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Darcy was sitting at her usual table in the small coffee shop she’d discovered on a walk one day when she’d needed a bit of time away from the tiny flat Jane had rented near the Tower. Though they were both under contract to SI, neither of them fancied the idea of living under the incredibly nosy and watchful eye of Tony and his strangely human AI. Her textbooks were spread out taking up almost every inch of the table, and a cup full of whipped cream, frothy milk and sugary syrup with a tiny bit of coffee teetered on the narrow windowsill by her elbow.
She was deep into research about the political ramifications of Electoral College inversions when someone coughed, disturbing her concentration; it took ages to get into the zone, especially when she had so many other things on her mind, so the disruption was anything but welcome.
“Can I help you?” she asked, one eyebrow raised; she was aware that her hair was a mess thanks to the woollen hat she'd worn to brave the chilly New York November, but she didn't think the fluff that was her hair detracted from her ability to be intimidating.
“Uh...it’s a bit crowded in here. Can I share?” The interruptor, as Darcy had decided she was going to call him, looked a little bit uncomfortable, his shoulders were hunched and he seemed to prefer looking anywhere but at her now that he'd gained her attention.
She looked down at the table, and the piles of paper covering it, then at the small coffee shop that had grown incredibly busy at some point after she started studying. “Okay,” she shrugged, quickly placing everything in one ramshackle pile and then stuffing it in the front pocket of her ancient knapsack. “Take a seat before someone starts to think you're some sort of modern art sculpture.”
She slumped down a little and kicked the leg of the chair opposite, “It’s not going to bite you.”
Steve had found the coffee shop by accident. He’d been out for a run one morning when the smell of freshly baked bread had almost drawn him to the tiny store front. He didn’t often head to Louis’ Place after 6am as he knew that it tended to attract a large student crowd, but this morning he’d been running more than a little late thanks to an impromptu meeting that Stark had called which had, unfortunately, turned out to be an absolute waste of everyone’s time.
He was a little disappointed that his usual table seemed to now be the centre of some kind of paper explosion, and the girl sitting in the seat he considered his, with the perfect view for a paranoid soldier, was now staring at him through eyes that were the sort of blue he often used when painting a skyline.
“Thanks,” he finally said, taking the proffered seat and putting his coffee cup on the table. “So...I don't think I've seen you in here before.” He hated small talk, but he didn't feel comfortable sitting at a table and not making any effort, he looked down at the table and started to pick at a loose chip of varnish on the edge.
“Are you kidding me right now?” he clearly heard her mutter under her breath as she studied him from across the table. “Is that the best you've got?” She finally asked, her voice a little loud so that it could be heard over the chatter which filled the small café.
“Excuse me?” Steve asked, wondering why she was half-glaring at him. “All I meant was that I'm a regular and I've never seen you in here before, nothing more.” Sensing that she still wasn't quite convinced, he held his hands up at shoulder height as a sign of mock surrender. “Hey, I didn’t mean anything by it.”
“Okay,” she told him, “whatever.” She dismissed him easily, simply pulling a tablet from her knapsack and starting to swipe her finger determinedly across the screen.
Steve normally sat alone and enjoyed the quiet, he now knew that his first instinct, which had been to get his drink to go, was the right one, but he could no longer see the counter for the crowd of students who had clearly come here right from class, loudly chatting about some ‘hard-ass psych professor’ who had apparently asked them to so some unreasonable assignment. A small grin on his face at the colourful language one of the louder girls had come up with to describe the poor man, Steve took another sip of his coffee and, for some reason, found himself staring across the table at his unwilling company. Normally he loved the quiet, but right now it was sitting heavy on his shoulders, sort of like the support beam he'd had to hold up after one of Tony’s stupid experiments went very wrong.
Darcy could feel that he was watching her, and she shifted in her seat, expanding and shrinking images on her Tumblr timeline in an effort to look busy. Finally, when the feeling of being watched became too much, and she’d decided that this lunk wasn’t any kind of threat, she put the tablet down with a sigh. “So, how long have you been coming here?” She knew that it sounded like a really corny chat-up line, but she hoped that he didn’t take it that way.
“Not sure,” he shrugged, taking another sip of his coffee. “It’s better than places like Starbucks .” His tone of voice made it clear that he really didn’t rate anything that the chain coffee shop produced, and Darcy found herself agreeing, though during October she basically lived on their pumpkin spice.
“Louis definitely knows his coffee,” she declared as she raised her cup and toasted Louis, who was sitting in the corner of the coffee shop, enjoying his own drink, coffee so strong you could stand a spoon up in it. “I’ve only been coming here a few months. It’s the perfect place to study after classes.”
“I can tell,” he told her, pointedly looking at the packed tables filled with students who were discussing everything from incarnations of Hamlet in modern media to the implications of using some sort of code to customise vectors for something he couldn’t begin to comprehend. “What are you studying? Looked like a lot of papers?”
“The electoral college,” Darcy said, taking her spoon and stirring it around in the milky remains of her drink, mentally calculating if there was any point in ordering another one, or if she should just head back to the labs and make sure Jane had eaten lunch as she promised she would.
