Chapter Text
Day 346
Tuesday, 11:45 AM
After a lazy new year’s day, Steve does everything in his power to avoid Darcy.
It’s almost like last year, when she had just started doing whatever she’d been doing with Bucky, except now it was infinitely harder, as she lived with him and actively sought him out. Steve hadn’t realised just how integrated their daily life was until he started attempting to untangle it.
He eats breakfast with Sam at the diner where Sam lives to avoid Darcy doing yoga in the mornings. Sam is still bummed about his breakup with Bianca, but as the weeks go by he seems more upset about how boring physical therapy is, than his breakup.
He stays longer after work, no longer rushing to finish the meetings and reports and analysis and training drills so that he can make dinner for himself and Darcy. He tells Darcy the reason he is not home as much is because he is helping Sam through the breakup, and she is fully supportive of his decision to support his friend. Her sympathy for Sam and boundless understanding makes Steve feel guilty about blowing her off, but he sticks to it.
He sticks to it until his friends betray him. When Steve shows up to take Sam to physical therapy about two and a half weeks into the new year, Sam threatens to tell Darcy about his undying love for her, if Steve won’t leave him the hell alone, and stop using him as an excuse.
Steve then starts hanging out with Bucky and Natasha, and they let him third wheel until that Sunday before they, too, threaten to tell Darcy.
Luckily Sam still eats breakfast with him in the diner every morning, so at least he doesn’t have to see Darcy work out in skimpy clothing while he’s drinking his morning coffee.
Or so he thought.
When he walks into the training room to do a sparring session with Natasha he hears:
“Hey Steve, watch this!” He turns and sees Darcy barrelling towards him.
The shock of seeing her is enough to give her the upper hand. He just stands there and takes it when she tackles him to the ground in a shoddy version of one of Natasha’s easier takedowns.
So there he lays. His back on the mat, pinned under a scantily clad, and slightly sweaty Darcy. She’s got his wrists pinned to the floor on either side of his head, her knees on his shoulders and face a few inches above his. He’s barely breathing, using all his remaining control to keep his eyes from slipping to her lips, and his body from flipping her either off him or under him, he’s not sure which, so he stays still.
“Gotcha!” She smiles down at him, then lets go of his wrists to playfully boop his nose before she clambers up and stands above him with her hand out in an offer to help him get up.
He just lays there, eyes still wide as they fly over from her, her outstretched hand, to Natasha.
“Shit technique, Darcy,” Natasha admonishes, “if he were not surprised, and also unwilling to hurt you, he would have broken your knee with his elbow when he blocked you.”
Natasha then nods at the training dummies they had just come from, “try again.”
Darcy rolls her eyes but turns her back to Steve and skips back to the dummies, ponytail bobbing with every skip.
Steve looks back at Natasha, he’s pretty sure his face betrays his feeling of betrayal.
“She says she feels like she’s worked out enough to try working out with us. Says it’s her new year's resolution to win a fight against Clint. Who am I to deny her such pleasures?”
Then Natasha turns and follows Darcy back to the dummies and starts to correct her forms and drill the maneuver into her until it is muscle memory.
Steve just blinks at them for a full minute, eyes lingering too long on Darcy’s thigh resting on the dummy’s hip, knowing that was where it had been on him minutes ago, then he turns to the equipment in the farthest corner from the two, and starts doing his warmups with his back to where he can hear Darcy laugh in triumph against the dummy.
Nowhere is safe anymore.
Darcy keeps popping up everywhere. He goes to physio with Sam and gets a cup of coffee after; Darcy is there on a coffee break, telling them Sam texted her they had good coffee here and that she should get down there and join them. Sam soon excuses himself to take a taxi home, blaming exhaustion even though Steve know's it's bullshit. He ends up walking Darcy back to the tower, her arm around his to not slip on the icy pavement.
He goes to the movies with Bucky; Darcy is there, discussing the movie in detail with them afterwards, comparing it to other pieces of media they’ve both consumed and getting into a heated debate with him about who the real villain was. (They both agree on who, just for different reasons). It’s not until they get home that Steve realises he doesn’t remember when Bucky excused himself to go home. He also can't place him with them longer than exiting the cinema.
He goes to an art show with Natasha; Darcy is there, thanking Natasha for the invite, telling him about the online beef between the two artists and dissecting the genius media campaign that set up this faux feud to up ticket prices. She is almost more impressed by their PR than the art. Natasha leaves before Darcy is done explaining the feud.
