DISCLAIMER: The original characters are mine, as is the story idea. Marvel owns the rest. 

The static shock is new.

            Michaela isn't an idiot (most days); static shock as a concept isn't new. She's been terrorizing the neighborhood with it since she was seven and her grandma knitted her a pair of incredibly ugly wool socks that she refused to take off, which were then forcibly removed after she'd gone two days without a bath. And she's hardly a stranger to grabbing onto a pole on the subway and zapping the hell out of herself.

            But this is... more.

            Tuesday morning dawns, presumably, bright and bitterly cold, though Michaela doesn't open her eyes until 8:53, approximately seven minutes before her first class. The only comment she has about the weather is to declare it was too fucking cold as she hurriedly threw on a seasonally-inappropriate jacket on her way out of her apartment. Late as she is, she can't grab breakfast from the cafe on campus, or even a coffee, which doesn't bode well for her attitude for the rest of the day.

            She snaps at a professor or two. Her next paper is probably going to get tanked. Oh fucking well.

            The point is, though, that she wasn't in any state of mind to notice it until well into the afternoon when she's holed up behind the register at Cody's, mindlessly greeting customers and desperately hoping none of them choose to mention her smudged makeup or the unavoidable stains under her arms. This wasn't a clean shirt by any means, hadn't been clean when she wore it last, either. Is it her fault that the washers in her apartment complex ate quarters like they were fucking caviar?

            A few regulars pass through — Diego and Carla, Tommy and Riley, Mr. Yang — but they don't linger today like they might have otherwise. The shop isn't busy, really, there are only a handful of people browsing, so apparently she's giving off pretty strong don't-engage-with-me-I'm-not-human-today vibes, which suits her fine. For the most part.

The absence of friendly conversation is starting to wear on her the longer her shift drags on. Her leg shakes, knee bobbing against the row of drawers behind the register; she worries at a hangnail on her thumb, too chicken just to rip it off; the copper on her tongue comes from having her teeth planted a little viciously in her lower lip. God, she has so much homework for this week, and then finals are coming up, she'll be swamped, how the hell is she going to come into work when she already knows she has three papers, two projects, and an oral presentation due in a few weeks—

Someone steps up to the register and Michaela straightens instinctively, whacking her knee against the drawers in her haste. She hisses out a strangled breath, fighting the urge to crouch down and cradle her leg; instead, she forces a brittle smile at the man in front of her and says, "Hope you found everything alright. Want me to ring you up?"

The man smiles in sympathy, his brows drawn together behind his red-tinted glasses. "Yeah, that'd be great." He loads his things onto the counter and Michaela dutifully ignores them; she's learned not to make assumptions based on what people bought, and more to the point, she doesn't care to make a guessing game out of it, not when she has better things to waste brainpower on. She's already started working his purchases into the register when he says, with a smidge of hesitation, "Are you alright? I heard a bang and it, uh, didn't sound great."

Michaela pauses, biting again at her lip. She doesn't normally take notice of customers, aside from the ones that turn up on a daily basis, but — the guy smiles at her, sheepish but charming, and she drops her gaze to give him an absent once-over and—

Ah. Fuck.

His suit is nice, though she doesn't really have an eye for expensive tastes. For all she knows he'd nicked it from a Good Will bin and it's really thirty years old. But it looks good on him; charcoal jacket and pants, crisp white shirt, maroon tie that she thinks maybe matches his glasses? Short, dark-brown hair, stubble on his cheeks and chin. Cute, overall. And then there's the cane.

She'd thought his phrasing had been a little odd. He'd heard her, didn't mention the pained grimace that had undoubtedly flashed across her face before she schooled her features into reluctant professionalism.

So. Cute and blind, if she isn't being too presumptuous. Huh.

"I'm..." She waves a hand, mentally curses herself, then says, "You know. Banged my knee a little. Nothing to complain to HR about." What HR? She works at a convenience store. Michaela squeezes her eyes shut, breathes out slowly, embarrassingly grateful he can't see just how much of a fool she is. Awkward as fuck and caffeine-deficient, she isn't at her best today, or. Well. She can't remember the last time she'd been at her best. "I'm fine, really, but thanks for asking. This all for today?" she asks, grabbing at a subject change with both hands and yanking for all she was worth.

