The Bubble (2/3)
Part 1
S.H.I.E.L.D. fly them out to California in a private jet. It's awesome, like that plane on Criminal Minds, but Steve has trouble enjoying it fully, still stuck in the 'why can't we do things like normal people?' mindset. If being harassed by the media means that sometimes they get to travel in this plush flying living room, maybe she's a little bit cool with it.
Steve shakes her awake as they touch down; she's curled up against his side, her hand tucked into his awful flannel shirt that he loves so much. She can sort of see why he likes it, it's soft and warm and... absorbs drool pretty well. Ew. She wipes her mouth and sits up.
“Ugh, sorry, you should have woken me.”
“It's okay.” He points to the window. “We're landing.”
“Awesome.” She curls her fists to her chest and stretches, repositioning herself in a less pretzel-like shape.
“Yeah...”
The plan is for her dad to meet them on the airfield and then drive them to the house, hidden in the back of his four by four. Steve is still uncertain about the whole venture.
The plane touches down, glides a few hundred feet, and she sees the blue four by four in the distance. It's flanked by five black cars with tinted windows.
“Okay,” she says briskly as the plane rolls to a stop. Steve responds well to 'brisk'. “Bags,” she says. Well, bag, singular: Steve only packed a 'nice' pair of slacks, a button down shirt, a t-shirt, a pair of pyjamas, and a book in the suitcase. More room for Christmas presents.
An agent comes out of the cockpit and pulls the hatch open. She salutes him and he stares at her dispassionately. “As you were,” she mutters, walking down the steps, Steve behind her.
It's drizzling slightly outside, turning the steps slippery but she's got her S.H.I.E.L.D. boots on, so she's cool (seriously the best reason to join S.H.I.E.L.D., for real). At least it's not also sub zero temperatures - she'd almost forgotten what reasonable weather they get out here, it always put a dent in her cardigan-wearing tendencies.
“Daddy!” she calls, throwing her arms wide as they near him. He gets out of the car, bumps into one unmoving agent, throws his hands up defensively, and edges around him.
“Child!” he exclaims once he's free and clear. They hug quickly, a kiss on the forehead for her, a kiss on the cheek for him. “It's good to see you,” he says.
“It is good to see me,” she agrees, then throws a thumb over her shoulder. “So, this is Steve.”
Steve's got a good three, four inches on him vertically, and even more in the chest area, but somehow he manages to make himself look smaller, hunching his shoulders a little, ducking his head.
It doesn't stop her dad from saying the extremely tactful, “Jesus, you're like a fucking tank.”
“It's good to meet you, Mr Lewis,” Steve says, valiantly ignoring the embarrassing situation her dad has brought to the party. He holds his hand out, and her dad shakes it slowly.
“Yeah... it's, it's something to meet you too,” he says, staring at Steve sort of blankly.
“Yo, Dad,” she says, poking him in the side, “how about let's not stand out in the rain, and you can let go him now, yeah?”
“Right, sorry, yeah, your friends were talking about people 'breaking perimeter', so we should probably get going.”
The ride home is just a couple of steps away from insufferably awkward. Her dad alternately chats aimlessly and fiddles with the radio, blasting them with various mindless pop songs. Steve looks increasingly pained as time passes, dwindling down to one word answers.
“Okay, kids,” her father says, twenty excruciatingly long minutes in. She's starting to recognise the houses passing by them, the run down bungalow on the corner with all the cats, the house with the twenty year old Christmas decorations that stay up all year round. “Time to hide. There are a couple of blankets back there. One of you is gonna have to be go in the well, I'm afraid.”
Steve looks at Darcy and she sighs. “No, let me,” she says, sliding down behind the driver's seat, and pulls one of the blankets over her head.
“This is ridiculous,” Steve mutters, as she hears him shifting around.
“The price of fame, my boy! It's a damn good thing we didn't get that smart car we were thinking about,” her father says. She feels the car turn and slow down, and there's a hum of activity outside. “Guys!” he says, “I got a couple of extra bags of Doritos, anyone hungry? I have dip, too.”
Darcy peeks out from under the blanket as the car rolls into garage, the garage door squeaking and whirring as it comes back down.
“Okay, all clear,” he says. Darcy clambers up and smiles at Steve, who's sitting up, pulling the blanket from off his head, his hair all fluffed up at the front.
“They're starting to feel like part of the family,” her father comments. “I might bring them out some goose on Christmas Day.”
“I'll get the bag,” Steve says, bailing from the car.
She leans forward and bangs her hand against the driver's seat. “Hey, Dad, try not to freak Steve out, okay?”
“I love that you think I'd be able to freak out Captain America.”
“Daddy, you can do anything you put your mind to. But seriously, Steve's kind of... a closet neurotic, just lay off a little, yeah? I know it might be hard, with your great and terrible wit, but.”
“My girl's all grown up,” he says wistfully. “I'll be good.”
Her mother is upstairs when they come in through the kitchen.
“Such a nice welcome,” Darcy mutters, looking around the cluttered kitchen. The house has never been, like, tidy or anything, but the clutter seems to have doubled. Shit, her parents like knick knacks. Steve looks even bigger than normal, standing awkwardly in their poky little house.
Steve makes a sound next to her, looking over at the fridge. Artfully centred in the middle of a collage of baby photos and school pictures (oh man, she'd almost forgotten her side ponytail phase) is a torn out picture from a newspaper, Steve turning his face from the photographer's camera, his body turned protectively towards her, while she's ducking her head and grinning. It's very rock star.
“Darcy is that you?” her mother yells from upstairs. “Come upstairs, I'm still tidying.”
“Prepare yourself,” Darcy murmurs to Steve, and takes him by the hand to lead him upstairs.
There's a pile of sheets on the floor outside Darcy's childhood bedroom, and the tunelessly humming of her mother coming from within the room.
“Mom?” she calls, peering around the door frame, still holding Steve's hand loosely. Her mother looks up from straightening the cover, blowing unruly hair from her face, and smiles.
“Oh, my baby girl,” she says, dropping the collection of towels held in one arm to the bed. She kisses Darcy on both cheeks and gives her a one armed hug, before fixing her steely gaze on Steve. “Now, let me look at you,” she says, half crowding him against the wall. God, both her parents are so embarrassing.
“Mom, this is Steve. Steve, this is my mom, Elaine.”
“Mrs Lewis,” Steve says, offering his hand, like clinging to his upright values will bring order to this household. (Hint: it won't.)
“I thought you'd be taller,” is her mom's judgement, shaking his hand briefly.
“Mom.”
“What, they make him out to be seven foot or something in the papers. It's not a criticism, just an observation.”
“I'm not offended,” Steve says quietly, smiling a little.
Darcy tuts. “You wouldn't be offended if someone came up to you and punched you in the face.”
Steve tips his head to one side. “I wasn't when you did.”
“Okay, okay.” Her mother holds up her hands and steps around them. “I'll leave you two to get settled in. Darcy, I changed your sheets and got you some towels. Your room is disgusting.”
Her room is kind of disgusting, she notes when she has a closer look. And basically exactly how she left it when she moved out for college at eighteen. Except for the rectangular depressions in the carpet. “Hey!” she shouts, as her mother retreats down the stairs, “You really did have gym equipment in here!”
“I said I did, didn't I?” her mother's answer drifts back.
Darcy sighs and lifts the suitcase on to the bed to open it up. She's feeling so much love right now.
“So,” Steve says, and stops. He's carefully checking out the room, her bookcase stuffed full of old textbooks and doorstop fantasy novels, her collection of My Little Pony on the windowsill, her Evanescence and Linkin Park posters. She's pretty sure her notebook full of emo poetry is around here somewhere. “So,” he tries again, “we're... sharing?”
“Uh, yes?”
“Oh, okay, because...” He shoves his hands in his pockets. “It's just, we're under your parents' roof and we're not married, so I thought maybe... Is that too old-fashioned?”
Steve looks so ridiculously out of place, surrounded by her childhood. She grabs his arms, like she can anchor him down. “No, lots of people are like that, I think. My parents just don't give a shit.”
“Okay.”
“I mean, unless you want to sleep somewhere else. I think Dad has a cot in his study.”
“No, I-- I don't think I'd much like sleeping alone, any more,” he says, doing that coy act that he's actually starting to get a little good at. Man, he could be such a heart breaker if he put some effort in. She wraps a hand around his waist, pulling him in. “I heard what you said to your father, you know.”
“Ew,” she says, screwing up her face. “Sorry about that.”
“It's okay. Better neurotic than angry and grumpy, I guess.”
She'd tell him how lovely he is, but she's pretty sure he's just about reached his limit for embarrassment today. “Dinner's soon. Just, you know, ignore everything Dad says.”
The photo album of doom is on the dining room table when they go back downstairs. Darcy looks at it in horror as Steve asks if he can help with anything, and ends up laden down with plates and bowls of food to bring to the table.
“He's not a packhorse!” she shouts around the door.
“I don't mind.”
“You don't mind anything,” she says, and picks the album up, carrying it across the room to hide it in a drawer. “They'll have you mowing the lawn and clearing the gutters if you aren't careful.”
“Put that down, young lady,” her mother says behind her and Darcy drops her head in defeat. So close.
“What is that?” Steve asks, forced down into a seat by her mother as she starts serving the chicken and risotto.
“After dinner entertainment,” her mother says. “Darcy, sit down.”
She takes a seat next to Steve at their little dining room table set up in the corner of the living room. There are several piles of books on floor, hastily moved from the tabletop. The table hasn't been used for its intended purpose in years. “Jeez, Mom, are you feeding the five thousand?”
She shrugs. “You said Steve eats a lot and your father's inner old Jewish woman got excited. Sam, get in here before your food gets cold!”
They eat in uncomfortable silence for a while, interspersed with comments from her mom about her work teaching English Lit at the local university, and Steve thanking them, like, four times for the food. Darcy has to kick him under the table to get him to shut up.
“So, how did you two kids meet, then?” her mother asks Steve. Darcy resists the urge to bang her head on the table. She's already told them this story, and they're just grilling Steve about it now to be dicks.
“It was at the Independence Day celebrations at Central Park. S.H.I.E.L.D. had her keeping an eye on the kids.” He smiles at her crookedly. She'd almost called in sick that day, because what the fuck, she had to run around after a bunch of kids because she was a chick and it was Captain America's birthday? That day had indeed been a suckfest right up until the moment she looked up and found Captain America watching her quizzically. No photograph or lust-fuelled description could have done him justice.
“Darcy, what did I tell you about picking up strays in the park?” her father says, and she sends a kick his way, but Steve laughs.
“I'm glad she did, sir.” Oh, that earns him a squeeze to the knee and a little further exploration until he takes her hand and gently pushes it away, face betraying none of what's going on under the table.
“Okay, enough of the 'sir',” her father's saying. “I read your comics when I was kid. I used pretend I
was you when we played make-believe in the playground.”
“Oh,” Steve says, and fiddles with cutting his chicken for a second before adding, “I don't know what to say to that.”
Her dad laughs. “You're okay, Steve.” He drums his fingers on the table for a moment before adding, “At the risk of sounding like a cliché, what is it that you do, when you aren't... being a superhero?”
