talk to you mechanic to mechanic, ‘stead of mechanic to boss?”
He peers at her, in what she suspects is equal parts bemusement and interest. “Sure,” he says. “Hit me.”
“What’m I doin’ wrong?” she bursts out. “I don’t got a fancy piece of paper sayin’ how much know-how I got, but I know machines, and I ain’t mean, and—”
“No one will give you the time of day.” She nods, quietly. “I hired you for your considerable skills, Frye, and because I thought you could shake things up around here.”
Kaylee isn’t entirely certain that he isn't talking to somebody standing behind her who happens to be called Fry. “…Me?”
“Yeah, you. They’ve gotten awfully suǒ rán around here lately, and you know your stuff inside and out, and maybe even upside down, and you had the whole – frighteningly happy all the time, thing, going for you,” he illustrates with a sweep of a hand, “and I figured you’d be a real shot in the arm around here.”
“You’re not helpin’,” she tells him.
He talks with the tilt of his head almost as much as he does with his mouth. This particular head-tilt, combined with a flick of his eyes, is facetious as all hell. “If you really want me to help, I can go back in there and order them all to listen to you.”
Her mouth sets. “Still not helpin’.”
“Then you’re just going to have to tough it out, Frye,” he says. “They’re academics. Tectonic plates change their minds faster than those guys do.”
Kaylee doesn’t like dramatics, but the only thing she hates more than shoddy work is shoddy work that puts people at risk. She takes the shot. “You really want me to wait when there’s lives in danger?”
“—Well, that’s spectacularly cryptic. By all means, continue to be vague.”
She doesn’t like dramatics and she doesn’t want to tell tales out of school, take advantage of the fact that she knows Mr. Stark (sort of), get anybody in trouble, but there’s things that need saying. “The starboard air filter on the Tiān é, it’s—”
“Mr. Stark? Mr. Stark!” Dignified Lise Hsu comes scrambling up the hall, her hair out of its tie and flinging everywhere; Kaylee’s eyes widen. “Sir, you had better come back.”
The second they open the sound-proofed door, the design bay screeches, several alarms going off at once and blurring together. Kaylee’s immediate instinct is to clap her hands over her ears, but she freezes partway there, because there’s a stream of smoke trickling out of the Tiān é’s open ramp, and a dazed-looking Pete is sitting on the floor several feet away, as Eli shouts something she can’t hear, and techs run from here to there.
Stark steps up. “Override code 93-WILC. Voice activation: Stark, Anthony.” The alarms stop mid-shriek.
“Alright,” says Stark into the sudden stillness. “Don’t everybody start explaining at once.”
“I, um,” says Pete. “I thought Kaylee might be right, so I opened the access panel and switched it on, and something…” He makes an explodey motion with his hands.
Kaylee’s fingers are covering her mouth.
“Who’re you?” Stark says.
“That’s – that’s Peter,” says Kaylee around her hands. “He’s gonna be a doctor in biochemistry – Pete! Are you okay?”
He shoots her a shaky thumbs up.
Stark turns to her. “You have something to do with this?”
“I—”
“Kaylee tried to tell us that there was something wrong with the air filter, and none of us believed her,” says Lise, and Kaylee could kiss her. “Except Peter.”
“That’s because he's smarter than the rest of you combined,” says Stark. “Now, can someone please confirm that the rest of my ship isn’t about to spontaneously combust?” He heads toward the ship; Kaylee’s about to follow, but Eli pulls her to the side.
“Miss Frye,” he says, his mouth tight. “How convenient, that the air filter just happened to malfunction while Mr. Stark was here.”
Kaylee stares at him a minute, and then she yanks her arm back. “Are you sayin’ what I think you’re sayin’?”
“All I’m ‘ sayin’ ’ is that you now look very good while the team looks very bad, and if I found out that you had anythi—” His low voice breaks off, abruptly, when someone else cuts in.
“I’m going to have to insist that you include me on any consultations here,” says Tony Stark as he steps in, clearly aware that consulting is not what’s happening. He looks at the distress in Kaylee’s face, and he shifts his weight sharply. “Private, then? Alright, I'm no buttinski.” He turns his back on Eli just as the engineer is about to speak. “Miss Frye. I have something I’ve been meaning to say to you for a while now.”
“Yeah?” says Kaylee, her eyes over-bright. She crosses her arms preemptively.
“Come work with me.”
She stares at him. So does Eli and half the team, who’re all gathered around and have given up pretending they’re not listening. “ ‘Less I’m missin’ somethin’ real important, I do work with you, Mr. Stark,” says Kaylee.
“No, you work for the company. I want you to come work with me. Subtle yet important distinction.”
She watches him, slow and careful. “What’s that mean?”
“It means, Miss Frye, that the good people here, their job is to make my designs suitable for consumption, public or otherwise. My job, among other duties, is to come up with ideas that’ll knock the ‘verse on its pìgu, and then execute them.”
“Execute the pìgu,” she says dubiously.
“No, the ideas.” He shifts again, folding his arms over his chest to mimic her posture. “Look – I spend a lot of time building and fine-tuning prototypes, and I could use a mechanically-minded girl Friday.”
“…Huh?”
“For God’s sake— a mechanic, Frye, I need a mechanic to help me out, and I think you’re just the ticket, as long as you’re quicker on the uptake when the conversation involves circuitry. You’d be working with me, full time, in my personal lab.” Most of the engineers are pretty quiet in their astonishment, but Pete’s poker face isn’t so great; he sucks in a loud breath. “Think you can handle it?”
“You gonna be a gentleman?” Kaylee counters, and Stark laughs.
“Cross my xīn zàng and prefer not to die.”
She eyes Stark slyly. She may be starting to grin. “You really got a five-power energy converter with double flux in there?”
“Miss Frye, I invented the five-power energy converter with triple flux.”
Kaylee has heard legends about the kind of equipment that Tony Stark has in that lab, and she knows what kind of pretty comes out of it; her smile takes a turn toward dazzling, threatening to take over her entire face. “Wŏ de mā, yeah, okay, I’ll work with you!”
“Good.” Stark turns to Eli, shooting him an unimpressed look. “Lynch, consider Miss Frye poached, and consider yourself lucky that I’m taking her instead of handing your job to her. The next time something explodes that isn’t supposed to, on one of my prototypes, I’m going to be a very unhappy man.” Stark glances at the crowd of engineers and twirls his finger for a moment before pointing at Pete. “Parker.”
“Peter,” Pete corrects, hesitantly.
“Same difference. Nice work.”
Pete smiles, surprised and bright. Eli Lynch’s mouth opens and closes like some kind of deep-sea fish. The engineers stare.
Kaylee graciously accepts Stark’s offered elbow and sweeps out of the design bay, feeling like a queen in coveralls.
“Thanks,” she tells him earnestly in the hallway, squeezing his arm, “Xièxie nĭ, you won't regret it, I promise,” and he snorts a laugh.
Stark slips his sunglasses on. “Don’t thank me til you’ve worked with me, băobèi.”
Chinese translations [from here and a translator]:
Wèi - Hi
Yōumĕi - Elegant
Suǒ rán - Complacent, dull
Tiān é - Swan [ship classification]
Pìgu - Ass
Xīn zàng - Heart
Wŏ de mā - Mother of God
Xièxie nĭ - Thank you
Băobèi - Sweetheart
Part 4