fic: Direction (2/3)
Part 1
Steve has a standing date every week to go to S.H.I.E.L.D. and just... be there, under their supervision. Of course, they say it's acclimation therapy, but the agents assigned to him do very little past 'this is how Google works' and 'Czechoslovakia is two countries now'. He resents it, but at least they're trying to be more open with him, he guesses. He'd prefer an in depth look at their weapons manufacturing, but apparently being Captain America doesn't give him high enough clearance for things like that.
He leaves his apartment just after nine, helmet in hand, to ride over to headquarters. The subway would be faster, but riding his bike helps calm him when he's feeling agitated, and he's trying to keep a lid on his increasingly combative side. He only gets a couple of steps from his door, though, before he feels someone watching him. He turns around slowly.
“Going my way?” Darcy asks, leaning against the railing outside his building. He almost didn't recognise her, she's wearing a leather jacket he's never seen before, and a huge pair of sunglasses.
“Shouldn't you be at work?”
She drops the sunglasses down her nose. “I'm sick.” She gives one pathetic cough. “See?”
“I see.”
She pushes herself off the railing and saunters up to him. She steps onto his shoes to give herself a couple of extra inches, and kisses him softly. He's still not quite used to all this 'PDA', as Darcy calls it, but it's one thing he's acclimating to pretty easily.
“You taking your motorcycle over to S.H.I.E.L.D.?” she asks, apparently not feeling the need to step off his feet.
“Yeah. How'd you know I have a motorcycle?”
“S.H.I.E.L.D. sees all and knows all. Plus-” She pokes him in the chest. “-if you want to keep your sweet ride under wraps, you should probably find a different mode of transport when every major news channel has a camera on you, making sure the crazy alien god is really leaving. And you're holding a helmet.”
“Right, good points.”
“So, let's see it.” At his frown, she adds, “The bike, Steve.”
“It's just over here,” he says, pointing to where it's parked on the road, covered in a dust cover. She grins and ambles over to it, waiting impatiently for him to take the cover off. Once he's got the cover off and is rolling it up to put in his bag, she stares silently at it.
“Steve,” she says after a couple of seconds, “I'm having sexual feelings for this bike. I'm afraid I'm going to have to start dating it. How do you feel about open relationships?”
He laughs. He's not entirely sure what an open relationship entails exactly, and he doesn't really want to be told right now. “It is pretty nice,” he agrees.
She runs her fingers along the handlebars, and smiles at him devilishly. “Play hooky with me.”
“I can't. Fury's expecting me.”
“Because you love your meetings with the big guy.”
“That's not the point.”
She pushes herself up onto her tiptoes, ghosts her mouth over his until his eyelids flutter shut, then asks, “And what's the point?”
He licks his lips. Either she's really manipulative, or he's just really good at getting manipulated. Probably both. “I forgot.”
“Great!” She bounces away, and he rubs a hand over his eyes. When he opens them again, she's pulling a bike helmet out of her bag with a flourish.
“You have your own helmet?”
She arches an eyebrow. “I have my own motorcycle license. But I'll let you feel like the man for today.”
“Thanks...” He frowns. “Hey, did you plan all of this?”
“Well, if I did, it'd be an amazing plan.”
When Steve was a kid, he used to dream of riding a motorcycle. There weren't many to be seen around where he lived, but he saw drawings in comics and pulps, and heard about friends' cousins' girlfriends' fathers and their Harley-Davidsons. He wanted to go fast, as fast as Superman flew in his comics, which seemed like an attainable goal when he was ten years old, and he wanted a girl nestled against his back, which seemed a lot less attainable to him at any age.
He got half his wish in the war, and it was as exciting as he thought it would be, but for all the wrong reasons. And the only people he ever got on the back of the bike were injured soldiers and the occasional injured civilian.
Having Darcy pressed up against his back, her small hands fisted in his jacket, lives up to all his expectations, even if she does yell all sorts of obscenities when the wind's whipping up fast enough that he's the only one that can hear them. He doesn't break the speed limit, he wouldn't dream of it, but he does push it a little, weaving through traffic more than he normally would until they make it to Coney Island. She jumps off the bike and pulls off her helmet as he parks.
“Oh, we have got to take this baby out onto a dirt road sometime!” she says, grinning at him, her cheeks pink. He takes his helmet off, drops it to the ground, and leans forward to kiss her, still sitting on the bike. She cards her fingers through his hair with one hand, grabs his chin with the other, and turns the kiss a little more intimate than he would normally be comfortable with outside, but there's still blood pounding in his ears from the ride, and he lets himself just not care for a few minutes.
She pulls away, still holding his chin. “Oh, so you're a speed freak?”
“Adrenaline junkie,” he says, thinking of the phrase that Tony threw at him last time they argued. (“You're a fucking adrenaline junkie; get yourself killed if you want, don't fuck us up too.”) “Bucky always said that I enjoyed getting into fights a little too much.” He pauses and looks towards the fair grounds. “Do you wanna go on the Cyclone?”
She pulls a face. “I'm kind of... scared of heights. And spinning around and shit.”
“But you thought it was 'awesome' when we got inches away from that truck?”
“As long as I'm within a foot of the ground, I'm cool.”
“I did throw up last time I went on it,” he says.
“Oh!” Darcy grins. “Let's get food!”
They get hot dogs from a place on the boardwalk; it's not even ten in the morning yet, but it's a warm day, and Darcy drops her feet into his lap once they're settled on a bench overlooking the beach.
“Did you used to come here a lot?” she asks.
“Yeah, taking girls on the Thunderbolt was one of Bucky's 'tricks' to get them to cuddle up to us. It would've worked better if I hadn't been 'like a rag doll'.” The girl had said it nicely, but he was bony and his hands were constantly cold; he was never going to be much comfort to a scared girl. “My mom tried to teach me how to swim in the ocean. I got pneumonia.”
“You always have such happy stories, Steve.” She scoots in a little closer and takes a huge bite of her hot dog, wipes ketchup off her face with the back of her hand, and grins. “I grew up by the beach. I never once got a tan. I'm very proud of that.”
“That's quite the accomplishment.”
“Thank you.” She moves in even closer, until she's almost sitting in his lap. “If I'd known we were coming to the beach, I'd've brought my bikini. I don't suppose you'd be up for skinny dipping, huh?”
“I don't suppose I would,” he replies, finishing the last of his hot dog.
“Okay, Mr. Sarcastic, what do you want to do?” she asks in an exasperated tone, but when he looks at out of the corner of his eye, she's grinning.
He shrugs in response.
“Excellent. Well, what do you do, you know, in the day?”
He shrugs again. The amused look on her face is starting to slide. “I draw?” he offers. “Sometimes.”
“You any good?”
He glances at his bag. His sketchbook is in there; he'd thought maybe after S.H.I.E.L.D. he might go over to the Chrysler building and work on his architecture drawing, he had considered spending his day doing that. “Not really,” he says in answer to her question. “I used to draw stupid comics about... liberty bonds and stuff.”
“Oh?” She narrows her eyes at him, glances at the bag, then lunges for it before he can stop her. Not that he makes much of an effort to.
“There's something in here,” she says, hugging the bag to her chest. “I can feel it. It's calling to me, Steve.”
“It's just a sketchbook.”
Her eyes light up, and she digs into his bag for it, pulling out the dog-eared green spiral bound book he'd bought from the supermarket a couple of months ago. “Would it be, like, a huge breach of your privacy if I looked through it?” she asks, staring at him with wide eyes.
“It's fine,” he says, and she flips the book open before he's even managed to get both syllables out. She grins at him like she's won something, then looks down. Her face... shifts.
“Whoa,” she mutters, and flips a couple more pages. “I thought you meant, like, glorified stick figures. This is very disappointing, I thought I was going to be able to tease you... Steve, these are beautiful.”
He's suddenly aware of the hard back of the bench, and he shifts awkwardly. “They're okay.”
She blows out a scornful sigh and turns a page towards him. “Where's this?”
“That's, uh.” He leans forward and turns the corner of the page down; he wrote place names on the back of every picture he drew. “That's a room in the Wadsworth Atheneum in Connecticut. I took my bike and went east for a little while, after. Got as far as Maine.” Before S.H.I.E.L.D. hauled him back home, he doesn't add.
She pulls the book away and goes back to picking through it. “I did one of those 'see America' road trips before college,” she says absently.
He tried to draw a picture of every place he visited: he'd spend all day at it, keeping his head down and his gaze away from people who didn't care to look at him until they saw a face they thought recognised, a face from TV and papers and the internet, and then he'd get on his motorcycle and be gone again. He stayed in B&Bs occasionally, but he'd long learnt that he could go days at a time with no sleep, thanks to the serum, with little to no side effects. Then S.H.I.E.L.D. said there were things to discuss, that he had 'responsibilities', and he folded like a cheap deck of cards. The whole thing had been a pointless waste of time, except for the fact that now Darcy is looking carefully at every quickly drawn and poorly coloured picture with a smile on her face. Until she turns a new page.
Her eyebrows draw together and she tilts her head to one side. He lifts his chin to catch a glimpse, and--
Oh God, he'd forgotten that was even in there.
She looks up into his wide-eyed face and grins. “You drew a picture of me?”
“No, I didn't,” he says quickly, even though it's completely futile, because yes, he did.
She tips the book down so that he can get an upside view of the barely started drawing. He sketched an outline of her face, her nose, her glasses, her hair, all from memory after first meeting her, before deciding that it was absolutely too creepy to draw a picture of a girl he'd barely knew, who was too young for him, and who he definitely wasn't going to call.
