Work Text:
Astrophysicist seeks assistant
- Six week appointment, in Puente Antiguo, New Mexico.
- Duties and work hours to vary.
- SIX UNITS FOR FULL DURATION!!!!
- Contact the Dean of Transfers for more information:
- [email protected] or
call 995-623-8246
The advertisement had been placed on the student commons billboard, but it seemed as if no one cared about practically free credits.
But Darcy Lewis did. She’d managed to flunk both her basic math and her general biology classes, and now she was in serious danger of not graduating on time. She needed those six credits more than she needed oxygen at that particular moment in time.
She didn’t particularly care about stars.
When she’d taken the offer for those beautiful, blessed credits in return for interning for some crackbrained scientist in the back desert of New Mexico, she figured it would amount to being a glorified gofer. That she would mostly perform coffee runs, and keep Doctor Foster’s underwear and sock off the floor without letting him look down her tops.
Stepping off her plane, after three hours sitting next to some screaming brat and his indulgent granny, she was not surprised to see a clearly hand made sign of cardboard with a large ‘Dracy Lewis’ scrawled across it. What she was not expecting was for it to be held by a petite brunette with the prettiest brown eyes Darcy had ever seen, and wearing a flannel shirt, jeans, and scuffed boots.
Darcy had stopped in front of the woman and her sign, her brows knit together, and one ear bud of her precious, brand-new ipod hanging off her shoulder.
“Uh, it’s Darcy, actually…”
The woman had looked at the drooping piece of cardboard, then at Darcy, back at the sign, and then back to Darcy. She’d then launched into a round of apologies while trying to hide the offending bit of tree carcass behind her. As it was wider than she was, this was not a particularly successful maneuver. All the while, her mouth had been running a mile a minute.
“I am so sorry! I was going to make a really nice one, I even bought glitter pens for it, but then there was an anomaly on one of the star scans for the third quadrant, only it turned out to be nothing, well, not nothing, there were stars, but I meaning nothing as in nothing anomalous, is that even a word?”
Darcy had blinked slowly, once, twice. She felt vaguely like there might have been English in that…sentence…somewhere. The pretty brunette was still smiling hopefully at her, like some puppy in human form, and Darcy wondered if she needed to pat the other woman on the head or something.
“Uh, Doctor….Foster?”
Those shiny brown eyes had blinked in return, and then the woman was all action.
“Oh, oh, yes! I’m Doctor Foster! Doctor Jane Foster! Thank you so much for coming, Ms. Lewis. It’s such a pleasure to meet you, I’m so glad you’re here!”
She held out a hand to shake, and Darcy took it with only a mild hesitation.
“It’s just Darcy, Doc.”
A happy beaming smile that had nearly blinded her.
“Oh, Jane, please. Are these your bags? Let me get those for you!!”
Darcy did not even manage a nod before Doctor Foster/ Jane had picked up Darcy’s duffel with more ease than Darcy had either expected or had ever experienced with it herself. She was chattering away, and Darcy idly wondered where she found the time to breathe during the whole thing as she followed the other woman out into the bright New Mexico sunshine.
It was not, in fact, coffee runs and cleaning. She made coffee, yes, and she did do laundry, but that was where the similarities between reality and Darcy’s initial expectations of this little internship stopped.
It was charts and maps and equations that took up whole folding tables with the necessary paper spread out end to end. It was Doctor Foster continuously speaking completely incomprehensible sentences in what was very obviously English, and when Darcy failed to understand, did not translate it, but rather repeated it. It was hand made machinery of dubious credibility, held together only by rolls of extra-strength duct tape and Doctor Foster’s seemingly endless supply of enthusiasm.
It was swearing about dirty, cock-sucking installation men who did stints as high-way robbers for broke astrophysicists and their assistants as she fought with the dramatically temperamental internet connection, and phone, and that quadruple-times despised hot water heater. It was late nights in a cramped Jeep miles into the desert, sitting in the driver’s seat and scrolling through the ever growing list of songs on her ipod while the good doctor filmed dust devils and odd little swarms in the sky.
