fic: Direction (1/3)
Title: Direction
Rating: R
Pairings/Characters: Darcy/Steve, Jane, Erik, Tony
Word count: ~23,000
Summary: Steve is not ninety four years old, he's barely twenty seven and he has no idea what he's doing. It's a good thing he's not the only one. (This is a post-movie fic, so there are spoilers for That Thing That Happened.)
Steve is not turning ninety four today. Steve is, as of eight oh five this morning, twenty seven years old. Steve's father died before he ever got the chance to see his baby son, and Steve's mother died when he was twelve years old. He spent six years in a Catholic orphanage, five years moving from flophouse to flophouse with Bucky, four years in the US Army, and six months in the twenty first century.
It's kind of cute, he guesses, and Tony doesn't actually make him wear the party hat that he got especially, 'a buck fifty at the dollar store, Capiscle! You'd better reimburse me!'. They fold his 'birthday party' into the Independence Day celebrations in Central Park, and turn it into an Avengers PR stunt. Well, a Captain America and Iron Man PR stunt, because Thor and Bruce are gone, and for reasons that Steve doesn't fully understand yet, Clint and Natasha have enough pull with Fury to get out of it.
So it's Steve, Tony and his friends, anonymous S.H.I.E.L.D. agents, the media, and the crowds. The never-ending crowds with their own cameras and their endless things to sign. Tony takes to it like a duck to water, as does his girlfriend, Miss Potts, and Colonel Rhodes, who both look effortlessly cool and unflappable the entire day, while Steve feels sullen and sticky under the hot sun.
It starts to wind down in the late afternoon, although there are still kids everywhere who want to touch his shield or try on his sunglasses. Most of them gravitate towards Tony after a while, who apparently has no compunction in taking his shoes and socks off and sitting in flattened grass to have super soaker fights with them.
It's not that Steve isn't good with kids, it's just that he's different; he's not exactly from the 'seen but not heard' era, but they're unruly, faintly disrespectful, and very easily broken if he throws a ball too hard or swings a kid too high.
“Fucking monsters,” someone hisses none too quietly behind him. He turns around and sees a young woman in a short floral sun dress and sandals, standing among a crowd of children. He looks back towards Tony and the others, but they're a ways in the distance now and no one seems to be around to help her.
“Are you okay?” he asks, edging towards her.
“Do I look okay?” she snaps, dropping down onto her knees to wipe at a kid's face. “I mean, this dress cost me eighty dollars, and now there's half a bottle of Sunny Delight down it and it's rapidly sticking to my bra. And now I'm telling some random guy about my bra!”
“Do you want me to get someone?”
“How about you get Captain America over here to deal with all his vertically challenged f-f--” she chokes as she looks up at him. “Oh, so you're Captain America. You could have told me.”
“You didn't really give me a chance. And anyway--” He offers her a hand up, and her dress really is stuck to her bra. “I, uh, I only play him on TV.”
She tilts her head and narrows her eyes.
“Uh. I'm trying to be funnier. Apparently it's important nowadays.”
“'Nowadays',” she mutters, pursing her lips into a smile. “Well, you should keep working on that, dude.”
He sticks his hands into his pockets and resists the urge to rock on his heels. She's short, almost a full foot shorter than he is, long dark hair, glasses slipping down the end of her nose, remnants of make-up smudged on her face. She's, well, she's very nice looking. “Thanks.”
“Oh.” She wrinkles her nose up. “Is that treason?”
“I don't know, I don't think so.”
She breathes out heavily. “Good, 'cause if I get fired, I think they're gonna assassinate me.”
“Okay,” he says. “How about I get someone to help you?” He turns around and raises his hand to one of the undercover agents.
“Oh my God, they're in the trees,” she mutters as they start to close in.
“Agent Lewis, we'll take over from here,” one black-suited agent says, appearing at her side. She starts, then looks up at the sky in exasperation.
“Agent?” he repeats. She doesn't look like any agent he's met so far.
“Agent Darcy Lewis, at your service, sir,” she says, thrusting her hand at him with a smirk.
He takes it, carefully wrapping his fingers around her hand. “Steve.”
“Nice to meet you, Steve,” she says, raising her eyebrows.
She has a firm shake for such a small hand, and holds on for a little longer than is probably necessary. He pulls his hand away slowly, and smiles.
“There's a water fountain over there, if you want to get the juice out of your dress.”
“If anyone but Captain America said that to me, I'd think it was a come on.” She wiggles her eyebrows and sets off in the direction of the fountain. After a moment's hesitation, he follows.
“I'm sorry, I didn't mean it like that.”
She looks back over her shoulder and winks. “Did I say it'd be a bad thing? Hey, hold down the button for me, will you?” She sets her... chest on the edge of the fountain, and smiles up at him. It's a dangerous smile, he thinks, and presses his thumb against the button.
“So...” He looks at the rapidly drenched front of her dress, then decides to inspect the grass instead. “What gets a S.H.I.E.L.D. agent on babysitting duty?”
“Just your good old-fashioned hierarchy bullshit.” She leans even further forward against the basin, patting at her dress. “I'm at the bottom of the ladder, so I get bullshit grunt work. Plus they thought I was the 'least threatening' person to be around kids.”
“Really? You don't seem not... threatening,” he says, and wonders if he could have put that any more stupidly, but she just looks up at him and grins.
“Right? That's what I said. But you know men. Always thinks they know best.” She pauses and glances up at him again. “I mean, not you. You seem pretty non-jerky.”
“I try.”
She chuckles softly. “Nice delivery, very dry. B+, you learn pretty fast.”
He ducks his head. “Thanks.”
“It's your birthday today, right?” she asks, after a couple minutes more of scrubbing at her dress.
“Yeah,” he mutters.
“Ninety four, that's pretty awesome.”
He hums something vaguely in the positive before she adds, “So how old are you really?”
He smiles. “Twenty seven. Although, since my plane went down in May, and I got out of the ice in August, I was really twenty seven some time in October.” He pauses when he notices her looking at him with eyebrows raised. “It's complicated.”
She stands up and shakes herself, her breasts bouncing a little, and he looks harder at the grass. “It sounds complicated. And, hey, Captain America is only three years older than me? That's crazy. Well, this didn't work,” she adds, and he risks a look at her dress: it's completely soaked, turned semi-sheer and outlining her bra, which is... black.
“Oh, here.” He lets go of the fountain and starts to unbutton his shirt.
“Hey, whoa, you don't need to strip to make me feel better,” she says, her tongue in the corner of her mouth.
He feels his cheeks flush as he reaches the bottom buttons and pulls it off. “I just thought you might like to... to cover up,” he says, and hands her the shirt.
“Oh,” she says, looking momentarily crestfallen before putting it on. She buttons up the middle buttons, ties the shirt tails up around her waist, and pushes up the sleeves. It looks... it looks good on her. “I'll give it back to you next time I see you,” she says.
He shrugs. “You can keep it, I don't mind.”
“Whoosh,” she mutters and starts patting the pockets of her dress. “Aha!” she says, and produces a pen. She takes his hand and tugs him a little closer; he's caught between wanting to stubbornly stay where he is, and wanting to do the exact opposite, so he just kind of stumbles towards her and bangs his hip against the fountain. She laughs and begins to write something on his wrist. He tilts his head to read it: numbers. Ten numbers with a New York area code, so... a phone number. “In case you ever need any lessons on being funny,” she says. Then she salutes him and takes off across the park, leaving him to look at her writing on his arm. She has really terrible handwriting, it looks like she was drunk when she wrote it.
“Did you just hook up with some random girl?” Tony says when he makes it back over to them. “Don't tell me you're desperate enough to sleep with your groupies. I can introduce you to girls, you know.”
“I was talking to a S.H.I.E.L.D. agent,” he says, crossing his arms over his chest.
“Didn't look like any S.H.I.E.L.D. agent I've ever seen,” Tony says, then narrows his eyes. “Wait a minute, did she... She did! She wrote her number on your arm! Oh man, you are totally in there.”
“Shut the fuck up, Tony,” Rhodes says good-naturedly, slapping Tony on the back. “It's cute.”
Steve sighs.
-
When he gets home, he copies her phone number down onto a scrap of newspaper and secures it to his fridge with a magnet, then proceeds to look at it every day for two weeks, but never pick up his phone. It's a good thing that Tony never comes over, because he's already been at Steve about 'the girl with the rack', and he'd probably just go ahead and call her himself.
Then again, maybe he'd be too busy with the latest assault on his tower which somehow results in Steve getting his leg broken when part of it collapses on him.
Afterwards, he's taken to the hospital, where the doctors poke and prod at him, and set his leg without any anaesthetic because nothing short of an induced coma will knock him out. It's enough to get rid of Tony, his face paling at the snap and crack of Steve's bones, and Steve gets the cast put on in peace.
“You!” someone calls while he's waiting for it to dry. Darcy stomps across the room, all in black: boots, pants, tight t-shirt, and a fine layer of dust covering it all.
“Oh God, you weren't in the building, were you?” He'd been pretty sure at the time that they'd evacuated everyone before the fight really got into a full swing, and he can't really think of a reason why she'd have been there anyway, but he doesn't like the idea of her being in danger. He doesn't like the idea of anyone being in danger, but he really doesn't like the idea of it being her.
“Clean-up duty. Once you guys have finished destroying stuff, the little worker bees come in and tidy it all up so that the next time, you have an aesthetically pleasing background to fight to.”