“I know what my own face looks like, dude, and also you wrote my name at the bottom.” She turns the book around and taps the intricate lettering work he'd done on those five letters.
“I was practising my calligraphy,” he mutters. He can feel his cheeks begin to burn.
She shoves the book into his hands. “Finish it,” she says.
“What?”
She digs around in his bag, muttering about why he has to bring so much crap with him everywhere, before emerging triumphant again with his pencil case. She drops it on top of the sketchbook in his lap and smiles. “Finish it. It'll be easier for you now.” She sticks her chin out and turns her head, trying for a very serious expression.
“O...kay,” he says slowly. He takes a pencil out of the case, tests it on the page, then looks back at her. “Don't do that, though. Just be normal.”
“'Normal',” she scoffs.
“As normal as you can be,” he amends.
She turns out to be a terrible model; she keeps moving and getting distracted by people on the beach, keeps trying to peer over and get a look at his progress. He's basically doing it from memory anyway.
“So, where'd you go on your road trip?” he asks after pushing her away for the fourth time.
“Oh, just around the west coast, mostly. My high school boyfriend 'borrowed' his brother's camper van and we did the whole seventies thing. I even wore a kaftan at one point. I say 'borrow' because I'm pretty sure he stole it, but Drew had a scholarship to UC Davis on the line, and his brother lived next door to a junkyard. Pretty sure their parents had a favourite.” She scratches her nose, tries for another look at the drawing and continues. “Drew ditched me in San Francisco, though.”
“He did what?”
“Right? I was also extremely offended by this. He just met someone else and left me at truck stop while I was getting a Froyo. We were planning on going to Six Flags the next day, I thought. I never did get to swim with dolphins. In Drew's defence, he'd had a sexual awakening, but that didn't stop me from tracking him down and stealing the van in the middle of the night.”
“Okay,” he says. He makes her lips a little fuller, her hair a little messier, imagining eighteen year old Darcy jacking someone's van under the cover of darkness. He can see it so clearly that it makes him laugh.
She grins. “After committing grand theft auto, I went to Las Vegas for a while, but I didn't have any money, so then I headed to Mexico. Eventually the van broke down so I left it in there and hitched a ride back over the border.”
“That, that sounds ridiculously dangerous.” He adds more laugh lines around her mouth, draws her glasses in more thickly. “Weren't your parents worried?”
“Steve, I drove around in a van tracking down atmospheric anomalies with two mad scientists, then tased a man who fell out of the sky. I don't always make great decisions.”
“I thought all your ideas were amazing.”
“Amazing, yes. Great, no. It's a fine distinction, I wouldn't expect you to understand. As for my parents, they just told me to come back with all the limbs I left with, and no babies. Plus my dad gave me his credit card for emergencies.”
“Right,” he says, looks at her, then back at the picture. “Okay,” he says, “I think--”
She practically jumps into his lap, ducking her head under his arm to look at the picture. “Oh, Steve,” she says. She reaches out and touches the pencil lines of her hair lightly. “I'm beautiful.”
He slides one arm around her middle. “You are.”
She twists in his grip and cups both hands over his cheeks. “Thank God for gay Drew,” she says between kisses.
-
All that training is actually starting to put some muscle on her. Her arms look crazy. She's tried working out before, but she's never had this kind of motivation: Steve's started doing those pull up things with a metal bar across the door frame. He can just, like, hang there and chat with her while she's using the punching bag. What more reward does she need but that?
“Look at it,” she says, and flexes her arm closer to the webcam.
“Very nice,” Jane says distantly, looking down at whatever's on her desk.
“You aren't even paying attention to me,” Darcy mutters, and rolls her sleeve back down.
“I'm a little busy, Darce, I'm sorry, there's so much to do before we close up the lab. Why don't you call Steve?”
“He's coming over in a couple of hours. You're going to come to New York when you get back, right?”
Jane looks up and wrinkles her nose. “I don't think I have much of a choice. S.H.I.E.L.D. basically owns all of my research, so if I want to pursue it I have to do it through them. Ugh, I don't want to think about it. What are you doing with Steve?”
“Getting him into my bed.”
Jane narrows her eyes at this: she had pronounced Steve's desire to wait 'adorable' when Darcy told her. It doesn't feel so adorable from this end.
“Well, we're making dinner and watching a movie first. Well, he's making dinner. I'm drinking wine while sitting on the counter watching. But then I'm going to see what we can do about this situation we have. I want to get my hand up his shirt and down his pants, at least.”
“Lovely. Does Steve know this?”
“Pretty sure he's worked it out with me grabbing his ass all the time.”
Jane sighs, and Darcy thinks she's going to get more hassle about being 'a bad influence' (from his stories, it sounds like Bucky was more than a little bit of a ladies man; Steve's already been corrupted), but Jane just rests her chin on her hands and says, “I wish I had an ass to grab.”
“It really is very nice.”
Jane sighs again. “I'll bet.”
She keeps her promise to sit on the counter and drink booze while Steve messes around with all the exotic vegetables he brought with him.
“Try not to get too drunk before we eat,” he chides her.
“Cook faster then.”
He mutters something under his breath and she takes an extra large gulp of wine just to spite him.
Her apartment isn't really made for two people, especially when one of them is Steve's size. Honestly, it's barely fit for one. There's mould growing over the front door that Steve stares at worriedly every time he's over (which is... often), but it's not in her bedroom so that's okay, right? Half the light fixtures are broken, and even the ones that do work are so weak that she has to have an assortment of thrift store lamps. And not cool thrift store, shitty thrift store. Her bedroom is almost entirely taken up by her small double bed, which she's particularly glad she stubbornly insisted on getting despite her dad trying to dissuade her, because trying to fuck Steve on a single bed would be ridiculous. Her dad did manage to convince her that the three piece L-shaped couch was a bad idea, so she has a scratchy little couch that she knows Steve finds uncomfortable but never says anything about.
The kitchenette is similarly not Steve-sized and the only place to eat is a pull down ironing board that doubles for a table. Normally she just eats on the couch with the plate balanced on her knees, but Steve gets all prim about it and under duress she digs out her two plastic folding chairs from the closet. And laughs at how awkward Steve looks sitting on one. He just tuts at her and tells her to eat her food.
He's made a stew, which she was extremely suspicious of when he mentioned it, because that's like gruel or something, but she's converted once she tries it.
“My mother taught me how to make it,” he tells her.
“Your mom was awesome,” she says. And also dead, she thinks; good one, Darcy.
“She was,” he agrees, and pushes a piece of beef around his plate for a minute before adding, “She'd have liked you.”
“Eh, I'm not a mother person. My own mom only just barely tolerates me, and that's because I'm the only kid she has.”
He smiles softly down at his plate. “She would. She'd have thought you were smart, and funny, and beautiful.”
Oh, she thinks as his cheeks pink a little.
“And then she probably would have made an uncomfortable comment about babies,” he says, and now his smile is wider, feels less serious.
She lets out a breath and digs around for something appropriately indelicate to say. “The mother of a boyfriend of mine once said I had 'birthing hips'. A little bit later on I threw red wine in her face. I was pretty smashed by then, though, so...”
Steve's face screws up a little as he laughs. “How'd the boyfriend take that?”
“He was stoned the entire time. I could have set him on fire and he wouldn't have had a care.”
“You've lived an interesting life, Darcy Lewis.”
She preens a little. “I have.”
It's not that hard to convince Steve to leave the dishes in the sink to soak/rot and pull him over to the couch to watch the DVD of some long, old movie that Steve had been talking about earlier in the week. Okay, it's Lawrence of Arabia, she's not stupid, but it's long, and Steve just totally stops talking when he's watching movies. He won't exactly shush her if she says something, but he always looks pretty pained to be maintaining a conversation under those conditions. She pulls out her laptop, puts her feet on the coffee table, and uses his chest as a pillow for the next four hours. It's close to midnight when he finally shifts and stretches his arms over his head.
“Hey.”
She looks up at him and jabs her glasses back up her nose with her index finger. “Oh, you're back?”
“Sorry. Um.” He looks at her screen. “Are you busy?”
“Extremely,” she says, closes her game of Minesweeper, and leans forward to put the computer on the coffee table. She can feel him move around to resettle against the couch cushions, then lean forward and press his mouth against her shoulder and up until he gets to just below her ear. A shiver runs all the way down her back, and she turns around to swing one leg over his, pulling him in to continue.
He kisses her achingly slow, like he's trying to imprint every last second of it onto his memory, and shit, maybe he is: his life is, like, eight five percent memories. And it's not bad; she hasn't spent this much time kissing the same person without there being some bigger pay off at the end since she was sixteen, but she's starting to foster an appreciation for it. Yeah, she'd like him to go to town on her, but this is kind of... loving, or whatever.
Plus, his hand is resting on her waist, under her shirt, and he's rubbing his thumb back and forth over her skin. Score!
And then the doorbell rings. Only her. This would only happen to her. Steve starts to pull away and she makes a muffled noise of disapproval against his mouth and grips the back of his head to hold him there. He doesn't need much more convincing to ignore the bell and she decides this is one of the 'do or die' situations that she's heard so much about. She shifts herself fully into his lap, pushing herself up onto her knees to lean over him and press him back against the couch cushions, all without breaking the kiss. He groans low in his throat and starts making little gasping sounds when she occasionally comes up for air. She pulls back long enough to give him time to say, 'whoa, this feels a lot like pre-premarital sex', but he just makes his own noise of disapproval and leans up to kiss her again. She risks rocking her hips into his a couple of times, and he fucking pants into her mouth. Oh, this is happening.
And the doorbell goes again. And again, and now someone's just holding the button down so that it's a constant blaring sound reverberating around her shitty ass apartment, making Steve tense up.