It was ‘Jane, did you eat today?’ and ‘What do you mean you don’t have any pop tarts?!’. It was dragging Doctor Foster out for a drink or eleven at the town’s one hole-in-the-wall bar to flirt and dance with truck drivers and cowboys and what few other single males could be found. Then it was Rosa’s diner for breakfast the afternoon after.
It was the Doc calling up Erik Selvig, and there then being two socially backward scientists to baby-sit, rather than one.
It was six weeks turning into six months turning into almost a year.
But Darcy still didn’t give two damns about the stars.
Fucking stars.
They’d brought Thor, with all his muscle-bound, cup smashing, blonde, looks-way-too-hot-in-denim God-ness.
He’d made Jane smile and laugh, do things that had been technically (or not so, depending on who you asked) illegal, and talk about something other than science upon a rare occasion. He drank Selvig under the table, then fireman carried the other man to his bed. He’d smiled for Darcy’s constant camera shots and listened to her endless attempts to explain Facebook and the concept of an ipod. He’d eaten their entire stockpile of pop tarts.
Then, the small, stupid balls of gas took him away again, and with him went Jane’s smile, and Erik’s laugh, and the unconscious feeling of safety the people of Puente Antiguo had once felt in their little town.
Three months after his dramatic departure, and eventual non-reappearance, Darcy found Jane crying in the bathroom of her motor home at just after two in the morning, smelling like she’d been bathing in rubbing alcohol.
“Jane…”
Those gorgeous eyes had been watery and faintly unfocused as Jane leaned against the small tub holding a tumbler in one hand and an empty bottle of what looked like whiskey at her other elbow.
“Why hasn’t he come back, Darce? Did I do something wrong? Was I too nerdy? I’m always too nerdy.”
She gave a little hiccup and lifted her glass to her mouth with the care of the drop-dead drunk. It had always amazed Darcy that no matter how drunk Jane got, her speech was still exceptional. Although she spoke more English than Science by glass three.
“Jane, you’re-”
“I know I’m too nerdy, Darce. Always have been. Don’t mean to be, really I don’t, but not doing what I love…well, I tried that…”
Darcy nearly choked on her own saliva. This was news to her, and she couldn’t imagine a world where Jane didn’t speak two languages at once.
“When was this?”
Jane took another slow sip of alcohol, not even coughing by this point. Her head lolled back on her neck until it rested against the edge of the bathtub, and then she closed her eyes.
“Was back in uni, long before I met you. Looooooong time before. There was a guy who sat next to me in one of my organic chemistry classes, fuck I hated O-Chem. Any way, he was really sweet, and he took me out a few times. But eventually, he didn’t like it when I talked. Said it made him feel stupid when he couldn’t understand me. Kept asking me to ‘speak English’.”
She tipped back the rest of the tumbler, as though the booze would erase how much that asshat must have hurt her.
“Well, he was an asshat.”, Darcy informed her.
“Not the point, Darce.”
“And what was the point, Jane?”
A slow, languid twist of her lips.
“It nearly killed me, trying to do that, make him happy. I swore I’d never do it again. Only, it keeps driving men away. Even Thor, and here I thought maybe a God would understand.”
Once more the glass made the trip to her mouth, but when Jane tasted only empty air, she jerked it back to deliver such a look of betrayal, you would think it had murdered her firstborn. After a moment, those big brown eyes filled with tears, and dropping the glass, Jane buried her face in her hands.
“Why am I never good enough?” she wailed, her cry muffled by her hands.
Darcy hated Thor with a serious passion right about then, and was having more than one violent fantasy of tasing him again…repeatedly, and then using Mew-mew to send his nuts back up into his abdominal cavity. She gathered the weeping Jane into her arms, awkward with the lack of space though it was, and rocked her, trying to soothe.
