Work Text:
T-Minus Twenty
Part Three of “The Best Laid Plans” Series
20:00
Darcy sets the timer on her phone and runs for the elevator. She leaves a trail of rainbow feathers in her wake, though not as many as she anticipated and she begins to fear that Tony applied some sort of adhesive especially designed to stick to her skin. A few of the lab monkeys working this floor peer at her as she runs by, but she ignores them. Some take pictures of her as she passes, pictures that are most certainly being immediately uploaded to a plethora of social media, but she has bigger concerns facing her than potential embarrassment among the Internet and underlings: avoiding her promised annihilation at the hands of Clint and Tony and, after, getting her sweet, sweet revenge upon them in any way she could.
She skids to a stop before the elevator, already feeling the burn in her lungs from the unfamiliar physical exertion. Bending over, she slaps at the down button, but she has no time to catch her breath for, at that moment, Jarvis speaks.
“I apologize again, Ms. Lewis, but Mr. Stark has forbidden you access to the elevators for the next twenty-nine minutes.”
Darcy blinks at the revelation. “But— but I need to get to the residence floors.”
“Might I suggest the stairs?”
For a moment, she can’t speak. Then she’s shouting and shedding feathers, looking, she’s sure, like a neon disco ostrich in the midst of a nervous breakdown. “That’s thirteen floors down, Jarvis. I’ll— I’ll—”
“Complete the distance, one step at a time.”
“I was gonna say die, but if you want to be optimistic…”
She hears snickering behind her and turns to find a gaggle of peons gathered in the distance, all with Stark phones on and pointed at her. Darcy gives them a narrow-eyed glare, which scatters one or two of the weaker willed, before turning for the stairs, saying as she does, “Jarvis, tell your assface of a boss I won’t forget this.”
“I’m relaying the message as we speak, Ms. Lewis.”
18:00
Fueled by righteous fury, Darcy sails down the first few flights.
17:00
Fueled by grim determination, she walks down the next three.
15:30
Fueled by bitter fumes, she eases down the next two.
12:30
Fueled only by desperation and the fear that, if she collapses here, she’ll die alone and be eaten by wild dogs before anyone can find her, she trudges down the next four, shedding dicks and feathers and bits of her left lung along the way.
9:00
Darcy flops through the door to Steve’s floor, air sliding into and out of her lungs in an alarming wheeze. She collapses onto the ground in a sweaty, sticky heap, cursing the day she ever met Jane Foster and applied for that goddamned internship that led her here, to her dick-covered doom. Glitter grinds into her chest and a canary yellow feather tickles her nose as she tries to breathe. She can’t summon the energy to either flop over or fetch the feather, so she lays, her ass up and face down, on the monochrome tile.
8:00
Darcy rises, less like a phoenix and more like a just-birthed chicken, all wobbly knees and tacky in all senses of the word feathers, a magenta penis clinging to her right brow and egg yolk squishing beneath her boobs, and starts to shuffle down the hall to her intended destination. As she does, she retrieves her phone from her pocket to check the time. A polite person, such as Thor or Pepper, would describe the sound she makes in discovering that she’s used over half her time just trying to get to her destination as a distressing cry.
Clint and Tony would call it the sweet sound of success.
Jane would take one look at Darcy and just shake her head, preferring to communicate her view of the sound as a pathetic moan in a non-verbal fashion.
Darcy calls it nothing, too panicked to waste the time and energy to sufficiently describe her despair, and instead lurches the final few feet to Steve’s door where she knocks with one downy hand.
7:15
Twelve seconds after her knock, the door opens, to Steve, of course, because the universe hates Darcy, likely because Tony paid it to. He stares at her for ten precious seconds, his eyes going wide and mouth falling open as he takes her in. Darcy props herself against the wall, an action that earns her a slight grimace from Steve, and uses all of her remaining energy to croak out from pained lungs, “Buck…y.”
Steve’s brows climb to his hairline. “Bucky did this?”
Darcy shakes her head. Glitter and a green dick fall to the floor by his feet. “Cl— Clint.”
At that, Steve sighs. It’s the sigh of a man firm in the belief that he’s surrounded by idiots. “He’s not here, Darcy. If you can’t find him, he’s—”
“No.” Gasp. “Here.” Wheeze. “Talk.” Puff. “Buck.” Pant. “Please.”
Steve needs a few seconds to process her stilted speech. When he does, he takes another moment to look at her before narrowing his eyes. “Why?”
And Darcy gets it. She does. Who wouldn’t be suspicious of a polychromatic hissing chicken that demanded the presence of your recently rescued and quite possibly still evil best friend? But she doesn’t have time. Thrusting a hand in front of his face, dislodging, in the process, more cocks and feathers that drift in a gentle arc to the floor, Darcy sucks in a desperate gulp of air and bleats out as loud as she can, “Barnes!”
“What?” he bellows from inside.