“Goddamnit,” she mutters, getting off him and stomping the couple of steps to the intercom. “Who the hell is this?” she demands into it. There's a long pause, and she looks back at Steve, who looks incredibly ruffled and a little hazy. Ugh, God, why is this happening to her? “I think it's kids,” she says, and reaches out to cut off the line just as there's a pathetic hiccuping sound.
“Hello?” she says.
“Darcy?” someone slurs. “Don't think I meant to come here, sorry...”
She squints. Steve's looking less hazy by the second, and that's just a damn tragedy. “Erik?”
“Yeah,” he sighs down the line.
“And you're here because...?”
“Couldn't remember where I live...”
“I-- okay. Wait there, I'll come get you.”
“I can get up the stairs,” Erik grumbles. “Just buzz me in.”
“Fine, grumpy pants. Try not to bump into too many walls on the way up.” She buzzes him up, cuts the line and looks back at Steve. “Cockblocking asshole,” she mutters.
He swallows, clearly choosing to ignore that, and says, “Is Dr Selvig okay?” He looks even more uncomfortable on the couch, crossing his legs gingerly, and he's really like the nicest person in the world. Well, maybe not the world, that might be a little bit of an exaggeration, but he's definitely the nicest person she knows.
“He's just drunk.” Jesus, Steve's mouth is all pink and kind of blurry around the edges, and his hair is sticking up at the back, hanging down at the front and brushing against his eyebrows. Quite frankly she wants to jump on him and ride him all night, drunk former boss at her door be damned, but even now Steve's eyebrows look worried.
“And at your door at midnight because he can't remember where he lives,” Steve finishes for her.
“Yeah, well,” she mutters, and there's a pitiful knock at the door behind her. “He's still a cockblocking asshole.”
Erik does, indeed, look pitiful, and extremely grumpy.
“You forgot where you live?” she asks.
“S.H.I.E.L.D. keeps moving me around. New place every week, it feels like.”
“And there was literally nowhere else for you to go tonight?”
“No,” he says, and scowls. “Can I come in?”
“Mi casa es su casa,” she mutters, and steps aside to let him in.
“If I could just sleep on the couch...” he says, suddenly sheepish. It's like the five stages of grief, but with drunkenness.
“Mi couch es su couch.”
“Thanks, I'll just, uh...” He shuffles around her into the apartment and pauses. “Captain Rogers?”
Steve has her laptop on his lap now, she notices, and his hair is mostly smoothed back down. Can't do much about his mouth, though. “Dr Selvig.”
Erik blinks a couple of times, and squints at her. “Darcy, are you going out with Captain Rogers?”
“Actually, we were staying in,” she says. Boom, cue the canned laughter.
Erik merely frowns some more and leans in to her, saying in that drunk person whisper which is more of a yell, “He's far too old for you, Darcy.”
“The worried dad routine is a little ironic when you're stinking up my apartment with your beer fumes. And he's twenty seven, so...”
“Maybe I should go,” Steve murmurs, sounding none too sure.
“You're not leaving me with drunky here. You, get up,” she says to Steve, then slaps Erik on the back. He doesn't look amused. “You, sit down. I'll get you a glass of water. Steve, can you put my laptop away in my bedroom?”
She gets Erik his water and throws a bottle of Tylenol at him that bounces off his chest and rolls across the floor. Serves him right. She runs right into Steve as she goes into her bedroom to grab her extra blankets and they do the awkward 'which way are you going?' dance before Steve laughs and moves out of the way.
“Maybe we could go over to my place,” he says as she starts digging through her closet for her most hideous Disney princess blanket.
“You'd feel bad if he choked on his own vomit while he was sleeping. He'll be out cold soon, he won't hear a thing.” Steve doesn't say anything in response, so she guesses that it won't matter whether Erik's asleep or not. Damn, so close. She tugs on the sleeve of a sweater that's hanging down from the shelf, and a pile of balled up t-shirts make their escape all over her head. Steve's over in a second to help tidy up, and he's, like, folding the t-shirts up while she kicks the rest of them into the floor of the closet after locating her Cinderella blanket.
“So I'm... sleeping in here,” Steve says, looking up at her as she stands up.
“I don't know where else you'd sleep, I don't even have a tub.”
His face is studiously blank, which she's noticed is something that he does when he doesn't want to come across as 'old-fashioned'. She softens a little.
“You can go home if you want. I've dealt with uglier and drunker than Erik.”
“No, I-- I want to stay,” Steve says and shifts uncomfortably where he's kneeling on the floor, then glances at the bed.
Ah, she thinks. “I'm going to be using the bathroom in a minute,” she says, and looks pointedly at him.
He blinks at her.
“So if you need to go jerk off, you'd better do it now.”
He moves the pile of t-shirts in his lap carefully to the bottom of the closet and gets up. “Okay,” he says, voice going higher than usual. “Yeah.”
Erik is still grumbling on the couch, fiddling with the bottle of Tylenol, when she dumps the blanket by him.
“Damn American bottles,” he mutters under his breath. She snatches it from him and twists the cap off while he eyeballs her.
“So, Captain Rogers,” he says.
“So, hammered at my door at midnight.” She hands the open bottle to him and crosses her arms over her chest. “Any reason why?”
“I told you, I couldn't remember my address.”
“I meant the drinking.”
He shrugs. Well, there's not much more she can do there, she thinks, and walks over to the kitchenette to look at the dishes. They look pretty good. Steve's still in the bathroom, and she knows she shouldn't, but... she goes to the door and listens for a moment; faintly she can make out the same kind of gasping sounds that he was making on the couch just a few minutes ago. Right where Erik is bedding down, which is kind of gross, she guesses.
“What're you doing?” Erik asks. He looks ridiculous with Cinderella's face plastered over his chest and legs.
“Not having sex,” she says, “how about you?”
Getting ready for bed has never been more awkward. Steve does at least strip down to his undershirt and boxers (Jesus, his thighs), then just stands by the bed like a loose end while she gets changed. She almost decides to change in the bathroom, but fuck it, if he can't handle seeing her back and a little side boob, then they have bigger problems.
Then there's the getting settled portion of the night. Darcy likes pulling the sheets up around her ears, childhood stories of spiders crawling in there stuck with her, but when she does that, suddenly Steve's feet make an appearance at the end of the bed.
“I feel like we're in a 1950s sitcom,” she mutters. She's probably not quite awesome enough yet to be Lucille Ball, but obviously Steve's got that special brand of handsome that came out of the early to mid twentieth century.
“What?”
“Lying ramrod straight like we're Barbie and Ken, but with the hair colours switched. The only things missing are separate beds.”
He laughs, and at least a little bit of the tension drains out of him. She grabs his arm and rolls over, pulling him along with her. It's been a while since she's shared a bed, but spooning's good, especially since it can so easily lead to other things. Steve's just not playing ball though, and barely presses against her back at all.
“Steve,” she snaps, “what's the problem?”
“I-- I think I'm going to get too...” he trails off and she rolls back over to look at him.
“Say it,” she coaxes.
He sighs. “Turned on.”
“God, the sexual frustration is just coming off you in waves.”
“I know,” he mutters.
“Okay, come on,” she says, sits up and grabs one of his arms to pull around her shoulders, settles his other arm across her stomach and tugs at him until he gets the idea that he should rest his head against her chest. The phrase 'to her bosom' comes to mind.
“How's this?” she says.
“Yeah, it's-- this is okay,” he says softly.
“Good, then go to sleep.”
In the morning, he's basically in the same position, except he's thrown his leg across hers and pressed his face against her neck. When she opens her eyes, all she can see at first is blond hair, all ruffled and floppy, and she thinks, Jesus, do I really have Captain America curled up around me in my bed? and also: he's kind of cuddly.
He snuffles a little as he wakes up, stretching out, the muscles in the arm around her shoulders bunching up and relaxing again. She can't decide whether she has a best life, or the worst one.
“Morning,” Steve mumbles, cracking an eye open. There's a distinct lack of freaking out, so maybe she has the best life?
“Hey.” She runs her fingers through his hair and he smiles, pushing himself up to kiss her. It's not a long kiss, but it's a good one, despite concerns about morning breath.
Then there's a clattering sound from the living room, and Steve's immediately sitting up, straight-backed, metaphorical ears pricking up.
“Erik,” she says. She listens for a minute. “Pretty sure he's puking. Hopefully he got to the bathroom in time.”
Steve's back curves a little, and he looks over his shoulder. “Wanna go out for breakfast?”
-
Darcy was never one for sleepovers. For one, she didn't like sharing her toys, her food, or her pets ('no, let's not dress the cat up in my dollies's clothes, okay, Amanda?'), and for two, her mother hated having other people's children in her house for long periods of time; she didn't birth 'em and she sure as hell wasn't cleaning up after 'em.
Darcy decides that she's coming round to sleepovers when she wakes up for the twelfth consecutive morning with Steve's hand splayed out over her stomach. She thinks even her mom wouldn't mind him as a house guest. Let's be real, who would?
His things start to creep into her apartment, and he's not making any indications that he has any desire to go back to his own place at night, which, shit, is just fine with her. He does the cooking, the grocery shopping, cleaned that mould off the wall with bleach, and is just generally getting his househusband on. If she's found him standing in her living room at three in the morning looking confused and has had to guide him back to bed a couple of times, well, she talks in her sleep, so no one's perfect.
Still no sex, though. That's a sticking point.
“If that's your worst problem, you have a pretty easy life,” Jane tells her. She's been back in New York for two days - day one, sleep off jetlag; day two, Darcy-o-rama - and already she's giving Darcy shit.
