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It started with a smiley face. It was small and a little smudged and kind of looked like a child had drawn it. It was in the bottom corner of the whiteboard, like someone had been sat at the nearby desk and doodled it quickly from their seat. The red ink stood out against the black block letters; on further inspection Jimmy found the red pen was not in its usual place in the pot, but resting against one of the 1950s televisions as though it had been dropped onto the table and rolled with the gradient.
This is a very serious investigation, in the middle of a very serious incident and this board is a wall of very serious information, but Jimmy doesn’t rub it off straight away. It’s kind of cute, actually.
Jimmy is a pretty great FBI agent, if he does so say himself, so it doesn’t take him long to figure out who the phantom artist is. The biggest giveaway is that for all the hundreds of people on the base, only one of them seems to have a sense of humour.
Also, when he handed Doctor Lewis a cup of coffee half an hour later, she took it from him with red ink-stained fingers.
Jimmy wouldn’t say the whiteboard is sacred, but he’s never solved a case without using one before. There’s something about getting every thought out of his head that seems to give him enough space to actually pick up on what’s actually key information and what’s wild speculation. He’s aware some of it might be a bit out there, but three weeks ago half the population suddenly reappeared and a giant purple grape man from the past took on the entirety of Earth’s superheroes in upstate New York so forgive him if he doesn’t want to explore all angles just in case.
Once Monica returned with some answers (and a whole lot more questions), he needed her to look over the board and add her information. Doctor Lewis perched on a nearby desk, still a little starry eyed, fiddling with one of her devices. She kept surreptitiously looking over at the board, silently reacting each time Monica ruled out a theory.
“Skrulls?” Monica snorted, tapping a marker against her chin as she drew determined, solid lines through Jimmy’s notes. “Nah, I don’t think so. Nice drawing though.”
“Huh?” Jimmy had been rooting through the transcript of Monica’s latest interview with Hayward. He looked up at her quizzically.
Monica smiled, a rare occurrence since she’d shaken off the persona of Geraldine. “The drawing?” She pointed with the marker. “It’s not exactly accurate, but its fun.”
Next to Jimmy’s block capitals was a little green alien face, a pointed oval with two big black eyes. He raised an eyebrow at Doctor Lewis, who had hunched her shoulders up to her ears.
“In my defence,” She started. “I didn’t really have a reference point. Most of the aliens I met are either really, really hot or really, really gross.”
To Jimmy’s amazement, Monica tipped back her head and laughed. Doctor Lewis looked like she was about to combust at the sight of her new hero cackling with delight.
“Oh, I can believe that.” She agreed. “Remind me to tell you some stories sometime. We can trade. And I’ll show you what Skrulls really look like.”
Doctor Lewis practically swooned.
“How did you do that?”
Jimmy pulled his gaze from the monitor. He was slumped in his chair, trying to identify the civilians in the crowd at the talent show, idly shuffling through the deck of cards he’d found in his glove compartment while searching for gum to keep his hands busy.
Darcy sat across from him, chin propped on her hand as she gawked.
He wasn’t sure when she’d stopped being Doctor Lewis and started being Darcy, but he figured it was somewhere around her crowing that the Maximoff Anomaly should be called ‘The Hex’; it had altered his mental file on her from listing her as a formidable young woman with a Ph. D. to a formidable young woman with a Ph.D. who was also a massive dork. It might also have something to do with the time she’d rolled her eyes at him and demanded again that he ‘just call me Darcy!’.
There’d been a S.W.O.R.D agent eavesdropping on them (as usual) and Darcy had immediately rounded on him. “But you,” She’d glared. “You still have to address me as Doctor. Or Your Highness. Whichever I feel like on the day. Now go get me some chips.”
The agent did scuttle off, rebuked, but didn’t deliver the snacks. Jimmy grabbed some for her later, and she’d beamed at him from beneath her beanie and headphones.
She definitely wasn’t beaming at him now. He knew she’d worked almost fifteen hours straight today, eyes slightly glazed as she gaped at him.
“Do… what?” He asked, flipping through the pack again. “I’m just running screenshots through the federal database, it’s not that-“
“No! The thingy with the things!” Darcy lifted her head from her hand long enough to mime a dramatic card cascade movement.
“This?” Jimmy manoeuvred a few of the cards dextrously, and she nodded entranced. He glanced at his laptop screen, noting the search was still running and wouldn’t be completed any time soon, before straightening up and fanning out the deck. “Pick a card.”
Darcy tired eyes widened. “No? You can’t?”
“I assure you, ma’am, I can.” Jimmy inched the cards closer to her. “Go on, pick a card.”
As he ran through the trick, one of the oldest in the book, he couldn’t help be amused that she was so invested in the close-up magic. He knew she’d trained under Doctor Foster and Doctor Selvig, two of the brightest minds in modern science, had an expansive knowledge of astrophysics in not only their solar system but was at the forefront of investigating the rest of the nine realms and had been friendly with the literal God of Thunder. To see her be dumbstruck by a silly card trick was charming as all heck.
“Is this your card?” He slapped it faceup on the desk and Darcy lost her shit.
“Yes! What the fuck, man.” Her hands flew to her forehead, miming her mind being blown. “Are you a secret blackjack dealer? Do you moonlight as a casino magician? Does the FBI pay so bad you have to go rig Vegas on your vacations?”
“What’s a vacation?”
“Touche.” Darcy walked her fingers along the desk, then picked up the card that was face up, inspecting it as though it held the answers of the universe. “Will you… teach me?”
“The card trick?” He was pretty confident she was just humouring him, tired and worn out from a long day of stress. He watched as she yawned, loudly and without grace. “Sure… Go get some sleep, and I’ll show you if it gets quiet tomorrow.”
