Work Text:
He really needed to quit working late. No good came of being alone in an empty office at midnight.
Of course…he wasn’t alone now.
“Stay where you are,” he said, rounding the corner and turning his pistol onto the the young woman who sat astride a…a…monster. A monster that was snarling and heaving in place like a wave getting ready to strike the shore.
“Oh, hi! Please don’t shoot,” the woman shouted over the sound of the beast. She raised hands nearly swallowed up by the sleeves of her sweater, eyes wide behind her glasses. The beast or animal or strangely slimy machine she sat on sagged slightly down to the floor, still growling. And it’s greasy and leather girth pushed aside desks and chairs that scraped loudly over the floor. She pointed down at it and added, “And Wallace definitely isn’t going anywhere for a few hours. I…come in peace?”
“Who are you?” Daniel snapped, inching forward, leaning against the wall for a little secret support. If she was any kind of trouble he didn’t want her knowing about his limp.
“Darcy Lewis,” she said, staring his gun. “Extremely harmless. I work for…well I kind of work for Stark. But not the Stark you know. His son. His current eventual son. It’s very complicated.”
“What is…is that?” Daniel asked, gesturing with the gun to the beast whose huffing was growing quieter but no less menacing.
Darcy Lewis leaned forward and covered the spot on the animal’s forehead where the gun was pointed as if to protect it from the shot.
“This is Wallace,” she said. “He is a-” and then she said a word that sounded like a sneeze. “And he time travels. We time travel. But only one year at a time before he needs to nap and recharge so the trip has been taking awhile.”
Daniel stood, back against the wall, gun in hand, for a long minute. Darcy smiled at him and the…the animal wiggled and settled further down on the floor. It…he? Was now making a heavy snuffling sound, like the engine on a tank.
“What’s it doing?” Daniel asked.
“Catching his breath,” Darcy said with a shrug. “Do you mind if I come down though?” she lowered her voice and leaned forward. “He is not the most comfortable ride I’ve been on, if you know what I’m saying.”
Daniel wasn’t sure that he did. He wasn’t so sure he was really awake right now, if he thought about it.
“We’ll only be here till…I dunno, three or four or so?” Darcy said, and then she swung one leg over the back of the beast and began to slide down its ribs to the floor.
No one else would be in the office before those hours. Daniel lowered the gun and Darcy smiled wider at him. Wallace blinked a pair of what Daniel had previously thought were horns but were now very clearly eyes, and his huffing eased to a deep and relaxed sort of snore.
“Where…where are you heading?” Daniel asked, which seemed entirely too casual a question for the situation.
Darcy was grinning as she approached him and Daniel held his breath—not well enough to miss the scent of flowers in her hair and something very mineral and musky on her clothes—as she passed him. He had to hop carefully backwards to try and stop her from glancing at a stack of case files on Thompson’s desk and then she was ducking around his own chair, grabbing his cane and tossing it to him. He caught it on reflex.
“I can’t answer that,” Darcy said, rounding his desk and scouting the room. “It’s very top secret. But I will tell you, just for funsies, it involves saving super soldiers.” And then she winked and asked, “Do you guys have snacks in here?”
“Captain Rogers?” Daniel breathed.
“Fifty percent yes,” Darcy whispered and then she caught sight of the coffee wagon. “Aha!”
“Third desk back on the right,” Daniel told her. “Wilkes keeps a better stock in the bottom left drawer. You’re going to save Captain America.”
“Ohhhh,” Darcy said, finding a tin in Wilkes’s desk full of baked goods. “I love a man who appreciates his mother’s cooking. And I didn’t say anything about Captain America.”
“You did-”
“I did not,” Darcy said, sharp and slow, with a look over the frame of her glasses that reminded Daniel of Dooley. She took a big bite of a jelly topped dumpling and hummed in pleasure. She mumbled through the bite, “You can go home now. I promise I’ll be good.”
Daniel straightened at that. He may be going crazy but he could still do his job. “Ma’am. I am not leaving you alone in the Strategic Scientific Reserve offices no matter who you plan on saving with your…balljusnap.”
Darcy snorted and licked the powdered sugar off her fingers. She gave him a long once over from head to toe that had him half hot below the collar and half ready for her to strike. He was fairly sure he could hold his own against her. It was the sleeping beast he was really worried about.
She perched herself at the edge of Wilkes desk and cocked her head, smiling at him in a toothy, dangerous way that made a blush rise to his cheeks.
“Do you have a pair of handcuffs?” she asked.