“I'm... between jobs,” Steve says, smiling. “Sometimes Tony tests things out on me.”
“This is Tony Stark, right?” her mother cuts in, and Steve nods. “Just making sure that we understand that our only daughter's boyfriend hangs out with Tony Stark, the biggest womaniser since Hugh Hefner.”
“Uh,” Steve says, “I don't really hang out with him that much...”
“She's joking,” Darcy says, patting him on the shoulder. “And Tony's not that bad. He's kind of a nice guy, even.”
Her mother holds out her hand. “Continue.”
“Um, so, when Tony wants his inventions hit really hard he calls me.” Steve shrugs. “Except for that... I'm thinking about going back to school.”
This is the first Darcy's heard of it. She knows that Steve got a little embarrassed with Tony and Pepper, but she's heard a rumour that Stark has, like, seven PhDs, which can't possibly be true, but in a comparison of education pretty much everyone who isn't Tony Stark is going to lose. “You are?”
He looks at her. “Yeah, the last couple of weeks, I thought maybe...”
She drops her hand to his back. “I think that's great.”
He smiles at her before turning back to her parents. “I didn't get to go to university, before.”
“What do you want to study?” his father asks.
“I was thinking about graphic design. Tony gave me this tablet for Christmas and you can design 3D images on it. I'd like to learn more about that.”
“Again, this is Tony Stark,” her mother comments.
Darcy glares at her. “Steve's a really great artist.”
“I'm okay,” he mutters.
“Oh, shut up, Steve,” she says, pushing at his shoulder a little. “He could totally be professional, no doubt.”
“I don't know about that,” Steve mutters, focusing on his plate for a couple of seconds before raising his head again. “I don't know if it's even going to be possible, though. Can't imagine that Captain America attending afternoon classes isn't going to raise a few eyebrows.”
“There are online courses,” her father says. “Guy at work got his entire law degree online.”
“Maybe, yeah. I'd have to see what Fury says about it, probably.”
“Fury?” her mother asks.
“Classified,” Darcy says.
“Honestly, I'm impressed if Darcy's boyfriends have any goals in life at all,” her father says. “Her last one played video games in his underwear twenty hours a day.”
“To be fair,” Darcy says, “he was a professional video game player.”
“No. I consider myself an open minded guy, but that is not a job. Don't you agree, Steve?”
Steve's eyes widen a little bit. “I don't... know anything about video games, really...”
“I'm just messing with you, but you are the only boy that she's brought home that isn't a complete idiot.”
“Don't be so quick to judgement, sir,” Steve says seriously, and goes back to his food. There's a beat before both her parents laugh, and Steve ducks his head a little, looking pleased with himself.
Desert is ice cream with apple pie (“Very funny,” Darcy dead pans, eyeing her dad.) on the couch with the photo album spread out on the coffee table.
“She was a colicky baby. She just cried and cried and cried,” her mother says, turning to yet another page of grumpy baby pictures. Apparently they whipped the camera out every time Darcy cried or had a tantrum, just so that one day they could show Captain America her fat, blotchy face.
“And who was the one who stayed up with her every night?” her dad says. “Oh yeah, that was me.”
“I was financially supporting you through school, mister,” she says breezily, and coos at a studio shot of Darcy in a yellow dress with a floppy sunflower on her head. God, the nineties.
“Dad was at law school when I was baby,” Darcy explains to Steve. “They were very forward thinking, very early nineties power suit feminism.”
“Oh,” Steve says, because obviously he has no idea what 'early nineties power suit feminism' really means. He looks back at the album and cracks up at Darcy's first grade head shot. It's not like it's her fault that her front teeth grew in last and her dad's hair styling skills started and finished with pigtails sticking straight out from either side of her head. She plants her elbow in his ribcage, but that just makes him laugh harder. He has a nice laugh, it's kind of dumb and giggly sounding, and far too rarely heard. She wraps an arm around his waist, and he lays his arm along her shoulders, surprisingly relaxed in the presence of her parents. Her mother looks at them out of the corner of her eye, but doesn't comment.
“Ah,” her father says, “the boyfriends.” He sweeps his hand across a two page spread of every boyfriend Darcy's had, starting with Glen, the boy who dumped her because initiating a dry, close mouthed kiss made her 'easy'. Twelve year olds, man, they're the worst.
Steve points at her prom photo. Black Hot Topic dress and shit loads of black eyeliner - she thought she was going to be so counterculture, but half her class turned up in that year's range. “Is that Drew?”
“She told you about Drew?” her mother asks.
Steve frowns. “Yeah?”
“And you aren't shocked by her wild youth?” Her tone is light, but Darcy can tell there's a strong vein of 'don't you dare judge my baby girl, I will fight you' to it.
Steve shrugs. “I had kinda a wild youth myself. Lots of... getting into fights and uh, there was a period where I basically lived on the streets.”
That pretty effectively shuts down that line of questioning; Steve sure does know how to kill a conversation.
Darcy clears her throat and taps the image of skinny, greasy-haired Drew. “Yeah, that's Drew.”
She already knew that Steve was kind of a departure for her, dating-wise, but seeing all her boyfriends laid out for her on the page, she realises just how different Steve is to them, physically. It's a cliché, but they were boys, and Steve is definitely a man. She guesses she just never really felt confident enough to talk to the really good-looking guys at high school and university, or maybe she wrote them off as stupid meatheads. It never really occurred to her that Steve might be like that, though. Maybe once you've seen a guy fending off an alien attack with five other stupidly dressed self-appointed superheroes, it's easier to believe that he isn't going to be of the party all night frat boy mentality.
Her dad looks up from the album. “You know what this needs? A new photograph. Let me go get my camera.”
“Sam likes taking pictures,” her mother says as he leaves the room.
“I guessed,” Steve says, flipping through a couple more pages until he settles on Darcy's graduation photos. She wouldn't have gone, but Dad wanted the picture, and an excuse to take a trip to the east coast.
“What was left of Sam's family fled from Germany during the war, so it's a bit of family tradition to record every little thing that happens,” her mother says.
“Oh,” Steve says softly, “I understand.”
And he does: Steve's got at least five door stop sized books about all the things he missed in the war. Darcy gets depressed just looking at them, especially since she can tell how much it upsets him, to know that all these terrible things were happening right under his nose, and he didn't do anything to stop them. She rubs his back, and he smiles a little.
Her father comes back a couple of minutes later, and fiddles with the camera for an inordinate length of time.
“Okay,” he says eventually, “big smiles! And don't worry, it's digital; no awkward conversations about who the blond guy is from the people at the developing place.”
Steve leans his head against hers and her dad snaps the picture, tells her off for blinking, fiddles around deleting it, and takes it again. And twice more for good measure.
He hands the camera over to her. “I'm going to print out the best one, so pick carefully.”
Her choice is between awkward, awkwarder, and awkwardest, while Steve has a perfect easy smile in each picture; she doesn't know how he manages to be such a beautiful human being all of the time. It must be exhausting.
“Eh, I look awful in all of them so the first one, I guess.”
“No, you don't,” Steve says into her hair, and her dad smiles approvingly.
-
“I see where you get it from,” he says later, once they've escaped the clutches of the photo album and made it to her bedroom.
“Get what?” she asks, tugging her t-shirt over her head. Steve's eyes drop for a moment, then snap back up.
“Everything,” he says. “You act like your dad and look like your mom.”
“Don't get any ideas,” she says, letting her jeans pool around her ankles.
“What?” he says, sounding a little flustered.
She steps out of her jeans and starts working on the buttons of his shirt. “You're mine,” she says, mostly joking, but Steve leans into her, looks at her in a way, and she finishes quietly, “don't you forget it.”
“I won't,” he breathes, and moves with her when she walks him backwards to the bed. He drops down onto the mattress, and she climbs on top, working his shirt off his shoulders and sliding her hands up under his undershirt. She traces her fingers around his abs as she kisses him lazily, catching his nipples a couple of times. He moans into her mouth, pushing himself up onto his elbows, and she clutches at his sides, stroking his shoulder blades.
He drops his head back, and she takes the opportunity to get at his neck, biting and sucking. Sometimes she's wishes that he didn't heal so well: she likes the idea of leaving marks on him.
“Wait,” he pants. “We can't have sex in, ahh, in your parents' house.”
“Really, 'cause we seem to be doing a pretty good job of it right now.”
“Darcy, c'mon.”
She pushes herself up. “You're serious?”
His answer is more of a groan of despair, but she gets the idea. “Okay, okay,” she says, and rolls to the side. Steve squirms and pants some more, glances over at her with flushed cheeks.
“Hey,” she says, “if you're hurting, that's not my problem.”
He drops down onto bed and sighs.
-
Her childhood bed is a twin, so Steve just barely fits in it, and Darcy has to slot herself in around him. Which isn't a hardship, really, because he's very cuddly and she's never really been into that before, but she's learning to like it.
She wakes up with her cheek pressed against his chest, and one of her legs tangled between his. He's shifting a bit, which at first doesn't strike her as unusual while she's drifting in and out of sleep, except that his heart is beating kind of fast, and he's making unhappy little noises in his sleep.
She knows he has nightmares sometimes. She doesn't know exactly what they're about, because it's not his favourite topic of conversation, but she can hazard a good guess. They tend to leave him confused and disoriented afterwards, like he's sleepwalking except he really is awake, and she knows not to wake him up while he's in the midst of one, but she hates watching him go through it. She raises her head carefully (she did some research into PTSD nightmares - read: she typed 'waking someone up from a nightmare' into Google - and there were a bunch of stories about people hitting their partners in their sleep; she's pretty certain that Steve would never ever ever ever ever forgive himself if he lashed out at her) and looks at him. His cheeks are flushed, which is different, he normally goes pale, and the sounds he's making are verging on keening.
Well, maybe that isn't an insistently poky part of his leg under her thigh.
“Steve,” she murmurs, giving into her urge to press her fingers just below his mouth. He groans, one hand sliding up the curve of her waist. “Are you having a sex dream?”
He groans some more in response, and she pulls herself up to get a better look at his face. His mouth is slightly open, eyes moving back and forth behind his eyelids, and he arches into her when she moves, trying to rut against her thigh.
Well, shit. Now she's going to have to watch him get all hot and bothered and not participate in the bothering. Although, she imagines that waking someone up from a sex dream wouldn't result in getting hit. Maybe hit on. She crosses her arms over his chest and sighs; there's never anyone around to hear her best jokes.
Steve bites his lip and clutches hard at her waist. His head rolls to one side and he mumbles something softly, too soft for her to catch. She lets it go the first time, but he keeps mumbling stuff, squirming and whining in between, and she only leans in close enough to hear him, she swears, but the syllables are all slurred together and she can't make out a thing. She presses in as close as she can, without actually touching him any more than she already is.
Her nose is right by his cheek when he snuffles, his eyelashes fluttering for a moment before he opens his eyes. This close, she can see all the different shades of blue in the flecks of his irises.
“You were having a sex dream,” she tells him.
He licks his lips. “Yeah. Yeah. You were teasing me.”
“I'm sorry.”
“That's okay.”