He probably sees— or, not sees, hell. He can probably tell what she was doing, but he doesn't seem to mind, just gives an easy shrug and taps his cane lightly against the floor. "That's all. I'm just on a snack run for my partner. We've been at the office all day, and he likes to remind me when I've gone too long without getting some fresh air."

Aw, nice guy. Michaela could use someone like that, if she's being honest with herself. Which she isn't, not today anyway. Today is not a day for honesty. She needs more sleep for that, and like, at least one espresso.

She grins, another reflex, and bags his snacks. "Not sure if the air here qualifies. Especially not after last week."

The man's brows twitch upwards, just a little. "Were you around for the attack?"

"Uh." Way to go, Michaela. That's a pleasant topic, very casual. "Yes? Technically?" Stop making everything a question, Jesus! "The, um, the blast, or whatever, I wasn't all that close to it, but I got caught by the cloud of..."

She trails off. Fuck if she knew what tragic-backstory-of-the-week exposed them to. The doctors at the hospital she'd woken up at didn't know what it was, either, but they'd collectively decided that it hadn't been toxic, so. Death isn't on the horizon, apparently.

What a pity.

"I mean, I'm fine, obviously. Got kinda scraped up when I fell and all, but nothing serious." That's when she clocks the bandage wrapped around the guy's hand, and since she'd already stuck her foot in her mouth, she might as well go for broke. "Did you... What about you?"

That gives him pause, only for a moment, before his injured hand flexes and then cinches tighter around the handle of his cane. He laughs, shakes his head. "Oh, no, I got lucky. I was visiting a friend when it happened, so I wasn't in town." Another smile. "But I'm glad to hear you're alright."

Right. Sure. This isn't just two people exchanging niceties for a (nearly) awkward length of time. Michaela abruptly ducks her head and pushes his bag closer to the edge of the counter. "Yeah, good news for me," she says, refusing to acknowledge her flushed cheeks. When is her shift over again? Not soon enough. "Here you go. That'll be $8.37."

He passes her a twenty, insists she keep the change (which is absurd, she doesn't get tips, and she can't be rude—) but when she makes  to press the bill back into his hands she yelps at the shock of their skin meeting. And for once she isn't being dramatic, there was a literal shock, she could've sworn she'd seen a spark—

Glasses frowns as his hand spasms, then shakes out his fingers and tips his head, looking at her just a bit off-center, his gaze seemingly focused over her left shoulder. "That was..."

"Static," she mutters, staring at her own hand. It doesn't look— she doesn't know, burned? She's pale as ever, though, no blemishes or marks that she can see. "My fault, probably. Sorry."

"Don't worry about it," he says graciously, like there was nothing out of the ordinary about what had just happened. And maybe there wasn't anything strange there, maybe Michaela just needs someone to knock her the fuck out so she can move on from today. "Have a nice day!"

It takes her a solid fifteen minutes once he's left to realize she hadn't given him his change.

"Motherfucker."

__________

She'd write it off as another product of her shitty, shitty day and care not at all about the significance of it, but it... keeps happening.

Two more customers brush hands with her and two more times they both got shocked. Then, when she's on her way out, so, so ready to bury her head in a pillow and possibly never emerge into the light of day again, she closes her hand around the door handle and — her whole hand this time, a bright burst of pain, electricity crackling over her skin, but now it isn't quite pain. Or, it's not as painful as before, like the shock has diffused across her hand, up her forearm, dissipating quicker.

She doesn't have the chance to dwell on it, because Emmett's taking over her position at the register and she does not want to get sucked into a conversation with him, well-meaning as he is. (He's in college, too, which he likes to remind her about whenever possible, but he can't seem to grasp that he's eighteen and she's twenty-four and that their experiences weren't really the same at all). So she shoves aside the prickle of worry at the back of her neck, decides very promptly that she's imagining things and slips out onto the street, hands stuffed deep into her pockets and her breath crystallizing in the air as she makes her way home.