“Interesting. For any particular reason?” He hated to admit it, but he’d judged; he’d taken one look at her and thought that she was probably some liberal arts student, probably studying the history of Graffiti or something.
“Political science. How can we judge anything without understanding it?” She twisted her wrist to check the time on the over-large watch, and grimaced. “Anyway, it was great to sort of meet you. I have to go.” She picked up her knapsack, quickly drank the last few mouthfuls of her lukewarm coffee, and then rushed out the door, waving a hand absentmindedly in farewell as the door opened for another group of students to walk in.
Darcy had been so annoyed that her afternoon of study had been interrupted by someone she didn’t know, that she actually mentioned the mystery lunkhead to Jane when they were experiencing a lull in the science. Jane had told her that the guy hadn’t done it on purpose and she should ‘give him a break’ though Darcy believed that he could have taken a seat anywhere but with her. It had reached the point where Jane had actually sent her for a time out with the office coffee machine, and Darcy had, for the rest of the day, bitten her tongue and abstained from mentioning coffee shop mystery man and his interruption of her study Zen.
“Are you going to make me beg?” Darcy asked. The sun had long since set and Jane’s last coffee had grown cold at her elbow.
“Huh? What?” Jane looked up from the machine innards she had been prodding for the last two hours, her eyes just a little but bloodshot.
“It’s nearly 10. You said that if I stopped talking about the guy at Louis’ we could finish before the sun set and order a Chinese.”
“Okay. Give me a few more minutes. No more than an hour, Darcy. And then we can go.” Jane went back to carefully stripping a very thin cable, having completely missed the fact that the lights were on and it was dark out.
“It’s late, and I know that you've been surviving on jelly beans since I left for class this morning. Don't think I didn't notice that you only nibbled at the sandwich I made you, with my own fair hands.”
Jane could tell that Darcy was on a roll, and would only get more dramatic if left to her own devices. “All right, I guess this can wait ‘til tomorrow,” she gave a dramatic sigh of her own as she reluctantly, but carefully, pushed the wires back inside the box and then moved away from her cluttered work station. “Come on then, Kung Po chicken and sticky ribs here we come.” As though she had suddenly found enthusiasm from somewhere, Jane headed to the door, grabbing Darcy by the hem of her thick sweater and pulling her out of the lab.
“Had I known it would be that easy to get you out of the lab I’d have pulled the blackout blinds down hours ago,” Darcy joked as they sat down in a restaurant where they often ordered take-out after a busy night. She looked at the food piled on Jane’s plate and grinned as her friend made quick work of a large rib.
“I might get absorbed in my work, Darcy, but I'm not quite that oblivious to the outside world,” she licked her fingers and then picked up a pair of chopsticks to dive into the spicy sweet Kung Po. “Anyway, why don't you tell me all about this person who invaded your workspace this afternoon?”
Raising one eyebrow in amusement at Jane's attempt to distract her from her usual ‘you science too much, and don't take proper care of yourself’ lecture, Darcy turned her attention to her own food. “No point now, I'm not annoyed anymore.”
“But you were so descriptive when you told me how much his blue eyes distracted you, and how you couldn't get anything done because his muscles were in the way.” Jane couldn't hold back her chuckle when Darcy started to blush, a rose tint to her pale cheeks, rising up to colour the tips of her ears. “The way you described him I started to wonder if you were talking about a Thor clone! Not that he could be cloned or anything, he's definitely one of a kind.”
Darcy slumped in her seat and banged her head against the table, groaning. “Oh my God, Janie. Please stop talking.”
“Why? You didn't stop when we were working. In fact, you didn't stop for hours! Anyone would think that you were obsessed with the blue-eyed table invader or something.” The older girl patted Darcy on the shoulder in a way that was meant to offer something resembling comfort, then turned her attention back to her food, everything on her plate needed to be eaten before it got cold; there was nothing good about cold and gloopy Chinese, though it had its merits when it was reheated the morning after!
“Just because I talked about him doesn’t mean I liked him. You whine about stupid scientists who used to ignore you and now just want to hang on your lab coat all the time,” Darcy muttered around a mouthful of Chow Mein, slurping the noodles she’d curled around her chopsticks.
“How’s the assignment coming?” Jane asked, showing that she occasionally paid attention to work that wasn’t science-based.
“Okay, I guess. I’m probably going to have to spend a bit more time going over my research.” She picked up her glass and took a sip of water. “Do you think Stark would loan me a jet to fly to DC?” She was only half joking, but she could tell from the expression on Jane’s face that her friend thought her absolutely insane.
“Haha, very funny! You know how Stark feels about the whole political science thing. As far as he’s concerned it doesn’t exist!”
Darcy knew that Jane spoke the truth, and she was only half-serious about it. She had plenty of research to be going on with thanks in part, to the, only sort of, illegal searches she’d done. “I know, but it’s a legit science,” she knew full well that this could easily start a discussion on how it really wasn’t a science in the truest sense of the word, but she stood by her craft and her ability to argue like a pro often worked to her benefit, though not when it came to Stark, who could argue with a banana and make it want to commit suicide if he was in one of his ‘moods’.
