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It starts innocuously enough.
The team is called away on a mission and Darcy, on account of not being superpowered, superstrong, or even the tiniest bit muscle-y, stays behind with Jane. And she’s totally fine with that. Staying behind with her favorite person to watch reality TV and eat her weight in chips and guac in between science sessions sounds way better than getting shot at or, on one memorable occasion, temporarily turned into toddlers.
Still, she can’t help but snark at the small group of Avengers as they rush out of the common room to make their way to the helipad.
“Kids these days. You go on vacay but you don’t write, you don’t call,” she mock sighs. “At least bring me a souvenir!” she yells over the klaxons as they file out.
She gets the odd chuckle and some eyerolls and she thinks that’s the end of it.
A week later in the lab, she finds a small brown paper bag on her desk.
“Uh, Janey? This yours?” she calls out.
“Is what mine?” comes Jane’s muffled answer from behind some lab equipment.
The bag is surprisingly heavy and when she carefully upends it onto the desk, a green glass square rolls out with a ‘thump’.
“Um.”
Darcy, mind reeling with thoughts of potential weapons someone might try to sneak into the Tower, very carefully takes a closer look at the bag.
In black ink and spiky handwriting, “For Darcy” is written.
“Okaaaay,” she says hesitantly. She takes a chance and picks up the glass cube hoping she doesn’t get blown to smithereens. Testing the weight in her hands she’s still in one piece so she turns it over to read the words etched on it:
Regional Salesperson of the Month
Springboro, OH
2012
“It’s a…paperweight?”
Jane pokes her head out from behind the machine. “A what?”
“Never mind,” she sighs. She takes a look at Jane and frowns. “Safety goggles, Janey!”
The paperweight pretty much lives on the corner of her desk after that. She figures if someone really wanted to use it to hurt her or Jane it would have happened already. Besides, it keeps all the various requisition forms and SOP templates from fluttering to the floor.
One afternoon, she’s doing some research (read: scrolling through cat gifs online) when someone looms over her desk. She glances up from watching a tabby kitten chase its own tail to see the Winter Soldier himself, Bucky Barnes looking kind of nervous.
She’s friendly with Bucky, as she is with all the Avengers, but they never really hang out one on one. Still, his sarcastic comments, the flirtyness that still errs on the side of polite has had her nursing a little crush ever since he arrived at the Tower. His ice blue eyes and panty-dropping physique don’t help either.
“Hey, Sarge, how’s it goin’?”
“FRIDAY told me that I should probably come down here an’ tell you that crystal thing is mine.” He presses his lips together. “Uh, was mine. It’s yours now. But it’s from me.”
Darcy quirks a brow. Bucky Barnes is being adorably awkward.
“Oh, good!” she says, smiling. “Thought it was a weapon or something at first.”
“Yeah, that was mentioned.”
“You didn’t put yourself in any danger to get this for me did you? Because I was mostly kidding about the souvenir thing.”
“Nah. Pinched it offa some guy’s desk in an office building we were clearin’ out.”
“The office building that was ON FIRE!” Clint’s voice comes from above one of the ceiling tiles.
“What?!” Darcy nearly screeches as she stands from her office chair sending it rolling backwards. “Also, Clint, get down from there!”
Bucky rolls his eyes. “Only a little on fire,” he grumbles. He sends a glare up to the ceiling. “And mind yer business, Barton!”
“Ugh, you Avengers. How did you even – “ Darcy squints at the wall clock. “You know what? You can tell me all about it over lunch. You had Thai food, yet?”
“Nope,” Bucky answers, a little smile forming on his face as he looks at her from beneath dark lashes.
Darcy takes the liberty of taking his arm (and oh, that grin she gets in response does things to her) and says, “Good. I’ll even split my mango and coconut rice with you.”
“Countin’ it, dollface.”