She slides over to straddle his hips, wasting no time in pushing her tongue into his mouth, revelling in how he opens up to her, his hands sliding down to her ass, letting her fuck his mouth and pull at his hair. When she pulls away, he makes the most amazing, toe-curling noise of frustration.
“Wait a minute, wait,” she says, and presses her fingers to his lips. “We can't have sex in my parents' house.”
He groans, squeezing her ass, and looks at the clock. It's not even seven yet, her parents won't be up for another couple of hours.
“Oh, that's how it is, is it? Can't go twenty four hours without doing the dirty?”
“Thirty six hours,” he says, as she leans over to her night stand drawer to grab a condom. “Do you have condoms squirrelled away everywhere?”
“Are you complaining?”
“Nooo,” he says, stretching out the word as she wriggles down to get at his pants and free his erection. She considers it for a moment before ducking down and licking away the pre-come. He practically yelps, arching into her grip. “Dar-- ahhh,” he moans, his hand closing around her shoulder. “Darcy, Darcy.”
“I got you,” she murmurs, and makes quick work of the condom, while he does his best to keep still, though he can't quite stop all the little shudders. She sinks down onto him slowly and he rocks up into her with an impatient groan, tipping his head back against the pillows.
She spreads her hands out over his chest and looks at him, spanning his abs with room to spare. It's kind of crazy to think that six months ago he was a guy who, to her, was basically just a character in the comics that her Granddad shared with her father as child - and he compounded that by looking like he'd been drawn by someone who had a very definite idea of American masculinity. Five months ago she was wondering if she wasn't just bullying this poor guy into spending time with her because she was hot for him, and six weeks ago she took his virginity.
Now he just looks like he might cry if she doesn't start moving. She rolls her hips once, slow and hard, and his mouth drops open. He reaches up and pulls at her shirt, awkwardly trying to get it off before he just drags her down and kisses her, pawing at her breasts through the material. It's kind of awesome how he gets all clumsy when he's really turned on, and she grins into the kiss as she tugs the shirt up and over her head easily. She grinds down again and he moans, stretching his throat and clenching his jaw, inviting her to her worst.
“Wait,” he moans, and she doesn't even register it at first, because it sounds exactly like every other thing he's moaning, but he runs his fingers through her hair and tugs. “Darcy, wait.”
She pulls back and looks at him. He's pink all over, hair mussed, mouth swollen - he looks like they've already gone a couple of rounds, and they haven't even got started yet. “You don't seriously want to stop now, do you? Even you aren't that much of a masochist.”
“No, I just-- ah-- I can't, I don't want to... wake anyone.”
“You better keep quiet then,” she says, ducking down for another kiss.
“I don't think I, I can,” he manages.
Oh. Well, that's sort of very flattering. “Okay, how about this then?” she whispers into his ear, and presses her hand over his mouth. She takes his muffled moan as ascent and goes back to what she was doing. They settle into a rhythm, Steve meeting her every time she rocks into him, pressing his thumbs against her nipples, rolling his head back into the pillows every time. The harder she presses down on his mouth, the more he writhes and tries to groan; she'd already suspected that he had a bit of a domination kink, and this is ample proof of that.
There's not much he can do, with her holding him down like this, but he pays lots of attention to her breasts, squeezing and kneading them with his fingertips. He always tries to make sure not to leave any of her unloved, but she knows that guys are drawn to her tits like magpies are to shiny things, and Steve's no different in that regard, although he's pretty good about not making it obvious. At least until he gets his mouth on them. Then it's not much of a puzzle.
For once it seems like Steve might come first, the way he's moving, his stomach muscles clenching and relaxing over and over again, and that's just not acceptable. She takes one of his hands from her breasts and guides it down, arranging his fingers where she wants them against her. It took him a little getting used to, when she first introduced him to the concept of fingering; apparently he'd always thought that it sounded painful for the girl, but he took to it like he does everything: like a boss.
His big fingers - two, she's quite insistent on this - rub against her clit, stretching her until she very well may not be able to keep quiet herself, and God, she wishes his body was on top of her, pressing her down into the mattress, sliding her up the sheets with every thrust until she has to lay her hands flat against the wall to stop from bumping her head. She rides his dick and his hand as hard as she can without her legs actually seizing up, almost forgetting that he's even there and that this isn't just a really excellent dildo, and she is so close...
There's a tapping at the door. “Darcy? Your father wants to know if Steve likes anything in particular for breakfast.”
Darcy's head snaps up, to Steve with his eyes as wide as saucers, then to the door, which thank fucking God she remembered to lock last night.
“No!” she barks. “He'll eat anything! Go away!”
“Well, there's no need to be rude,” her mother says, and then Darcy hears the creaking of departing footsteps.
She doesn't even want to look back at Steve; if there was ever a boner killer, this would be it, and she'll be lucky if he ever looks either of her parents in the face ever again.
Then a high-pitched whine escapes from between her fingers and Steve rolls his hips, presses his fingers in harder, and generally ruts into her like a randy dog, his cheeks staining red around her hand. Well. Well, okay, she thinks, and redoubles her efforts. Steve crooks his fingers just right and brings her to orgasm like a pro, watching her face the entire time, his body getting tenser and tenser underneath her, until she's pretty sure it's just cruel to make him wait any longer. The noises coming from the back of his throat are so incredible, she wants to hear them properly, and she doesn't know when she's going to be able to indulge this apparent kink of his again. One day, one day she's going to get him somewhere soundproofed and just draw the loudest sounds out of him that she possibly can, until he's hoarse from it.
Until then, she settles for leaning over and slapping her clock radio on, twiddling the volume control up on whatever dance music is playing, and removing her hand from his mouth. There's actually a freaking imprint of her hand there, although it starts to fade away immediately. He presses his head back into the pillow, and moans for all he's worth while she digs her fingers into his hair and thrusts as hard as she can, through the burn of her muscles and the sweat she can feel running down her back.
Steve comes with one hand still on her breast, the other twisting in the sheet, his Adam's apple bobbing as he says something that's drowned out by the music. His body goes rigid for a moment, then just totally relaxes, the closest to boneless that she's got him so far. She turns the radio off again and slides off him as she feels his dick start to soften inside her, then strips him of the condom, knots it, and wraps it in a tissue to throw away later.
“Wow,” she says, running her hands up his chest, getting a smile in return. “I didn't know you had a thing about almost getting caught in the act.”
“Neither did I,” he says, with a lazy quality to it that makes her lean down and kiss his chapped lips. “But you don't think your parents heard us, do you? 'Cause that, that wouldn't be good.”
She drops down next to him. “I doubt they could hear anything over Kei$ha brushing her teeth with a bottle of jack.”
“Okay. Mm,” he murmurs, licking his lips. “We don't have to get up yet, do we?”
“Not if you don't want to,” she says, and he hums happily, rolling onto his side to bury his face in her shoulder. She kisses his forehead and twines their legs together. He's already on his way back to sleep, she can tell, all warm and loose-limbed against her.
“I love you,” she says softly.
“Mm. Love you too,” he mumbles.
-
Christmas at the Lewis household normally consists of getting up late and eating fast food in front of whatever reruns are on the television. They do the fun parts, like presents and decorations, because who doesn't like shiny things and getting stuff, but the rest of it is a bit of a mystery to Darcy. The closest she's ever got to the 'true meaning' of Christmas was playing a sheep in her kindergarten nativity.
Steve, though, he used to do all this Christmassy stuff. His mom took him to see the Santa Claus at Macy's, the displays in all the big department stores, which were even bigger treats than for most, because he rarely got further than the two block walk to school. When he was fifteen, the nuns took him, along with a group of kids from the orphanage, to see the first official tree at Rockefeller Center get lit up. And, of course, he went to midnight mass every year.
“Do you want to go do that tonight?” she asks while they're peeling and chopping all sorts of vegetables, most of which she has never eaten in her life (sprouts, Dad, really? He's being a total show-off for Steve). “There's a church around here somewhere.”
“You don't want to do that,” he says, glancing at her out of the corner of his eye.
“I don't mind. Would you like to?”
He shrugs. “Haven't been in five years. Seventy five years.”
“But do you want to?” she presses, leaning forward and poking him in the side with the handle of the knife she's holding.
“I guess...” he says, but there's a little smile on his face. “How would we get out of the house without being seen?”
He raises a good point: not one blind or curtain has been opened since they arrived, and neither of them have even been into the backyard. Never let it be said that Darcy doesn't put at least a couple of minutes thought into her plans, though.
“Well, you know how you said I look like my mom?” she says, and he nods. “As long as I don't look directly at any cameras, I think I'll be able to trick them. You'll be under a blanket again.”
Of course, because it's one of her plans, it goes perfectly. The remaining reporters hanging around in the front yard at freaking ten thirty pm on Christmas Eve don't even care when she pulls out of the garage, totally unaware of who's being harboured in the house.
They sit in the back of the church, and Darcy just follows what Steve does, stands up and sits down when he does, reads off the little booklet someone handed to her when he points her to the right page, mouths along to the hymns that she doesn't know (Steve's singing voice is nice, though, she doesn't want to drown it out with her own), repeats the prayers, some of which are vaguely familiar. At one point everyone starts, like, kneeling down, except some people don't, and that's a little confusing, so she just sits on the very edge of her seat, in case the priest tells her off for doing it wrong. Which he doesn't, because he's a priest; dude's not going to come over and bitchslap her.
It's kind of hard not to drift off, with all the toneless speeches from the priest, and the scarily in sync repetition of the worshippers. She makes it to the Communion, and most of the room start lining up to receive the bread and wine. She's pretty sure you have to be, like, Catholic and baptised and have done that thing where you dress up like a bride before you're allowed to go up there, so she stays where she is. But so does Steve, and she'd bet money on the fact that he was baptised. Maybe he didn't dress up like a bride, but she's willing to accept that her understanding of this whole thing isn't 100%.
“Don't you want to go up there?” she whispers to him.
He shakes his head, looking at her little sadly. “I don't think that's probably a good idea.”
The whole thing's over pretty soon after that, and Steve makes a quick exit while other people group together to wish each other a merry Christmas. He waits for her by the door and they walk back to the car without talking. He has to get in the back, which is unfortunate, because she's getting some serious sad vibes off him, and she'd like to be able to look him in the eye when she talks to him.
“Hey,” she says as she pulls out of the parking lot, “you okay?”
“Yeah,” he says quietly, and she looks at him in the rear view mirror. He sighs. “No.”
“What's wrong? Do you wish we hadn't come?”
“No, it's not that. I just... I feel like a fraud for being comforted by mass when I don't even believe half of it any more.”
“I think it's okay not to believe all of it. I mean, if you can't have a crisis of faith after what you went through, then no one will ever be able to have one ever again,” she says carefully. Man, theology; she took one course in it in her sophomore year at Culver, and dropped it after two lectures. “I mean,” she barrels when he doesn't reply, “the last time I went to temple was like, shit, fifteen years ago, and I didn't even have a bat mitzvah, but I still consider myself Jewish.”
Probably not the best example, since she's basically an atheist, but she doesn't need to point that out to Steve right now.
“Isn't it called a bar mitzvah?” he asks after a few more seconds silence.