He has one of his few down times with Tony while he is still in town, coming to his R&R lab to test new gear (hit things hard); and Darcy is there, chilling on one of Tony’s comfortable couches and helping Steve really push the boundaries on some of the equipment. Darcy really is a whizz with computers, even Tony is impressed by her bypassing his programming with a combination of a USB stick and some water and a hairpin. Steve too, though he is more impressed by how Darcy talked a mile a minute about everything and anything under the sun as she did it, distracting Tony from what she was doing; only other person who could achieve that level of casualness and make it seem natural was Natasha.
It’s not like Steve can be mad. He knows what his friends are trying to do, and he does like spending time with Darcy, but if he really has any chance of making it out of this without completely obliterating his heart, he needs to make some changes.
Day 349
Friday, 11:40 PM
Darcy starts organising fun bonding times for the Avengers again. Only this time, instead of bringing them to another bar with pool or darts, and booths for conversations, she brings them to a club. There is a light up dancefloor, the music is too loud for anyone but Steve and Bucky (and maybe Natasha) to hear anything not shouted directly at them. Clint has a great time, immediately disconnecting his hearing aid and doing some sort of rock-polka to the vibrations all around him. Darcy and Kate join him. Sam quickly disappears with a handsome man after only a few dances, and Natasha and Bucky look like they have a great time doing impressive ballroom moves that Steve knows Bucky’s good at, but somehow making it work with the music, which is something Darcy called dubstep.
Steve spends most of the night in a corner, nursing the same beer and waiting until Darcy told him it was time to go home. He would have left earlier, but he needed to know she got home safe.
He tried not to pay too much attention to the amount of attention she was getting on the dancefloor with her magnetic presence and the see-through mesh top that looked just as good on her now as it did at that impromptu fashion show two months ago.
“It’s been so long since I danced like that,” Darcy sighed when the door opened to their living room. “Too long since I did any kind of dancing really,” she turned to him with a salacious smirk and suggestive eyebrow wiggle. Steve barely had time to register the innuendo before she almost tripped over the shoes she had just kicked off, and he reached a hand out to steady her.
“Why thank you, good sir,” she smiled and her hand went up from where his grabbed her shoulder up until it was settled on his chest, leaving goosebumps in her wake. She leaned in as if to let him in on a secret, then: “However can I repay you?”
Steve frowned, confused, then blinked as he understood that Darcy was drunkenly flirting with him.
I- wh at- what do I do?
His inaction, his frown, or both, seemed to have sobered Darcy up a little, as she awkwardly patted his chest and stared walking down the hall to the bathroom.
“Sorry it’s been a while, not just for you.” Then she closed the bathroom door with a sort of finality that left Steve reeling.
Day 350
Saturday
The next morning she looks adorably pitiful as she nurses her hangover on the couch while binging a new show. Well, new to him, and he ends up picking up fastfood and letting her nap with her feet on his lap as he watches almost the whole first season. None of them bring up the awkward moment in the hall.
Steve reflects on his miserable attempt at distance the past week.
Somehow, avoiding Darcy this week ended up with them basically going on a date every damn day. Surprise takedown by courtesy of Natasha on Monday, coffee date orchestrated by Sam on Tuesday. Movie date set up by Bucky on Wednesday, another date set up by Natasha at the gallery the day after, R&R fun at Tony’s on Friday before they all went out as a group, and now he’s even managed to have a day of domestic bliss entirely by his own design!
Day 351
Sunday
He tells Sam to quit meddling after their Sunday breakfast. Sam had just gotten the all clear from Dr Cho to do some more exercising, as long as it didn’t involve heavy weights and too much use of his shoulder. They were enjoying a brisk walk in Central Park when Steve brought up his dismay that none of his friends seemed to be able to leave him and his love life alone, when Sam came to an abrupt stop, let out the biggest sigh, and told him he had to leave. Promptly leaving before Steve could even offer to walk him back to the subway.
When he returns home earlier than he usually does on a Sunday and sees Darcy doing pushups on her yoga mat in front of the TV, he tells her to put a jacket on and brings her with him to the local gym he frequents.
He helps her get set up with her own gym membership, then shows her how to use the weights and equipment. They spend a couple of hours going over everything and setting up a workout plan for her, and Steve pretends not to notice the change in her body over the last few months.
It’s still soft and curvy, but there is some serious definition to her shoulders and he can see the strength in her thighs. Even her posture seems a bit taller, less hunched over, as she confidently pushes on and gives her all. He is impressed. He knew she’d been working out a lot, but he hadn’t let himself think about it too much.