“You are gorgeous, and your giant, genius brain is a fucking turn on, and you should never have to censor yourself. Other people’s stupidity is not your problem. If he hasn’t come back, he’s a giant cock-whore who’s too damn dumb to realize what he has, and if he ever does come back around, I’m going to use that giant hammer of over-compensation he always carries to make his equipment go from tiny to non-existent!”
Jane was still sniffling, and the side of Darcy’s neck where she had pressed her face was hot and damp, but she was also laughing a little by this point.
“I know you would, Darcy. I know you would.”
As Jane’s shoulder’s continued to shake, still more with tears than mirth, Darcy Lewis decided that she really, really hated the stars, and the Gods that rode in on them.
It was a long time before Jane cried herself out, and then Darcy pulled her up off the floor and hustled her to bed. She laid out aspirin and water beside it, and crept out as quietly as she could to sleep on the dining area bench in case she was needed.
She was not expecting Jane to some to her the next morning with clear, if really bloodshot, eyes.
“Darce, what if he can’t get back? What if something happened?”
In Darcy’s honest, if very negative, opinion, it was very likely nothing had gone wrong other than Thor being a giant douche-king. However, she knew that saying that out loud, especially after the night before, would be a very bad idea. It was also the last thing Jane needed to hear at that moment. So, she played along, setting her elbows on the table, and her chin on top of her hands.
“What if, Jane?”
Jane looked at her, and for the first time in a while, she smiled.
“Then I need to go to him. Do you still have Agent Coulson’s contact information?”
“Like I’d forget how to get a hold of the fucker who confiscated my ipod.”
That long missing smile grew wider, and Jane honest-to-not-Thor laughed.
“Then go get it for me. We have some serious work to do!”
Darcy went to do as requested, thinking that while she still hated the stars, she would probably be better off keeping that to herself.
Darcy was beginning to think her life was made of suck. The stars had taken Jane, too.
Sure, apparently Thor was not actually a giant douche, and actually had been delayed by his crazy, psychotic brother, but that did not mean he got to suddenly reappear, sweep Jane off her feet, and then promptly vanish again. He didn’t get to be the one to take care of Jane. That was Darcy’s job, damnit, and Thor needed to earn those privileges again! He probably wouldn’t remember she had to be reminded to eat, or that she didn’t carry a taser.
It took a week for her to realize that she had nothing to do, or really anywhere to go by this point. Erik, reappearing from where ever he’d gone haring off to, took pity on her. Another week, and she was back at University, finishing up her last few classes for her degree.
Only now, she wasn’t so sure she even wanted a political science degree.
Jane came back different.
She was quieter, older in a way Darcy didn’t understand, and anytime Darcy tried to ask, to get Jane to talk to her, even a little bit, it was always:
“Hey, is that Erik calling?”
“I’m gonna go get some coffee…”
“I have to get the new print out for eight section of quadrant seventy-two alpha, the correlations between the measurements are off.”
Or some other pathetic or transparent excuse. Darcy eventually became so frustrated, she turned to her best buddy in terms of interrogation: alcohol.
It then took four hours of patience and a couple blenders worth of extra-strength margaritas before Jane unwound enough to open her mouth.
“Darce, it was so bad.”, she murmured, as Darcy filled her glass back up to the brim. She was huddled into the corner of the couch, feet tucked underneath her, and cradling the alcohol as if it were something precious.
“Bad?”
“So, so bad. People were screaming, and dying, and there was…was blood, just, everywhere. And that awful voice in my head. And the pain, and that voice…that voice-”
“Jane-”
“It wasn’t me, Darce. But he wouldn’t let me go, and it was like some sort of horror movie nightmare that you never think happens in real life. It was like my body wasn’t my own, and I was just along for the ride.”
“Who was the voice?”
Jane shook her head, her lips tightening and pressing until they were thin white lines nearly swallowed by her face. She then chugged half her glass of margarita, and held it out for Darcy to refill.