“Oh,” he says, “I'm sorry.”
She narrows her eyes and puts her hands on her hips, drawing his attention there despite his best efforts to the contrary. “Is this what you do, Captain Rogers? Love 'em and leave 'em?”
That's the kick he needs to drag his attention back to her face. “What?”
“Typically when someone gives you their number, they expect to then receive a call from the recipient of said phone number.”
“Oh,” he says again. He looks at his lap for a moment, then back up. “I broke my leg.” He tries to sound a little plaintive; hey, it works for Tony.
She tilts her head. “How long's it going to take to heal?”
“Three, four days.”
She nods, pouting her lips faintly. He's almost successful in chasing away the thought that she'd be a very good kisser. “I'm going to tell you a story, Rogers,” she says. “In the summer of 1998, when I was but a fresh-faced ten year old, I was the queen of the playground. I didn't grow up in a very interesting town, so that concrete death trap was the bomb. My speciality was the monkey bars, they were my shit. Well, one day I was keeping on keeping on, and some pimply faced little bastard distracted me. I fell, Steve, and my left arm went kinda--” She twists her arm around her back and pulls a face. “Broke it in two places. It hurt like a bitch. 'Thankfully' I was already on my summer break, so I didn't miss any school, but I spent the rest of that summer inside with my father, watching CSPAN. I mean, it ended up helping me, in the long run, but playing on the monkey bars was never the same. My arm still aches when it rains.”
She pauses and he ducks his head, not sure if he's allowed to laugh or not.
“So, the moral of the story, Captain Rogers,” she continues, “is that I'm very unsympathetic to your sprained ankle.”
He bites his lips and grins. “Message received, ma'am. I promise I'll call you.”
“Nope, nope.” She pats down her pockets and somehow finds a pen in there somewhere. “The cast dry?” she asks, then starts scrawling something on it before he can answer. “Okay,” she says, when she's finished, “you're gonna meet me at this location next Saturday at fifteen hundred hours precisely. The only excuse I'm going to accept is seeing you get your face bashed in by a baddie on the evening news. Deal?”
“Deal,” he says.
-
The place where he's been ordered to go to is a Starbucks at Columbus Circle, and he gets there twenty minutes early, kicks around outside, trying not to look too much like he's been stood up, pulling his hat down low and hoping he isn't going to get recognised, before going in when his watch says it's 2:59pm. The coffeehouse is bewilderingly busy, not a single seat free, and he starts to wish that he'd gone in earlier, instead of trying to be cute about it and time it exactly. She doesn't have his phone number and he forgot his cell in his anxiety anyway, so there's no way to get into contact with her and rearrange, and he's starting to think that maybe he really has been stood up. Payback's a bitch, as Tony likes to say.
Or maybe not. “Hey, beautiful,” someone says behind him. He turns around to find Darcy smiling up at him. She's wearing shorts that show off her shapely legs, but what he really notices is how she's wearing his shirt, the bottom of it tucked into her shorts, sleeves rolled up to her elbows and held there with safety pins, a white tank top just visible underneath. He stares for a little too long, he guesses, because she puts her nose in the air and says, “You aren't getting it back now, buddy.”
He just smiles and follows her to the two seats by the window that she's staked out. There's a tall paper cup that's still steaming on the table in front of him when he takes his seat.
“I guessed you were a hot chocolate type of guy,” she says and shrugs.
He almost says something about how he should be the one buying the drinks, but bites it back at the last second, Natasha's disapproving face looming in his mind's eye. Instead he just says, “I am, yeah, thanks.”
“Extra whipped cream,” she says, and takes a sip of whatever she's having.
He tries his drink too, to cover his lack of having anything at all to say, and glances out the window. Right out at where he'd been standing not two minutes ago.
“Did you...?”
“See you standing out there for the last twenty minutes? Yep.” She pokes at the brim of his baseball cap. “You looked adorable trying to be all incognito.”
“Oh no, did people recognise me?” He leans his cheek on his hand and tries to glance around carefully, to see if anyone's looking. It seems pretty safe, but he's starting to live in constant fear of people and their damned camera phones.
She pats him on the shoulder. “It's New York, nobody looks at anybody else. Maybe, maybe, if you were in the suit, but otherwise, I'm pretty sure you're good.”
He sighs. “I hope you're right. So, um, how long have you been here for?”
“'Bout, well...” She lifts a shoulder. “Half an hour.”
“Okay,” he says, and takes another sip, glancing at her out of the corner of his eye.
She rolls her eyes and sighs in disgust. “Don't look at me like you think you know something.”
“I'm not. I don't know anything.” It comes out a little more sadly than he means it to. She looks at him thoughtfully for a minute, and he shifts slightly away. “So, why'd you decide to become a S.H.I.E.L.D. agent?”
“Ah, well. It started with a man falling out of the sky.”
“A man fell out of the sky?”
“Thor.”
“Thor?”
“I tased him.”
“You tased him?”
“Are you just going to repeat everything I say?”
“Am I-- no. No, I'm not, sorry. But... you tased Thor? I fought with him, he's... strong.”
“Well, he was depowered when I--” She shakes her fist, in no way reminiscent of a taser. “So I guess you can't really judge him for that. What you can judge him for is sending Jane to Buttfuck, Norway and not even swinging by to say, 'hey'.”
“Jane?”
“Jane Foster, the most adorable of all the astrophysicists.”
“Dr Foster?” He remembers some talk of a 'Dr Foster', but he's pretty sure that they didn't refer to the place she went to as 'Buttfuck'. “Wait, do you know Dr Selvig?”
“Yeah, I was their research assistant.”
“How is he?”
She twists her mouth and taps her fingers on the edge of her cup. “He's... I don't know, he seems okay most of the time? Hasn't been going to his therapy sessions, far as I can tell, but then who does?”
Steve doesn't, that's for sure. This doesn't seem to be a very good topic of discussion for a date, though, if that's what this is; Darcy's starting to look a little sad and he grabs hold of the first thing he thinks of.
“So, why S.H.I.E.L.D., then?”
Her face goes from sad to annoyed in a split second. “Ugh. Okay. It's like Men in Black: either I became one of them or I got mind wiped, and since I hope those clicky pen things aren't actually real, I was very strongly advised to accept their job offer.”
“I... don't know what any of that means, but it doesn't sound very good.”
“Eh, I didn't have any other plans. I don't have a great track record with committing to things or, like, making decisions. I changed my major three times.” She shrugs and looks at him through her eyelashes as she sips her drink. “I guess there's no point me asking you why you work for S.H.I.E.L.D.”
“I wanted to be taller.”
“Solid reasoning. So, how're you finding this brave new world?”
He's finding it... he's not even sure any more. Sometimes things are familiar: people make Wizard of Oz jokes, read Batman and Superman comics, get drunk and sing loudly in the street outside his apartment at three in the morning. People are basically still the same, as friendly or unpleasant as they ever were, and it's not even the technology that throws him; it's not that hard to work out telephones or televisions or computers. And yet, most of the time everything feels so unreal and unfamiliar to him. Maybe it's just loneliness.
All that seems a little too heavy to tell a girl he's not even spent twenty four hours with yet, though, so he just says, “No one's created soma yet. I don't know how I feel about that.”
She squeaks with laughter and bangs her fist against his hand. “I didn't know you were a nerd! Excellent!”
“When you're a ninety pound asthmatic, you read a lot of books.”
“I imagine you would.” She drains the last of her cup, smacking her lips as she bangs it back down on the table. “Do you want to get out of here?”
He looks around, looking for press or maybe one of his more aggressive fans, but there's nothing different about the crush of people. “Where are we going?”
“I don't know, you're the New Yorker, I'm just a girl from small town California. Show me the city, Captain Rogers.”
“Uh. I haven't finished my drink.”
She hops up from her seat and collects up her cup and napkins. “Don't worry, it's portable. I'm going to start feeling rejected right about... now,” she says, and he stands up, maybe a little too quickly, ending up just a couple of inches from her.
“Great reaction times,” she says, and pats him on the hip. “Come on.”
She latches onto his arm pretty quickly as they walk down the street, oohing and ahhing at things that really aren't all that interesting. He's beginning to get the distinct feeling that despite her assertion that he was going to 'show her the city', she's very much controlling everything that's happening right now.
After a little while she falls quiet, and they wander aimlessly, neither of them saying anything. She looks up at him a couple of times, but still doesn't speak until finally she pokes him in the side. “Hey, you look nervous.”
“I am nervous,” he says quickly. It's such a relief to admit it that he's almost not embarrassed. Almost.
“Why are you nervous?”
“I don't... do this.”
“Walk down streets? I can see how being without your men to carry your chair on the... the pole thingies could be off putting.”
“Pole thingies?”
“You know, those chair throne things that people get carried on?” She rolls her eyes. “Man, you can ruin a joke at twenty paces.”
He frowns at her. “I meant, I don't date.”
“Twenty first century girls not good enough for you? If it helps, I was born in the twentieth century.”
“I mean... I've never dated.”
“You've...” She stops and lays a hand flat on his chest. “You've never been on a date?”
“I used to go on double dates with my friend, but most of the time it ended with him doing the double dating.”
“Wow.” She shakes her head. “Huh, I'd never have thought Captain America would be the nervous type.”
“Captain America isn't. Steve Rogers is.”