“Cool beans.” She switched off her monitor, patting him haphazardly on the shoulder as she got up. “See you tomorrow, dude.”
“Goodnight.” Jimmy chirped back cheerfully, refocusing on his search. He went to swipe her card back into the pile when he realised it was missing. “Hey, Darcy, you’ve taken-“ He looked behind him to find the room empty and chuckled. “Never mind.”
The following morning, in one of the spaces Monica had carved out of by wiping disproved theories from the board, there it was. The missing card was tacked up in the top corner, with a replica doodled next to it. Outlined in black, with the details filled in red, a true to size drawing of the ace of hearts.
The board was getting emptier, a lot of the solid leads and information transferred to paper and images and tacked up on the wall instead. Jimmy had rearranged the theories on the board the previous day, reorganising the elements still in play to give himself fresh space for any new ideas Darcy or Monica brought to him. Tidy board, tidy mind, that’s what he always said. Not out loud, obviously, he’d never hear the end of it from his colleagues.
Monica was still stewing silently from the morning’s meeting, Darcy hovering over her shoulder as the two women tried to track down an 80s era drone from the S.W.O.R.D database.
Jimmy hunted down a board pen – since Darcy had started ‘borrowing’ them, they never seemed to be in their allotted space anymore, but dotted anywhere around their corner of the base – intent on adding this newest idea to the board and seeing if writing it out would spark any more thoughts.
He went to roll the board over, but stopped when he saw the space he’d cleared the night before was now filled with a very unflattering caricature of Director Hayward. The man’s features were cartoonishly ballooned out of proportion, eyes bulging, veins popping as though his head was about to burst. It would have been almost unrecognisable as the man if not for a neatly drawn speech bubble which emerged near the cavernous mouth; ‘Hayward? More like Hay-I’m-A-Dick-Ward.’
It wasn’t even remotely clever, but Jimmy still found himself snorting at it.
He was torn between professionalism and annoyance at the Director, who was so clearly out of his depth but refused to ask for help and undervalued the two women Jimmy knew had more sense than everyone else on the base put together. The bold strokes of the drawing implied Darcy felt the same way, her handwriting a little rushed as though she had scribbled out the first thought that came to her in anger.
Professionalism (just) won out, but not before he snapped a couple of pictures of the drawing on his phone. As he rubbed the ink away, he might set it as their WhatsApp group chat picture when they eventually get around to making it – Darcy had already claimed she wants it to be named ‘The Hexagang’ although Monica didn’t seem quite so convinced. There wasn’t any urgency to trade numbers yet anyway; for the time being they were stuck together, united by being the only ones who seemed to be getting anything done.
In the aftermath of the Maximoff anomaly, Jimmy was ready to sleep for a month.
The base, de-circusified, was being dismantled around him. Monica, who was not normally the touchy-feely type, had hugged him and Darcy tightly before she had headed out, ready to redevelop S.W.O.R.D into the organisation she knew it could be. She and Jimmy had traded business cards while Darcy had scrawled her number and email on the back of a Starbucks napkin and they all pretended she wasn’t watery eyed as she handed it over to her hero.
Darcy had disappeared to pack up her equipment and Jimmy hoped she wouldn’t leave without saying goodbye.
He swept through their section of the base with an FBI duffle bag, packing away anything the bureau had approved his use of during the case. He wondered what would happen to the whiteboard; as much as he’d joked it was the fourth member of their team, he didn’t actually intend to smuggle it into the back of his car when he left to be debriefed. He made his way over to it, expecting it to be wiped clear, but saw that Darcy had left on final doodle for him.
It was a takeout coffee cup, her phone number jotted along the cardboard sleeve, with a question mark beside it. He tilted his head as he examined it, already reaching for his phone to key her number in.
“So?” Darcy’s voice came from behind him. He turned to see her stood behind him with her arms folded, almost glaring at him as though she was expecting a response.
“So…?” Jimmy repeated, confused.
“So,” Darcy stressed. “Do you want to… you know…” She flapped a hand at the board. “Get coffee sometime? With me?” Her cheeks started to go a little pink.
Ah, that’s what the question mark had meant. Jimmy felt a slow smile stretch across his face, letting his bag drop to the floor.
“I’ll do you one better.” He proposed, swiping a nearby pen and turning away from Darcy’s quizzical expression. Underneath her coffee cup, he began to draw, copying her question mark at the end. With a flourish, he revealed the fresh doodle to her, extremely pleased with himself. “So?” He mimicked her.
Darcy blinked at him, nonplussed. “So, what? What is that?” She squinted at the board. “Is that a flying saucer?”
Jimmy’s smile faded slightly. “It’s a plate.” He protested, using the capped pen as a pointer. “With food on it.”
“Dude.” Darcy shook her head. “That’s definitely not what it looks like.”
“That’s not really the point-“
“Well, I’m just saying-“
“-and it does look like a plate-“
“-are you, like, asking me if there’s aliens-“
“-this bit is a chicken drumstick how can you not see that-“
“-we both know there are-“
“-not that the drawing actually matters-“
“-or were you not listening when-“
“-what matters is I’m trying to ask you to dinner!”
“Oh.” Darcy shut her mouth abruptly.
“Yeah.” Jimmy ran a hand through his hair, flustered.
“I mean, you could have just said.” She pointed out.
He closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose. “Yeah.”
Darcy pressed her lips together, clearly trying to contain her laughter since the initial shock of his statement had worn off. “Okay then.”
Jimmy opened one eye warily. “Okay then?”
“Come on, man.” Darcy rolled her eyes at him incredulously. She marched forward and reached for his hand. Jimmy’s mind, already frazzled from the difficulty of getting this damn dame to just go on a date with him, practically whited out. She grabbed the pen from his death grip, uncapped it and wrote three decisive, bold capital letters under his drawing.
‘YES’