Work Text:
It’s the harvest season and though Darcy, in years past, has often let this holiday slip by without recognition, it gives her an excuse to cook for everyone.
She ropes Steve into helping when he wanders, sleepy-eyed and blinking from his nap on the common room couch, into the communal kitchen, following the smell of baking artisan bread. He drops a kiss on her forehead and turns, when directed, to peeling and chopping potatoes.
Darcy waits to the count of ten and like clockwork, James appears in the doorway, looking adorably befuddled at having his nap interrupted, though far more awake than Steve. Darcy points him toward fixings for a chocolate pie and he sees the ingredients, as similar to the ones his mom used to use as she could find, and sends her an achingly sweet smile.
Sam and Nat are the next to join. Darcy puts Nat in charge of the baked macaroni and sets Sam to mixing up a Mabon cider in the crock-pot. Soon the kitchen is filled with the tantalizing odor of allspice, cinnamon and clove.
Darcy pulls the bread from the bottom of the double oven, does a quick temperature check on the roasting chicken and places it back inside for another fifteen minutes. She turns around just in time to see Clint reaching greedy fingers toward the chocolate pie filling and spares some energy to have a wooden spoon rise up and whack him on the hand, which makes Nat smirk and gets James, Steve and Sam laughing.
By the time the table’s set and the food laid out, Tony and Jane have made an appearance, looking wet and bedraggled from the fall storm that caught them on their way back from the seminars they’d been attending for the last three days.
Darcy presses a mug of cider, each, into their cold hands and if those mugs have been liberally dosed with Tony’s good whiskey, that’s a secret between the three of them.
They sit at the round table and Tony asks, “What are we celebrating, Sparks?” before taking another sip from his mug.
Darcy looks at the rag-tag group of people that have become her surrogate family, looks at Steve and James on either side of her, revels in the warm contentment that radiates off both of them.
“Balance,” she says. “And abundance.”