Urging did not yield anything other than more shaking of the head and occasional whimpers, so Darcy let the topic drop for the time being. They simple drank and munched on popcorn in silence as a silly movie Darcy didn’t even recognize played softly in the background. Some sort of cliché rom-com with Gerard Butler and his blonde love interest. It was into this silence that Darcy dared to ask:
“Couldn’t Thor protect you? I thought he was the God of bad-assery.”
It was, apparently, the wrong thing to say, as Jane began to cry silently. Big, fat tears streamed down her face and a few dropped into her drink. Darcy immediately felt like the scum of the earth, and began to pat and soothe in earnest.
“Oh, no, no, Jane. I’m so sorry. Forget I said anything, I’m an idiot. No, I’m a douche, I’m a-”
She was not expecting Jane to start busting up laughing so hard, the tears kept coming. Darcy had to rescue her dangerously tilting glass and set it safely on the table before it became part of the carpet. She then sat in bemusement and stared, wondering if Jane had lost her mind already.
“Now you sound like me.” Jane managed to wheeze after a time. They shared a brief smile, and then Jane sobered.
It wasn’t so much that he couldn’t protect me, you know. Although he’s the god of battles and storms, not bad-assery.”
“Oh, boo.”
“Ha. Anyway, he did the best he could, and because of that, I’m still alive. Without him, I would never have come back, Darce. I’d be out there somewhere, in a mass grave, or burned on a mass pyre. So he did well. Really he did.”
She leaned over and picked up the margarita again, took a sip, then another.
“It’s just, no one remembers that sometimes even Thor needs to be protected, you know?”
Darcy could not hold back her snort.
“Uh, Jane? He’s a several millennia old being of power, worshipped as a God by ancient people, for good reason I might add. The God of battle and storms, no less, and I seem to recall him coming back from the dead at least once. I really, highly doubt he needs protection.”
The smile Jane gave her this time was a little bitter around the edges, and a whole lot of sad.
“That’s what everyone seems to think, and physically, I suppose they may be right. But his heart, Darce? It’s so beaten and broken. He lost his mom in all that mess.”
Darcy felt like a jackass again, and wondered if she’d ever stop putting her foot into it. She also felt distinctly uncomfortable, unsure if she should offer sympathy for someone she had never even met, but Jane just kept going, not even noticing Darcy’s response.
“He lost his mother, and even with that loss, he was expected to lead his army into battle. Then, on top of all of that, he had to deal with Loki being, well, Loki, and then he was expected to bring great victory. And it just exhausts him. I see it all the time. It weighs him down like Mjolnir never did. Doesn’t he, like everyone else, need protection for that? Or, at least a place where he can rest and relax?”
Darcy stared at her for a long moment, then downed her own glass poured a refill, and then smirked.
“Jane?”
“What?”
“You’re so gone for him, aren’t you?”
“Oh shut up, Darcy, and pour me another drink.”
There was nothing for Darcy to do but oblige her.
Darcy liked Stark Tower. A lot.
It was ritzy and full of luxury, and because she was a ‘great, valiant, and true friend’ of both Jane and Thor, she got to live there too. Rent free, even, and she was handed a job. Her shiny new bachelors in poly-sci got stuffed into a random drawer somewhere, and she found herself back in a position she knew well: Intern-slash-babysitter.
She didn’t even mind joining SHIELD as an official office agent. Which, while she had to go through basic training, was simply an on-paper label for ‘Thor wants her here, so get her some clearance yesterday, damnit.’ Hell, she was even on payroll, which was nice. (Also, Agent Coulson was actually pretty cool when he wasn’t trying to confiscate he ipod. He liked apple pie, apparently, and would often bring her a piece from the dinning commons whenever training ran long).
But it also meant rounds of coffee, laundry, charts and maps, and some pop tarts, usually in that order. But now, rather than doing to for a couple of backward scientists and their crazy extra-terrestrial guest, she was now performing all of this for a group of socially-stunted, immature, arrogant freaking superheroes. She paused to wonder sometimes how this was where her life had gone, but it usually wasn’t for long.