She opens her mouth to try to respond, but the only sound that issues forth is a feeble whine. Darcy closes her eyes and gives in to half a sob, a stitch in her side, egg on her ass, and rainbow dicks plastered to her décolletage.
“Are you… okay?”
With three words, her salvation dawns. God bless Captain Steve. God bless his concern for the small folk and their troubles, especially for hyperventilating interns that have, perhaps, too big of an obsession with his ass and his waist-to-shoulder ratio. Summoning the last bit of her strength, Darcy raises her head to fix Steve with her most pathetic kicked puppy-dog face, her eyes shimmering with tears and the slightest waver to her yolk-covered chin. Steve sighs at her blatant manipulation, but he still turns around and walks back into the apartment to say to Bucky, “Darcy needs to talk to you about… I don’t know. Something nuts.”
“Can’t she come in? I need to blue shell this fucking turtle so he won’t win the race.”
“No, she can’t come in. I’m going to have to disinfect the entryway as it is. I don’t want to have to do the whole apartment.”
There’s a moment of silence from the apartment (a moment in which Darcy pries her hand from the wall, wincing at the twinkling residue she leaves behind) and then Steve sputters, “No, I didn’t— I meant— Feathers, Buck. And… egg? Maybe. And there’s— there’s shiny… stuff. All over. Shiny…”
“What?”
Steve doesn’t respond. Darcy checks her phone and nearly weeps to find that two minutes have passed.
“Steve. Just spit it out.”
“Cocks, Bucky. She’s covered in shiny cocks.”
Utter silence follows his proclamation. Darcy closes her eyes and wonders if, even this high up, the Earth could still open and swallow a person whole. She considers making a break for it right then and there but a thump sounds from inside the apartment followed by hurried footsteps and then Bucky’s at the door, staring at her like all his Christmas wishes had been answered in one sweaty, cranky, fluffy package.
5:00
“What happened? Tell me everything.”
“Oh, like you don’t know,” she snaps, deviating wildly off course from her harried plan to save her soggy ass. “What the hell made you tell Clint that I said he had a huge hard-on for you?”
“You hiding in the storage closet when I came by.”
Her eyes widen at the admission. Darcy tries to say something in response, priding herself on her repartee, but he’s rendered her completely speechless and all she can do is gape.
Bucky leans against the doorframe, his eyes bright as they rake her up and down. “I have to say, I knew he’d do something afterward to get you up here, but this… This is beyond anything I could have imagined.”
Darcy blinks at him, still thrown. “I…”
A grin teases the corners of his mouth. “You…?”
“...will murder you... in your sleep for this. So hard. You have… You have no idea.”
Bucky looks her over again and his grin widens. “I think I have some idea.”
“No. You don’t. Because of you, Barton narced on me to Tony about the glitter in his suit, and now the two of them have teamed up against me. And the eggs I can accept. The feathers too. But they dropped tinfoil penises on my head and made me walk down thirteen flights of stairs so I can stand here in front of you with your stupid face and your stupid hair to try to get you to think that Barton is a completely sane individual and an ideal candidate for a friend. All so I can avoid their plan for my total annihilation. But you know what? Fuck that. Fuck Tony and fuck Barton and fuck their stupid plan and fuck you too, man. Because I will embrace whatever annihilation you all have in store for me and strike back with all the fury that I can muster, and believe me, dude, when I say that it’s a shit-ton. Because I grew up in a small town with three older brothers, so you might know a dozen ways to kill people with your big toe, but I know three-dozen ways to make a grown man cry, so prepare for obliteration, pal.”
Bucky gapes at her. Beyond him, Darcy sees Steve. He stares at her in equal astonishment. Some of her righteous rage diminishes at the sight.
“Not literal obliteration, Cap. Metaphorical. Metaphorical, um, murder.”
Steve draws closer. Darcy squirms beneath his gaze, at the upright tilt of his jaw and the crease in his noble brow. “It’s not right.”
Darcy sighs and closes her eyes. It wasn’t. But hadn’t she endured enough? Wasn’t this and the assured ignominy awaiting her on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and in about twenty-five Vines enough to satisfy even the most barbaric of gods? Was a lecture by Captain Principle really necessary to make sure she learned her lesson?
“I know,” she says, trying not to sigh again. “I’m—”
“—outnumbered,” he says. “That’s not right. Do you want some help?”
Her eyes fly open, hope dawning within her once more. “What?”
“Three against one,” he says, shaking his head. “That’s not right. I’d like to even those odds.”
“Hey!” Bucky says, turning to scowl at Steve. “I never said I was on their side.”
But Darcy only has eyes for Steve. “Are you serious?”
“If you want,” he says. “Which isn’t to say that I don’t think you’re capable on your own. Because you are. Just look at what you’ve accomplished so far. They tried their best to humiliate you. They set you up to fail in an unjust physical challenge. But you haven’t let them beat you. You’re choosing to fight on. I respect that.” He takes a step forward then and holds out his hand. “I would be honored to fight alongside you, Ms. Lewis, in this most ridiculous of wars.”