“Ah,” she says, eyebrows going high. “Got a little identity disorder thing going on, have we?”
Her hand is still on his chest; he takes a deep breath and tries to justify himself. “We don't even know each other!”
“Well, I know you, and you know that I'm a funny, intelligent, gorgeous woman with amazing breasts who you immediately started checking out upon meeting.”
“I didn't...” he mutters.
“Well, we'll agree to disagree, then.” She drops her hand and starts to chew on her thumbnail. “Look, I'm not maneater. Unless they like that sort of thing. Do you wanna take things slow?”
His immediate instinct is to say, 'no, no, that's definitely not a good idea', but what comes out is, “Okay.”
-
Darcy doesn't do slow. She'd been thinking one night stand, friends with benefits at best, and that was if he didn't just say, 'I'm Captain America, I can get any girl I want', (which he'd have been a fool to say and she would have swiftly disposed of any memorabilia she might have collected up over the years). She wasn't looking for any sort of relationship thing, and even if she had been, Steve Rogers has got 'baggage' and 'issues' written all over his face.
But, it's a very nice face. Especially when he smiles, which is what she tells Jane when they perform the post date dissection over Skype.
“That doesn't seem like a good basis for a relationship,” she points out.
Darcy settles down on her stomach, adjusting the laptop screen so that Jane doesn't get an eyeful of either her tits, or the wall behind her bed. “It's as good a basis as a nice set of abs and biceps, Dr I'm-an-intellectual-with-a-lady-boner-for-big-dumb-guys.”
Jane's eye rolling is delayed over the webcam, but still conveys her point. “Don was a physicist, and Thor isn't stupid.”
“Don was a skirt-chasing asshat, and the jury's still out on Thor.”
“Oh, whatever,” Jane mutters. “Tell me more about starting a relationship with someone who spent his formative years in depression era New York, is repressed to hell and back, and has identity issues.”
Darcy rests her chin against the edge of the laptop. “He's really cute.”
-
Their next couple of dates are slow. Like, molasses slow, going for walks and getting early lunches at Mom and Pop cafés.
The thing is, Steve seems like a really easygoing guy, and he is, but he's also really fucking sad around the edges, especially when they pass through construction sites, which is, hey, just about every part of Midtown for the foreseeable future. They need to find something else to do.
“Movie marathon,” she says, presenting him with a ticket. “Nary a technicolour in sight.”
It's an old theatre, threadbare seats, popcorn from an old, kind of suspicious looking red and white machine - basically it's crappy, but she refrains from saying it because he looks kind of charmed, with it and maybe with her too.
He laughs at all the lines that aren't funny and listens intently to all the talky bits and seems to swoon a bit at the romantic parts, and maybe after a while she starts to get into it, too, even though she can totally tell when it's a stunt double and when it's the actor. He also eats all of their extra large tub of popcorn, which is actually a good sign, despite the fact that she wanted some of that buttery goodness, because it means that he's not completely hyper aware of her the whole time.
Afterwards, he kind of gushes a little, with lots of 'did you see this and that part?' and sighing over the pretty girls before glancing sidelong at her. She just slots her arm into his and he keeps talking, as they wander through the darkening streets.
“Hey,” he says after a while, “can I take you home? Your home, I mean. Just to, uh...”
“You already are.”
“I am?”
She nods. Choosing a location close to home seemed like the best way to encourage well, sex, or at the very least a kiss at the door. Plus, Queens wasn't affected by the Chitauris, so there was less likelihood of a reappearance of sad face Steve. “I just live a couple of blocks that way,” she says, pointing east.
He's a bit quieter after that, but she's pretty sure it's because her neighbourhood is a little rough, and he's having lots of Captain America feelings about it.
“Wanna come up?” she asks as she fishes around in her bag for her keys.
“I'll just... I'll just see you to your door?”
“Are you asking me or telling me?”
“I'm... not sure.”
“Well,” she says, pulling her keys triumphantly from her bag, “this isn't my door. My door is up on the third floor. What if a bad guy kidnaps me on my way up? I think you should at least take me upstairs.”
Steve's face says she isn't fooling anyone, but he still follows her up.
“You sure you won't come in?” she says, when they get there. She leans against her door, spinning her keychain around her finger.
“Yeah, I'm...” He presses his lips together briefly. “Yeah.”
“How about a kiss?”
He blinks. Not exactly the response she was hoping for, but pretty much what she was expecting. “A kiss on the fourth date isn't scandalous, even for you, come on.”
“No, of course it's not,” he says, and she can practically feel his desire to scuff his toe in the gross carpet outside her apartment.
A thought occurs to her as he continues to put her in mind of her first 'boyfriend' when she was twelve. “Steve, how many people have you kissed?”
He narrows his eyes a little. “Two.”
“Two girlfriends isn't so bad,” she says. She'd kind of been thinking it was going to be a big fat zero.
“No, I mean... two kisses.” He kind of grimaces and shrugs at the same time. Well, that's more like it.
“Come here,” she says, crooking her finger to get him to close the distance between them. He's very good at taking orders, at least. She pushes herself up onto her toes and still only hits his neck. “Stop being so tall.”
“I can't help it.”
“Excuses,” she mutters, and throws her arm around his neck, hauling herself up. She's already against the door, and since Steve's ever the gentleman and wouldn't want her to strain her arm, he holds her there with light hands on her waist, as if she weighs nothing at all. And damn, thinking about how strong he is seems to be a bit of a turn on, she's just now discovering.
Also, he has the prettiest eyelashes she's ever seen. Like, on her best day, with her best make up, she still wouldn't be able to compete with that. “Ugh,” she mutters.
“Are you okay?” he asks. His fingers kneed her skin a little, just under her ribcage.
“More than,” she says, and tips her head forward to kiss him. His lips are just as soft as they look and he parts them a little; not enough for a full on tonguing but there's definitely some intent there, and even more when he presses into her, just a little, just for a second before putting her down and stepping back.
“Okay,” he says, and he actually licks his fucking lips. “No bad guys here, ma'am.”
“Are you sure?”
“Absolutely, Miss Lewis.”
“I'm holding you to that,” she says, pointing her door key at him.
“Please do,” he says and turns away before she gets to see the blush that she's sure is about to follow.
-
It turns out that he really likes kissing, as well as being a really quick study. It doesn't take much to lure him into her apartment the next time they go out, and their concerted effort to watch whatever's on TCM ends when he starts smelling her hair. He tries to be subtle about it at first but then he gets a little bolder, brushes his nose against her hair accidentally, and she turns to look at him and then somehow they end up making out for twenty minutes. It's a good twenty minutes.
“Do you wanna--” she says against his mouth before she pulls away, “--go somewhere else?”
He groans, chasing her for a minute before opening his eyes. “What?”
“How's the room with the bed in it sound to you?”
“Oh.” He sits back and wipes his hand across his mouth. “No, I--”
“No?” she repeats.
He cringes a little. “I'm-- I-- That sort of thing...”
“What sort of thing?”
“Sex before marriage,” he sort of half mutters, glancing at her shitty coffee table for a moment.
“You don't believe in it?”
“I believe it exists,” he says, trying for a smile that looks like a cross between amused and pained. “But I'm Catholic, I can't help it.”
She arches an eyebrow. “So you'll use me for my wit, interpersonal skills and pillow lips, but you won't use my body?”
“Your lips are part of your body,” he points out quietly.
“You're turning into a real smartass,” she says, grabbing the front of his shirt to drag him back in.
“So, you're okay with it?”
“For now,” she says, moving her hand from his shirt to the back of his head.
-
Steve leads a pretty sedate life, most of the time. He lives in an apartment in Brooklyn Heights, paid for completely by the interest he accrued on the money he got from the USO tours. He fought with S.H.I.E.L.D. about it, at the time: the higher-ups wanted him at one of the bases, or at the very least living in a building with a full contingent of agents working undercover as staff. For some reason, though, Fury sided with him on it, and he bought this slightly run down apartment with a tiny kitchen where he bangs his hips on the counters every time he goes from the fridge to oven. There's a grocery store down the street, an enormous supermarket the next block over, and a gym ten minutes away. He has an agreement with the owner of the place to use it after hours, at first because tearing punching bags to pieces tends to raise eyebrows, and now because he has one of the most famous faces in the US.
He doesn't really socialise with people. He used to, a little, but now he's always under threat of being recognised, and it's easier to just... not.
Except when it comes to Darcy. There's no 'not' with her.
“I don't think this is a good idea,” he says.
“Every idea I have ever had in my life has been amazing.” She looks at his wrapped hands. “Can I wrap my hands up like that? That looks cool.”
“You need to wear gloves.”
“Sexism,” she mutters as she takes the boxing gloves he hands her.
“Don't you get training as a S.H.I.E.L.D. agent?”
“It had some holes.” She shakes her arms out and bounces on the spot. She'd called him just as he was getting ready to go to the gym; when he'd told her this, she said that that was perfect and that she'd see him in half an hour. Now she's here in leggings and a tank top and she doesn't have a coat, so did she come here dressed in just that? He's both appalled and a little turned on.
“Are you sure about this?” he tries again as she puts her fists up and jabs at the air.
“I'm wearing three bras. It's happening.”
“Okay.” He spreads his hands. “Punch my palm, don't push yourself, just whatever feels good. Right to right, left to left.”