To this day, she maintained that that the legos in Stark’s shoes had been a requirement for a continued grip on her sanity. (Questionable though it was to begin with.)
…
It worth it.
What she had not been prepared for was the staggering amount of issues that each of them carried, as well as the personality quirks, boundaries, and needs of six superheroes, two girlfriends, and their handler.
Barton was always hiding in the air ducts, and refused to wear shoes, or even socks, unless he absolutely had to. He was also Darcy’s favorite ally in the ongoing prank war. She would never have been able to get into the ducts herself, otherwise.
Steve was a cute, precious little baby, and she constantly wanted to hug him, PTSD and being twice her size be damned. He also left charcoal and graphite smears on all the door knobs or the edge of the fridge, or one of the kitchen counters. He was also so polite, sometimes Darcy wanted to poke him, just to see what he would do. Thankfully, Stark was already taking care of that, and Darcy could enjoy the show without being caught in the crossfire.
Natasha carried a whole host of sharp implements anywhere on her person at any time. Darcy was completely okay with this. Her issue was that Natasha would not teach her how to use them until she finished her basic training. She also seemed to have an almost psychological need to feed Darcy chocolate every time she saw her. Another thing Darcy had no issue with. However, she and Pepper did not get along, so any time both of them were in the same room, it was necessary to run interference.
Thor was loud. Like, really loud. In bed, in training, in the fucking shower. He’d re-learned his bad habits while he’d been away. Jane also still had to remind him that shirts were mandatory for men-slash-Gods with steady girlfriends who had assistants with the balls to taser them.
Stark infuriated or amused her by turns, often in the same conversation. He wore suits worth more than her bachelors degree had cost, plus room and board, and he then ruined them because he was tinkering with some mechanical doodad or other and spilled or smeared grease all over it. Her only consolation was that Steve did not approve either, and could then be convinced to look the other way as she performed a prank in retaliation. He was noisy and wild, and he worked like an over-active, hyper, goateed sun. His very presence seemed to exert a gravitational pull on the Avengers, drawing them in. He made them things, and got them to help pull pranks on her, and---aw, hell. He was generous to a fault, not that she’d ever admit it out loud. He loved when the people around him were happy. It was a compulsive need on par with Natasha and feeding Darcy. Still, Darcy supposed billionaires who had been kidnapped by terrorists and then had a mini-battery inserted into their chests were allowed to have some quirks.
And then there was Bruce.
Darcy could, and did, admit to herself that she rather liked this quiet older nerd. He didn’t fit as well with the others, who knew they were powerful and liked it. He was always sliding into a corner, or shrinking in on himself. He was more afraid of himself than anything else. At least until she started grabbing his butt (and such a nice one, too). Then he made really fun squeaking noises. He also never took her up on sexual harassment, so she felt no need to stop.
He was always the first up in the morning, doing a yoga routine she never would have seen if she hadn’t been coming home late (or early, depending on the view) from bar hopping. He loved tea, and all shiny things of scientific origin. He said ‘good morning’ to her face, and not her chest. He had a quiet, but dry, sense of humor, and despite his own anger issues, he was a good person to seek out when angry, for he made an excellent sympathetic ear.
So, when ever she found herself in the mood to pump Stark full of thousands of volts of electricity and watch him jerk, she would seek out Doctor Banner. He’d make then both a cup of tea, sit her in one of the window seats, put himself down on the floor about ten feet away and just let her talk.
---
However, it was not the good doctor she was seeking two weeks before she was going to be finished with Shield basic. She stormed into the kitchen on the communal floor, hoping to find some of Stark’s booze. Maybe if she got drunk enough, she wouldn’t feel quite so shitty. She found several, and without bothering to check the labels, opened the nearest one and went to chug it.
