Frostbite: The Time In Between// Book 6 of the Frostbite Series

Chapter 10

"Happy, why on Earth did you shut off the elevators?" I panted while gripping the stairs railing.

"I have no clue..." Happy huffed. "I thought it would save energy."

"Save energy!?" I jerked my head to look down the five steps below me where he stood. "This place is powered by an arc reactor."

"Yeah, well, we're burning some calories doing this," Happy replied, finding the strength to trudge up a few more steps.

Happy Hogan and I were halfway up the stairwell of the Avengers Tower, struggling to make it to the penthouse where all the boxes had been stored before moving day. Which was today, and the plane is supposed to take off in an hour. It took us about thirty minutes to get this far up the stairs, I thought I could do it in fifteen. I was wrong.

"I thought you'd been working out," Happy said. "You took that running start and I thought I was done for."

"I need to work on more running, less punching a bag and skating," I replied. "If I knew how to work Tony's jet boots, believe me, I would be doing that right now."

Happy laughed at my joke and we continued in our trek to the top of the tower. It came to a point where I was taking three steps at a time, forcing myself to almost do the splits while stretching my short legs. Thankfully I was wearing leggings and a tank top so that I wasn't sweating as much as Happy was behind me. When we finally reached the penthouse floor, I stumbled through the door and collapsed onto a chair that hadn't yet been moved. Happy slowly trudged in and sat down on the small steps, taking a cloth out of his jacket pocket and wiping his forehead. The moving staff weren't coming in for another fifteen minutes and, lucky them, they would arrive in the plane.

I looked around at the stacks of boxes till my eyes caught the bar on the far side of the penthouse. A small grin creeped across my face and I looked at Happy.

"Hey, you didn't pack Tony's bar stuff, did you?" I asked.

"...No..." Happy replied.

"Great." I stood up and walked around behind the bar.

I knelt down, seeing that there was a shelf of whiskey, vodka, wine and a cooler of beer, grenadines, lemonade and cans of soda. I stood up as Happy was sitting down at the bar, on the counter were a couple of whiskey glasses.

"What'll it be, Mr. Hogan?" I spoke in a thick New York accent. Mostly impersonating my dad's voice.

"Ah, I'll have a whiskey on the rocks." Happy played along.

"Soitently." I kneeled back down and grabbed the bottle of whiskey, set out a glass, filled it with some ice from the cooler and poured Happy a glass of whiskey. "There you go, sir."

"And what'll you be having?" Happy asked me.

"I have the biggest sweet tooth, so I'll have to go with a..." I kneeled down to the cooler and grabbed a can of soda and bottle of run. "Coca-Cola with a shot of rum."

"To Moving Day." Happy held up his drink.

"To Moving Day," I replied.

Happy and I clinked our glassed together, took our sips, and I leaned against the bar, looking around at the room.

"I miss the days where we would stop Loki in the penthouse and then go eat shawarma," I sighed.