“'Whatever feels good',” she repeats back at him, and winks. Once they start, though, she gets focused, bouncing on her toes a little as she lands her punches. It doesn't take long for her to start sweating, her neck and arms shiny, dark hair from her ponytail sticking to her skin. His attention wanders.
“Can we do that thing where I jab you with one hand and punch you in the face with the other?” she asks after a while.
“Huh?”
“Eyes up top, Captain,” she says
He blinks a couple of times, refocusing on her. “Oh, a one-two punch? Sure.”
It's a little worrying how much she enjoys pretending to punch him, grinning gleefully every time he turns his face with a glancing blow.
“You're kind of violent, you know,” he says.
“Mean streets of Monterey, man.” She spits hair out of her mouth and goes for another strike. He dodges it this time, and she trips, falling straight into him, their chests flush.
“I'm sorry!” he says, gripping her arms. “I was just--”
She laughs, tilts her head up and pouts at him. “No fair,” she says, and her mouth curves into a smile. When he ducks down to kiss her, though, she pulls away, and pushes him on the nose with her gloved hand. “We're working.”
“Can we stop working?”
“Are you trying to ditch your responsibilities?”
He manages to drop a kiss to her forehead; she swats at him like an annoying bug. “Yeah...”
“Okay. But! I want you to flip me first.”
“You want me to what you?”
“Flip me over your shoulder. It looks cool on TV, I want to know what it feels like.”
He steps away from her completely and crosses his arms over his chest. “I don't want to do that.”
She mirrors his pose. “Don't be a baby about it.”
“No, I... No.”
“Why not?”
“I'll... hurt you.”
“No, you won't.” She frowns at him, reaches out and tugs his arm. “Hey, you won't hurt me.”
“You don't know that.”
“I'm pretty confident. Come on. I get behind you, right?” She dodges around him and wraps her arms around his waist. “Is this right?”
“Darcy,” he mutters.
“Really, what's the worst that could happen?”
“I break your back.”
She squeezes him harder. “That would suck,” she agrees, “but it's not going to happen, so...”
“You don't know that,” he repeats.
“Oh my God, stop arguing with me, yes, I do.”
He grits his teeth and looks down at her hands fisting in his t-shirt. He knows she'll just keep at this until he agrees to it. “Okay.”
“Ha ha!” she says and lets go of him. He sets about arranging her properly, her right leg behind his, her right arm over his shoulder, and says a silent prayer before dropping to a crouch as he rolls her over his shoulder. She lands on the mat with a thump and an 'oof!'.
“Are you okay?” he asks, scrambling around to look at her the right way up.
She laughs, says, “That was awesome!” and pulls him down for a kiss. A kiss that is very much helped by her prone position on the floor, and in short order he finds himself pressing down against her as she opens her mouth under his, one of her hands in his hair, the other at the small of his back. She tugs lightly at his hair, and he shivers, pressing his mouth down her neck between groans. He can't stop shivering, but it's really more like... shuddering, and it's become harder and harder to resist the urge to rock his hips against her. He drops his forehead to her warm skin and sighs.
“Damn,” he mutters.
“Is this a little bit too exciting?” she asks, still stroking his hair.
He groans. “Yeah.” He pushes himself up and rolls over to lie next to her.
“Hungry?” she asks.
“I'm always hungry,” he replies. “Sushi?”
She hums. “It's ridiculous that you like sushi,” she comments after a moment.
-
Her presence at the gym becomes a regular thing. He helps her with her self-defence training, where his experience of being beaten up in the alleyways of his youth come in handy: shins and eyes are the best parts to go for, backs of knees if you can get to them, biting is unpleasant but a good option if you have strong jaws. Darcy looks a little sad when he explains all this, and kisses him afterwards, sweeter than normal.
When they aren't training, she sits with her legs over the edge of boxing ring, watching him work on the punching bag, giving him directions on how to stand. Namely with his back to her.
“Oh yeah,” she mutters, and smacks the bubble gum that she's chewing.
“Okay.” He stills the bag and looks over his shoulder. “I think I've entertained you enough for one day.”
“You're always entertaining, Steve. Gum?” She tosses him a piece because he can answer, and he catches it with one hand. “That, for instance. Entertaining.”
He rolls his eyes and throws the gum into his mouth. It's almost sickeningly sweet: she's the only person he knows that can stand the sugary food he likes. “Do you want to go for a walk?”
She sighs, resting her chin on one of the boxing ring ropes. “A walk?”
“It's nice out.”
“There are nice places inside, too,” she says, and widens her eyes at him. She's mostly taken his moral quandary in her stride, but that doesn't stop her from making it quite clear that she wants to have sex with him. It's embarrassing, but God, he finds the directness of it incredibly arousing.
He falls back on his standard, “Just because this generation doesn't appreciate...”
“Oh God,” she says, and throws the packet of gum at him, which again he catches easily. “Fine, let's go smell the tulips.”
“Roses,” he corrects, and she slides feet first out from under the ropes, arching her back.
His mouth goes a little dry. She shakes her hair out as she passes him and snags his former shirt from where she slung it over a chair earlier; she's rarely without it. “Coming?”
She takes his hand when they leave the gym, lacing her fingers through his as they walk, smacking her gum even louder. She tries to teach him how to do it, but he can't quite get the hang of it. He's pretty good at blowing bubbles, though.
There are billboards above their heads as they get closer to the waterfront. There's one in particular that he's been seeing a lot recently, from a personal injury attorney. It says, 'Were you injured in the Battle of Manhattan, May 2012? Call this number!'.
“Where were you when Loki attacked the city?” he asks her, still looking up at billboard.
She glances up too. “I was on a coffee run. I ended up in the subway. Because of you, apparently.”
“It was the best I could come with at short notice,” he says. “Sorry.”
“It was crazy, man. There should never be that many people in there at the same time.” She pauses and covers their joined hands with her free one. “Honestly, fuck, I was terrified. I didn't have any training, and it was kind of worse than the Destroyer in a way, you know, because I didn't know where the threat was. I didn't have Jane or Erik, or Thor and his crazy buddies. Or even Coulson. And I'd left my taser at home that day, I think that was the worst part.”
“You knew Coulson?”
“He was the S.H.I.E.L.D. liaison for the whole 'Thor from the sky' thing.”
He nods. “Right, of course he was. I remember Thor saying something about that.”
She lets go of his hand and wraps her arm around his waist. “I saw you at his funeral. That was a nice speech that you gave.”
“You were there?” He barely remembers what he said, something about honour and commitment and hard work, and other things he used to say when he lost a man. All of it was, quite frankly, bullshit; he barely knew the guy and it seemed like no one else did, either. Maybe the cellist, but she wasn't allowed to come to that funeral. Apparently there was a civilian memorial service a few days later. He hopes she made it.
“Yeah. I was in the back. Like, way way in the back. I might have been crying a little, didn't want Captain America to see me with mascara tracks down my face. Never wear mascara to a funeral. It's just an all round bad idea..”
He rests his arm along her shoulders. “I'll try to keep that in mind.”
“You should.”
He pulls his wallet out of his pocket. “Fury gave me these,” he says, sliding the plastic wrapped trading cards out. He hasn't looked at them since he put them in there months ago, but it feels right to carry them around. Or better, at least.
She stops walking and takes them from him, turning them over in her hand. “Cap trading cards? These are original.”
“How did you know that?”
She shrugs. “Dad's a bit of a fan. He taught me how to tell originals and reproductions apart. It's all in the stamp on the back.”
“Really?” He looks closer and she holds them up to his face. “Never noticed that before.”
She hands them back carefully. “That's blood, right?”
“Yeah. Coulson's. He wanted me to sign them. I did, but...” He taps the silver pen work across the middle. “Too late.”
“He'd be thrilled. And he'd be happy you have them, too.” She leans her head against his shoulder for a second, then pushes her shoulders back. “I mean, what a nerd, what the hell. Pfft.”
He slips the cards back into his wallet and smiles. “I know. And he watched me while I 'slept'.”
“He was a creepy ass little man,” she says. “Oh, hey, I got you something.” She pulls her arm from around him and starts digging in her patch-covered satchel. There's a patch for every country she's been to, she's told him. She's particularly fond of her Switzerland patch, because that's where she lost her virginity to a guy that Steve instantly hated. She hands him her taser as she continues to rummage, and he does his best to conceal it, because he's not really sure if these things are street legal. “Here we go!” she says, takes the taser back and puts a little metal object in its place.
“Darcy,” he says, looking at it.
“It's an iPod.”
“I know that. Aren't these things expensive?” Everything seems expensive to him, but he's pretty sure that these things are accepted as being moderately pricey.
“Well, I didn't buy it for you.”
“Oh.”
She clicks her tongue. “Don't pout. I bought it to replace my old iPod that was 'lost' after the Destroyer incident, but then they found it while... clearing out Coulson's bottomless paper tray and I was going to sell this one on ebay, but then I thought, like, you'd probably like something to put your old man music on and...” She shrugs.
“Okay.” He closes his fingers around the iPod. “This gift is about fifty percent less romantic now.”
“And don't you feel better about it now? I did buy this for you, though,” she adds and pulls out something that looks like a wristband. “You put the iPod in the pouch and then put the band around your arm so that you can listen to it while you run.” She pulls the velcro apart and tests it out around his bicep. “I got the biggest they had... I think it'll fit.”
“Five percent more romantic,” he says. “Now I have to get you something.”
“Oh, you give me stuff,” she says and smacks his ass.