-------
Darcy is strolling to the common room kitchen to forage for snacks, when she passes Bucky in the hallway. She holds her fist out for a fistbump which he returns, touching his metal knuckles to hers with gentle pressure. He even ‘blows it up’ like she taught him and she’s unable to stop a smile from forming on her lips. Just as she’s about to continue on her way, he stops her and presses something into her hand. It has tag on it that says simply ‘Darcy’.
“Bucky, you didn’t have to –“ then Darcy gets a good look at her ‘souvenir’ and promptly bursts out laughing. “Oh my god! Bucky!”
Bucky, arms crossed over his chest and sporting a Cheshire Cat smile, looks very, very proud of himself.
“It’s so…”
He waits expectantly.
“Hideous! I love it!”
She holds up her gift – a bottle opener in the shape of a boy. A boy who is standing with one hand on his hip and the other holding his equipment as if caught in the middle of taking a piss.
“Tracked an arms dealer to Brussels last mission,” Bucky explains, giving her a shy little smile.
“Let’s put this thing to good use,” Darcy declares and motions for him to follow her to the kitchen. She begins rummaging in the refrigerator. She pushes a bag of spinach, some Tupperware containers with dubious looking contents, and a box of lunch meat to the side before finally finding what she’s searching for.
“A ha!” Darcy triumphantly holds out a six-pack of Flying Dog Pale Ale.
Placing it on the counter with a clink, she explains, “You gotta hide the good stuff, otherwise it ‘mysteriously disappears’”
She uses her brand spanking new opener on two bottles and nudges one towards Bucky.
He takes it and Darcy knows she’s got it bad when she’s admiring how the condensation drips over his silver hand and the way his Adam’s apple bobs when he takes a drink.
“It’s good,” he says, surprise coloring his tone.
“I know right? They make a pumpkin one too, for Halloween.”
At that, Bucky’s nose crinkles.
Darcy shrugs and makes her way over to the gigantic beige monstrosity Stark calls a couch. “So you’re not aboard the Pumpkin Spice hype train. Got it.”
She pats the seat next to her, grinning. “C’mon, dude. We’re gonna watch a modern American classic.”
Twenty minutes later, a very heated argument is brewing in the Tower common room.
“They’re gonna go with House #3,” Darcy insists, pointing at Bucky with the neck of her beer bottle. “You’ll see. It’s under budget and that kitchen has good bones! They can renovate it however they like!”
“You are so wrong, doll. It’s House #2, trust me. Good neighborhood, and didja see that backyard? Plenty of room for that mutt they just adopted.”
They both groan when the couple goes with House #1.
“Booo!” Darcy jeers, throwing a piece of popcorn at the TV. “Awful choice. What the hell? It’s tiny and overbudget, you dummies!!”
“Ain’t no yard either,” Bucky grouses, slouching further into the couch. “They don’t deserve that dog.”
Sam walks into the room, glances at the opening credits to the next episode on the tv screen and grins deviously.
He reaches for his wallet. “Let’s make this interesting,” he says to Bucky and Darcy.
-------
“Jane, I’m gonna freakin’ kill you!”
“…Kay.” Jane continues to furiously scribble in a notebook. She squints, lets out an annoyed breath, then crosses something out with a vehemence that’s kind of scary.
“Where are my speakers?” Darcy demands.
“Okay,” Jane replies.
Darcy rolls her eyes. Fine. A new tactic.
“Jane.” Darcy continues, in dull, dry voice. “Oh my god, the spectrometer’s on fire…”
Jane’s head whips up, eyes wide. “What?! Where? How?”
Darcy snaps her fingers quickly in front of Jane’s face. “Jane! Focus!”
“The spect-“
“- Is fine. Now where are my speakers?”
Jane winces, begins shuffling her papers.
“Jane…”
“It’s sort of…”
“…Sort of…”
“In use.” Jane bites her lip. “Was.”
“Was?”
“I needed it yesterday. Then it kind of…exploded?”
“Jane! How the hell am I supposed to listen to my tunes? You know Tony won’t allow me to access FRIDAY’s music anymore.”