“I'm sorry we can't all have epic, literally star-crossed, romances. Some of us are strictly earthbound.”
“Oh, shut up,” Jane grumbles into her coffee. “Some of us don't have a warm body to sleep next to every night. Don't talk to me about 'sexual frustration'.”
“I'm sorry, did you have to walk up hill both ways in the rain and the snow to have sex? That must have been very hard for you.”
“Shut up,” Jane repeats.
Darcy-o-rama is not going as well as Darcy hoped it would, mostly on account of Jane being so fucking grouchy. And maybe she's a little sad, too, but Darcy's stretching herself pretty thin dealing with Steve's bouts of epic sadness. She's all agony aunted out.
“I hope you're not going to be like this when Steve gets here,” Darcy says. “It's un-American.”
Jane rolls her eyes. Maybe plying her with caffeine had been a bad idea, but she'd just made such big eyes at the quadruple espresso mocha latte with extra whipped cream or whatever the hell it is. They're sitting outside waiting for Steve to get there - it's October and it's not really warm enough to be out there, but Jane's been cooped up in the ass end of nowhere for months, and she seemed a little edgy inside.
Honestly, Jane kind of looks like shit, and it's not just the jetlag. It's not anything in particular, just everything together, like the guy she'd spent the better part of a year trying to open a portal for turning up, getting into a couple of scuffles, and leaving again, all in the space of a few days. And, like, Darcy gets that he had to get that homicidal lunatic of brother off the planet and she's super grateful for that, no doubt, but eh, Jane's the closest thing she has to a best friend. Rationality doesn't come into the equation here.
“Oh hey,” she says, sitting up. Steve's on the next block, walking towards them. Still wearing that fucking cap. “Steve's here!”
Jane turns around to look at him, and he waves at them before breaking into a jog. Darcy's probably imagining the slow motion. Probably.
“Oh wow,” Jane mutters.
“Right?”
Jane shifts a little in her seat, still watching his approach. “Oh damn.”
Big, blond, and hunky, she should have realised. “Okay, that's enough,” Darcy says, tugging on Jane's arm. “I saw him first.”
Jane looks back at her. “I take back everything I just said. I have complete sympathy for what you're going through.”
Well, that's something, at least.
“Hey,” Steve says when he gets to them, and ducks down to kiss her. She swipes the cap off his head and threads her fingers through his hair for a moment before releasing him. He pats his hair back down primly and puts the cap back on, then turns to Jane and smiles full force at her. It wouldn't be an exaggeration to say that Jane swoons in her seat. “It's great to finally meet you, Dr Foster,” he says, offering his hand.
She takes it, looking not so much starstruck as horny. Where's a spray bottle when Darcy needs one? “It's very nice to meet you too, Captain... Rogers? America?”
“Steve normally works,” he replies.
Darcy wraps her arm around his waist and tugs him in until his hip is pressed against the armrest of her chair. “He's getting kind of snarky. He wasn't like that when I met him.”
Steve clears his throat. “So what are we doing today?”
“We need to get Jane some new threads.”
“Hey!” Jane folds her arms over her faded Jem and the Holograms t-shirt. “I like my clothes!”
“Far be it from me to insult someone's personal style, but...” Darcy leans forward and tugs on the bottom of the t-shirt, where there's a suspicious orange stain. “Are you keeping all of your dinners on it?”
Jane makes a disgusted sound and slides down in her seat. “Fine.”
Bringing Steve to the kind of places that Jane buys clothes from is a little hilarious. One would think that establishments that sell cheap t-shirts with eighties cartoon characters and anthropomorphic flowers on them would be pretty non-threatening places, but it turns out that it's a whole underground thing. Half the 'stores' Jane wants to go into look like they appeared overnight, with curtains stapled to alcoves as dressing rooms, and the prerequisite tattooed girl with a bar through her nose working the till. Steve just looks so big compared to everyone else, he's double everyone's size and the shops are so tightly packed that he can't help but bump into mutilated mannequins and borderline fetish wear.
Jane sweeps up an armful of coloured t-shirts and disappears into the little curtained changing room. Darcy stations Steve outside to guard her modesty, just to give him something to do, and every so often Jane pokes her head out and asks Steve's opinion on whatever she's trying on.
Darcy plops down in a chair and inspects the wall of pseudo tribal jewellery.
“Do you, like, share him?” tattoo girl asks, leaning over the counter.
“Her boyfriend just cut and run, so I'm letting her play house with him today.”
“Th-- He did not cut and run!” Jane calls.
Darcy waves her hand dismissively in her direction. “Whatever. He had 'reasons'.”
“He did...” Steve says, conveniently ignoring the rest of the conversation.
“Thank you!” Jane says.
“So, he's yours?” the girl asks Darcy.
Darcy glances at him and he smiles a little.
“Yeah.”
“Ugh,” the girl says, then leans forward and lowers her voice. “Sorry, he's just so... vintage. You don't see that any more.” Steve's switched his cap for a pair of aviators that obscure his face somewhat, because it's not 'polite' to wear hats indoors. She pointed out that it was a major douche move to wear sunglasses indoors, but it was the lesser of two evils, he'd said. Darcy's not surprised that tattoo girl is into the high waisted, tucked in shirt look, she's got the whole the rockabilly thing going on, Bettie Page bangs, bright red lipstick, tight polka dot dress. Frankly, she'd probably eat Steve for breakfast.
“I love your tats,” Darcy says. She's got a whole freaking collage of Disney princesses on her arm; if that doesn't make her cool, then Darcy is quitting the world. “Jane has a tattoo. Some sciency thing, right?” she calls.
“Double helix,” Jane calls back.
“Right cheek or left?”
There's a long pause before Jane pops her head out around the curtain. She looks at Steve, who raises his eyebrows slightly.
“Left,” she says. “I was very drunk, okay, never party with engineers.” She disappears back behind the curtain, and Steve clears his throat.
“Do... you have any tattoos, Darcy?” he asks almost shyly, even though she knows that he isn't half as shy and bashful as he comes across sometimes.
“That's something you're just going to have to find out for yourself.”
He bites his lips and looks back at the changing room when Jane pulls the curtain back and steps out with her armful of t-shirts.
“How many are you getting?” Darcy asks.
“All of them,” she says, dropping the pile on the counter.
“What about, uh, some new jeans?” Darcy says, eyeing Jane's worn in, frayed jeans that quite frankly she probably bought from the kids department a decade ago.
“No,” Jane says, putting her nose in the air. Darcy takes a breath to say something, and Jane clicks her tongue. “Drop it.”
After another couple of clothes stores, a sporting goods store to get a new pair of hiking boots, and two hours in a bookstore, where Darcy feels very ignored because both Jane and Steve get sucked into poring through the science and art sections respectively, she takes Jane back to her apartment to cook dinner for her. To have Steve cook dinner for her.
“He cooks too?” Jane whispers to her once they're firmly ensconced on the couch.
“He does everything, it's amazing. I don't know he was like this before or if that serum is just total magic, but he's basically perfect.”
Jane hums something and sighs, rolling the wine glass she holding between her hands.
“Hey,” Darcy says, squeezing her shoulder. “Thor'll be back.”
“Yeah, maybe. It's not even that, though. Everything's just so... such a mess.”
Darcy nods. “Have you talked to Erik recently?”
“Not really. He doesn't seem to want to talk to me any more.”
“It's not personal.”
Jane sighs and drinks more of her wine. “I know. I just wish I'd been here.”
“Yeah...” It just so happens that she feels kind of terrible about that: after the cops had finally let them back out of the subway (and Darcy still gets a bit short of breath in tight enclosed spaces; which is awesome when you live and work in New York), the last thing that was on her mind was calling Jane. She'd spent two hours crying on the phone with her parents, ran up her bill, and had her cell disconnected for two weeks before she could get the money together to pay it off. It wasn't until Coulson's funeral a few days later that she'd thought to call, from a phone at S.H.I.E.L.D. headquarters, but of course Jane couldn't get back in time. She's not even sure when Jane found out what had happened, or from who.
Jane sighs again, drains the rest of her glass, and gets up to pour herself more. Steve looks at her out of the corner of his eye, then over her head at Darcy. She shrugs.
When Steve comes over with three plates of fancy spaghetti, there isn't enough room on the couch for all of them, so he sits on the armrest as they eat, and Darcy settles herself underneath him, his legs on either side of her.
“So, how's your... research going?” Steve asks awkwardly.
“It's going nowhere,” Jane says bitterly. “S.H.I.E.L.D. has it all, and after everything that happened with Erik, they're not happy about letting him work on anything any more, so it all falls to me and half the work is tied up in a bureaucratic shitstorm.”
“I'm sorry...” Steve says. Darcy wraps her arm around one of his legs. He's been great all day, but Jane's just a cloud of gloom right now, and maybe the relentless charmingness of Steve doesn't work on her as well as it does on Darcy.
“No, it's, it's--” Jane waves her fork, flicking spaghetti sauce onto the couch cushion. Darcy leans forward and wipes it away with her thumb, then licks her thumb clean. “It's fine. It's totally fine.”
It is not totally fine.
Jane is kind of a sad drunk. She's unobtrusively sad, though, thanks Steve for the food and picks at it well after they're finished.
“Um,” Steve says quietly when Darcy uncharacteristically elects to help with the dishes. “She can't just go back to the hotel.”
“Ugh.” Darcy is not, and has never been, the 'supportive friend'. She's the chick who gives good head, the girl across the hall with the best weed in the dorms, the friend who's fun at clubs but you wouldn't invite her out when your parents come to visit. She's also never been the one with the big, kind-hearted boyfriend who gives a shit about her friends' problems. “I'll get her the blanket.”