Part 2
Rating: R
Pairings/Characters: Darcy/Steve, Jane, Erik, Tony
Word count: ~23,000
Summary: Steve is not ninety four years old, he's barely twenty seven and he has no idea what he's doing. It's a good thing he's not the only one. (This is a post-movie fic, so there are spoilers for That Thing That Happened.)
Steve is not turning ninety four today. Steve is, as of eight oh five this morning, twenty seven years old. Steve's father died before he ever got the chance to see his baby son, and Steve's mother died when he was twelve years old. He spent six years in a Catholic orphanage, five years moving from flophouse to flophouse with Bucky, four years in the US Army, and six months in the twenty first century.
It's kind of cute, he guesses, and Tony doesn't actually make him wear the party hat that he got especially, 'a buck fifty at the dollar store, Capiscle! You'd better reimburse me!'. They fold his 'birthday party' into the Independence Day celebrations in Central Park, and turn it into an Avengers PR stunt. Well, a Captain America and Iron Man PR stunt, because Thor and Bruce are gone, and for reasons that Steve doesn't fully understand yet, Clint and Natasha have enough pull with Fury to get out of it.
So it's Steve, Tony and his friends, anonymous S.H.I.E.L.D. agents, the media, and the crowds. The never-ending crowds with their own cameras and their endless things to sign. Tony takes to it like a duck to water, as does his girlfriend, Miss Potts, and Colonel Rhodes, who both look effortlessly cool and unflappable the entire day, while Steve feels sullen and sticky under the hot sun.
It starts to wind down in the late afternoon, although there are still kids everywhere who want to touch his shield or try on his sunglasses. Most of them gravitate towards Tony after a while, who apparently has no compunction in taking his shoes and socks off and sitting in flattened grass to have super soaker fights with them.
It's not that Steve isn't good with kids, it's just that he's different; he's not exactly from the 'seen but not heard' era, but they're unruly, faintly disrespectful, and very easily broken if he throws a ball too hard or swings a kid too high.
“Fucking monsters,” someone hisses none too quietly behind him. He turns around and sees a young woman in a short floral sun dress and sandals, standing among a crowd of children. He looks back towards Tony and the others, but they're a ways in the distance now and no one seems to be around to help her.
“Are you okay?” he asks, edging towards her.
“Do I look okay?” she snaps, dropping down onto her knees to wipe at a kid's face. “I mean, this dress cost me eighty dollars, and now there's half a bottle of Sunny Delight down it and it's rapidly sticking to my bra. And now I'm telling some random guy about my bra!”
“Do you want me to get someone?”
“How about you get Captain America over here to deal with all his vertically challenged f-f--” she chokes as she looks up at him. “Oh, so you're Captain America. You could have told me.”
“You didn't really give me a chance. And anyway--” He offers her a hand up, and her dress really is stuck to her bra. “I, uh, I only play him on TV.”
She tilts her head and narrows her eyes.
“Uh. I'm trying to be funnier. Apparently it's important nowadays.”
“'Nowadays',” she mutters, pursing her lips into a smile. “Well, you should keep working on that, dude.”
He sticks his hands into his pockets and resists the urge to rock on his heels. She's short, almost a full foot shorter than he is, long dark hair, glasses slipping down the end of her nose, remnants of make-up smudged on her face. She's, well, she's very nice looking. “Thanks.”
“Oh.” She wrinkles her nose up. “Is that treason?”
“I don't know, I don't think so.”
She breathes out heavily. “Good, 'cause if I get fired, I think they're gonna assassinate me.”
“Okay,” he says. “How about I get someone to help you?” He turns around and raises his hand to one of the undercover agents.
“Oh my God, they're in the trees,” she mutters as they start to close in.
“Agent Lewis, we'll take over from here,” one black-suited agent says, appearing at her side. She starts, then looks up at the sky in exasperation.
“Agent?” he repeats. She doesn't look like any agent he's met so far.
“Agent Darcy Lewis, at your service, sir,” she says, thrusting her hand at him with a smirk.
He takes it, carefully wrapping his fingers around her hand. “Steve.”
“Nice to meet you, Steve,” she says, raising her eyebrows.
She has a firm shake for such a small hand, and holds on for a little longer than is probably necessary. He pulls his hand away slowly, and smiles.
“There's a water fountain over there, if you want to get the juice out of your dress.”
“If anyone but Captain America said that to me, I'd think it was a come on.” She wiggles her eyebrows and sets off in the direction of the fountain. After a moment's hesitation, he follows.
“I'm sorry, I didn't mean it like that.”
She looks back over her shoulder and winks. “Did I say it'd be a bad thing? Hey, hold down the button for me, will you?” She sets her... chest on the edge of the fountain, and smiles up at him. It's a dangerous smile, he thinks, and presses his thumb against the button.
“So...” He looks at the rapidly drenched front of her dress, then decides to inspect the grass instead. “What gets a S.H.I.E.L.D. agent on babysitting duty?”
“Just your good old-fashioned hierarchy bullshit.” She leans even further forward against the basin, patting at her dress. “I'm at the bottom of the ladder, so I get bullshit grunt work. Plus they thought I was the 'least threatening' person to be around kids.”
“Really? You don't seem not... threatening,” he says, and wonders if he could have put that any more stupidly, but she just looks up at him and grins.
“Right? That's what I said. But you know men. Always thinks they know best.” She pauses and glances up at him again. “I mean, not you. You seem pretty non-jerky.”
“I try.”
She chuckles softly. “Nice delivery, very dry. B+, you learn pretty fast.”
He ducks his head. “Thanks.”
“It's your birthday today, right?” she asks, after a couple minutes more of scrubbing at her dress.
“Yeah,” he mutters.
“Ninety four, that's pretty awesome.”
He hums something vaguely in the positive before she adds, “So how old are you really?”
He smiles. “Twenty seven. Although, since my plane went down in May, and I got out of the ice in August, I was really twenty seven some time in October.” He pauses when he notices her looking at him with eyebrows raised. “It's complicated.”
She stands up and shakes herself, her breasts bouncing a little, and he looks harder at the grass. “It sounds complicated. And, hey, Captain America is only three years older than me? That's crazy. Well, this didn't work,” she adds, and he risks a look at her dress: it's completely soaked, turned semi-sheer and outlining her bra, which is... black.
“Oh, here.” He lets go of the fountain and starts to unbutton his shirt.
“Hey, whoa, you don't need to strip to make me feel better,” she says, her tongue in the corner of her mouth.
He feels his cheeks flush as he reaches the bottom buttons and pulls it off. “I just thought you might like to... to cover up,” he says, and hands her the shirt.
“Oh,” she says, looking momentarily crestfallen before putting it on. She buttons up the middle buttons, ties the shirt tails up around her waist, and pushes up the sleeves. It looks... it looks good on her. “I'll give it back to you next time I see you,” she says.
He shrugs. “You can keep it, I don't mind.”
“Whoosh,” she mutters and starts patting the pockets of her dress. “Aha!” she says, and produces a pen. She takes his hand and tugs him a little closer; he's caught between wanting to stubbornly stay where he is, and wanting to do the exact opposite, so he just kind of stumbles towards her and bangs his hip against the fountain. She laughs and begins to write something on his wrist. He tilts his head to read it: numbers. Ten numbers with a New York area code, so... a phone number. “In case you ever need any lessons on being funny,” she says. Then she salutes him and takes off across the park, leaving him to look at her writing on his arm. She has really terrible handwriting, it looks like she was drunk when she wrote it.
“Did you just hook up with some random girl?” Tony says when he makes it back over to them. “Don't tell me you're desperate enough to sleep with your groupies. I can introduce you to girls, you know.”
“I was talking to a S.H.I.E.L.D. agent,” he says, crossing his arms over his chest.
“Didn't look like any S.H.I.E.L.D. agent I've ever seen,” Tony says, then narrows his eyes. “Wait a minute, did she... She did! She wrote her number on your arm! Oh man, you are totally in there.”
“Shut the fuck up, Tony,” Rhodes says good-naturedly, slapping Tony on the back. “It's cute.”
Steve sighs.
-
When he gets home, he copies her phone number down onto a scrap of newspaper and secures it to his fridge with a magnet, then proceeds to look at it every day for two weeks, but never pick up his phone. It's a good thing that Tony never comes over, because he's already been at Steve about 'the girl with the rack', and he'd probably just go ahead and call her himself.
Then again, maybe he'd be too busy with the latest assault on his tower which somehow results in Steve getting his leg broken when part of it collapses on him.
Afterwards, he's taken to the hospital, where the doctors poke and prod at him, and set his leg without any anaesthetic because nothing short of an induced coma will knock him out. It's enough to get rid of Tony, his face paling at the snap and crack of Steve's bones, and Steve gets the cast put on in peace.
“You!” someone calls while he's waiting for it to dry. Darcy stomps across the room, all in black: boots, pants, tight t-shirt, and a fine layer of dust covering it all.
“Oh God, you weren't in the building, were you?” He'd been pretty sure at the time that they'd evacuated everyone before the fight really got into a full swing, and he can't really think of a reason why she'd have been there anyway, but he doesn't like the idea of her being in danger. He doesn't like the idea of anyone being in danger, but he really doesn't like the idea of it being her.
“Clean-up duty. Once you guys have finished destroying stuff, the little worker bees come in and tidy it all up so that the next time, you have an aesthetically pleasing background to fight to.”