“Even against him?” she asks, pointing a feathered hand at Bucky, who watches the exchange with wide, disbelieving eyes.
“Especially against him,” Steve says with a smile.
A polite person, Bruce, perhaps, or Jarvis, would describe the sound that she makes now as unbridled glee.
Clint and Tony would likely call it the sound of their imminent doom.
Jane would still take one look at Darcy and shake her head, this time as she walked away, but she would maybe walk away with a smile on her face, preferring to communicate her support for Darcy and her crusade in a non-verbal fashion.
Darcy calls it justice, the universe recognizing her plight and sending her a savior, a tactical genius, a secret anarchist punk who loved nothing more than to fight for the little guy against the corrupt and omnipotent man.
Squealing again, she does a small dance for joy and then says, “I accept your help, Captain, and would totally shake your hand except mine’s covered in drying egg and really kind of gross right now. Like your wall. And your floor. And the bit of hall before the stairs. I wouldn’t actually go into the stairs. Like, ever. Sorry.”
Steve smiles again. “It’s okay, Ms. Lewis. I used to live in a tenement. Feathers and egg are the least disgusting things I’ve come across in a hallway.”
“What about shiny cocks?” she asks, grinning in return.
“Not even those. I lived in DUMBO, Ms. Lewis, back when it was even, uh, more colorful than it is now.”
“Cool. And it’s Darcy.”
“Darcy,” he agrees. “Now—” He eases closer, his face alight with mischief. “Can I tell Tony that we’ve joined forces? I just… I want to see his face. I need to see his face.”
“Hell yes.” She steps back to give him room to leave but stops as a thought occurs. “Oooh, oooh, say ‘Payback’s a bitch, Stark’ when you do. And— and get Jarvis to play ‘Captain Got Back’ as you leave.”
Steve regards her a moment, and Darcy feels like preening under his appreciative gaze. He gives her a farewell nod and she salutes him, wincing only slightly at the feathers that flap against her face in her efforts. She watches him leave, as he carefully edges around the swath of dead bird before the stairwell, aware all the while of Bucky staring at her. Darcy shifts in place, the wild rush of promised triumph abating a bit and the potentiality for embarrassment rising. Her jeans have grown stiff as the egg has dried, and her boobs squish as she moves, but when she turns toward Bucky, he doesn’t look at her in discomfort or distaste, but in something close to awe.
“You… are amazing.”
Darcy feels herself flush at the unexpected compliment. She tries to hide it with a smirk and a Vanna White-esque wave of her absurd body. “Amazing. Yep. That’s me.”
“No, I’m serious. They told me stories about you, but they did not do you justice. At all.”
Her flush intensifies. Darcy glances at Bucky from the corners of her eyes, finds him watching her with the same appreciation that she saw in Steve, but Steve didn’t breathe fast as he looked at her or bite down on his bottom lip. Heat swirls within her at that, and Darcy looks away, down at her arm, where she flicks at a lavender cock and says as smoothly as she can, “Guess you picked the wrong side, dude.”
“Maybe so,” he says. “But I was trying to get to yours.”
Her timer chimes then, a cheery salsa beat that makes Bucky grin. Darcy keeps her head down, both from the grin and the comment preceding it, under the pretense of silencing her phone. She presses her lips together to try to hide her smile, but she fails and she knows she fails because she can see Bucky from the corners of her eyes and thus see the grin that unfolds across his face as he takes her in.
She gives in then, at least to the smile. Looking up at him, she says, “I think you need to review your strategy. Since yours, you know, actually blew up in my face.”
“I don’t know,” he says, leaning again against the doorframe and crossing his arms over his chest. “It got you up here, didn’t it?”
Darcy gives him a look as she slides her phone back into her pocket. “Don’t push your luck, dude. I’ve got egg in places it should never be.”
His gaze drops blatantly to her chest, and the impish grin unfurls once more.
Darcy narrows her eyes. “Really? You’re gonna ogle me now? With the dicks and the egg and the glitter?”
“Would it make it better if I also asked you to dinner?”
Her pulse jumps as he looks back at her. Bucky wears the same pair of sinful jeans as when they first met, but he’s barefoot now and clad in a soft grey tee, and the sight of him, the intimacy of this moment which he makes in the way he stands and the way he looks at her, diminishes her ability to breathe.
“I think if I said yes,” she says slowly, “then that would be fraternizing with the enemy.”
Bucky leans closer. “It would be.” His voice drops then, deliberately she thinks, but no less effectively, to a low rumble that makes her shiver. “But that’s the best part.”
She hoped so. Revenge against Clint and Tony would be sweet, but making out with Bucky would definitely be sweeter. After she showered, of course.
“Well then,” she says as she turns to walk away, “pick me up at seven, oh enemy of mine. I’ll see if I can’t turn you to the glittering side of the force.”
*