Part 3
Steve has a standing date every week to go to S.H.I.E.L.D. and just... be there, under their supervision. Of course, they say it's acclimation therapy, but the agents assigned to him do very little past 'this is how Google works' and 'Czechoslovakia is two countries now'. He resents it, but at least they're trying to be more open with him, he guesses. He'd prefer an in depth look at their weapons manufacturing, but apparently being Captain America doesn't give him high enough clearance for things like that.
He leaves his apartment just after nine, helmet in hand, to ride over to headquarters. The subway would be faster, but riding his bike helps calm him when he's feeling agitated, and he's trying to keep a lid on his increasingly combative side. He only gets a couple of steps from his door, though, before he feels someone watching him. He turns around slowly.
“Going my way?” Darcy asks, leaning against the railing outside his building. He almost didn't recognise her, she's wearing a leather jacket he's never seen before, and a huge pair of sunglasses.
“Shouldn't you be at work?”
She drops the sunglasses down her nose. “I'm sick.” She gives one pathetic cough. “See?”
“I see.”
She pushes herself off the railing and saunters up to him. She steps onto his shoes to give herself a couple of extra inches, and kisses him softly. He's still not quite used to all this 'PDA', as Darcy calls it, but it's one thing he's acclimating to pretty easily.
“You taking your motorcycle over to S.H.I.E.L.D.?” she asks, apparently not feeling the need to step off his feet.
“Yeah. How'd you know I have a motorcycle?”
“S.H.I.E.L.D. sees all and knows all. Plus-” She pokes him in the chest. “-if you want to keep your sweet ride under wraps, you should probably find a different mode of transport when every major news channel has a camera on you, making sure the crazy alien god is really leaving. And you're holding a helmet.”
“Right, good points.”
“So, let's see it.” At his frown, she adds, “The bike, Steve.”
“It's just over here,” he says, pointing to where it's parked on the road, covered in a dust cover. She grins and ambles over to it, waiting impatiently for him to take the cover off. Once he's got the cover off and is rolling it up to put in his bag, she stares silently at it.
“Steve,” she says after a couple of seconds, “I'm having sexual feelings for this bike. I'm afraid I'm going to have to start dating it. How do you feel about open relationships?”
He laughs. He's not entirely sure what an open relationship entails exactly, and he doesn't really want to be told right now. “It is pretty nice,” he agrees.
She runs her fingers along the handlebars, and smiles at him devilishly. “Play hooky with me.”
“I can't. Fury's expecting me.”
“Because you love your meetings with the big guy.”
“That's not the point.”
She pushes herself up onto her tiptoes, ghosts her mouth over his until his eyelids flutter shut, then asks, “And what's the point?”
He licks his lips. Either she's really manipulative, or he's just really good at getting manipulated. Probably both. “I forgot.”
“Great!” She bounces away, and he rubs a hand over his eyes. When he opens them again, she's pulling a bike helmet out of her bag with a flourish.
“You have your own helmet?”
She arches an eyebrow. “I have my own motorcycle license. But I'll let you feel like the man for today.”
“Thanks...” He frowns. “Hey, did you plan all of this?”
“Well, if I did, it'd be an amazing plan.”
When Steve was a kid, he used to dream of riding a motorcycle. There weren't many to be seen around where he lived, but he saw drawings in comics and pulps, and heard about friends' cousins' girlfriends' fathers and their Harley-Davidsons. He wanted to go fast, as fast as Superman flew in his comics, which seemed like an attainable goal when he was ten years old, and he wanted a girl nestled against his back, which seemed a lot less attainable to him at any age.
He got half his wish in the war, and it was as exciting as he thought it would be, but for all the wrong reasons. And the only people he ever got on the back of the bike were injured soldiers and the occasional injured civilian.
Having Darcy pressed up against his back, her small hands fisted in his jacket, lives up to all his expectations, even if she does yell all sorts of obscenities when the wind's whipping up fast enough that he's the only one that can hear them. He doesn't break the speed limit, he wouldn't dream of it, but he does push it a little, weaving through traffic more than he normally would until they make it to Coney Island. She jumps off the bike and pulls off her helmet as he parks.
“Oh, we have got to take this baby out onto a dirt road sometime!” she says, grinning at him, her cheeks pink. He takes his helmet off, drops it to the ground, and leans forward to kiss her, still sitting on the bike. She cards her fingers through his hair with one hand, grabs his chin with the other, and turns the kiss a little more intimate than he would normally be comfortable with outside, but there's still blood pounding in his ears from the ride, and he lets himself just not care for a few minutes.
She pulls away, still holding his chin. “Oh, so you're a speed freak?”
“Adrenaline junkie,” he says, thinking of the phrase that Tony threw at him last time they argued. (“You're a fucking adrenaline junkie; get yourself killed if you want, don't fuck us up too.”) “Bucky always said that I enjoyed getting into fights a little too much.” He pauses and looks towards the fair grounds. “Do you wanna go on the Cyclone?”
She pulls a face. “I'm kind of... scared of heights. And spinning around and shit.”
“But you thought it was 'awesome' when we got inches away from that truck?”
“As long as I'm within a foot of the ground, I'm cool.”
“I did throw up last time I went on it,” he says.
“Oh!” Darcy grins. “Let's get food!”
They get hot dogs from a place on the boardwalk; it's not even ten in the morning yet, but it's a warm day, and Darcy drops her feet into his lap once they're settled on a bench overlooking the beach.
“Did you used to come here a lot?” she asks.
“Yeah, taking girls on the Thunderbolt was one of Bucky's 'tricks' to get them to cuddle up to us. It would've worked better if I hadn't been 'like a rag doll'.” The girl had said it nicely, but he was bony and his hands were constantly cold; he was never going to be much comfort to a scared girl. “My mom tried to teach me how to swim in the ocean. I got pneumonia.”
“You always have such happy stories, Steve.” She scoots in a little closer and takes a huge bite of her hot dog, wipes ketchup off her face with the back of her hand, and grins. “I grew up by the beach. I never once got a tan. I'm very proud of that.”
“That's quite the accomplishment.”
“Thank you.” She moves in even closer, until she's almost sitting in his lap. “If I'd known we were coming to the beach, I'd've brought my bikini. I don't suppose you'd be up for skinny dipping, huh?”
“I don't suppose I would,” he replies, finishing the last of his hot dog.
“Okay, Mr. Sarcastic, what do you want to do?” she asks in an exasperated tone, but when he looks at out of the corner of his eye, she's grinning.
He shrugs in response.
“Excellent. Well, what do you do, you know, in the day?”
He shrugs again. The amused look on her face is starting to slide. “I draw?” he offers. “Sometimes.”
“You any good?”
He glances at his bag. His sketchbook is in there; he'd thought maybe after S.H.I.E.L.D. he might go over to the Chrysler building and work on his architecture drawing, he had considered spending his day doing that. “Not really,” he says in answer to her question. “I used to draw stupid comics about... liberty bonds and stuff.”
“Oh?” She narrows her eyes at him, glances at the bag, then lunges for it before he can stop her. Not that he makes much of an effort to.
“There's something in here,” she says, hugging the bag to her chest. “I can feel it. It's calling to me, Steve.”
“It's just a sketchbook.”
Her eyes light up, and she digs into his bag for it, pulling out the dog-eared green spiral bound book he'd bought from the supermarket a couple of months ago. “Would it be, like, a huge breach of your privacy if I looked through it?” she asks, staring at him with wide eyes.
“It's fine,” he says, and she flips the book open before he's even managed to get both syllables out. She grins at him like she's won something, then looks down. Her face... shifts.
“Whoa,” she mutters, and flips a couple more pages. “I thought you meant, like, glorified stick figures. This is very disappointing, I thought I was going to be able to tease you... Steve, these are beautiful.”
He's suddenly aware of the hard back of the bench, and he shifts awkwardly. “They're okay.”
She blows out a scornful sigh and turns a page towards him. “Where's this?”
“That's, uh.” He leans forward and turns the corner of the page down; he wrote place names on the back of every picture he drew. “That's a room in the Wadsworth Atheneum in Connecticut. I took my bike and went east for a little while, after. Got as far as Maine.” Before S.H.I.E.L.D. hauled him back home, he doesn't add.
She pulls the book away and goes back to picking through it. “I did one of those 'see America' road trips before college,” she says absently.
He tried to draw a picture of every place he visited: he'd spend all day at it, keeping his head down and his gaze away from people who didn't care to look at him until they saw a face they thought recognised, a face from TV and papers and the internet, and then he'd get on his motorcycle and be gone again. He stayed in B&Bs occasionally, but he'd long learnt that he could go days at a time with no sleep, thanks to the serum, with little to no side effects. Then S.H.I.E.L.D. said there were things to discuss, that he had 'responsibilities', and he folded like a cheap deck of cards. The whole thing had been a pointless waste of time, except for the fact that now Darcy is looking carefully at every quickly drawn and poorly coloured picture with a smile on her face. Until she turns a new page.
Her eyebrows draw together and she tilts her head to one side. He lifts his chin to catch a glimpse, and--
Oh God, he'd forgotten that was even in there.
She looks up into his wide-eyed face and grins. “You drew a picture of me?”
“No, I didn't,” he says quickly, even though it's completely futile, because yes, he did.
She tips the book down so that he can get an upside view of the barely started drawing. He sketched an outline of her face, her nose, her glasses, her hair, all from memory after first meeting her, before deciding that it was absolutely too creepy to draw a picture of a girl he'd barely knew, who was too young for him, and who he definitely wasn't going to call.
“I know what my own face looks like, dude, and also you wrote my name at the bottom.” She turns the book around and taps the intricate lettering work he'd done on those five letters.