“You shouldn’t have put Copacabana on repeat!”
“You goobers wouldn’t leave the lab to shower and eat like normal humans!” Darcy protests.
Jane lets out an exasperated breath.
“Here, just put your phone in this.” Jane hands her a mug that’s been sitting on Darcy’s desk. Darcy smiles at the burnt orange glaze and the fissures spidering along the side that had clearly been superglued back together at some point.
“It’s Bucky’s mug,” Darcy says turning it over in both her hands. “Remember? He said he managed to keep it from when he was in Romania. Said the cracks gave it character.”
Jane quirks an eyebrow and gives Darcy a significant look over her laptop screen.
“What?”
“Nothing, nothing,” Jane says breezily, tapping a pen against her lip. “Anyways, that is Barnes’ mug. He left it here yesterday when he was down here visiting you. Or maybe it was from the day before that. Or the day before that.”
Darcy huffs, defensive. “Well, it’s nice to have some company down here in the dungeons when my BFF is too busy trying to send us all into the ass-end of space.”
Jane’s response is a simple, “Hmpf.”
Darcy studies the other girl and her brown hair sticking up every which way. She has chopsticks holding up her messy bun for cripes sakes and she can’t even remember the last time they ordered Chinese. Not to mention the dark smudges under her eyes, and the ink stains on her t-shirt. Darcy grimaces as Jane continues to write, eyes flitting restlessly between her white board and her papers.
“I know exactly what we need,” Darcy declares, thumbing on her phone and scrolling for a few moments. She places it in the mug. “Dance party!”
“Darce, I can’t I’m stuck on these proofs –“
“C’mon, Janey, it’ll help you think.”
“Darcy – “
But Darcy turns the volume way up, presses play, and then at the top her lungs–
“WHAT’S WITH THESE HOMIES DISSIN’ MY GIRL”
“Oh god.”
Darcy grins and sings even louder.
“WHY DO THEY GOTTA FRONT”
She takes Jane’s hands and pulls her up from her desk until Jane finally gives in, stifling a series of giggles. She joins in the singing as Darcy takes her arm stiffly in hers and begins to lead them both into an exaggerated tango.
They keep dancing, both singing into one of Bruce’s pipettes as a microphone then doing a two-person conga line around the lab bench.
“Oh, oh, and you’re Mary Tyler Mo-AUGH!” exclaims Darcy when mid-Hand Jive, she backs into something very solid. She whirls around to see that the solid thing she bumped into is super soldier chest.
Bucky has one eyebrow raised and a damned smirk on his face.
“What’s this racket?” he bellows over Rivers Cuomo.
“Rude, Barnes! This one of the best songs of all time! Now are you gonna dance with us or do you only know how to Lindy Hop?”
Bucky rolls his eyes at the challenge but lets himself be pulled into the girls’ approximation of dancing. Really, they’re just jumping around to the beat and singing loudly and off-key. But they’re laughing and smiling and Bucky twirls the both of them one after the other, careful not to bump them into any equipment.
At some point, Jane has her breakthrough and goes off to find a dry erase marker and her notes. That leaves Darcy to cajole Barnes into joining her in a series shimmies and bobs and whirls around the lab. Turns out he doesn’t know just the Lindy Hop.
Darcy lets out a delighted whoop as Bucky dips her, supporting her weight with one strong arm against her back, and his smooth silver hand holding hers close to his chest.
Heart thrumming, she looks up into Bucky’s flushed face, his blue-grey eyes bright and twinkling.
“Oh! By the way, we used your mug,” she mentions, breathless and grinning.
Bucky beams at her.
“Keep it.”
-------
After hours of tossing and turning, Darcy gives up. Trying to get back on a regular sleep schedule after weeks of tending to Jane through a science bender is just too confusing for her body. Sleep is not happening tonight, her brain used to shutting down only just before dawn.