“Oh,” he says, “I'm sorry.”
She narrows her eyes and puts her hands on her hips, drawing his attention there despite his best efforts to the contrary. “Is this what you do, Captain Rogers? Love 'em and leave 'em?”
That's the kick he needs to drag his attention back to her face. “What?”
“Typically when someone gives you their number, they expect to then receive a call from the recipient of said phone number.”
“Oh,” he says again. He looks at his lap for a moment, then back up. “I broke my leg.” He tries to sound a little plaintive; hey, it works for Tony.
She tilts her head. “How long's it going to take to heal?”
“Three, four days.”
She nods, pouting her lips faintly. He's almost successful in chasing away the thought that she'd be a very good kisser. “I'm going to tell you a story, Rogers,” she says. “In the summer of 1998, when I was but a fresh-faced ten year old, I was the queen of the playground. I didn't grow up in a very interesting town, so that concrete death trap was the bomb. My speciality was the monkey bars, they were my shit. Well, one day I was keeping on keeping on, and some pimply faced little bastard distracted me. I fell, Steve, and my left arm went kinda--” She twists her arm around her back and pulls a face. “Broke it in two places. It hurt like a bitch. 'Thankfully' I was already on my summer break, so I didn't miss any school, but I spent the rest of that summer inside with my father, watching CSPAN. I mean, it ended up helping me, in the long run, but playing on the monkey bars was never the same. My arm still aches when it rains.”
She pauses and he ducks his head, not sure if he's allowed to laugh or not.
“So, the moral of the story, Captain Rogers,” she continues, “is that I'm very unsympathetic to your sprained ankle.”
He bites his lips and grins. “Message received, ma'am. I promise I'll call you.”
“Nope, nope.” She pats down her pockets and somehow finds a pen in there somewhere. “The cast dry?” she asks, then starts scrawling something on it before he can answer. “Okay,” she says, when she's finished, “you're gonna meet me at this location next Saturday at fifteen hundred hours precisely. The only excuse I'm going to accept is seeing you get your face bashed in by a baddie on the evening news. Deal?”
“Deal,” he says.
-
The place where he's been ordered to go to is a Starbucks at Columbus Circle, and he gets there twenty minutes early, kicks around outside, trying not to look too much like he's been stood up, pulling his hat down low and hoping he isn't going to get recognised, before going in when his watch says it's 2:59pm. The coffeehouse is bewilderingly busy, not a single seat free, and he starts to wish that he'd gone in earlier, instead of trying to be cute about it and time it exactly. She doesn't have his phone number and he forgot his cell in his anxiety anyway, so there's no way to get into contact with her and rearrange, and he's starting to think that maybe he really has been stood up. Payback's a bitch, as Tony likes to say.
Or maybe not. “Hey, beautiful,” someone says behind him. He turns around to find Darcy smiling up at him. She's wearing shorts that show off her shapely legs, but what he really notices is how she's wearing his shirt, the bottom of it tucked into her shorts, sleeves rolled up to her elbows and held there with safety pins, a white tank top just visible underneath. He stares for a little too long, he guesses, because she puts her nose in the air and says, “You aren't getting it back now, buddy.”
He just smiles and follows her to the two seats by the window that she's staked out. There's a tall paper cup that's still steaming on the table in front of him when he takes his seat.
“I guessed you were a hot chocolate type of guy,” she says and shrugs.
He almost says something about how he should be the one buying the drinks, but bites it back at the last second, Natasha's disapproving face looming in his mind's eye. Instead he just says, “I am, yeah, thanks.”
“Extra whipped cream,” she says, and takes a sip of whatever she's having.
He tries his drink too, to cover his lack of having anything at all to say, and glances out the window. Right out at where he'd been standing not two minutes ago.
“Did you...?”
“See you standing out there for the last twenty minutes? Yep.” She pokes at the brim of his baseball cap. “You looked adorable trying to be all incognito.”
“Oh no, did people recognise me?” He leans his cheek on his hand and tries to glance around carefully, to see if anyone's looking. It seems pretty safe, but he's starting to live in constant fear of people and their damned camera phones.
She pats him on the shoulder. “It's New York, nobody looks at anybody else. Maybe, maybe, if you were in the suit, but otherwise, I'm pretty sure you're good.”
He sighs. “I hope you're right. So, um, how long have you been here for?”
“'Bout, well...” She lifts a shoulder. “Half an hour.”
“Okay,” he says, and takes another sip, glancing at her out of the corner of his eye.
She rolls her eyes and sighs in disgust. “Don't look at me like you think you know something.”
“I'm not. I don't know anything.” It comes out a little more sadly than he means it to. She looks at him thoughtfully for a minute, and he shifts slightly away. “So, why'd you decide to become a S.H.I.E.L.D. agent?”
“Ah, well. It started with a man falling out of the sky.”
“A man fell out of the sky?”
“Thor.”
“Thor?”
“I tased him.”
“You tased him?”
“Are you just going to repeat everything I say?”
“Am I-- no. No, I'm not, sorry. But... you tased Thor? I fought with him, he's... strong.”
“Well, he was depowered when I--” She shakes her fist, in no way reminiscent of a taser. “So I guess you can't really judge him for that. What you can judge him for is sending Jane to Buttfuck, Norway and not even swinging by to say, 'hey'.”
“Jane?”
“Jane Foster, the most adorable of all the astrophysicists.”
“Dr Foster?” He remembers some talk of a 'Dr Foster', but he's pretty sure that they didn't refer to the place she went to as 'Buttfuck'. “Wait, do you know Dr Selvig?”
“Yeah, I was their research assistant.”
“How is he?”
She twists her mouth and taps her fingers on the edge of her cup. “He's... I don't know, he seems okay most of the time? Hasn't been going to his therapy sessions, far as I can tell, but then who does?”
Steve doesn't, that's for sure. This doesn't seem to be a very good topic of discussion for a date, though, if that's what this is; Darcy's starting to look a little sad and he grabs hold of the first thing he thinks of.
“So, why S.H.I.E.L.D., then?”
Her face goes from sad to annoyed in a split second. “Ugh. Okay. It's like Men in Black: either I became one of them or I got mind wiped, and since I hope those clicky pen things aren't actually real, I was very strongly advised to accept their job offer.”
“I... don't know what any of that means, but it doesn't sound very good.”
“Eh, I didn't have any other plans. I don't have a great track record with committing to things or, like, making decisions. I changed my major three times.” She shrugs and looks at him through her eyelashes as she sips her drink. “I guess there's no point me asking you why you work for S.H.I.E.L.D.”
“I wanted to be taller.”
“Solid reasoning. So, how're you finding this brave new world?”
He's finding it... he's not even sure any more. Sometimes things are familiar: people make Wizard of Oz jokes, read Batman and Superman comics, get drunk and sing loudly in the street outside his apartment at three in the morning. People are basically still the same, as friendly or unpleasant as they ever were, and it's not even the technology that throws him; it's not that hard to work out telephones or televisions or computers. And yet, most of the time everything feels so unreal and unfamiliar to him. Maybe it's just loneliness.
All that seems a little too heavy to tell a girl he's not even spent twenty four hours with yet, though, so he just says, “No one's created soma yet. I don't know how I feel about that.”
She squeaks with laughter and bangs her fist against his hand. “I didn't know you were a nerd! Excellent!”
“When you're a ninety pound asthmatic, you read a lot of books.”
“I imagine you would.” She drains the last of her cup, smacking her lips as she bangs it back down on the table. “Do you want to get out of here?”
He looks around, looking for press or maybe one of his more aggressive fans, but there's nothing different about the crush of people. “Where are we going?”
“I don't know, you're the New Yorker, I'm just a girl from small town California. Show me the city, Captain Rogers.”
“Uh. I haven't finished my drink.”
She hops up from her seat and collects up her cup and napkins. “Don't worry, it's portable. I'm going to start feeling rejected right about... now,” she says, and he stands up, maybe a little too quickly, ending up just a couple of inches from her.
“Great reaction times,” she says, and pats him on the hip. “Come on.”
She latches onto his arm pretty quickly as they walk down the street, oohing and ahhing at things that really aren't all that interesting. He's beginning to get the distinct feeling that despite her assertion that he was going to 'show her the city', she's very much controlling everything that's happening right now.
After a little while she falls quiet, and they wander aimlessly, neither of them saying anything. She looks up at him a couple of times, but still doesn't speak until finally she pokes him in the side. “Hey, you look nervous.”
“I am nervous,” he says quickly. It's such a relief to admit it that he's almost not embarrassed. Almost.
“Why are you nervous?”
“I don't... do this.”
“Walk down streets? I can see how being without your men to carry your chair on the... the pole thingies could be off putting.”
“Pole thingies?”
“You know, those chair throne things that people get carried on?” She rolls her eyes. “Man, you can ruin a joke at twenty paces.”
He frowns at her. “I meant, I don't date.”
“Twenty first century girls not good enough for you? If it helps, I was born in the twentieth century.”
“I mean... I've never dated.”
“You've...” She stops and lays a hand flat on his chest. “You've never been on a date?”
“I used to go on double dates with my friend, but most of the time it ended with him doing the double dating.”
“Wow.” She shakes her head. “Huh, I'd never have thought Captain America would be the nervous type.”
“Captain America isn't. Steve Rogers is.”
“Ah,” she says, eyebrows going high. “Got a little identity disorder thing going on, have we?”