“Isn’t ten thirty-six on a Tuesday morning a tad early for a vodka bender?”
She spun around, and there he was, seated at the kitchen table, a pot of tea at his elbow and a stack of reports in front of him. She really liked him in glasses. He was sexy like that, but she was in no mood to mention it. Instead she glanced that the label of the bottle she’d been about to kill, and hid a wince. She hated vodka.
But not wanting to look like an idiot, or a docile child to be chastised, she smirked and lifted the bottle to her lips, taking a long pull. Darcy didn’t quite manage to keep the smirk in place, or to completely hide the shudder of disgust that racked her as she swallowed. He laughed softly from his cozy corner. He belly gave a little swoop, like it always did when he smiled or found something funny.
“If you don’t like it, don’t drink it.”
“Hush, I’m practicing my Tony Stark impression.’
Somehow, instead of making him laugh again, like she’d intended, he looked back up from his papers sharply. His brows came together with a nearly audible click as he took in her appearance for the day. Sweatpants, baggy t-shirt with a high neckline, sneakers, no make-up.
“Is something wrong, Ms. Lewis?”
“Nothing what so ever, Doctor Banner.”
His frown went even deeper, if that was possible.
“You always call me Doc, and you nag me to call you Darcy.”
That was another thing about Bruce. He was too perceptive by half, and right now, that penetrating stare was turned on her full force. Instead of answering the unspoken question as well as the verbalized one, she considered the bottle in her hand, and wondered if she could stomach another pull. After a few moments more of the silent staring, she got uncomfortable.
“Just a slip of the tongue. Nothing to worry about.”
“I see.”
Darcy could have written a paper arguing against the Bible from all the disbelief in his tone. Putting the cap back on the bottle, she shoved it back into the cupboard and made for the door.
“Really, it’s nothing. Just on my lunch break, but I’d better get back or my training officer will have my ass.”
She paused in the doorway, steeled herself, and then turned to give Bruce an utterly fake smile.
“See ya later, Doc.”
“Dar-”
Because she fled so quickly, she missed Bruce setting down his papers and pen, and then reaching for the cell phone in his pocket instead.
Darcy had heavy eyes and a foggy head as she shuffled into combat and self-defense training the next morning. Agent Mcgraff, her Shield trainer, had not taken well to her self-assigned lunch break (or her telling him she’d rather sleep with the Thing, or perhaps even Tony Stark, than with him.) The paperwork he’d saddled her with, both horribly complicated and waaaay above her pay grade, had kept her chained to her desk until well after one in the morning.
It was now five fifty-seven a.m., and Darcy Lewis wanted nothing more than to go back to bed. Instead, she joined several other new hires in gathering around the gym mats, and their large-egoed instructor.
Agent Mcgraff was a fairly good looking man in his early thirties, with a buff build that said he spent a lot of time at the gym himself, and he was far too interested in talking to Darcy’s breasts for her to be nice when she told him no. Now, he crossed his arms and looked at her with a very sadistic smile. Which is how Darcy just knew the retribution and harassment reports she had filled out during a break in her workload yesterday were never going to get to Administration.
“Ah, Probationary Lewis. Since you’re late, you have volunteered to be the attempted rapist for today’s training demonstration.”
She glanced at the clock, noting that she had a full sixty seconds until training was technically supposed to begin. She was also not the last person in the room. She also knew that no one was going to help her out of Mcgraff beating her ass because he could. She ran her tongue over her teeth for a moment, then sighed.
“Sorry, Jane.”, she murmured under her breath, then stepped forward. Louder, she said:
“Apparently you have need of corrective lenses, Trainer Mcgraff. That clock says I have….thirty-two, thirty-one seconds as of now, before training even begins.”
His eyes narrowed, and she felt her knees turn to water. She hated confrontations, really she did, but damn it, she had taized the Norse god of fucking thunder, and she would rather gnaw on her own entrails before she gave way to some middle-management piss-head with inadequacy issues. At least then she could salvage something when she go fired. Although, apparently Mcgraff was talking, and she should probably pay attention.