“I was practising my calligraphy,” he mutters. He can feel his cheeks begin to burn.
She shoves the book into his hands. “Finish it,” she says.
“What?”
She digs around in his bag, muttering about why he has to bring so much crap with him everywhere, before emerging triumphant again with his pencil case. She drops it on top of the sketchbook in his lap and smiles. “Finish it. It'll be easier for you now.” She sticks her chin out and turns her head, trying for a very serious expression.
“O...kay,” he says slowly. He takes a pencil out of the case, tests it on the page, then looks back at her. “Don't do that, though. Just be normal.”
“'Normal',” she scoffs.
“As normal as you can be,” he amends.
She turns out to be a terrible model; she keeps moving and getting distracted by people on the beach, keeps trying to peer over and get a look at his progress. He's basically doing it from memory anyway.
“So, where'd you go on your road trip?” he asks after pushing her away for the fourth time.
“Oh, just around the west coast, mostly. My high school boyfriend 'borrowed' his brother's camper van and we did the whole seventies thing. I even wore a kaftan at one point. I say 'borrow' because I'm pretty sure he stole it, but Drew had a scholarship to UC Davis on the line, and his brother lived next door to a junkyard. Pretty sure their parents had a favourite.” She scratches her nose, tries for another look at the drawing and continues. “Drew ditched me in San Francisco, though.”
“He did what?”
“Right? I was also extremely offended by this. He just met someone else and left me at truck stop while I was getting a Froyo. We were planning on going to Six Flags the next day, I thought. I never did get to swim with dolphins. In Drew's defence, he'd had a sexual awakening, but that didn't stop me from tracking him down and stealing the van in the middle of the night.”
“Okay,” he says. He makes her lips a little fuller, her hair a little messier, imagining eighteen year old Darcy jacking someone's van under the cover of darkness. He can see it so clearly that it makes him laugh.
She grins. “After committing grand theft auto, I went to Las Vegas for a while, but I didn't have any money, so then I headed to Mexico. Eventually the van broke down so I left it in there and hitched a ride back over the border.”
“That, that sounds ridiculously dangerous.” He adds more laugh lines around her mouth, draws her glasses in more thickly. “Weren't your parents worried?”
“Steve, I drove around in a van tracking down atmospheric anomalies with two mad scientists, then tased a man who fell out of the sky. I don't always make great decisions.”
“I thought all your ideas were amazing.”
“Amazing, yes. Great, no. It's a fine distinction, I wouldn't expect you to understand. As for my parents, they just told me to come back with all the limbs I left with, and no babies. Plus my dad gave me his credit card for emergencies.”
“Right,” he says, looks at her, then back at the picture. “Okay,” he says, “I think--”
She practically jumps into his lap, ducking her head under his arm to look at the picture. “Oh, Steve,” she says. She reaches out and touches the pencil lines of her hair lightly. “I'm beautiful.”
He slides one arm around her middle. “You are.”
She twists in his grip and cups both hands over his cheeks. “Thank God for gay Drew,” she says between kisses.
-
All that training is actually starting to put some muscle on her. Her arms look crazy. She's tried working out before, but she's never had this kind of motivation: Steve's started doing those pull up things with a metal bar across the door frame. He can just, like, hang there and chat with her while she's using the punching bag. What more reward does she need but that?
“Look at it,” she says, and flexes her arm closer to the webcam.
“Very nice,” Jane says distantly, looking down at whatever's on her desk.
“You aren't even paying attention to me,” Darcy mutters, and rolls her sleeve back down.
“I'm a little busy, Darce, I'm sorry, there's so much to do before we close up the lab. Why don't you call Steve?”
“He's coming over in a couple of hours. You're going to come to New York when you get back, right?”
Jane looks up and wrinkles her nose. “I don't think I have much of a choice. S.H.I.E.L.D. basically owns all of my research, so if I want to pursue it I have to do it through them. Ugh, I don't want to think about it. What are you doing with Steve?”
“Getting him into my bed.”
Jane narrows her eyes at this: she had pronounced Steve's desire to wait 'adorable' when Darcy told her. It doesn't feel so adorable from this end.
“Well, we're making dinner and watching a movie first. Well, he's making dinner. I'm drinking wine while sitting on the counter watching. But then I'm going to see what we can do about this situation we have. I want to get my hand up his shirt and down his pants, at least.”
“Lovely. Does Steve know this?”
“Pretty sure he's worked it out with me grabbing his ass all the time.”
Jane sighs, and Darcy thinks she's going to get more hassle about being 'a bad influence' (from his stories, it sounds like Bucky was more than a little bit of a ladies man; Steve's already been corrupted), but Jane just rests her chin on her hands and says, “I wish I had an ass to grab.”
“It really is very nice.”
Jane sighs again. “I'll bet.”
She keeps her promise to sit on the counter and drink booze while Steve messes around with all the exotic vegetables he brought with him.
“Try not to get too drunk before we eat,” he chides her.
“Cook faster then.”
He mutters something under his breath and she takes an extra large gulp of wine just to spite him.
Her apartment isn't really made for two people, especially when one of them is Steve's size. Honestly, it's barely fit for one. There's mould growing over the front door that Steve stares at worriedly every time he's over (which is... often), but it's not in her bedroom so that's okay, right? Half the light fixtures are broken, and even the ones that do work are so weak that she has to have an assortment of thrift store lamps. And not cool thrift store, shitty thrift store. Her bedroom is almost entirely taken up by her small double bed, which she's particularly glad she stubbornly insisted on getting despite her dad trying to dissuade her, because trying to fuck Steve on a single bed would be ridiculous. Her dad did manage to convince her that the three piece L-shaped couch was a bad idea, so she has a scratchy little couch that she knows Steve finds uncomfortable but never says anything about.
The kitchenette is similarly not Steve-sized and the only place to eat is a pull down ironing board that doubles for a table. Normally she just eats on the couch with the plate balanced on her knees, but Steve gets all prim about it and under duress she digs out her two plastic folding chairs from the closet. And laughs at how awkward Steve looks sitting on one. He just tuts at her and tells her to eat her food.
He's made a stew, which she was extremely suspicious of when he mentioned it, because that's like gruel or something, but she's converted once she tries it.
“My mother taught me how to make it,” he tells her.
“Your mom was awesome,” she says. And also dead, she thinks; good one, Darcy.
“She was,” he agrees, and pushes a piece of beef around his plate for a minute before adding, “She'd have liked you.”
“Eh, I'm not a mother person. My own mom only just barely tolerates me, and that's because I'm the only kid she has.”
He smiles softly down at his plate. “She would. She'd have thought you were smart, and funny, and beautiful.”
Oh, she thinks as his cheeks pink a little.
“And then she probably would have made an uncomfortable comment about babies,” he says, and now his smile is wider, feels less serious.
She lets out a breath and digs around for something appropriately indelicate to say. “The mother of a boyfriend of mine once said I had 'birthing hips'. A little bit later on I threw red wine in her face. I was pretty smashed by then, though, so...”
Steve's face screws up a little as he laughs. “How'd the boyfriend take that?”
“He was stoned the entire time. I could have set him on fire and he wouldn't have had a care.”
“You've lived an interesting life, Darcy Lewis.”
She preens a little. “I have.”
It's not that hard to convince Steve to leave the dishes in the sink to soak/rot and pull him over to the couch to watch the DVD of some long, old movie that Steve had been talking about earlier in the week. Okay, it's Lawrence of Arabia, she's not stupid, but it's long, and Steve just totally stops talking when he's watching movies. He won't exactly shush her if she says something, but he always looks pretty pained to be maintaining a conversation under those conditions. She pulls out her laptop, puts her feet on the coffee table, and uses his chest as a pillow for the next four hours. It's close to midnight when he finally shifts and stretches his arms over his head.
“Hey.”
She looks up at him and jabs her glasses back up her nose with her index finger. “Oh, you're back?”
“Sorry. Um.” He looks at her screen. “Are you busy?”
“Extremely,” she says, closes her game of Minesweeper, and leans forward to put the computer on the coffee table. She can feel him move around to resettle against the couch cushions, then lean forward and press his mouth against her shoulder and up until he gets to just below her ear. A shiver runs all the way down her back, and she turns around to swing one leg over his, pulling him in to continue.
He kisses her achingly slow, like he's trying to imprint every last second of it onto his memory, and shit, maybe he is: his life is, like, eight five percent memories. And it's not bad; she hasn't spent this much time kissing the same person without there being some bigger pay off at the end since she was sixteen, but she's starting to foster an appreciation for it. Yeah, she'd like him to go to town on her, but this is kind of... loving, or whatever.
Plus, his hand is resting on her waist, under her shirt, and he's rubbing his thumb back and forth over her skin. Score!
And then the doorbell rings. Only her. This would only happen to her. Steve starts to pull away and she makes a muffled noise of disapproval against his mouth and grips the back of his head to hold him there. He doesn't need much more convincing to ignore the bell and she decides this is one of the 'do or die' situations that she's heard so much about. She shifts herself fully into his lap, pushing herself up onto her knees to lean over him and press him back against the couch cushions, all without breaking the kiss. He groans low in his throat and starts making little gasping sounds when she occasionally comes up for air. She pulls back long enough to give him time to say, 'whoa, this feels a lot like pre-premarital sex', but he just makes his own noise of disapproval and leans up to kiss her again. She risks rocking her hips into his a couple of times, and he fucking pants into her mouth. Oh, this is happening.
And the doorbell goes again. And again, and now someone's just holding the button down so that it's a constant blaring sound reverberating around her shitty ass apartment, making Steve tense up.