Her hand is still on his chest; he takes a deep breath and tries to justify himself. “We don't even know each other!”
“Well, I know you, and you know that I'm a funny, intelligent, gorgeous woman with amazing breasts who you immediately started checking out upon meeting.”
“I didn't...” he mutters.
“Well, we'll agree to disagree, then.” She drops her hand and starts to chew on her thumbnail. “Look, I'm not maneater. Unless they like that sort of thing. Do you wanna take things slow?”
His immediate instinct is to say, 'no, no, that's definitely not a good idea', but what comes out is, “Okay.”
-
Darcy doesn't do slow. She'd been thinking one night stand, friends with benefits at best, and that was if he didn't just say, 'I'm Captain America, I can get any girl I want', (which he'd have been a fool to say and she would have swiftly disposed of any memorabilia she might have collected up over the years). She wasn't looking for any sort of relationship thing, and even if she had been, Steve Rogers has got 'baggage' and 'issues' written all over his face.
But, it's a very nice face. Especially when he smiles, which is what she tells Jane when they perform the post date dissection over Skype.
“That doesn't seem like a good basis for a relationship,” she points out.
Darcy settles down on her stomach, adjusting the laptop screen so that Jane doesn't get an eyeful of either her tits, or the wall behind her bed. “It's as good a basis as a nice set of abs and biceps, Dr I'm-an-intellectual-with-a-lady-boner-for-big-dumb-guys.”
Jane's eye rolling is delayed over the webcam, but still conveys her point. “Don was a physicist, and Thor isn't stupid.”
“Don was a skirt-chasing asshat, and the jury's still out on Thor.”
“Oh, whatever,” Jane mutters. “Tell me more about starting a relationship with someone who spent his formative years in depression era New York, is repressed to hell and back, and has identity issues.”
Darcy rests her chin against the edge of the laptop. “He's really cute.”
-
Their next couple of dates are slow. Like, molasses slow, going for walks and getting early lunches at Mom and Pop cafés.
The thing is, Steve seems like a really easygoing guy, and he is, but he's also really fucking sad around the edges, especially when they pass through construction sites, which is, hey, just about every part of Midtown for the foreseeable future. They need to find something else to do.
“Movie marathon,” she says, presenting him with a ticket. “Nary a technicolour in sight.”
It's an old theatre, threadbare seats, popcorn from an old, kind of suspicious looking red and white machine - basically it's crappy, but she refrains from saying it because he looks kind of charmed, with it and maybe with her too.
He laughs at all the lines that aren't funny and listens intently to all the talky bits and seems to swoon a bit at the romantic parts, and maybe after a while she starts to get into it, too, even though she can totally tell when it's a stunt double and when it's the actor. He also eats all of their extra large tub of popcorn, which is actually a good sign, despite the fact that she wanted some of that buttery goodness, because it means that he's not completely hyper aware of her the whole time.
Afterwards, he kind of gushes a little, with lots of 'did you see this and that part?' and sighing over the pretty girls before glancing sidelong at her. She just slots her arm into his and he keeps talking, as they wander through the darkening streets.
“Hey,” he says after a while, “can I take you home? Your home, I mean. Just to, uh...”
“You already are.”
“I am?”
She nods. Choosing a location close to home seemed like the best way to encourage well, sex, or at the very least a kiss at the door. Plus, Queens wasn't affected by the Chitauris, so there was less likelihood of a reappearance of sad face Steve. “I just live a couple of blocks that way,” she says, pointing east.
He's a bit quieter after that, but she's pretty sure it's because her neighbourhood is a little rough, and he's having lots of Captain America feelings about it.
“Wanna come up?” she asks as she fishes around in her bag for her keys.
“I'll just... I'll just see you to your door?”
“Are you asking me or telling me?”
“I'm... not sure.”
“Well,” she says, pulling her keys triumphantly from her bag, “this isn't my door. My door is up on the third floor. What if a bad guy kidnaps me on my way up? I think you should at least take me upstairs.”
Steve's face says she isn't fooling anyone, but he still follows her up.
“You sure you won't come in?” she says, when they get there. She leans against her door, spinning her keychain around her finger.
“Yeah, I'm...” He presses his lips together briefly. “Yeah.”
“How about a kiss?”
He blinks. Not exactly the response she was hoping for, but pretty much what she was expecting. “A kiss on the fourth date isn't scandalous, even for you, come on.”
“No, of course it's not,” he says, and she can practically feel his desire to scuff his toe in the gross carpet outside her apartment.
A thought occurs to her as he continues to put her in mind of her first 'boyfriend' when she was twelve. “Steve, how many people have you kissed?”
He narrows his eyes a little. “Two.”
“Two girlfriends isn't so bad,” she says. She'd kind of been thinking it was going to be a big fat zero.
“No, I mean... two kisses.” He kind of grimaces and shrugs at the same time. Well, that's more like it.
“Come here,” she says, crooking her finger to get him to close the distance between them. He's very good at taking orders, at least. She pushes herself up onto her toes and still only hits his neck. “Stop being so tall.”
“I can't help it.”
“Excuses,” she mutters, and throws her arm around his neck, hauling herself up. She's already against the door, and since Steve's ever the gentleman and wouldn't want her to strain her arm, he holds her there with light hands on her waist, as if she weighs nothing at all. And damn, thinking about how strong he is seems to be a bit of a turn on, she's just now discovering.
Also, he has the prettiest eyelashes she's ever seen. Like, on her best day, with her best make up, she still wouldn't be able to compete with that. “Ugh,” she mutters.
“Are you okay?” he asks. His fingers kneed her skin a little, just under her ribcage.
“More than,” she says, and tips her head forward to kiss him. His lips are just as soft as they look and he parts them a little; not enough for a full on tonguing but there's definitely some intent there, and even more when he presses into her, just a little, just for a second before putting her down and stepping back.
“Okay,” he says, and he actually licks his fucking lips. “No bad guys here, ma'am.”
“Are you sure?”
“Absolutely, Miss Lewis.”
“I'm holding you to that,” she says, pointing her door key at him.
“Please do,” he says and turns away before she gets to see the blush that she's sure is about to follow.
-
It turns out that he really likes kissing, as well as being a really quick study. It doesn't take much to lure him into her apartment the next time they go out, and their concerted effort to watch whatever's on TCM ends when he starts smelling her hair. He tries to be subtle about it at first but then he gets a little bolder, brushes his nose against her hair accidentally, and she turns to look at him and then somehow they end up making out for twenty minutes. It's a good twenty minutes.
“Do you wanna--” she says against his mouth before she pulls away, “--go somewhere else?”
He groans, chasing her for a minute before opening his eyes. “What?”
“How's the room with the bed in it sound to you?”
“Oh.” He sits back and wipes his hand across his mouth. “No, I--”
“No?” she repeats.
He cringes a little. “I'm-- I-- That sort of thing...”
“What sort of thing?”
“Sex before marriage,” he sort of half mutters, glancing at her shitty coffee table for a moment.
“You don't believe in it?”
“I believe it exists,” he says, trying for a smile that looks like a cross between amused and pained. “But I'm Catholic, I can't help it.”
She arches an eyebrow. “So you'll use me for my wit, interpersonal skills and pillow lips, but you won't use my body?”
“Your lips are part of your body,” he points out quietly.
“You're turning into a real smartass,” she says, grabbing the front of his shirt to drag him back in.
“So, you're okay with it?”
“For now,” she says, moving her hand from his shirt to the back of his head.
-
Steve leads a pretty sedate life, most of the time. He lives in an apartment in Brooklyn Heights, paid for completely by the interest he accrued on the money he got from the USO tours. He fought with S.H.I.E.L.D. about it, at the time: the higher-ups wanted him at one of the bases, or at the very least living in a building with a full contingent of agents working undercover as staff. For some reason, though, Fury sided with him on it, and he bought this slightly run down apartment with a tiny kitchen where he bangs his hips on the counters every time he goes from the fridge to oven. There's a grocery store down the street, an enormous supermarket the next block over, and a gym ten minutes away. He has an agreement with the owner of the place to use it after hours, at first because tearing punching bags to pieces tends to raise eyebrows, and now because he has one of the most famous faces in the US.
He doesn't really socialise with people. He used to, a little, but now he's always under threat of being recognised, and it's easier to just... not.
Except when it comes to Darcy. There's no 'not' with her.
“I don't think this is a good idea,” he says.
“Every idea I have ever had in my life has been amazing.” She looks at his wrapped hands. “Can I wrap my hands up like that? That looks cool.”
“You need to wear gloves.”
“Sexism,” she mutters as she takes the boxing gloves he hands her.
“Don't you get training as a S.H.I.E.L.D. agent?”
“It had some holes.” She shakes her arms out and bounces on the spot. She'd called him just as he was getting ready to go to the gym; when he'd told her this, she said that that was perfect and that she'd see him in half an hour. Now she's here in leggings and a tank top and she doesn't have a coat, so did she come here dressed in just that? He's both appalled and a little turned on.
“Are you sure about this?” he tries again as she puts her fists up and jabs at the air.
“I'm wearing three bras. It's happening.”
“Okay.” He spreads his hands. “Punch my palm, don't push yourself, just whatever feels good. Right to right, left to left.”