“Bat mitzvah for girls.”
“Oh.”
She glances at the rear view mirror again. He's sitting with his hands in lap, looking out the window. “Steve, you're, like, the epitome of a good Christian. Don't be too hard on yourself.”
He smiles a little. “Have you met me?” he asks.
“Thankfully, I have,” she says, and his smile widens.
-
She's pretty sure that Steve doesn't sleep at all that night; his stillness is almost oppressive, like he's trying so, so hard not to disturb her that he's just broadcasting his anxiety like a fucking loudspeaker.
“Steve,” she mutters just after four in the morning.
“You're awake?”
“No,” she says irritably, shifting around until her back is against the wall and her chest is squashed against his side, “I'm still asleep, you're hallucinating.”
“Sorry, stupid question.”
She looks out the outline of his face in the dark and imagines him ducking his head, looking at her ruefully. Shit, now she feels bad.
“Come here,” she says, tugging at his arm until he rolls over. She pushes his head down so that his cheek is resting against her stomach - she's noticed that he likes that, being all curled up, even if he's a little big for it. Something to do with being little most of his life, she guesses, although he doesn't like talking about it.
Still, she's pretty sure he doesn't get any sleep and in the end she gets up at seven anyway. On her holiday, it's a tragedy.
Her parents are already awake when they get downstairs, her dad messing around in the kitchen making stuffing for the ridiculously large goose, and her mom on her laptop, frowning at the screen, a pair of glasses balanced on the end of her nose. She's never really free of her students. When Darcy stomps in to get coffee, though, her dad drops everything and hauls them both out to open presents.
From her grandmother she gets a knitted cardigan, dark brown and vomit orange with mismatched buttons. She must be the only granddaughter ever that actually likes her grandmother's strange creations. Her parents give her a hundred dollar gift card for Amazon with a note says, 'our laziness is made up for by how much this is worth'. From other assorted relatives she nets fifty dollars and ten cents.
“This is from me and Steve,” she says, handing them a hastily wrapped gift. Her dad gives it a shake, despite it being flat and solid, then hands it to her mom to open. Steve shifts a little as she opens it and reveals the old signed USO picture of him that Darcy found in a storage room - needless to say, it wasn't Steve's idea.
“That shit would be worth a lot on ebay,” Darcy says, as her dad takes it and turns it over in his hands. “But don't sell it; technically you're not even meant to have it.”
“Stealing's wrong,” her dad says vaguely, not even looking up. “But I don't want to be right.”
Steve's starting to blush, so she grabs his present from under the tree and shoves it into his hands.
“This is for you,” she says. His eyebrows jump up, like he thought she wasn't going to get him something or some shit, and he rips through the much less hasty wrapping paper, smiling.
“It's a book,” he says, then, “oh, it's...” He smooths his hand over the leather cover, mouth slightly open.
“It's a sketchbook,” she says. “That shitty one you have is falling to pieces. I did a lot of research about this thing. Did you know there are, like, lots of different kinds of paper for sketching and stuff?” She doesn't add that it cost her a good hundred dollars.
“Yeah,” he says, flipping through the pages, rubbing the paper between his fingers carefully. “This is beautiful, thank you.”
“That's okay,” she says, and he grins, kissing her on the cheek, then reaching under the tree to pull something out to give her. It's a rectangular box, very neatly wrapped with a bow - a real one, not one stuck down with double sided tape. She tears through it with her usual grace, pulling out a plain cardboard box.
“Open it,” Steve says, nudging her. She rolls her eyes and pops open the top, then empties out all the tissue paper and slides out whatever's inside.
“What is... is this a taser?” she asks, pointing the sleek silver thing at him. He pushes her hand down.
“I asked Tony what the best taser on the market is, and he said whatever one he made. So this is one of a kind. Tony tried to insist that since he made it it's his gift to you, but I was the one who told him, so... he can shut up.”
She laughs and pulls him in for a kiss.
Her mom claps her hands together. “Okay, food's not going to cook itself,” she says, and grabs her dad's hand to pull him up.
Darcy smiles against Steve's mouth. “I think we made them uncomfortable. But I feel gross, I need to have a shower.”
She draws her feet underneath herself and starts to stand up, but Steve grabs her hand and gives it a tug.
“I've got another present for you,” he says softly, urging her back down.
“Okay? Don't think this means I'm buying you something else though,” she says flippantly, but Steve looks super nervous. She sits back down next to him and frowns as he pulls something else out from under the tree. A little something. A little... jewellery box.
Shit, she thinks. Shit shit shit. She kind of thought that if Steve proposed to her, it'd be a big romantic affair, like dinner and dancing and all that stuff, but then, he never does like to make a fuss, so...
He shoves the box at her awkwardly, and she thinks: well, maybe it wouldn't be the worst thing ever, to get married. Maybe she even likes the idea. Maybe she likes the idea when it's Steve doing the asking. Maybe. She takes a breath and holds it, then opens the box.
Huh.
“It's a locket?” The box was obviously too big to be a ring box, she thinks, duh, Darcy. She definitely isn't upset about that, but she isn't relieved either. That's a feeling to file away for later.
“Yeah, it's...” He takes the box from her and pulls the chain out, holding it up to her. “It was my mother's. Uh, most of her things are gone, she had to pawn her rings when I was a kid, but this was the... the first gift my father ever gave her, for her sixteenth birthday.”
Darcy catches the locket as it swings between them. It's oval-shaped, with a swirly pattern engraved on the front and on the back the words: To my love on her birthday, Joe.
“I'm sorry it's already personalised,” he says, “I, uh--” He trails off as she flicks it open. There are a couple of browned pictures inside. On the left there's a man that resembles Steve, though he's younger and his face is more drawn, and on the right there's a toddler wearing something with a frilly collar.
“Is that you?”
“Yeah, and my father. You don't have to keep them in there. I just, I didn't know what... uh...”
She flips the locket shut again and cradles it carefully in her hand. “Is this the only thing of your mother's that you have?”
“Yeah,” he says quietly.
“And you're giving it to me?”
He nods, pressing his lips together.
“Oh, Steve,” she says, dragging him in for another kiss. “You're unbearably sweet.”
He blinks at her, glances at her closed hand for moment. “I thought maybe you'd find it a bit weird, but it should be worn, and, and I want you to wear it. If you want to.”
She fists her other hand in his t-shirt. “I want to.”
“Okay,” he says, grinning.
“Okay,” she replies, and closes the gap between them again.
-
Steve gets roped into doing a load of the cooking, because her dad looks at the mess he's got himself into, wails about how disgusting doing the stuffing is, and Steve makes the mistake of offering his help. He doesn't seem to mind that much, though.
“Darcy likes it when I do the cooking,” Steve says, then cringes a little, like he's revealed this huge secret about them, gasp, spending enough time together to be cooking for each other (though it really is a one way street). Maybe even cohabiting, the horror of it.
Her dad just laughs. “Got that off her mother.”
“Damn straight,” her mom says, taking a sip of her wine.
After a truly ridiculous amount of food, most of eaten by Steve, her dad pulls out another photo album, an overstuffed one with a cracked and peeling cover and thick black pages with sheets of semi-transparent paper over the top. Darcy hasn't seen it in years.
“What are you doing with Pop's album?”
“He brought it over at Thanksgiving, told me to hang on to it in case 'the Captain' ever visits.”
Steve glances at her. “What's this?”
“My grandfather's photo album. It's got everything from, like, 1941 onwards.”
Steve's eyebrows jump up and he leans forward, resting his elbows on his knees. Her dad grins like a kid and flips it open. “My father really wanted you to see this.” He slides the album over to Steve and taps one of the pictures. It's one Darcy has seen a lot, of her Pop dressed up in a crudely made Cap helmet, brandishing a trash can lid for a shield. Steve touches the crinkly transparent paper carefully.
“They came over in '42, when my dad was six,” her father says. “He learnt how to speak English reading your comics.”
“Oh, that's... probably not such a good idea,” Steve says, smiling slightly. “I read some of them, when the girls showed them to me, they were pretty bad.”
“Oma did say that he went through a phase of using comic book sound effects as if they were words, but he also learnt the proper use of the words 'gosh' and 'swell'.”
“I didn't even used to say that!” Steve says, laughing.
As they dig into the album a little more, her mom taps her on the shoulder. “Do you want to go attack the leftover dessert before they get at it?” she asks, nodding at Steve and her dad. Darcy senses that she has some ulterior motives going on, other than cake, but seriously, there's cake.
She pats Steve on the shoulder. “I'll be in the kitchen.”
“Okay,” he says, distracted by a picture of her grandfather's collection of Captain America memorabilia circa 1950.
When she gets into the kitchen, her mother hands her a fork and pushes the chocolate log over to her.
“I feel like you're lulling me into a false sense of security,” she says, picking off the marzipan holly leaf and setting it aside.
“Don't be so suspicious.” She points her fork at Darcy. “That's a nice necklace.”
Darcy closes her fingers around the locket protectively. “Yeah.” Her mother stares at her, and Darcy rolls her eyes. “Steve gave it to me, it was his mom's.”
“I see.”
“You disapprove.”
“No, not really. I'll admit that I was a little... surprised when I found out from Twitter that my only child was dating a World War II superhero, but he seems like a very nice young man.”
“He is,” Darcy can't help but say. Her mother smiles knowingly.
“He's also from a different era. Women got the right to vote, what, a couple of years after he was born?”
“Mom.”
She shrugs. “I'm only pointing out that he was raised with very different values to you and even to mine and your father's parents. I don't want you to feel judged by him, is all.”
“He doesn't. Seriously, he was disappointed that I didn't have a tattoo.”
Her mother holds up her hands. “Okay, I don't need to know about that,” she says, and pulls the plate away from Darcy, who follows it with her fork in distress. “As long as you know that we're here for you whenever and for whatever. Come on, there's a Die Hard marathon on soon.”
When Steve's phone rings a few hours later, Darcy is well and truly ensconced on his lap, admiring Bruce Willis's aversion to upper body clothing.
“Oh, damn,” he mutters, “Sorry, I should have turned it off.”
“That's okay, we've seen this movie, like, fifteen times.”
Steve pulls the phone out and looks at it, then looks at her.
“Who is it?”
“Tony. Are you gonna...?” He motions to his lap.
She shifts a little. “No.”
He sighs, then answers it. “Hey, Tony. What do you... no, I'm not being unfriendly, I'm just wondering why you're calling me on Christmas day... Well, yeah, merry Christmas to you too.” He rolls his eyes and shakes his head at Darcy, mouthing 'I think he's drunk' to her. “What's that? Wait, what?” He sits up, slinging an arm around Darcy to stop her from sliding off his lap. “When are you leaving? Do you need any help? Yeah, yeah, okay, just let me know how everything's going. Tony, Tony, does Fury know-- He hung up.”
“What's happening?”
“He, uh.” Steve glances at her parents, who are doing really terrible impressions of people who aren't desperately listening in. “He found Bruce.”
“Where?”
“Uhhh, I'm sorry, I can't...” He glances at her parents again.
“Oh, pretend like we're not here,” her mom says, cuddling up against her dad.
“We're trying really hard to, don't worry,” Darcy says.