“Goddamnit,” she mutters, getting off him and stomping the couple of steps to the intercom. “Who the hell is this?” she demands into it. There's a long pause, and she looks back at Steve, who looks incredibly ruffled and a little hazy. Ugh, God, why is this happening to her? “I think it's kids,” she says, and reaches out to cut off the line just as there's a pathetic hiccuping sound.
“Hello?” she says.
“Darcy?” someone slurs. “Don't think I meant to come here, sorry...”
She squints. Steve's looking less hazy by the second, and that's just a damn tragedy. “Erik?”
“Yeah,” he sighs down the line.
“And you're here because...?”
“Couldn't remember where I live...”
“I-- okay. Wait there, I'll come get you.”
“I can get up the stairs,” Erik grumbles. “Just buzz me in.”
“Fine, grumpy pants. Try not to bump into too many walls on the way up.” She buzzes him up, cuts the line and looks back at Steve. “Cockblocking asshole,” she mutters.
He swallows, clearly choosing to ignore that, and says, “Is Dr Selvig okay?” He looks even more uncomfortable on the couch, crossing his legs gingerly, and he's really like the nicest person in the world. Well, maybe not the world, that might be a little bit of an exaggeration, but he's definitely the nicest person she knows.
“He's just drunk.” Jesus, Steve's mouth is all pink and kind of blurry around the edges, and his hair is sticking up at the back, hanging down at the front and brushing against his eyebrows. Quite frankly she wants to jump on him and ride him all night, drunk former boss at her door be damned, but even now Steve's eyebrows look worried.
“And at your door at midnight because he can't remember where he lives,” Steve finishes for her.
“Yeah, well,” she mutters, and there's a pitiful knock at the door behind her. “He's still a cockblocking asshole.”
Erik does, indeed, look pitiful, and extremely grumpy.
“You forgot where you live?” she asks.
“S.H.I.E.L.D. keeps moving me around. New place every week, it feels like.”
“And there was literally nowhere else for you to go tonight?”
“No,” he says, and scowls. “Can I come in?”
“Mi casa es su casa,” she mutters, and steps aside to let him in.
“If I could just sleep on the couch...” he says, suddenly sheepish. It's like the five stages of grief, but with drunkenness.
“Mi couch es su couch.”
“Thanks, I'll just, uh...” He shuffles around her into the apartment and pauses. “Captain Rogers?”
Steve has her laptop on his lap now, she notices, and his hair is mostly smoothed back down. Can't do much about his mouth, though. “Dr Selvig.”
Erik blinks a couple of times, and squints at her. “Darcy, are you going out with Captain Rogers?”
“Actually, we were staying in,” she says. Boom, cue the canned laughter.
Erik merely frowns some more and leans in to her, saying in that drunk person whisper which is more of a yell, “He's far too old for you, Darcy.”
“The worried dad routine is a little ironic when you're stinking up my apartment with your beer fumes. And he's twenty seven, so...”
“Maybe I should go,” Steve murmurs, sounding none too sure.
“You're not leaving me with drunky here. You, get up,” she says to Steve, then slaps Erik on the back. He doesn't look amused. “You, sit down. I'll get you a glass of water. Steve, can you put my laptop away in my bedroom?”
She gets Erik his water and throws a bottle of Tylenol at him that bounces off his chest and rolls across the floor. Serves him right. She runs right into Steve as she goes into her bedroom to grab her extra blankets and they do the awkward 'which way are you going?' dance before Steve laughs and moves out of the way.
“Maybe we could go over to my place,” he says as she starts digging through her closet for her most hideous Disney princess blanket.
“You'd feel bad if he choked on his own vomit while he was sleeping. He'll be out cold soon, he won't hear a thing.” Steve doesn't say anything in response, so she guesses that it won't matter whether Erik's asleep or not. Damn, so close. She tugs on the sleeve of a sweater that's hanging down from the shelf, and a pile of balled up t-shirts make their escape all over her head. Steve's over in a second to help tidy up, and he's, like, folding the t-shirts up while she kicks the rest of them into the floor of the closet after locating her Cinderella blanket.
“So I'm... sleeping in here,” Steve says, looking up at her as she stands up.
“I don't know where else you'd sleep, I don't even have a tub.”
His face is studiously blank, which she's noticed is something that he does when he doesn't want to come across as 'old-fashioned'. She softens a little.
“You can go home if you want. I've dealt with uglier and drunker than Erik.”
“No, I-- I want to stay,” Steve says and shifts uncomfortably where he's kneeling on the floor, then glances at the bed.
Ah, she thinks. “I'm going to be using the bathroom in a minute,” she says, and looks pointedly at him.
He blinks at her.
“So if you need to go jerk off, you'd better do it now.”
He moves the pile of t-shirts in his lap carefully to the bottom of the closet and gets up. “Okay,” he says, voice going higher than usual. “Yeah.”
Erik is still grumbling on the couch, fiddling with the bottle of Tylenol, when she dumps the blanket by him.
“Damn American bottles,” he mutters under his breath. She snatches it from him and twists the cap off while he eyeballs her.
“So, Captain Rogers,” he says.
“So, hammered at my door at midnight.” She hands the open bottle to him and crosses her arms over her chest. “Any reason why?”
“I told you, I couldn't remember my address.”
“I meant the drinking.”
He shrugs. Well, there's not much more she can do there, she thinks, and walks over to the kitchenette to look at the dishes. They look pretty good. Steve's still in the bathroom, and she knows she shouldn't, but... she goes to the door and listens for a moment; faintly she can make out the same kind of gasping sounds that he was making on the couch just a few minutes ago. Right where Erik is bedding down, which is kind of gross, she guesses.
“What're you doing?” Erik asks. He looks ridiculous with Cinderella's face plastered over his chest and legs.
“Not having sex,” she says, “how about you?”
Getting ready for bed has never been more awkward. Steve does at least strip down to his undershirt and boxers (Jesus, his thighs), then just stands by the bed like a loose end while she gets changed. She almost decides to change in the bathroom, but fuck it, if he can't handle seeing her back and a little side boob, then they have bigger problems.
Then there's the getting settled portion of the night. Darcy likes pulling the sheets up around her ears, childhood stories of spiders crawling in there stuck with her, but when she does that, suddenly Steve's feet make an appearance at the end of the bed.
“I feel like we're in a 1950s sitcom,” she mutters. She's probably not quite awesome enough yet to be Lucille Ball, but obviously Steve's got that special brand of handsome that came out of the early to mid twentieth century.
“What?”
“Lying ramrod straight like we're Barbie and Ken, but with the hair colours switched. The only things missing are separate beds.”
He laughs, and at least a little bit of the tension drains out of him. She grabs his arm and rolls over, pulling him along with her. It's been a while since she's shared a bed, but spooning's good, especially since it can so easily lead to other things. Steve's just not playing ball though, and barely presses against her back at all.
“Steve,” she snaps, “what's the problem?”
“I-- I think I'm going to get too...” he trails off and she rolls back over to look at him.
“Say it,” she coaxes.
He sighs. “Turned on.”
“God, the sexual frustration is just coming off you in waves.”
“I know,” he mutters.
“Okay, come on,” she says, sits up and grabs one of his arms to pull around her shoulders, settles his other arm across her stomach and tugs at him until he gets the idea that he should rest his head against her chest. The phrase 'to her bosom' comes to mind.
“How's this?” she says.
“Yeah, it's-- this is okay,” he says softly.
“Good, then go to sleep.”
In the morning, he's basically in the same position, except he's thrown his leg across hers and pressed his face against her neck. When she opens her eyes, all she can see at first is blond hair, all ruffled and floppy, and she thinks, Jesus, do I really have Captain America curled up around me in my bed? and also: he's kind of cuddly.
He snuffles a little as he wakes up, stretching out, the muscles in the arm around her shoulders bunching up and relaxing again. She can't decide whether she has a best life, or the worst one.
“Morning,” Steve mumbles, cracking an eye open. There's a distinct lack of freaking out, so maybe she has the best life?
“Hey.” She runs her fingers through his hair and he smiles, pushing himself up to kiss her. It's not a long kiss, but it's a good one, despite concerns about morning breath.
Then there's a clattering sound from the living room, and Steve's immediately sitting up, straight-backed, metaphorical ears pricking up.
“Erik,” she says. She listens for a minute. “Pretty sure he's puking. Hopefully he got to the bathroom in time.”
Steve's back curves a little, and he looks over his shoulder. “Wanna go out for breakfast?”
-
Darcy was never one for sleepovers. For one, she didn't like sharing her toys, her food, or her pets ('no, let's not dress the cat up in my dollies's clothes, okay, Amanda?'), and for two, her mother hated having other people's children in her house for long periods of time; she didn't birth 'em and she sure as hell wasn't cleaning up after 'em.
Darcy decides that she's coming round to sleepovers when she wakes up for the twelfth consecutive morning with Steve's hand splayed out over her stomach. She thinks even her mom wouldn't mind him as a house guest. Let's be real, who would?
His things start to creep into her apartment, and he's not making any indications that he has any desire to go back to his own place at night, which, shit, is just fine with her. He does the cooking, the grocery shopping, cleaned that mould off the wall with bleach, and is just generally getting his househusband on. If she's found him standing in her living room at three in the morning looking confused and has had to guide him back to bed a couple of times, well, she talks in her sleep, so no one's perfect.
Still no sex, though. That's a sticking point.
“If that's your worst problem, you have a pretty easy life,” Jane tells her. She's been back in New York for two days - day one, sleep off jetlag; day two, Darcy-o-rama - and already she's giving Darcy shit.