“'Whatever feels good',” she repeats back at him, and winks. Once they start, though, she gets focused, bouncing on her toes a little as she lands her punches. It doesn't take long for her to start sweating, her neck and arms shiny, dark hair from her ponytail sticking to her skin. His attention wanders.
“Can we do that thing where I jab you with one hand and punch you in the face with the other?” she asks after a while.
“Huh?”
“Eyes up top, Captain,” she says
He blinks a couple of times, refocusing on her. “Oh, a one-two punch? Sure.”
It's a little worrying how much she enjoys pretending to punch him, grinning gleefully every time he turns his face with a glancing blow.
“You're kind of violent, you know,” he says.
“Mean streets of Monterey, man.” She spits hair out of her mouth and goes for another strike. He dodges it this time, and she trips, falling straight into him, their chests flush.
“I'm sorry!” he says, gripping her arms. “I was just--”
She laughs, tilts her head up and pouts at him. “No fair,” she says, and her mouth curves into a smile. When he ducks down to kiss her, though, she pulls away, and pushes him on the nose with her gloved hand. “We're working.”
“Can we stop working?”
“Are you trying to ditch your responsibilities?”
He manages to drop a kiss to her forehead; she swats at him like an annoying bug. “Yeah...”
“Okay. But! I want you to flip me first.”
“You want me to what you?”
“Flip me over your shoulder. It looks cool on TV, I want to know what it feels like.”
He steps away from her completely and crosses his arms over his chest. “I don't want to do that.”
She mirrors his pose. “Don't be a baby about it.”
“No, I... No.”
“Why not?”
“I'll... hurt you.”
“No, you won't.” She frowns at him, reaches out and tugs his arm. “Hey, you won't hurt me.”
“You don't know that.”
“I'm pretty confident. Come on. I get behind you, right?” She dodges around him and wraps her arms around his waist. “Is this right?”
“Darcy,” he mutters.
“Really, what's the worst that could happen?”
“I break your back.”
She squeezes him harder. “That would suck,” she agrees, “but it's not going to happen, so...”
“You don't know that,” he repeats.
“Oh my God, stop arguing with me, yes, I do.”
He grits his teeth and looks down at her hands fisting in his t-shirt. He knows she'll just keep at this until he agrees to it. “Okay.”
“Ha ha!” she says and lets go of him. He sets about arranging her properly, her right leg behind his, her right arm over his shoulder, and says a silent prayer before dropping to a crouch as he rolls her over his shoulder. She lands on the mat with a thump and an 'oof!'.
“Are you okay?” he asks, scrambling around to look at her the right way up.
She laughs, says, “That was awesome!” and pulls him down for a kiss. A kiss that is very much helped by her prone position on the floor, and in short order he finds himself pressing down against her as she opens her mouth under his, one of her hands in his hair, the other at the small of his back. She tugs lightly at his hair, and he shivers, pressing his mouth down her neck between groans. He can't stop shivering, but it's really more like... shuddering, and it's become harder and harder to resist the urge to rock his hips against her. He drops his forehead to her warm skin and sighs.
“Damn,” he mutters.
“Is this a little bit too exciting?” she asks, still stroking his hair.
He groans. “Yeah.” He pushes himself up and rolls over to lie next to her.
“Hungry?” she asks.
“I'm always hungry,” he replies. “Sushi?”
She hums. “It's ridiculous that you like sushi,” she comments after a moment.
-
Her presence at the gym becomes a regular thing. He helps her with her self-defence training, where his experience of being beaten up in the alleyways of his youth come in handy: shins and eyes are the best parts to go for, backs of knees if you can get to them, biting is unpleasant but a good option if you have strong jaws. Darcy looks a little sad when he explains all this, and kisses him afterwards, sweeter than normal.
When they aren't training, she sits with her legs over the edge of boxing ring, watching him work on the punching bag, giving him directions on how to stand. Namely with his back to her.
“Oh yeah,” she mutters, and smacks the bubble gum that she's chewing.
“Okay.” He stills the bag and looks over his shoulder. “I think I've entertained you enough for one day.”
“You're always entertaining, Steve. Gum?” She tosses him a piece because he can answer, and he catches it with one hand. “That, for instance. Entertaining.”
He rolls his eyes and throws the gum into his mouth. It's almost sickeningly sweet: she's the only person he knows that can stand the sugary food he likes. “Do you want to go for a walk?”
She sighs, resting her chin on one of the boxing ring ropes. “A walk?”
“It's nice out.”
“There are nice places inside, too,” she says, and widens her eyes at him. She's mostly taken his moral quandary in her stride, but that doesn't stop her from making it quite clear that she wants to have sex with him. It's embarrassing, but God, he finds the directness of it incredibly arousing.
He falls back on his standard, “Just because this generation doesn't appreciate...”
“Oh God,” she says, and throws the packet of gum at him, which again he catches easily. “Fine, let's go smell the tulips.”
“Roses,” he corrects, and she slides feet first out from under the ropes, arching her back.
His mouth goes a little dry. She shakes her hair out as she passes him and snags his former shirt from where she slung it over a chair earlier; she's rarely without it. “Coming?”
She takes his hand when they leave the gym, lacing her fingers through his as they walk, smacking her gum even louder. She tries to teach him how to do it, but he can't quite get the hang of it. He's pretty good at blowing bubbles, though.
There are billboards above their heads as they get closer to the waterfront. There's one in particular that he's been seeing a lot recently, from a personal injury attorney. It says, 'Were you injured in the Battle of Manhattan, May 2012? Call this number!'.
“Where were you when Loki attacked the city?” he asks her, still looking up at billboard.
She glances up too. “I was on a coffee run. I ended up in the subway. Because of you, apparently.”
“It was the best I could come with at short notice,” he says. “Sorry.”
“It was crazy, man. There should never be that many people in there at the same time.” She pauses and covers their joined hands with her free one. “Honestly, fuck, I was terrified. I didn't have any training, and it was kind of worse than the Destroyer in a way, you know, because I didn't know where the threat was. I didn't have Jane or Erik, or Thor and his crazy buddies. Or even Coulson. And I'd left my taser at home that day, I think that was the worst part.”
“You knew Coulson?”
“He was the S.H.I.E.L.D. liaison for the whole 'Thor from the sky' thing.”
He nods. “Right, of course he was. I remember Thor saying something about that.”
She lets go of his hand and wraps her arm around his waist. “I saw you at his funeral. That was a nice speech that you gave.”
“You were there?” He barely remembers what he said, something about honour and commitment and hard work, and other things he used to say when he lost a man. All of it was, quite frankly, bullshit; he barely knew the guy and it seemed like no one else did, either. Maybe the cellist, but she wasn't allowed to come to that funeral. Apparently there was a civilian memorial service a few days later. He hopes she made it.
“Yeah. I was in the back. Like, way way in the back. I might have been crying a little, didn't want Captain America to see me with mascara tracks down my face. Never wear mascara to a funeral. It's just an all round bad idea..”
He rests his arm along her shoulders. “I'll try to keep that in mind.”
“You should.”
He pulls his wallet out of his pocket. “Fury gave me these,” he says, sliding the plastic wrapped trading cards out. He hasn't looked at them since he put them in there months ago, but it feels right to carry them around. Or better, at least.
She stops walking and takes them from him, turning them over in her hand. “Cap trading cards? These are original.”
“How did you know that?”
She shrugs. “Dad's a bit of a fan. He taught me how to tell originals and reproductions apart. It's all in the stamp on the back.”
“Really?” He looks closer and she holds them up to his face. “Never noticed that before.”
She hands them back carefully. “That's blood, right?”
“Yeah. Coulson's. He wanted me to sign them. I did, but...” He taps the silver pen work across the middle. “Too late.”
“He'd be thrilled. And he'd be happy you have them, too.” She leans her head against his shoulder for a second, then pushes her shoulders back. “I mean, what a nerd, what the hell. Pfft.”
He slips the cards back into his wallet and smiles. “I know. And he watched me while I 'slept'.”
“He was a creepy ass little man,” she says. “Oh, hey, I got you something.” She pulls her arm from around him and starts digging in her patch-covered satchel. There's a patch for every country she's been to, she's told him. She's particularly fond of her Switzerland patch, because that's where she lost her virginity to a guy that Steve instantly hated. She hands him her taser as she continues to rummage, and he does his best to conceal it, because he's not really sure if these things are street legal. “Here we go!” she says, takes the taser back and puts a little metal object in its place.
“Darcy,” he says, looking at it.
“It's an iPod.”
“I know that. Aren't these things expensive?” Everything seems expensive to him, but he's pretty sure that these things are accepted as being moderately pricey.
“Well, I didn't buy it for you.”
“Oh.”
She clicks her tongue. “Don't pout. I bought it to replace my old iPod that was 'lost' after the Destroyer incident, but then they found it while... clearing out Coulson's bottomless paper tray and I was going to sell this one on ebay, but then I thought, like, you'd probably like something to put your old man music on and...” She shrugs.
“Okay.” He closes his fingers around the iPod. “This gift is about fifty percent less romantic now.”
“And don't you feel better about it now? I did buy this for you, though,” she adds and pulls out something that looks like a wristband. “You put the iPod in the pouch and then put the band around your arm so that you can listen to it while you run.” She pulls the velcro apart and tests it out around his bicep. “I got the biggest they had... I think it'll fit.”
“Five percent more romantic,” he says. “Now I have to get you something.”
“Oh, you give me stuff,” she says and smacks his ass.
Part 2