Part 3
S.H.I.E.L.D. fly them out to California in a private jet. It's awesome, like that plane on Criminal Minds, but Steve has trouble enjoying it fully, still stuck in the 'why can't we do things like normal people?' mindset. If being harassed by the media means that sometimes they get to travel in this plush flying living room, maybe she's a little bit cool with it.
Steve shakes her awake as they touch down; she's curled up against his side, her hand tucked into his awful flannel shirt that he loves so much. She can sort of see why he likes it, it's soft and warm and... absorbs drool pretty well. Ew. She wipes her mouth and sits up.
“Ugh, sorry, you should have woken me.”
“It's okay.” He points to the window. “We're landing.”
“Awesome.” She curls her fists to her chest and stretches, repositioning herself in a less pretzel-like shape.
“Yeah...”
The plan is for her dad to meet them on the airfield and then drive them to the house, hidden in the back of his four by four. Steve is still uncertain about the whole venture.
The plane touches down, glides a few hundred feet, and she sees the blue four by four in the distance. It's flanked by five black cars with tinted windows.
“Okay,” she says briskly as the plane rolls to a stop. Steve responds well to 'brisk'. “Bags,” she says. Well, bag, singular: Steve only packed a 'nice' pair of slacks, a button down shirt, a t-shirt, a pair of pyjamas, and a book in the suitcase. More room for Christmas presents.
An agent comes out of the cockpit and pulls the hatch open. She salutes him and he stares at her dispassionately. “As you were,” she mutters, walking down the steps, Steve behind her.
It's drizzling slightly outside, turning the steps slippery but she's got her S.H.I.E.L.D. boots on, so she's cool (seriously the best reason to join S.H.I.E.L.D., for real). At least it's not also sub zero temperatures - she'd almost forgotten what reasonable weather they get out here, it always put a dent in her cardigan-wearing tendencies.
“Daddy!” she calls, throwing her arms wide as they near him. He gets out of the car, bumps into one unmoving agent, throws his hands up defensively, and edges around him.
“Child!” he exclaims once he's free and clear. They hug quickly, a kiss on the forehead for her, a kiss on the cheek for him. “It's good to see you,” he says.
“It is good to see me,” she agrees, then throws a thumb over her shoulder. “So, this is Steve.”
Steve's got a good three, four inches on him vertically, and even more in the chest area, but somehow he manages to make himself look smaller, hunching his shoulders a little, ducking his head.
It doesn't stop her dad from saying the extremely tactful, “Jesus, you're like a fucking tank.”
“It's good to meet you, Mr Lewis,” Steve says, valiantly ignoring the embarrassing situation her dad has brought to the party. He holds his hand out, and her dad shakes it slowly.
“Yeah... it's, it's something to meet you too,” he says, staring at Steve sort of blankly.
“Yo, Dad,” she says, poking him in the side, “how about let's not stand out in the rain, and you can let go him now, yeah?”
“Right, sorry, yeah, your friends were talking about people 'breaking perimeter', so we should probably get going.”
The ride home is just a couple of steps away from insufferably awkward. Her dad alternately chats aimlessly and fiddles with the radio, blasting them with various mindless pop songs. Steve looks increasingly pained as time passes, dwindling down to one word answers.
“Okay, kids,” her father says, twenty excruciatingly long minutes in. She's starting to recognise the houses passing by them, the run down bungalow on the corner with all the cats, the house with the twenty year old Christmas decorations that stay up all year round. “Time to hide. There are a couple of blankets back there. One of you is gonna have to be go in the well, I'm afraid.”
Steve looks at Darcy and she sighs. “No, let me,” she says, sliding down behind the driver's seat, and pulls one of the blankets over her head.
“This is ridiculous,” Steve mutters, as she hears him shifting around.
“The price of fame, my boy! It's a damn good thing we didn't get that smart car we were thinking about,” her father says. She feels the car turn and slow down, and there's a hum of activity outside. “Guys!” he says, “I got a couple of extra bags of Doritos, anyone hungry? I have dip, too.”
Darcy peeks out from under the blanket as the car rolls into garage, the garage door squeaking and whirring as it comes back down.
“Okay, all clear,” he says. Darcy clambers up and smiles at Steve, who's sitting up, pulling the blanket from off his head, his hair all fluffed up at the front.
“They're starting to feel like part of the family,” her father comments. “I might bring them out some goose on Christmas Day.”
“I'll get the bag,” Steve says, bailing from the car.
She leans forward and bangs her hand against the driver's seat. “Hey, Dad, try not to freak Steve out, okay?”
“I love that you think I'd be able to freak out Captain America.”
“Daddy, you can do anything you put your mind to. But seriously, Steve's kind of... a closet neurotic, just lay off a little, yeah? I know it might be hard, with your great and terrible wit, but.”
“My girl's all grown up,” he says wistfully. “I'll be good.”
Her mother is upstairs when they come in through the kitchen.
“Such a nice welcome,” Darcy mutters, looking around the cluttered kitchen. The house has never been, like, tidy or anything, but the clutter seems to have doubled. Shit, her parents like knick knacks. Steve looks even bigger than normal, standing awkwardly in their poky little house.
Steve makes a sound next to her, looking over at the fridge. Artfully centred in the middle of a collage of baby photos and school pictures (oh man, she'd almost forgotten her side ponytail phase) is a torn out picture from a newspaper, Steve turning his face from the photographer's camera, his body turned protectively towards her, while she's ducking her head and grinning. It's very rock star.
“Darcy is that you?” her mother yells from upstairs. “Come upstairs, I'm still tidying.”
“Prepare yourself,” Darcy murmurs to Steve, and takes him by the hand to lead him upstairs.
There's a pile of sheets on the floor outside Darcy's childhood bedroom, and the tunelessly humming of her mother coming from within the room.
“Mom?” she calls, peering around the door frame, still holding Steve's hand loosely. Her mother looks up from straightening the cover, blowing unruly hair from her face, and smiles.
“Oh, my baby girl,” she says, dropping the collection of towels held in one arm to the bed. She kisses Darcy on both cheeks and gives her a one armed hug, before fixing her steely gaze on Steve. “Now, let me look at you,” she says, half crowding him against the wall. God, both her parents are so embarrassing.
“Mom, this is Steve. Steve, this is my mom, Elaine.”
“Mrs Lewis,” Steve says, offering his hand, like clinging to his upright values will bring order to this household. (Hint: it won't.)
“I thought you'd be taller,” is her mom's judgement, shaking his hand briefly.
“Mom.”
“What, they make him out to be seven foot or something in the papers. It's not a criticism, just an observation.”
“I'm not offended,” Steve says quietly, smiling a little.
Darcy tuts. “You wouldn't be offended if someone came up to you and punched you in the face.”
Steve tips his head to one side. “I wasn't when you did.”
“Okay, okay.” Her mother holds up her hands and steps around them. “I'll leave you two to get settled in. Darcy, I changed your sheets and got you some towels. Your room is disgusting.”
Her room is kind of disgusting, she notes when she has a closer look. And basically exactly how she left it when she moved out for college at eighteen. Except for the rectangular depressions in the carpet. “Hey!” she shouts, as her mother retreats down the stairs, “You really did have gym equipment in here!”
“I said I did, didn't I?” her mother's answer drifts back.
Darcy sighs and lifts the suitcase on to the bed to open it up. She's feeling so much love right now.
“So,” Steve says, and stops. He's carefully checking out the room, her bookcase stuffed full of old textbooks and doorstop fantasy novels, her collection of My Little Pony on the windowsill, her Evanescence and Linkin Park posters. She's pretty sure her notebook full of emo poetry is around here somewhere. “So,” he tries again, “we're... sharing?”
“Uh, yes?”
“Oh, okay, because...” He shoves his hands in his pockets. “It's just, we're under your parents' roof and we're not married, so I thought maybe... Is that too old-fashioned?”
Steve looks so ridiculously out of place, surrounded by her childhood. She grabs his arms, like she can anchor him down. “No, lots of people are like that, I think. My parents just don't give a shit.”
“Okay.”
“I mean, unless you want to sleep somewhere else. I think Dad has a cot in his study.”
“No, I-- I don't think I'd much like sleeping alone, any more,” he says, doing that coy act that he's actually starting to get a little good at. Man, he could be such a heart breaker if he put some effort in. She wraps a hand around his waist, pulling him in. “I heard what you said to your father, you know.”
“Ew,” she says, screwing up her face. “Sorry about that.”
“It's okay. Better neurotic than angry and grumpy, I guess.”
She'd tell him how lovely he is, but she's pretty sure he's just about reached his limit for embarrassment today. “Dinner's soon. Just, you know, ignore everything Dad says.”
The photo album of doom is on the dining room table when they go back downstairs. Darcy looks at it in horror as Steve asks if he can help with anything, and ends up laden down with plates and bowls of food to bring to the table.
“He's not a packhorse!” she shouts around the door.
“I don't mind.”
“You don't mind anything,” she says, and picks the album up, carrying it across the room to hide it in a drawer. “They'll have you mowing the lawn and clearing the gutters if you aren't careful.”
“Put that down, young lady,” her mother says behind her and Darcy drops her head in defeat. So close.
“What is that?” Steve asks, forced down into a seat by her mother as she starts serving the chicken and risotto.
“After dinner entertainment,” her mother says. “Darcy, sit down.”
She takes a seat next to Steve at their little dining room table set up in the corner of the living room. There are several piles of books on floor, hastily moved from the tabletop. The table hasn't been used for its intended purpose in years. “Jeez, Mom, are you feeding the five thousand?”
She shrugs. “You said Steve eats a lot and your father's inner old Jewish woman got excited. Sam, get in here before your food gets cold!”
They eat in uncomfortable silence for a while, interspersed with comments from her mom about her work teaching English Lit at the local university, and Steve thanking them, like, four times for the food. Darcy has to kick him under the table to get him to shut up.
“So, how did you two kids meet, then?” her mother asks Steve. Darcy resists the urge to bang her head on the table. She's already told them this story, and they're just grilling Steve about it now to be dicks.
“It was at the Independence Day celebrations at Central Park. S.H.I.E.L.D. had her keeping an eye on the kids.” He smiles at her crookedly. She'd almost called in sick that day, because what the fuck, she had to run around after a bunch of kids because she was a chick and it was Captain America's birthday? That day had indeed been a suckfest right up until the moment she looked up and found Captain America watching her quizzically. No photograph or lust-fuelled description could have done him justice.
“Darcy, what did I tell you about picking up strays in the park?” her father says, and she sends a kick his way, but Steve laughs.
“I'm glad she did, sir.” Oh, that earns him a squeeze to the knee and a little further exploration until he takes her hand and gently pushes it away, face betraying none of what's going on under the table.
“Okay, enough of the 'sir',” her father's saying. “I read your comics when I was kid. I used pretend I
was you when we played make-believe in the playground.”
“Oh,” Steve says, and fiddles with cutting his chicken for a second before adding, “I don't know what to say to that.”
Her dad laughs. “You're okay, Steve.” He drums his fingers on the table for a moment before adding, “At the risk of sounding like a cliché, what is it that you do, when you aren't... being a superhero?”