“I don’t know why they insist on calling it science, it really has nothing to do with protons, neutrons or anything else that has a specific scientific base at all,” Jane said, pointing her chopsticks in Darcy’s direction and raising an eyebrow as if to tell her she knew that a distraction was being attempted. “So, did you at least get this guy’s name?”
“When’s Thor back from Asgard?” Darcy asked, willing to try pretty much anything to change the subject. She had been doing her best to ignore the fact she felt a little bit hot, and not with anger, when she thought about the coffee shop incident.
“Really?” Jane laughed, “that’s the best you’ve got? Are you sure you would survive in the House of Representatives?”
“Low blow, Jane. Low blow,” Darcy told her, spearing a pork ball with the pointy end of one chopstick and dunking it in the warm sweet and sour sauce before taking a large bite.
“He should be back on Wednesday, so you can have Thursday and Friday off to get that paper written and dazzle everyone in your class with your sparkling wit,” she paused to eat a piece of cashew she’d picked off her plate, then continued, “And maybe you can go to the coffee shop and see if you can meet up with the mystery man again.”
“Don’t even joke about that. I might have to find somewhere else to get good coffee, though Louis makes really good food too,” for a moment she pouted, imagining giving up the crusty bread and home made soup that was on offer all the way through the winter, and the bottomless cups of coffee that went with it.
“Seriously?” Jane raised an eyebrow in query, her tone indicating that she both doubted Darcy’s ability to avoid somewhere that could be potentially classed as a second home and any conviction in her declaration. “I give it a week before you give in and order a double shot espresso.”
Sucking in a deep breath and letting it out slowly through her nose, Darcy nodded her head in agreement. Jane was right; there was absolutely no way she was going to be able to go without a good coffee for longer than that, though perhaps she could try take-away for a while, and let Mr Blue Eyes have sole access to his table.
~*~
Steve couldn’t get the coffee shop girl out of his head; the way that she’d dismissed him made him realise he was so used to people hanging on his every word that her disinterest caught him off-guard. For the next week, he made a point of going to Louis’ Place at odd hours in the hope of meeting up with the mystery girl, but he had no luck. It was as though she’d disappeared off the face of the planet and it was proving incredibly frustrating. Every once in a while he thought he caught a glimpse of her dark hair under a purple beanie walking away from the counter, or thought he heard her dry tone as she ordered a drink, but he’d look up and she was gone. He was so frustrated that she’d seemingly managed to vanish into thin air that he used one of his training sessions with Clint to vent about it. Clint, of course, had twisted it until it was far more than it needed to be. “Sounds like you’ve got a crush,” the archer told him, biting his lip in an effort to control his smirk.
“She just seemed to be normal,” Steve protested, ducking to avoid another blow that Clint aimed at his head with the hard curve of his bow. “Wasn’t a giggly thing who wanted to hang off my arm.”
“Yep, definitely a crush. Hey, at least it’ll get Tash off your back, she might even stop trying to set you up.” Tash’s determination to set Steve up with any available agents was a poorly kept secret around the base. Steve’s ability to avoid anything resembling a set-up was almost as well known.
“You think she’ll give up that easily?” Steve wondered for a moment, the seemingly constant throwing out of names of any and all available women at the various SHIELD bases had started to get a bit wearing.
“You never know until you try,” Clint said, sounding a little breathless as he again tried to hit Steve in the stomach with his bow. “Can’t hurt.”
Of course, there was always the chance that Natasha would be able to find the elusive coffee girl before he did, therefore giving him more time to figure out how not to sound like a total tit when they spoke!
~*~
The weather was horrible, and Darcy hunkered down, pulling the collar of her coat up around her ears with one hand as she gripped her laptop bag tightly to her chest with the other. It seemed that not many had been mad enough to venture out as New York suffered from another cold and windy December morning. Granted, had she not needed to escape from starry-eyed Jane and Thor - who couldn’t keep their arms off each other and were being all drippy around the lab - she’d probably have continued studying at her desk, but they had, so she hadn’t!
She pushed open the door to Louis’ and sighed in relief when she noticed that the place was virtually empty. In one corner of the room was Mr Briefcase, a regular who always sat sipping a milky latte while he stared out the window; Louis was in his usual spot at the counter, reading the New York Times and chatting with Isabella about some family thing. Noticing Darcy he gave her a wave, “Usual?” he asked, his tone, as always, light and happy. Louis was clearly born to own a friendly local coffee shop.
“Definitely, and a bacon roll. It’s horrible out there.” She unpacked her laptop bag and then shrugged off her heavy winter coat, placing it over the back of the spare chair at her table.
She’d been sitting at the table, absolutely absorbed in the Tumblr thread she had found when searching for something completely different - she swore that if places like Tumblr didn’t exist she’d be so much more focused and productive - for about an hour. She’d long since finished her first coffee, and a second was still sending curls of aromatic steam into the air, when she felt the hairs on the back of her neck stand on end. Flicking to a less incriminating tab on her browser, she looked up.
“Can I share?”