“And I say you’re late, Probie. As well as disrespectful to authority figures, and a serious danger to yourself and the other trainees. Seems to me that Shield can’t afford to have a screw-up like you on the payroll.”
Fucking figured. Well, might as well be hanged for …what was it? Probably something to do with horses.
“I-”, she opened her mouth to tell him to pull his head out of his ass so she could shove her foot up it, when a very familiar drawl came from behind her.
“Now, see, I find so much wrong with that declaration. So much that I could neither explain it all, given a week, nor use terms small enough for his little monkey brain to understand. Really, so very much ridiculous, redonkulous amounts of wrong. What do you think, Natali-, Nata-, Nin-, oh, whatever the fuck your name is this week. Opinion, go.”
Darcy had thought she knew the meaning of the words ‘My insides turned to ice’. She hadn’t. Unfortunately, she did now. She refused to turn around, hoping that maybe, just maybe, if she ignored him he would go away. Then she could pretend that all of this was just a horrible nightmare produced from too much paper work, and that her alarm would be ringing.
Any second now.
Really.
Nope.
“For once, Stark, we actually agree on something.”
A bag of milk duds was thrust under her nose, and a pale, lovely arm smelling faintly of something floral draped itself over her shoulders.
“No. No, you should not be here. What are you doing here? No.” Darcy managed in a flat tone of voice, already opening her chocolate with resignation and a rather sizable sense of impending doom.
“Aww, but I like to be where I shouldn’t, dear little Devil Spawn. You really should know this by now.”
She wasn’t going to smile, she wasn’t. It would just encourage him.
“The fuck is this?” Mcgraff snarled, stepping forward and snatching the milk duds from Darcy’s hand. Or he tried to, anyway. The twin of the arm around her shoulder moved lightning quick to catch his pinky and bend it back, forcing him slowly to his knees.
“Those are not for you.”, Natasha informed him, face blank and voice glacial. As that tone was not directed at her, Darcy felt no fear what so ever.
“Bitch!”
“Now, that is just rude, son.”
This was Steve, coming around Darcy and Natasha to seize the agent on his knees by the back of his neck. Natasha released her prisoner’s hand, but when Mcgraff made to stand, he barely twitched. He tried twisting this way and that, getting only red in the face and even angrier for his exertions. He looked like nothing so much as a furious kitten in that moment. Steve was both entirely unimpressed, and obviously not expending much force at all to hold the man in place.
There was a click behind them, then two, then more. Darcy turned to see the rest of the trainees, all with their phones out, recording this little comedy that seemed to have become a matter of course in her life. Stark, looking his usual arrogant self in a clean suit, actually pulled out a sharpie and signed the back of one of the Starkphones in the front row. He then turned back to Mcgraff, who was still being held absolutely still.
“Now, see here, Chuckles…”
“Fuck off! You’ve got no jurisdiction here, Stark. You’re a fucking consultant! I’ll have your ass for this!”
Stark just smiled, and for the first time, Darcy could see the man who had lived through Afghanistan, and who flew around in a high-powered suit defeating bad-guys. That flash of teeth looked absolutely mean.
“Actually, Giggles, it just so happens that I do have jurisdiction here. You’ve been messing with our Jezebel here. And while we, as in us, the Avengers and assorted attached parties, savers of the planet? While we may get to pick and poke at her? You-”
He got really close to Agent Mcgraff then, who snarled and tried to lunge at him. He didn’t move so much as a centimeter, even as Steve watched the air ducts, rather than the angry man he held.
“-You get to toddle off to what ever outpost in Siberia or equally cold wasteland we decide to put you in, and if we hear so much as a rumor about you bothering our Demon Child again-”
An arrow shot out of the air duct that Steve had been looking at, landing with a thunk in the practice mat between Mcgraff’s knees. Steve’s restraining hand kept him from jerking back, although nothing stifled his yell of surprise. Stark had not even twitched as the projectile had passed within a very close distance of his face. He’d apparently only paused for effect.