“I'm... between jobs,” Steve says, smiling. “Sometimes Tony tests things out on me.”
“This is Tony Stark, right?” her mother cuts in, and Steve nods. “Just making sure that we understand that our only daughter's boyfriend hangs out with Tony Stark, the biggest womaniser since Hugh Hefner.”
“Uh,” Steve says, “I don't really hang out with him that much...”
“She's joking,” Darcy says, patting him on the shoulder. “And Tony's not that bad. He's kind of a nice guy, even.”
Her mother holds out her hand. “Continue.”
“Um, so, when Tony wants his inventions hit really hard he calls me.” Steve shrugs. “Except for that... I'm thinking about going back to school.”
This is the first Darcy's heard of it. She knows that Steve got a little embarrassed with Tony and Pepper, but she's heard a rumour that Stark has, like, seven PhDs, which can't possibly be true, but in a comparison of education pretty much everyone who isn't Tony Stark is going to lose. “You are?”
He looks at her. “Yeah, the last couple of weeks, I thought maybe...”
She drops her hand to his back. “I think that's great.”
He smiles at her before turning back to her parents. “I didn't get to go to university, before.”
“What do you want to study?” his father asks.
“I was thinking about graphic design. Tony gave me this tablet for Christmas and you can design 3D images on it. I'd like to learn more about that.”
“Again, this is Tony Stark,” her mother comments.
Darcy glares at her. “Steve's a really great artist.”
“I'm okay,” he mutters.
“Oh, shut up, Steve,” she says, pushing at his shoulder a little. “He could totally be professional, no doubt.”
“I don't know about that,” Steve mutters, focusing on his plate for a couple of seconds before raising his head again. “I don't know if it's even going to be possible, though. Can't imagine that Captain America attending afternoon classes isn't going to raise a few eyebrows.”
“There are online courses,” her father says. “Guy at work got his entire law degree online.”
“Maybe, yeah. I'd have to see what Fury says about it, probably.”
“Fury?” her mother asks.
“Classified,” Darcy says.
“Honestly, I'm impressed if Darcy's boyfriends have any goals in life at all,” her father says. “Her last one played video games in his underwear twenty hours a day.”
“To be fair,” Darcy says, “he was a professional video game player.”
“No. I consider myself an open minded guy, but that is not a job. Don't you agree, Steve?”
Steve's eyes widen a little bit. “I don't... know anything about video games, really...”
“I'm just messing with you, but you are the only boy that she's brought home that isn't a complete idiot.”
“Don't be so quick to judgement, sir,” Steve says seriously, and goes back to his food. There's a beat before both her parents laugh, and Steve ducks his head a little, looking pleased with himself.
Desert is ice cream with apple pie (“Very funny,” Darcy dead pans, eyeing her dad.) on the couch with the photo album spread out on the coffee table.
“She was a colicky baby. She just cried and cried and cried,” her mother says, turning to yet another page of grumpy baby pictures. Apparently they whipped the camera out every time Darcy cried or had a tantrum, just so that one day they could show Captain America her fat, blotchy face.
“And who was the one who stayed up with her every night?” her dad says. “Oh yeah, that was me.”
“I was financially supporting you through school, mister,” she says breezily, and coos at a studio shot of Darcy in a yellow dress with a floppy sunflower on her head. God, the nineties.
“Dad was at law school when I was baby,” Darcy explains to Steve. “They were very forward thinking, very early nineties power suit feminism.”
“Oh,” Steve says, because obviously he has no idea what 'early nineties power suit feminism' really means. He looks back at the album and cracks up at Darcy's first grade head shot. It's not like it's her fault that her front teeth grew in last and her dad's hair styling skills started and finished with pigtails sticking straight out from either side of her head. She plants her elbow in his ribcage, but that just makes him laugh harder. He has a nice laugh, it's kind of dumb and giggly sounding, and far too rarely heard. She wraps an arm around his waist, and he lays his arm along her shoulders, surprisingly relaxed in the presence of her parents. Her mother looks at them out of the corner of her eye, but doesn't comment.
“Ah,” her father says, “the boyfriends.” He sweeps his hand across a two page spread of every boyfriend Darcy's had, starting with Glen, the boy who dumped her because initiating a dry, close mouthed kiss made her 'easy'. Twelve year olds, man, they're the worst.
Steve points at her prom photo. Black Hot Topic dress and shit loads of black eyeliner - she thought she was going to be so counterculture, but half her class turned up in that year's range. “Is that Drew?”
“She told you about Drew?” her mother asks.
Steve frowns. “Yeah?”
“And you aren't shocked by her wild youth?” Her tone is light, but Darcy can tell there's a strong vein of 'don't you dare judge my baby girl, I will fight you' to it.
Steve shrugs. “I had kinda a wild youth myself. Lots of... getting into fights and uh, there was a period where I basically lived on the streets.”
That pretty effectively shuts down that line of questioning; Steve sure does know how to kill a conversation.
Darcy clears her throat and taps the image of skinny, greasy-haired Drew. “Yeah, that's Drew.”
She already knew that Steve was kind of a departure for her, dating-wise, but seeing all her boyfriends laid out for her on the page, she realises just how different Steve is to them, physically. It's a cliché, but they were boys, and Steve is definitely a man. She guesses she just never really felt confident enough to talk to the really good-looking guys at high school and university, or maybe she wrote them off as stupid meatheads. It never really occurred to her that Steve might be like that, though. Maybe once you've seen a guy fending off an alien attack with five other stupidly dressed self-appointed superheroes, it's easier to believe that he isn't going to be of the party all night frat boy mentality.
Her dad looks up from the album. “You know what this needs? A new photograph. Let me go get my camera.”
“Sam likes taking pictures,” her mother says as he leaves the room.
“I guessed,” Steve says, flipping through a couple more pages until he settles on Darcy's graduation photos. She wouldn't have gone, but Dad wanted the picture, and an excuse to take a trip to the east coast.
“What was left of Sam's family fled from Germany during the war, so it's a bit of family tradition to record every little thing that happens,” her mother says.
“Oh,” Steve says softly, “I understand.”
And he does: Steve's got at least five door stop sized books about all the things he missed in the war. Darcy gets depressed just looking at them, especially since she can tell how much it upsets him, to know that all these terrible things were happening right under his nose, and he didn't do anything to stop them. She rubs his back, and he smiles a little.
Her father comes back a couple of minutes later, and fiddles with the camera for an inordinate length of time.
“Okay,” he says eventually, “big smiles! And don't worry, it's digital; no awkward conversations about who the blond guy is from the people at the developing place.”
Steve leans his head against hers and her dad snaps the picture, tells her off for blinking, fiddles around deleting it, and takes it again. And twice more for good measure.
He hands the camera over to her. “I'm going to print out the best one, so pick carefully.”
Her choice is between awkward, awkwarder, and awkwardest, while Steve has a perfect easy smile in each picture; she doesn't know how he manages to be such a beautiful human being all of the time. It must be exhausting.
“Eh, I look awful in all of them so the first one, I guess.”
“No, you don't,” Steve says into her hair, and her dad smiles approvingly.
-
“I see where you get it from,” he says later, once they've escaped the clutches of the photo album and made it to her bedroom.
“Get what?” she asks, tugging her t-shirt over her head. Steve's eyes drop for a moment, then snap back up.
“Everything,” he says. “You act like your dad and look like your mom.”
“Don't get any ideas,” she says, letting her jeans pool around her ankles.
“What?” he says, sounding a little flustered.
She steps out of her jeans and starts working on the buttons of his shirt. “You're mine,” she says, mostly joking, but Steve leans into her, looks at her in a way, and she finishes quietly, “don't you forget it.”
“I won't,” he breathes, and moves with her when she walks him backwards to the bed. He drops down onto the mattress, and she climbs on top, working his shirt off his shoulders and sliding her hands up under his undershirt. She traces her fingers around his abs as she kisses him lazily, catching his nipples a couple of times. He moans into her mouth, pushing himself up onto his elbows, and she clutches at his sides, stroking his shoulder blades.
He drops his head back, and she takes the opportunity to get at his neck, biting and sucking. Sometimes she's wishes that he didn't heal so well: she likes the idea of leaving marks on him.
“Wait,” he pants. “We can't have sex in, ahh, in your parents' house.”
“Really, 'cause we seem to be doing a pretty good job of it right now.”
“Darcy, c'mon.”
She pushes herself up. “You're serious?”
His answer is more of a groan of despair, but she gets the idea. “Okay, okay,” she says, and rolls to the side. Steve squirms and pants some more, glances over at her with flushed cheeks.
“Hey,” she says, “if you're hurting, that's not my problem.”
He drops down onto bed and sighs.
-
Her childhood bed is a twin, so Steve just barely fits in it, and Darcy has to slot herself in around him. Which isn't a hardship, really, because he's very cuddly and she's never really been into that before, but she's learning to like it.
She wakes up with her cheek pressed against his chest, and one of her legs tangled between his. He's shifting a bit, which at first doesn't strike her as unusual while she's drifting in and out of sleep, except that his heart is beating kind of fast, and he's making unhappy little noises in his sleep.
She knows he has nightmares sometimes. She doesn't know exactly what they're about, because it's not his favourite topic of conversation, but she can hazard a good guess. They tend to leave him confused and disoriented afterwards, like he's sleepwalking except he really is awake, and she knows not to wake him up while he's in the midst of one, but she hates watching him go through it. She raises her head carefully (she did some research into PTSD nightmares - read: she typed 'waking someone up from a nightmare' into Google - and there were a bunch of stories about people hitting their partners in their sleep; she's pretty certain that Steve would never ever ever ever ever forgive himself if he lashed out at her) and looks at him. His cheeks are flushed, which is different, he normally goes pale, and the sounds he's making are verging on keening.
Well, maybe that isn't an insistently poky part of his leg under her thigh.
“Steve,” she murmurs, giving into her urge to press her fingers just below his mouth. He groans, one hand sliding up the curve of her waist. “Are you having a sex dream?”
He groans some more in response, and she pulls herself up to get a better look at his face. His mouth is slightly open, eyes moving back and forth behind his eyelids, and he arches into her when she moves, trying to rut against her thigh.
Well, shit. Now she's going to have to watch him get all hot and bothered and not participate in the bothering. Although, she imagines that waking someone up from a sex dream wouldn't result in getting hit. Maybe hit on. She crosses her arms over his chest and sighs; there's never anyone around to hear her best jokes.
Steve bites his lip and clutches hard at her waist. His head rolls to one side and he mumbles something softly, too soft for her to catch. She lets it go the first time, but he keeps mumbling stuff, squirming and whining in between, and she only leans in close enough to hear him, she swears, but the syllables are all slurred together and she can't make out a thing. She presses in as close as she can, without actually touching him any more than she already is.
Her nose is right by his cheek when he snuffles, his eyelashes fluttering for a moment before he opens his eyes. This close, she can see all the different shades of blue in the flecks of his irises.
“You were having a sex dream,” she tells him.
He licks his lips. “Yeah. Yeah. You were teasing me.”
“I'm sorry.”
“That's okay.”