At the end, Darcy is pink faced, sweaty and still somehow full of energy, and insists he show her some basic sandbag moves. Her eagerness to use the punch Natasha's been teaching her, makes her almost unable to stand still.
“Plant your feet,” Steve reminds her again.
“But you said be light on your feet!” Darcy throws over her shoulder, “how can I plant my feet and be light on my feet at the same time, Steve?”
Steve sighs and walks up to her, carefully, but firmly, placing his hands on her hips to steady her. “There’s a difference between moving around and jerking around, your hips and feet should be doing the same thing, not- whatever you’re doing. Here try to bounce while not actually jumping and having your hips parallel to your feet.” he adjusted her stance and let go. Darcy immediately lost the focus on her feet the moment she started punching again.
“No, here try this.”
He felt stupid. Holding her hips, instructing her to do the same moves in slow motion as he guided her hips and corrected her stance. He felt like a skeevy golf instructor in cheesy movies, but trying to talk her through it had taken fifteen minutes to no avail. At least Darcy seemed to get it now, and after a few minutes he could reluctantly let go and step back and get his head out of his ass.
Darcy does much better the next few minutes before the exhaustion catches up with her and she declares she’s too hungry to focus.
They go out for lunch after, and when they get home they snuggle up on the couch with the new season of the show Darcy napped through yesterday, and Steve tries not to let his attention be strayed by her bare legs since she emerged from the shower in that short robe of hers before she plopped down next to him.
It feels counterintuitive to spend the entire day together like this, but Steve still can’t help being drawn in by the gravity of her. However, he still thinks getting her a gym membership was a good plan. Maybe she will work out there instead of at their flat?
She made him promise to come back with her next week to help her progress, he agreed.
At least she is not going to be doing the hip thrusts off the edge of the couch while he’s home anymore.
It’s the only consoling thought he has before he rolls over in bed and tries to stop reliving the feeling of guiding Darcy’s hips with his hands, and that one moment he used his foot to kick her feet a little further apart.
Day 353
Wednesday, 17:30
January isn’t even over yet, before Bucky shows up at his apartment unannounced.
Natasha had shown up half an hour earlier and forced Darcy to come work out with her, Darcy complained the whole time she was getting ready, but he could see the bounce in her step as Natasha held out her boxing gloves to her.
Bucky doesn’t even knock, just lets himself in twenty minutes after Darcy and Natasha left, with the key he never returned when he moved out.
“Nice picture,” Bucky is looking at the newly hung picture on the wall between the kitchen door and window. It is the picture of Sarah, but bigger, and cropped to focus on her. Darcy was a whizz with editing programs on her computer, spent a whole day on it and had it printed for him at work, Steve framed it immediately. “Was this the day we were using her laundry for bullfighting with Tommy?”
Steve laughed at the memory, “no, I think this was when we were playing with the pigskin that Suzy’s big brother got. Remember I got that huge bruise on my knee after I completely fumbled it? Yeah, in the picture you can see me looking gloomy about it while you try to cheer me up.”
Bucky laughs too, then turns to look at Steve, “yeah the day we ruined her laundry she did not look this content.” He nodded behind him at the picture, and Steve nodded in agreement.
They both ended up on the couch with a cup each of coffee, aimlessly channel surfing before Steve got impatient.
“Why are you here, Buck?” He sighed.
“Can’t I just hang with my best friend with no ulterior motive?”
“Sure, but this is not that. This was premeditated, you got Natasha to take Darcy out, and I know you Bucky, there’s something you need to say… so say it.”
Bucky stopped flicking through channels and turned the TV off instead. “Stevie, I’ve been wanting to have this talk with you for a long time, we all have-”
“What talk? Who is ‘we all’?” Steve was immediately on the defensive.
“Your friends, people who care about you.” Bucky held his hands up placatingly, like he was the matador and Steve the raging bull that needed to calm down. “I thought it was best if it came from me though. We think it’s time… we think it’s time you got your head outta your ass about this Darcy sitch.”
Steve blinked at him, a thousand thoughts and feeling rolling into him like a tsunami, finally crashing and making his eyes sting instantly. He got on his feet and started pacing.
“Don’t you think I know that Bucky! I’ve tried, but it’s hard. I have tried to keep my distance, I have tried to fall out of love with her, I have tried, but nothing’s worked!”
Bucky looked alarmed, opening his mouth in protest, but Steve cut him off, his hands now up and defensive.