“I'm sorry we can't all have epic, literally star-crossed, romances. Some of us are strictly earthbound.”
“Oh, shut up,” Jane grumbles into her coffee. “Some of us don't have a warm body to sleep next to every night. Don't talk to me about 'sexual frustration'.”
“I'm sorry, did you have to walk up hill both ways in the rain and the snow to have sex? That must have been very hard for you.”
“Shut up,” Jane repeats.
Darcy-o-rama is not going as well as Darcy hoped it would, mostly on account of Jane being so fucking grouchy. And maybe she's a little sad, too, but Darcy's stretching herself pretty thin dealing with Steve's bouts of epic sadness. She's all agony aunted out.
“I hope you're not going to be like this when Steve gets here,” Darcy says. “It's un-American.”
Jane rolls her eyes. Maybe plying her with caffeine had been a bad idea, but she'd just made such big eyes at the quadruple espresso mocha latte with extra whipped cream or whatever the hell it is. They're sitting outside waiting for Steve to get there - it's October and it's not really warm enough to be out there, but Jane's been cooped up in the ass end of nowhere for months, and she seemed a little edgy inside.
Honestly, Jane kind of looks like shit, and it's not just the jetlag. It's not anything in particular, just everything together, like the guy she'd spent the better part of a year trying to open a portal for turning up, getting into a couple of scuffles, and leaving again, all in the space of a few days. And, like, Darcy gets that he had to get that homicidal lunatic of brother off the planet and she's super grateful for that, no doubt, but eh, Jane's the closest thing she has to a best friend. Rationality doesn't come into the equation here.
“Oh hey,” she says, sitting up. Steve's on the next block, walking towards them. Still wearing that fucking cap. “Steve's here!”
Jane turns around to look at him, and he waves at them before breaking into a jog. Darcy's probably imagining the slow motion. Probably.
“Oh wow,” Jane mutters.
“Right?”
Jane shifts a little in her seat, still watching his approach. “Oh damn.”
Big, blond, and hunky, she should have realised. “Okay, that's enough,” Darcy says, tugging on Jane's arm. “I saw him first.”
Jane looks back at her. “I take back everything I just said. I have complete sympathy for what you're going through.”
Well, that's something, at least.
“Hey,” Steve says when he gets to them, and ducks down to kiss her. She swipes the cap off his head and threads her fingers through his hair for a moment before releasing him. He pats his hair back down primly and puts the cap back on, then turns to Jane and smiles full force at her. It wouldn't be an exaggeration to say that Jane swoons in her seat. “It's great to finally meet you, Dr Foster,” he says, offering his hand.
She takes it, looking not so much starstruck as horny. Where's a spray bottle when Darcy needs one? “It's very nice to meet you too, Captain... Rogers? America?”
“Steve normally works,” he replies.
Darcy wraps her arm around his waist and tugs him in until his hip is pressed against the armrest of her chair. “He's getting kind of snarky. He wasn't like that when I met him.”
Steve clears his throat. “So what are we doing today?”
“We need to get Jane some new threads.”
“Hey!” Jane folds her arms over her faded Jem and the Holograms t-shirt. “I like my clothes!”
“Far be it from me to insult someone's personal style, but...” Darcy leans forward and tugs on the bottom of the t-shirt, where there's a suspicious orange stain. “Are you keeping all of your dinners on it?”
Jane makes a disgusted sound and slides down in her seat. “Fine.”
Bringing Steve to the kind of places that Jane buys clothes from is a little hilarious. One would think that establishments that sell cheap t-shirts with eighties cartoon characters and anthropomorphic flowers on them would be pretty non-threatening places, but it turns out that it's a whole underground thing. Half the 'stores' Jane wants to go into look like they appeared overnight, with curtains stapled to alcoves as dressing rooms, and the prerequisite tattooed girl with a bar through her nose working the till. Steve just looks so big compared to everyone else, he's double everyone's size and the shops are so tightly packed that he can't help but bump into mutilated mannequins and borderline fetish wear.
Jane sweeps up an armful of coloured t-shirts and disappears into the little curtained changing room. Darcy stations Steve outside to guard her modesty, just to give him something to do, and every so often Jane pokes her head out and asks Steve's opinion on whatever she's trying on.
Darcy plops down in a chair and inspects the wall of pseudo tribal jewellery.
“Do you, like, share him?” tattoo girl asks, leaning over the counter.
“Her boyfriend just cut and run, so I'm letting her play house with him today.”
“Th-- He did not cut and run!” Jane calls.
Darcy waves her hand dismissively in her direction. “Whatever. He had 'reasons'.”
“He did...” Steve says, conveniently ignoring the rest of the conversation.
“Thank you!” Jane says.
“So, he's yours?” the girl asks Darcy.
Darcy glances at him and he smiles a little.
“Yeah.”
“Ugh,” the girl says, then leans forward and lowers her voice. “Sorry, he's just so... vintage. You don't see that any more.” Steve's switched his cap for a pair of aviators that obscure his face somewhat, because it's not 'polite' to wear hats indoors. She pointed out that it was a major douche move to wear sunglasses indoors, but it was the lesser of two evils, he'd said. Darcy's not surprised that tattoo girl is into the high waisted, tucked in shirt look, she's got the whole the rockabilly thing going on, Bettie Page bangs, bright red lipstick, tight polka dot dress. Frankly, she'd probably eat Steve for breakfast.
“I love your tats,” Darcy says. She's got a whole freaking collage of Disney princesses on her arm; if that doesn't make her cool, then Darcy is quitting the world. “Jane has a tattoo. Some sciency thing, right?” she calls.
“Double helix,” Jane calls back.
“Right cheek or left?”
There's a long pause before Jane pops her head out around the curtain. She looks at Steve, who raises his eyebrows slightly.
“Left,” she says. “I was very drunk, okay, never party with engineers.” She disappears back behind the curtain, and Steve clears his throat.
“Do... you have any tattoos, Darcy?” he asks almost shyly, even though she knows that he isn't half as shy and bashful as he comes across sometimes.
“That's something you're just going to have to find out for yourself.”
He bites his lips and looks back at the changing room when Jane pulls the curtain back and steps out with her armful of t-shirts.
“How many are you getting?” Darcy asks.
“All of them,” she says, dropping the pile on the counter.
“What about, uh, some new jeans?” Darcy says, eyeing Jane's worn in, frayed jeans that quite frankly she probably bought from the kids department a decade ago.
“No,” Jane says, putting her nose in the air. Darcy takes a breath to say something, and Jane clicks her tongue. “Drop it.”
After another couple of clothes stores, a sporting goods store to get a new pair of hiking boots, and two hours in a bookstore, where Darcy feels very ignored because both Jane and Steve get sucked into poring through the science and art sections respectively, she takes Jane back to her apartment to cook dinner for her. To have Steve cook dinner for her.
“He cooks too?” Jane whispers to her once they're firmly ensconced on the couch.
“He does everything, it's amazing. I don't know he was like this before or if that serum is just total magic, but he's basically perfect.”
Jane hums something and sighs, rolling the wine glass she holding between her hands.
“Hey,” Darcy says, squeezing her shoulder. “Thor'll be back.”
“Yeah, maybe. It's not even that, though. Everything's just so... such a mess.”
Darcy nods. “Have you talked to Erik recently?”
“Not really. He doesn't seem to want to talk to me any more.”
“It's not personal.”
Jane sighs and drinks more of her wine. “I know. I just wish I'd been here.”
“Yeah...” It just so happens that she feels kind of terrible about that: after the cops had finally let them back out of the subway (and Darcy still gets a bit short of breath in tight enclosed spaces; which is awesome when you live and work in New York), the last thing that was on her mind was calling Jane. She'd spent two hours crying on the phone with her parents, ran up her bill, and had her cell disconnected for two weeks before she could get the money together to pay it off. It wasn't until Coulson's funeral a few days later that she'd thought to call, from a phone at S.H.I.E.L.D. headquarters, but of course Jane couldn't get back in time. She's not even sure when Jane found out what had happened, or from who.
Jane sighs again, drains the rest of her glass, and gets up to pour herself more. Steve looks at her out of the corner of his eye, then over her head at Darcy. She shrugs.
When Steve comes over with three plates of fancy spaghetti, there isn't enough room on the couch for all of them, so he sits on the armrest as they eat, and Darcy settles herself underneath him, his legs on either side of her.
“So, how's your... research going?” Steve asks awkwardly.
“It's going nowhere,” Jane says bitterly. “S.H.I.E.L.D. has it all, and after everything that happened with Erik, they're not happy about letting him work on anything any more, so it all falls to me and half the work is tied up in a bureaucratic shitstorm.”
“I'm sorry...” Steve says. Darcy wraps her arm around one of his legs. He's been great all day, but Jane's just a cloud of gloom right now, and maybe the relentless charmingness of Steve doesn't work on her as well as it does on Darcy.
“No, it's, it's--” Jane waves her fork, flicking spaghetti sauce onto the couch cushion. Darcy leans forward and wipes it away with her thumb, then licks her thumb clean. “It's fine. It's totally fine.”
It is not totally fine.
Jane is kind of a sad drunk. She's unobtrusively sad, though, thanks Steve for the food and picks at it well after they're finished.
“Um,” Steve says quietly when Darcy uncharacteristically elects to help with the dishes. “She can't just go back to the hotel.”
“Ugh.” Darcy is not, and has never been, the 'supportive friend'. She's the chick who gives good head, the girl across the hall with the best weed in the dorms, the friend who's fun at clubs but you wouldn't invite her out when your parents come to visit. She's also never been the one with the big, kind-hearted boyfriend who gives a shit about her friends' problems. “I'll get her the blanket.”
Part 3