She slides over to straddle his hips, wasting no time in pushing her tongue into his mouth, revelling in how he opens up to her, his hands sliding down to her ass, letting her fuck his mouth and pull at his hair. When she pulls away, he makes the most amazing, toe-curling noise of frustration.
“Wait a minute, wait,” she says, and presses her fingers to his lips. “We can't have sex in my parents' house.”
He groans, squeezing her ass, and looks at the clock. It's not even seven yet, her parents won't be up for another couple of hours.
“Oh, that's how it is, is it? Can't go twenty four hours without doing the dirty?”
“Thirty six hours,” he says, as she leans over to her night stand drawer to grab a condom. “Do you have condoms squirrelled away everywhere?”
“Are you complaining?”
“Nooo,” he says, stretching out the word as she wriggles down to get at his pants and free his erection. She considers it for a moment before ducking down and licking away the pre-come. He practically yelps, arching into her grip. “Dar-- ahhh,” he moans, his hand closing around her shoulder. “Darcy, Darcy.”
“I got you,” she murmurs, and makes quick work of the condom, while he does his best to keep still, though he can't quite stop all the little shudders. She sinks down onto him slowly and he rocks up into her with an impatient groan, tipping his head back against the pillows.
She spreads her hands out over his chest and looks at him, spanning his abs with room to spare. It's kind of crazy to think that six months ago he was a guy who, to her, was basically just a character in the comics that her Granddad shared with her father as child - and he compounded that by looking like he'd been drawn by someone who had a very definite idea of American masculinity. Five months ago she was wondering if she wasn't just bullying this poor guy into spending time with her because she was hot for him, and six weeks ago she took his virginity.
Now he just looks like he might cry if she doesn't start moving. She rolls her hips once, slow and hard, and his mouth drops open. He reaches up and pulls at her shirt, awkwardly trying to get it off before he just drags her down and kisses her, pawing at her breasts through the material. It's kind of awesome how he gets all clumsy when he's really turned on, and she grins into the kiss as she tugs the shirt up and over her head easily. She grinds down again and he moans, stretching his throat and clenching his jaw, inviting her to her worst.
“Wait,” he moans, and she doesn't even register it at first, because it sounds exactly like every other thing he's moaning, but he runs his fingers through her hair and tugs. “Darcy, wait.”
She pulls back and looks at him. He's pink all over, hair mussed, mouth swollen - he looks like they've already gone a couple of rounds, and they haven't even got started yet. “You don't seriously want to stop now, do you? Even you aren't that much of a masochist.”
“No, I just-- ah-- I can't, I don't want to... wake anyone.”
“You better keep quiet then,” she says, ducking down for another kiss.
“I don't think I, I can,” he manages.
Oh. Well, that's sort of very flattering. “Okay, how about this then?” she whispers into his ear, and presses her hand over his mouth. She takes his muffled moan as ascent and goes back to what she was doing. They settle into a rhythm, Steve meeting her every time she rocks into him, pressing his thumbs against her nipples, rolling his head back into the pillows every time. The harder she presses down on his mouth, the more he writhes and tries to groan; she'd already suspected that he had a bit of a domination kink, and this is ample proof of that.
There's not much he can do, with her holding him down like this, but he pays lots of attention to her breasts, squeezing and kneading them with his fingertips. He always tries to make sure not to leave any of her unloved, but she knows that guys are drawn to her tits like magpies are to shiny things, and Steve's no different in that regard, although he's pretty good about not making it obvious. At least until he gets his mouth on them. Then it's not much of a puzzle.
For once it seems like Steve might come first, the way he's moving, his stomach muscles clenching and relaxing over and over again, and that's just not acceptable. She takes one of his hands from her breasts and guides it down, arranging his fingers where she wants them against her. It took him a little getting used to, when she first introduced him to the concept of fingering; apparently he'd always thought that it sounded painful for the girl, but he took to it like he does everything: like a boss.
His big fingers - two, she's quite insistent on this - rub against her clit, stretching her until she very well may not be able to keep quiet herself, and God, she wishes his body was on top of her, pressing her down into the mattress, sliding her up the sheets with every thrust until she has to lay her hands flat against the wall to stop from bumping her head. She rides his dick and his hand as hard as she can without her legs actually seizing up, almost forgetting that he's even there and that this isn't just a really excellent dildo, and she is so close...
There's a tapping at the door. “Darcy? Your father wants to know if Steve likes anything in particular for breakfast.”
Darcy's head snaps up, to Steve with his eyes as wide as saucers, then to the door, which thank fucking God she remembered to lock last night.
“No!” she barks. “He'll eat anything! Go away!”
“Well, there's no need to be rude,” her mother says, and then Darcy hears the creaking of departing footsteps.
She doesn't even want to look back at Steve; if there was ever a boner killer, this would be it, and she'll be lucky if he ever looks either of her parents in the face ever again.
Then a high-pitched whine escapes from between her fingers and Steve rolls his hips, presses his fingers in harder, and generally ruts into her like a randy dog, his cheeks staining red around her hand. Well. Well, okay, she thinks, and redoubles her efforts. Steve crooks his fingers just right and brings her to orgasm like a pro, watching her face the entire time, his body getting tenser and tenser underneath her, until she's pretty sure it's just cruel to make him wait any longer. The noises coming from the back of his throat are so incredible, she wants to hear them properly, and she doesn't know when she's going to be able to indulge this apparent kink of his again. One day, one day she's going to get him somewhere soundproofed and just draw the loudest sounds out of him that she possibly can, until he's hoarse from it.
Until then, she settles for leaning over and slapping her clock radio on, twiddling the volume control up on whatever dance music is playing, and removing her hand from his mouth. There's actually a freaking imprint of her hand there, although it starts to fade away immediately. He presses his head back into the pillow, and moans for all he's worth while she digs her fingers into his hair and thrusts as hard as she can, through the burn of her muscles and the sweat she can feel running down her back.
Steve comes with one hand still on her breast, the other twisting in the sheet, his Adam's apple bobbing as he says something that's drowned out by the music. His body goes rigid for a moment, then just totally relaxes, the closest to boneless that she's got him so far. She turns the radio off again and slides off him as she feels his dick start to soften inside her, then strips him of the condom, knots it, and wraps it in a tissue to throw away later.
“Wow,” she says, running her hands up his chest, getting a smile in return. “I didn't know you had a thing about almost getting caught in the act.”
“Neither did I,” he says, with a lazy quality to it that makes her lean down and kiss his chapped lips. “But you don't think your parents heard us, do you? 'Cause that, that wouldn't be good.”
She drops down next to him. “I doubt they could hear anything over Kei$ha brushing her teeth with a bottle of jack.”
“Okay. Mm,” he murmurs, licking his lips. “We don't have to get up yet, do we?”
“Not if you don't want to,” she says, and he hums happily, rolling onto his side to bury his face in her shoulder. She kisses his forehead and twines their legs together. He's already on his way back to sleep, she can tell, all warm and loose-limbed against her.
“I love you,” she says softly.
“Mm. Love you too,” he mumbles.
-
Christmas at the Lewis household normally consists of getting up late and eating fast food in front of whatever reruns are on the television. They do the fun parts, like presents and decorations, because who doesn't like shiny things and getting stuff, but the rest of it is a bit of a mystery to Darcy. The closest she's ever got to the 'true meaning' of Christmas was playing a sheep in her kindergarten nativity.
Steve, though, he used to do all this Christmassy stuff. His mom took him to see the Santa Claus at Macy's, the displays in all the big department stores, which were even bigger treats than for most, because he rarely got further than the two block walk to school. When he was fifteen, the nuns took him, along with a group of kids from the orphanage, to see the first official tree at Rockefeller Center get lit up. And, of course, he went to midnight mass every year.
“Do you want to go do that tonight?” she asks while they're peeling and chopping all sorts of vegetables, most of which she has never eaten in her life (sprouts, Dad, really? He's being a total show-off for Steve). “There's a church around here somewhere.”
“You don't want to do that,” he says, glancing at her out of the corner of his eye.
“I don't mind. Would you like to?”
He shrugs. “Haven't been in five years. Seventy five years.”
“But do you want to?” she presses, leaning forward and poking him in the side with the handle of the knife she's holding.
“I guess...” he says, but there's a little smile on his face. “How would we get out of the house without being seen?”
He raises a good point: not one blind or curtain has been opened since they arrived, and neither of them have even been into the backyard. Never let it be said that Darcy doesn't put at least a couple of minutes thought into her plans, though.
“Well, you know how you said I look like my mom?” she says, and he nods. “As long as I don't look directly at any cameras, I think I'll be able to trick them. You'll be under a blanket again.”
Of course, because it's one of her plans, it goes perfectly. The remaining reporters hanging around in the front yard at freaking ten thirty pm on Christmas Eve don't even care when she pulls out of the garage, totally unaware of who's being harboured in the house.
They sit in the back of the church, and Darcy just follows what Steve does, stands up and sits down when he does, reads off the little booklet someone handed to her when he points her to the right page, mouths along to the hymns that she doesn't know (Steve's singing voice is nice, though, she doesn't want to drown it out with her own), repeats the prayers, some of which are vaguely familiar. At one point everyone starts, like, kneeling down, except some people don't, and that's a little confusing, so she just sits on the very edge of her seat, in case the priest tells her off for doing it wrong. Which he doesn't, because he's a priest; dude's not going to come over and bitchslap her.
It's kind of hard not to drift off, with all the toneless speeches from the priest, and the scarily in sync repetition of the worshippers. She makes it to the Communion, and most of the room start lining up to receive the bread and wine. She's pretty sure you have to be, like, Catholic and baptised and have done that thing where you dress up like a bride before you're allowed to go up there, so she stays where she is. But so does Steve, and she'd bet money on the fact that he was baptised. Maybe he didn't dress up like a bride, but she's willing to accept that her understanding of this whole thing isn't 100%.
“Don't you want to go up there?” she whispers to him.
He shakes his head, looking at her little sadly. “I don't think that's probably a good idea.”
The whole thing's over pretty soon after that, and Steve makes a quick exit while other people group together to wish each other a merry Christmas. He waits for her by the door and they walk back to the car without talking. He has to get in the back, which is unfortunate, because she's getting some serious sad vibes off him, and she'd like to be able to look him in the eye when she talks to him.
“Hey,” she says as she pulls out of the parking lot, “you okay?”
“Yeah,” he says quietly, and she looks at him in the rear view mirror. He sighs. “No.”
“What's wrong? Do you wish we hadn't come?”
“No, it's not that. I just... I feel like a fraud for being comforted by mass when I don't even believe half of it any more.”
“I think it's okay not to believe all of it. I mean, if you can't have a crisis of faith after what you went through, then no one will ever be able to have one ever again,” she says carefully. Man, theology; she took one course in it in her sophomore year at Culver, and dropped it after two lectures. “I mean,” she barrels when he doesn't reply, “the last time I went to temple was like, shit, fifteen years ago, and I didn't even have a bat mitzvah, but I still consider myself Jewish.”
Probably not the best example, since she's basically an atheist, but she doesn't need to point that out to Steve right now.
“Isn't it called a bar mitzvah?” he asks after a few more seconds silence.
“Bat mitzvah for girls.”