“I know it won’t work as long as we’re living together, I swear, I’m looking at other places! I even thought about moving to back to DC for a bit, or maybe Darcy could move to be with Trevor in Malibu? Whatever it takes because I know this can’t go on for any longer than it already has." Hetook a deep breath and forced himself to lower the volume of his voice before he continued. “Four years Buck! I’ve been in love with her for over four years, and i still keep falling harder every fucking day!”
Steve hadn’t noticed Bucky had gotten up too until he felt his hands on his shoulders, making him halt and look at him.
“Jesus, Steve, this is what I’m talking about,” Bucky shook him slightly, “we don’t want you to stop loving Darcy, we want you to tell her you love her and live happily ever after together. Just look around you, you’ve already built a home together and love each other in every other way that matters, why is this so different and scary?”
“How do you know we’d live happily ever after?”
“I’m not blind, Steve, anyone can see that girl is crazy about you too!”
“No, that’s not-” Steve ran his hands through his hair and sat back on the couch in frustration. “Even if we did end up together as a couple… I could die. I could freeze for another half a century, I could get hurt so bad that she could end up having to make the decision to pull the plug on me. I can’t do that to her!”
Bucky blinked at him, before a snort escaped him. A short humorless laugh.
“Steve, you idiot, she’d be the one deciding to pull the plug anyway!”
“I know, that’s why I got to move, or el-”
“Steve, you dumbass.”
The defeated tone in Bucky’s voice made Steve shut up. Bucky ran a hand over his face, looking closer to the age on his birth certificate than to his actual age. It’s remarkable how much youth was restored to him after he got with Natasha.
“You wouldn’t understand anyway, you’re with someone who has the same, if not more dangerous career.” Steve knew he was pouting, but his pulse was still racing.
Bucky sighed and sat on the coffee table in front of him, but said nothing until Steve reluctantly met his gaze again. It felt familiar. In their youth they would often sit like this. Steve; all emotional and worked up about something, Bucky; calm and patient. Sitting opposite each other as Bucky waited for Steve to calm down enough to meet his eyes. The only difference was that Steve didn’t have to crane his head anymore to reach his eyeline.
“You’ve had a shit life Steve,” Bucky finally said.
“Not as shit as-”
“Not relevant. I’m not here to compare your traumas to others’ Steve. Just because my life was shit, doesn’t mean you didn’t have a shit go of it too.” Bucky sat up straighter, and Steve wisely shut the hell up, ready to listen.
“However, the two of us, with our shit lives? We did not live through both the Great Depression and a World War to run like scared chickens at the mere thought that a happy ending might end in heartbreak.”
Steve opened his mouth, to say what; he didn’t know, but Bucky put a hand on his knee to stop him. “You’ve been hurt. I know. You loved and you lost. Your dad died when you were a baby, your ma before you even turned into a man. Your friend was captured, tortured, experimented on, freed, chose to fight with you and died.”
Bucky sighed, squeezing his shoulder when Steve drew breath to answer, halting him again, “I survived, sure, but you still went through the trauma and grief at my death. You fell in love with an amazing woman, and she loved you back, but before you managed to get your happy ending with her, you went down with that plane in the arctic.
“Then you woke up and it was 70 years later, and the woman you loved had lost her mind and lived out her last days reliving her grief every time you visited her, and you had to relive it with her every damn week until she too died. It’s enough to make someone as empathetic as you not want to go through anything like that again.
“But Steve, you can’t make a horrible life decision based on the mere notion that you might lose someone again.”
Bucky moved his arm from his knee to his shoulder, waiting again patiently for Steve to meet his eyes.
“Don’t you think loving them all, and being loved by them, was worth the heartache of losing them?”
Steve stared blankly ahead, processing Bucky’s words. Bucky sighed, patted his shoulder and stood. “At any rate, the least you could do is stop being such a yuck, and lay all the cards on the table and let the lady have a say herself. Before you do something as cowardly and foolish as moving out and running away. If you don’t… well, I never took you for a coward.”
7:15 PM
When Darcy returns an hour after Bucky’s departure, Steve is already in bed, but not sleeping. His mind keeps churning Bucky’s words over and over again in his head.
Until today he’d had a notion that leaving Darcy was a noble feat, that everyone would agree in the end, if they heard his side of things. Maybe after the dust settled and they could see how happy Darcy could be without him, they all just needed time to get used to the new normal.
But maybe it was just him wrapping what was left of his heart in old newspapers to protect it from further harm.
Was he acting noble or was he being a coward?