She shrugs on her oversized Culver sweatshirt, pulls on her favorite fluffy llama patterned socks, and takes the elevator down two floors to the common area kitchen. Her own apartment at the Tower comes with a kitchenette, but the common one has gas stoves and the giant couch that’s inexplicably more comfy than her bed.
She pads into the kitchen, surprised when she notices a dim light on. There’s a formless lump at the seat at the kitchen bar. She stops short of her destination and the formless lump looks up, revealing itself to be a very rumpled, very tired looking Bucky. His dark hair hangs limply around his face and he wears a sweatshirt (grey, the small gash running down side has burnt edges and she’s not sure she wants to hear the story about that) and red track pants. His feet are bare, and Darcy blinks, feeling sort of like a pervy Victorian gentleman who’s caught sight of an ankle.
“Couldn’t sleep?” Darcy asks, immediately regretting the stupid question. It’s 2am, why else would he be here?
Bucky only nods his head once in response.
He’s got a steaming mug in front of him, but he doesn’t seem to want to touch it. She peeks at it on her way to the fridge and makes a face at the contents. It looks like watery coffee and doesn’t smell very good.
“It’s instant,” Bucky says finally, shrugging. “Found it in that green can in the cabinet.” He nods in its direction.
Darcy immediately goes looking for it. Folger’s Decaf. And it’s expired. She shudders, then chucks the offending container straight into the trash.
She initially came to the common area to maybe have a glass of water and see if she could fall asleep on the couch, but now she has a much better idea. From the top left cabinet she pulls out a rectangular box that was left at her apartment door when the Avengers got back from their last mission.
She holds up a bar of drinking chocolate, wrapped in bright gold foil and stamped with ‘Demel’.
“Let’s try this instead ‘kay?”
Bucky manages a wan smile but nods. Darcy sets about making the hot chocolate, setting a small pot on the stove, then filling it with two cups of whole milk, and turning the stove on with a series of clicks. Somehow, she doesn’t think this hot chocolate should be made with water like those times in college when she only had packets of Swiss Miss.
The chocolate melts into the milk, and Darcy stirs the thick, velvety liquid with a wooden spoon until it gets just to boiling. She takes the pot off the stove and pours out the hot chocolate into two cups. She gently nudges one with her index finger towards Bucky who takes the cup in both his hands and takes a small sip while she does the same.
The name ‘drinking chocolate’ is accurate - it’s so rich it’s almost like fudge. She licks her lips, chasing the delicious bittersweet notes of the cocoa.
“You wanna talk about it?” she asks eventually when she’s savored a couple more sips.
“Not really,” he answers, voice gruff. But he doesn’t seem to be making any moves towards leaving and if you give Darcy an inch she’ll happily take a mile.
So Darcy talks instead, filling the quiet room with stories from growing up in Virginia, how her parents would take her to farmstands and then they’d eat their weight in cherries and nectarines in the car while listening to the local oldies station. She tells him about New Mexico, how she hated the weather but loved watching the stars with Jane, how she complained a lot but actually couldn’t believe that she got to ride in an RV and watch the sky for a living when her classmates instead had to stuff envelopes or pick up dry-cleaning for their bosses.
Every once in a while Bucky asks questions, prompts her for details, like he’s actually listening and not just letting her ramble. Darcy counts it as a win when she tells him about Thor’s penchant for karaoke and the “tiny wings of Midgardian fowl” and he gets those crinkles at the corners of his eyes when he smiles.
Finally, they’re both suppressing yawns so Darcy gathers up the empty cups, rinses them, and hands them to Bucky who sticks them in the dishwasher.
“Night, Bucky,” she says softly.
She’s shuffling to the door when she feels his fingers catch lightly at hers. He stares at her for a moment, uncertain, until she tilts her head and ticks up the corner of her mouth.