“Oh.”
She glances at the rear view mirror again. He's sitting with his hands in lap, looking out the window. “Steve, you're, like, the epitome of a good Christian. Don't be too hard on yourself.”
He smiles a little. “Have you met me?” he asks.
“Thankfully, I have,” she says, and his smile widens.
-
She's pretty sure that Steve doesn't sleep at all that night; his stillness is almost oppressive, like he's trying so, so hard not to disturb her that he's just broadcasting his anxiety like a fucking loudspeaker.
“Steve,” she mutters just after four in the morning.
“You're awake?”
“No,” she says irritably, shifting around until her back is against the wall and her chest is squashed against his side, “I'm still asleep, you're hallucinating.”
“Sorry, stupid question.”
She looks out the outline of his face in the dark and imagines him ducking his head, looking at her ruefully. Shit, now she feels bad.
“Come here,” she says, tugging at his arm until he rolls over. She pushes his head down so that his cheek is resting against her stomach - she's noticed that he likes that, being all curled up, even if he's a little big for it. Something to do with being little most of his life, she guesses, although he doesn't like talking about it.
Still, she's pretty sure he doesn't get any sleep and in the end she gets up at seven anyway. On her holiday, it's a tragedy.
Her parents are already awake when they get downstairs, her dad messing around in the kitchen making stuffing for the ridiculously large goose, and her mom on her laptop, frowning at the screen, a pair of glasses balanced on the end of her nose. She's never really free of her students. When Darcy stomps in to get coffee, though, her dad drops everything and hauls them both out to open presents.
From her grandmother she gets a knitted cardigan, dark brown and vomit orange with mismatched buttons. She must be the only granddaughter ever that actually likes her grandmother's strange creations. Her parents give her a hundred dollar gift card for Amazon with a note says, 'our laziness is made up for by how much this is worth'. From other assorted relatives she nets fifty dollars and ten cents.
“This is from me and Steve,” she says, handing them a hastily wrapped gift. Her dad gives it a shake, despite it being flat and solid, then hands it to her mom to open. Steve shifts a little as she opens it and reveals the old signed USO picture of him that Darcy found in a storage room - needless to say, it wasn't Steve's idea.
“That shit would be worth a lot on ebay,” Darcy says, as her dad takes it and turns it over in his hands. “But don't sell it; technically you're not even meant to have it.”
“Stealing's wrong,” her dad says vaguely, not even looking up. “But I don't want to be right.”
Steve's starting to blush, so she grabs his present from under the tree and shoves it into his hands.
“This is for you,” she says. His eyebrows jump up, like he thought she wasn't going to get him something or some shit, and he rips through the much less hasty wrapping paper, smiling.
“It's a book,” he says, then, “oh, it's...” He smooths his hand over the leather cover, mouth slightly open.
“It's a sketchbook,” she says. “That shitty one you have is falling to pieces. I did a lot of research about this thing. Did you know there are, like, lots of different kinds of paper for sketching and stuff?” She doesn't add that it cost her a good hundred dollars.
“Yeah,” he says, flipping through the pages, rubbing the paper between his fingers carefully. “This is beautiful, thank you.”
“That's okay,” she says, and he grins, kissing her on the cheek, then reaching under the tree to pull something out to give her. It's a rectangular box, very neatly wrapped with a bow - a real one, not one stuck down with double sided tape. She tears through it with her usual grace, pulling out a plain cardboard box.
“Open it,” Steve says, nudging her. She rolls her eyes and pops open the top, then empties out all the tissue paper and slides out whatever's inside.
“What is... is this a taser?” she asks, pointing the sleek silver thing at him. He pushes her hand down.
“I asked Tony what the best taser on the market is, and he said whatever one he made. So this is one of a kind. Tony tried to insist that since he made it it's his gift to you, but I was the one who told him, so... he can shut up.”
She laughs and pulls him in for a kiss.
Her mom claps her hands together. “Okay, food's not going to cook itself,” she says, and grabs her dad's hand to pull him up.
Darcy smiles against Steve's mouth. “I think we made them uncomfortable. But I feel gross, I need to have a shower.”
She draws her feet underneath herself and starts to stand up, but Steve grabs her hand and gives it a tug.
“I've got another present for you,” he says softly, urging her back down.
“Okay? Don't think this means I'm buying you something else though,” she says flippantly, but Steve looks super nervous. She sits back down next to him and frowns as he pulls something else out from under the tree. A little something. A little... jewellery box.
Shit, she thinks. Shit shit shit. She kind of thought that if Steve proposed to her, it'd be a big romantic affair, like dinner and dancing and all that stuff, but then, he never does like to make a fuss, so...
He shoves the box at her awkwardly, and she thinks: well, maybe it wouldn't be the worst thing ever, to get married. Maybe she even likes the idea. Maybe she likes the idea when it's Steve doing the asking. Maybe. She takes a breath and holds it, then opens the box.
Huh.
“It's a locket?” The box was obviously too big to be a ring box, she thinks, duh, Darcy. She definitely isn't upset about that, but she isn't relieved either. That's a feeling to file away for later.
“Yeah, it's...” He takes the box from her and pulls the chain out, holding it up to her. “It was my mother's. Uh, most of her things are gone, she had to pawn her rings when I was a kid, but this was the... the first gift my father ever gave her, for her sixteenth birthday.”
Darcy catches the locket as it swings between them. It's oval-shaped, with a swirly pattern engraved on the front and on the back the words: To my love on her birthday, Joe.
“I'm sorry it's already personalised,” he says, “I, uh--” He trails off as she flicks it open. There are a couple of browned pictures inside. On the left there's a man that resembles Steve, though he's younger and his face is more drawn, and on the right there's a toddler wearing something with a frilly collar.
“Is that you?”
“Yeah, and my father. You don't have to keep them in there. I just, I didn't know what... uh...”
She flips the locket shut again and cradles it carefully in her hand. “Is this the only thing of your mother's that you have?”
“Yeah,” he says quietly.
“And you're giving it to me?”
He nods, pressing his lips together.
“Oh, Steve,” she says, dragging him in for another kiss. “You're unbearably sweet.”
He blinks at her, glances at her closed hand for moment. “I thought maybe you'd find it a bit weird, but it should be worn, and, and I want you to wear it. If you want to.”
She fists her other hand in his t-shirt. “I want to.”
“Okay,” he says, grinning.
“Okay,” she replies, and closes the gap between them again.
-
Steve gets roped into doing a load of the cooking, because her dad looks at the mess he's got himself into, wails about how disgusting doing the stuffing is, and Steve makes the mistake of offering his help. He doesn't seem to mind that much, though.
“Darcy likes it when I do the cooking,” Steve says, then cringes a little, like he's revealed this huge secret about them, gasp, spending enough time together to be cooking for each other (though it really is a one way street). Maybe even cohabiting, the horror of it.
Her dad just laughs. “Got that off her mother.”
“Damn straight,” her mom says, taking a sip of her wine.
After a truly ridiculous amount of food, most of eaten by Steve, her dad pulls out another photo album, an overstuffed one with a cracked and peeling cover and thick black pages with sheets of semi-transparent paper over the top. Darcy hasn't seen it in years.
“What are you doing with Pop's album?”
“He brought it over at Thanksgiving, told me to hang on to it in case 'the Captain' ever visits.”
Steve glances at her. “What's this?”
“My grandfather's photo album. It's got everything from, like, 1941 onwards.”
Steve's eyebrows jump up and he leans forward, resting his elbows on his knees. Her dad grins like a kid and flips it open. “My father really wanted you to see this.” He slides the album over to Steve and taps one of the pictures. It's one Darcy has seen a lot, of her Pop dressed up in a crudely made Cap helmet, brandishing a trash can lid for a shield. Steve touches the crinkly transparent paper carefully.
“They came over in '42, when my dad was six,” her father says. “He learnt how to speak English reading your comics.”
“Oh, that's... probably not such a good idea,” Steve says, smiling slightly. “I read some of them, when the girls showed them to me, they were pretty bad.”
“Oma did say that he went through a phase of using comic book sound effects as if they were words, but he also learnt the proper use of the words 'gosh' and 'swell'.”
“I didn't even used to say that!” Steve says, laughing.
As they dig into the album a little more, her mom taps her on the shoulder. “Do you want to go attack the leftover dessert before they get at it?” she asks, nodding at Steve and her dad. Darcy senses that she has some ulterior motives going on, other than cake, but seriously, there's cake.
She pats Steve on the shoulder. “I'll be in the kitchen.”
“Okay,” he says, distracted by a picture of her grandfather's collection of Captain America memorabilia circa 1950.
When she gets into the kitchen, her mother hands her a fork and pushes the chocolate log over to her.
“I feel like you're lulling me into a false sense of security,” she says, picking off the marzipan holly leaf and setting it aside.
“Don't be so suspicious.” She points her fork at Darcy. “That's a nice necklace.”
Darcy closes her fingers around the locket protectively. “Yeah.” Her mother stares at her, and Darcy rolls her eyes. “Steve gave it to me, it was his mom's.”
“I see.”
“You disapprove.”
“No, not really. I'll admit that I was a little... surprised when I found out from Twitter that my only child was dating a World War II superhero, but he seems like a very nice young man.”
“He is,” Darcy can't help but say. Her mother smiles knowingly.
“He's also from a different era. Women got the right to vote, what, a couple of years after he was born?”
“Mom.”
She shrugs. “I'm only pointing out that he was raised with very different values to you and even to mine and your father's parents. I don't want you to feel judged by him, is all.”
“He doesn't. Seriously, he was disappointed that I didn't have a tattoo.”
Her mother holds up her hands. “Okay, I don't need to know about that,” she says, and pulls the plate away from Darcy, who follows it with her fork in distress. “As long as you know that we're here for you whenever and for whatever. Come on, there's a Die Hard marathon on soon.”
When Steve's phone rings a few hours later, Darcy is well and truly ensconced on his lap, admiring Bruce Willis's aversion to upper body clothing.
“Oh, damn,” he mutters, “Sorry, I should have turned it off.”
“That's okay, we've seen this movie, like, fifteen times.”
Steve pulls the phone out and looks at it, then looks at her.
“Who is it?”
“Tony. Are you gonna...?” He motions to his lap.
She shifts a little. “No.”
He sighs, then answers it. “Hey, Tony. What do you... no, I'm not being unfriendly, I'm just wondering why you're calling me on Christmas day... Well, yeah, merry Christmas to you too.” He rolls his eyes and shakes his head at Darcy, mouthing 'I think he's drunk' to her. “What's that? Wait, what?” He sits up, slinging an arm around Darcy to stop her from sliding off his lap. “When are you leaving? Do you need any help? Yeah, yeah, okay, just let me know how everything's going. Tony, Tony, does Fury know-- He hung up.”
“What's happening?”
“He, uh.” Steve glances at her parents, who are doing really terrible impressions of people who aren't desperately listening in. “He found Bruce.”
“Where?”
“Uhhh, I'm sorry, I can't...” He glances at her parents again.
“Oh, pretend like we're not here,” her mom says, cuddling up against her dad.
“We're trying really hard to, don't worry,” Darcy says.
Part 3