Then she's inhaling a cup of ramen, speed reading (i.e., skimming) through an article for her modern graphics class tomorrow, and internally freaking out about no less than five separate and completely unrelated problems. It's her greatest talent, and also the reason she averages four hours of sleep a night. Why had she wanted to go back to college again?

By the time Michaela is ready to start on the logo project that's due Friday, it's eleven at night and she's drained three cups of absolutely disgusting coffee, so she's looking at little to no sleep. Again. Hurray for her impulsive nature and inability to course-correct even when she knows she's fucking herself over and careening right into a terrible decision. She'd always heard her twenties would be the best time of her life, and wow, so many people had lied to her, it's not even funny.

Michaela drops heavily into her armchair (which she'd stolen off the sidewalk and felt no shame whatsoever about), dragging her laptop off the coffee table and into her lap. She's buzzing, her skin too tight. Her mouth's gone dry despite the coffee and she feels like the absolute last thing she should be doing is sitting down, but she isn't going to go for a run at eleven o'clock at night in Hell's Kitchen. Her brain betrays her on a nearly daily basis and she's failed more tests than she can count, but she isn't that stupid. Taking one year of karate when she was eight does not mean she has any business defending herself, so she isn't going to stick her neck out just to run off the jitters, thanks. She'll distract herself with schoolwork and maybe take a couple of laps around her tiny shithole of an apartment.

That's the plan, at least, until she sets her fingers down on the keyboard and the laptop abruptly goes up in smoke.

Michaela shrieks, her hands tingling as she tosses the laptop onto the ground, watching wide-eyed as it spits out sparks like she'd dumped a bucket of water over it. That... is not normal. Neither is whatever the hell is going on with her hands because they're tingling, yeah, but it's more than pins and needles; they feel charged, staticky in a way that's far from the harmless zaps you prank people with.

What the fucking fuck?

The smoking laptop is a lost cause, or not one worth pursuing right now, anyway. And her hands, well — she could, uh, go to the emergency room? Would they even take her in for something like this, whatever this was? Does she need a therapist?

That's a stupid question. Who doesn't need a therapist? Michaela doesn't want to meet that person, honestly.

Why is she daydreaming about the emergency room, anyway? She doesn't have health insurance. Hell, she'd nearly had a panic attack when she woke up in the hospital in the wake of the Avengers bagging another bad guy; not because she was in a hospital, but because she'd have to pay for being in a hospital. Which was a nightmare worse than death, really, and god, can't Tony Start just cover everyone who ends up bruised and broken after they save the day? She's grateful the Avengers are around, she is, New York wouldn't exist without them, but the man has literal billions of dollars. Hospital fees won't even make a dent in his gold-plated wallet, or whatever.

Focus, Michaela. Weird electrical shenanigans take precedence over lingering bitterness towards Tony Fucking Stark.

Yeah, there would always be time for that. Just not right now.

Michaela jabs a toe at the laptop, which responds by coughing up another round of sparks, so she draws  her legs hastily onto the chair and cowers there for a minute, then flings her hands out away from her body. The tightness in her chest is a warning she doesn't need, and she forces herself to breathe as evenly as she can, hoping to stave off the inevitable anxiety attack for a little while longer.

She flips her hands over, fingers splayed wide. Her careful breathing hitches. She's always been pale despite her more colorful heritage, but not to the point where her veins stand out glacial blue against her skin. And she's kidding herself if she labels the blue, arcing lights beneath her skin as veins — that's electricity, or something like it. Something almost... alive, right there, writhing even as she watches, snaking through her palms, and when it reaches her fingertips, sparks fizzle in the air just beyond her bitten-off nails.

That's about when her panic hits the wall, too big for her chest, and she lets out a sharp, broken breath that coincidentally coincides with all of the lights in her apartment — and, she'll learn later, her entire complex — blanking out with a high-pitched whine.

Somehow her awkward failure of an encounter with the cute office worker doesn't seem like such a big deal anymore.