“-This will seem like a visit from Grandma and Santa Claus.”
The tense silence in the room was more deafening that anything she’d ever heard.
“Come along, Darcy.”, Natasha said at last, steering her out of the door via her arm still around Darcy’s shoulders.
“But, training…I have-”
“No. We’re signing you out.”
“For how long?”
Stark bounded up on her other side as they moved into the hallway.
“Forever, Witch. We’re not sending our favorite coffee gofer to be abused by someone else. That’s my job.”
Down the hall, one of the overhead vents popped open, and Barton dropped down onto the carpet in his bare feet. In one hand, he held an extremely long pipe.
“Huh, and here I was wondering how you managed to get your bow into the ducts.” Stark said, rubbing a hand over his goatee.
“I wouldn’t take Lucy into those things, Stark. Not nearly enough maneuverability.”
“I thought I asked you not to actually shoot at him, Clint.”
This was Steve, coming up behind them and frowning his Disappointed Dad frown at Barton while the latter replaced the vent grate.
“Just be glad it was me, and not Thor, Cap. We’d be scrapping Mcgraff off one of the buildings across the compound if he’d been here.”
Steve made a pinched, pained sort of face, like he wasn’t sure if he should smile or keep frowning. Stark had no such compunctions, and began to howl. They moved her along with them as they got further and further from the training room. Suddenly, something clicked in her mind.
“Bruce.”
The four Avengers turned to look at her. Barton actually put his arms behind his head and smirked.
“What about him?”
“That sneaky little weasel. He snitched on me.”
“Ah, well…”
“I was handling it.”
“Badly.” Natasha pointed out, then gave Darcy’s shoulder a gentle squeeze, “ We fixed it. Now, eat your chocolate.”
Darcy popped another milk dud into her mouth and scowled.
Later that night, she found him sitting out on the penthouse patio, looking up at the stars. She paused in the doorway, watching him for a moment, because he just seemed so…peaceful. Then she shook herself, and remembered why she was there in the first place.
“You’re a snitch, Doc.”
He gave a small twitch, as if he had only realized she was there once she had spoken. However, he did not stop looking up, nor did he turn in her direction.
“I have no idea what you mean.”
She couldn’t hold back her snort at his bland voice.
“Your pants are smoking something awful, Doctor Banner.”
Her reward was that huffed laugh, and despite her anger, she found herself drifting out to sit next to him on the blanket he had spread over the real, honest-to-god grass Stark had installed. He tensed a bit, but didn’t move away. There was silence between them for a time, the hum of the city traffic far below mixing in with the wind to create a gentle sort of white noise.
“I’m not sorry.” he said suddenly, face still tilted toward the sky. She glanced at him out of the corner of her vision, unsure if that comment made her angry again, or simply amused. She noticed that he hadn’t shaved that morning, and that there was a bit of dark stubble along his jaw. Judging by the bags under his eyes, he also had not slept much.
His study of the night above became extremely focused as she turned to fully look at him. Biting back a smile, Darcy leaned a little, until their shoulder, then their elbows, and then their wrists too touched.
“That’s okay, Doc. Neither am I.”
She paused for a moment.
“Just don’t tell Stark I said that.”
He pressed his lips together, and his shoulder shook against her own as he attempted to hide his laughter.
“Wouldn’t dream of it.” he said at last, his voice just this side of strained.
Smiling herself, Darcy leaned a little bit more, until her head lay solidly on that still shaking shoulder. Silence enveloped them again, and she was very surprised that it was neither awkward nor uneasy.
A little bit later, he reached out with just his pinky finger, and tangled it with her own, still without looking at her. Her chest felt big and warm and wonderful as she looked up at the twinkling lights far above them.
So maybe she didn’t quite hate the stars after all.