Bucky draws her into his space, and leans down to press his face into her neck. His arms wrap around her waist gently and hesitantly at first, and when she hugs him back, he pulls her to him even tighter. She feels the not unpleasant prickliness of his stubble, the movement of his chest as he exhales, and breathes in the clean soap smell of him.
“Thanks, Darcy,” he whispers, breath hot against the space between her neck and shoulder. Then he pulls back and presses a quick kiss to her cheek and leaves.
Darcy, cheeks pinking, stands stock still in the kitchen for a full minute before snapping out of it.
-------
One month.
That’s how long the Avengers have been gone on their current mission to – well, Darcy’s not sure since it’s top secret and comms have been on blackout accordingly.
One month is long enough for Darcy to angst and worry about the team and for her to develop a newfound respect for Jane being able to do this so frequently whenever Thor is gone.
Not that she and Bucky are –
But she misses him and wants him and worries. She’s lost sleep over thinking of all the things that can go wrong and Jane - Jane of all people – has been sending her pitying little glances at work and finally told her to take the rest of the day off.
She’s on her bed, re-reading the same sentence in her book for the umpteenth time and worrying at a hangnail when she hears something in her living room. She bolts out of the bed, throwing the book to the floor and remembering the taser that’s on her coffee table when she sees her visitor.
Bucky stands in her doorway wearing a black shirt, tac pants, and big, dusty combat boots. There’s a smudge of dark powder across his cheekbone. Relief washes over Darcy so hard so can’t even get words to form in her mouth.
“Darcy? Your door was open, I – “
And in retrospect, it’s probably not a great idea to launch oneself into the arms of an ex-assassin then wrap one’s legs around his waist but Darcy’s not really thinking about anything at this point besides Bucky and here and safe. She’s thankful for his snappy reflexes because he drops the package in his hand to the floor and catches her, holding her up against him with one arm banded around her waist and the other supporting her ass.
He smells like cordite and sweat and before she lets herself think about it, she slants her lips over his, terrified for the half-second he freezes in shock until his low groan reverberates through her and he kisses her back.
God, does he ever.
He twines his hand into her hair, and licks into her mouth, groaning again when she opens for him. He shifts them a little and then her back is pressed into the wall with Bucky at her front. She tightens her legs around him, hooking her ankles together and he responds with a growl. Darcy would be embarrassed of her breathy little moans but she cannot care when he deepens the kiss, his tongue slipping against hers, caressing.
She pulls away, gasping and trying get air into her lungs, as Bucky busies himself by nipping gently at her bottom lip. Her vision is hazy and it’s difficult to feel anything but the lust pooled in her belly and Bucky’s plush lips but her eyes alight on the colorful package lying haphazardly on the floor.
“Were those for me?” she asks suppressing a shiver as Bucky presses hot kisses along her jawline.
“Hmm? Kinda busy right now, sweetheart.” Bucky flexes his fingers on her waist and licks firmly at the skin beneath her ear. She smacks his shoulder and he peers at her from beneath his lashes, pupils dilated, lips red and kiss-swollen.
“Those my flowers?”
“You know they are,” he answers slyly.
He sets her down gently on wobbly legs, but she steadies herself enough to go pick up her bouquet from its spot on her rug.
“Tulips?” She glides the side of her finger along the soft, cool petal of the bright yellow bulb. “Let me guess, the last mission was in Amsterdam?”
Bucky runs a hand along the back of his neck sheepishly. “Uh, they’re from the florist’s two blocks over. Came over to ask ya to dinner. Maybe dancin’ if you want…”
Darcy beams at him and takes his hand. “I’d love to,” she says and a slow grin blooms across Bucky’s face.
“Emily Post says I should’ve written you a ‘thank you’ card for all these presents you gave me, but” she tugs him towards her bedroom, “I think we can come up with something better.”
At this Bucky’s grin gets even wider, predatory even, and before she knows it he’s bent down and has her tossed over his shoulder.
He gives her a little smack on the ass and Darcy yelps, presses her thighs together and thinks,
Oh yeah. Much better.