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Darcy never chose the wrong kind of guy for her boyfriends. She may have had some less-than-ideal hook-ups (PSA: the attractiveness of muscular dudebros are inversely proportional to their sexual prowess) but her actual relationships had always been stellar. She and Kei supported each other through well-intentioned but over-bearing parents in high school then had an amicable break-up the summer after grad because they were going to college on opposite ends of the globe. She met Ryan at a mixer for various music extracurriculars on campus (Darcy went for shits and giggles; Ryan actually played a vicious cello). Their extremely fun two years ended when Darcy wanted to put her career ahead of Ryan's picket fence dreams, but he wasn't an asshat about it. He even pointed her towards Jane Foster's internship after her Facebook freakout regarding her missing science credits. She'd always love Ryan for that.
Clint Barton, on the other hand.
God damn Clint Barton, anyway.
"Georgetown?" Jane actually looked up from her screen. "Culver has a perfectly respectable Political Science Department."
"I know they do," said Darcy. "But 'perfectly respectable' isn't the same as 'globally acknowledged amazeballs' which is what Georgetown has."
Jane could only flap her hands and huff.
"Besides, DC is closer to your lab. We can have Science Lab Hula Contests more often and don't you roll your eyes at me; you know it works."
"The minions also use Science Lab Hula Contest time to make a new pot of coffee. We have to isolate the variables before making any definitive statements regarding the efficacy of Science Lab Hu--" Jane gaped at the pillow Darcy hurled at her face, then at Darcy, then back at the pillow.
Darcy batted her eyes. "It's good to graduate from internship to graduate student."
"Darcy, that is so unprofessional."
"You bet i--" Jane, thoroughly nerdy Jane, had such a weakass arm that Darcy had plenty of time to duck away from her return pillow-volley. "This is exactly why I try to encourage you to get out more. Violence is no way to win an argument." Her arm crept towards the pillow.
"You started it, Ms Social Justice Valkyrie."
"Excuse you, I'm a Social Justice Shieldmaiden! I actually go into battle." She snagged the pillow. Jane was still closer to the couch but with her horrendous aim, it only evened the handicap.
"No one will herd the minions the same way!" Jane wailed.
"You have to learn to feed yourself one of these days, Dr Foster."
"Lies! Filthy lies and network television statistics!" As soon as she spoke, Jane gasped and covered her mouth.
"Okay, that was just mean," said Darcy.
"I'm so sorry!"
"Totally uncalled for."
"You're so right. I apologize again for my thoughtlessness and will, henceforth, be more circumspect with my insults."
"You apology is accepted although the war continues." Darcy poked her head out from her hiding place behind the hydrogen beam injector. She got a faceful of tassels. Damn, she was really going to miss this internship.
As sexy as her permanent visitor pass to Avengers Tower looked to the average passer-by, Darcy didn't really see the Avengers often. The tower was less frat house and more working space with living quarters. Jane said most of them had their own place outside Manhattan, maybe even outside the state, which made sense. Having all the superheroes in one place begged for a pipebomb in the lobby.
Tony Stark and Bruce Banner dropped by Jane's floor at times but they had their own space (or in Stark's case, he had the rest of the tower plus a few factories spread across North America and the Indian subcontinent. Darcy herded them into Science Lab Hula whenever possible because it helped her come to terms with the fact that this was her life now-- alien princes, rockstar industrialists, and mutated geniuses. She took pride in the fact that the only time she had a starstruck moment was when Jane had a video conference with Princess Shuri of Wakanda about the possibility of a short research exchange because OH EM GEE WAKANDA.
Thor was around, of course. He stayed at Stark Tower whenever he could escape princing around the rest of the Nine Realms. Darcy never even saw Black Widow. Probably on purpose. She thought she saw Captain America in the hallway once but the guy looked totally bagged; she felt bad about bugging him in case he just returned from preventing nuclear war. Again. This month.
She met Hawkeye on her fifth or sixth lab visit. He was leaving Erik's desk just as she entered, coffee and pastry orders carefully balanced on one arm, ridiculous shopping bag of reference journals in the other. Considering the poor showing of her last two hook-ups, when she learned about inverse proportions, Darcy studiously avoided drooling over Hawkeye's biceps.
They were really amazing biceps, though. Pretty good showing of triceps, too. Everything from his wrists to his elbows just about melted her knees. But no, Darcy only needed to experience mistakes two times, max, to learn her lessons so she averted her eyes and thought of corporate globalism.
Hawkeye barbequed terribly on the labs Bunsen burners. He ate Erik's weird tube caviar and made epic clean-up-the-fridge sandwiches which both he and Erik swore was an legitimate Scandinavian thing. He hula'd, the two times he dropped in during Science Lab Hula Contest. According to Thor, the guy won once but she wasn't there to unleash her mad skills, so Darcy thought of it as a defaulted award. Jane said the pizza boxes strewn around the lab were his doing. Darcy had a visual of Hawkeye throwing pizza slices into scientists' mouths, like darts at a pub.
He seemed to avoid her though. Until Penultimate Deadline Wednesday when Darcy had to leave campus for fear of absorbing too much of the nervous grad student vibe only to mainline Red Bulls at the lab because fuck eJournal lag time.
"Try this." He switched out her fifth can of energy drink for a cup of tea.
"Bluhhh," said Darcy.
"Exactly. Natasha drinks that when she needs to prep for a long term mission."
"Funny, it doesn't smell like liquefied souls."
"I added mint," Clint drawled.
"You have hidden depths, Legolas." Darcy sipped the tea.
Okay, so she slept with him after all.
Ugh.
The problem with people who broke molds was they not only break said mold, they explode it into the air in a thousand colourful pieces like glitter on Pride Parade. And just like glitter, Darcy found pieces of him stuck to her in places she never thought to look. Okay, that was a completely flawed metaphor but she was in poli-sci not lit. Poor poetical skills aside, Clint stayed with her. Not necessarily physically because he had his life and she had hers, and both their lives rarely allowed for down time. They texted when they could and visited each other's state when possible.
Clint Barton defied Darcy's descriptive abilities. Wiry muscle under scarred skin, chest hair and stubble covering a multitude of ticklish spots, capable of remembering her favourite take-out orders after a night of thoroughly exhausting rough sex. He woke up in the middle of the night-- the nights he slept-- and nursed a beer while Darcy curled around his side, trying to smooth goosebumps from his back. Sometimes he talked to her. Sometimes, he asked her to please go back to bed, tonight was a bad night. Sometimes, he shimmied with her in her tiny living room to her Retro Pop playlist, sometimes he twirled her ballroom style around his much larger Tower apartments. Sometimes, he came back from Places Undisclosed, literally smelling like a barn but looking as relaxed as a black ops asset from a disavowed organization could look. Sometimes, Darcy felt kind of like she was in love. Sometimes, she told herself to stop thinking with her vagina.
Darcy gradually got used to waking up next to warmth and stubble and cordite, to messily home-cooked meals, to mindless TV as background noise to foot rubs while writing papers. Got used to it. Missed it, more and more often.
She woke up one Wednesday-- what was it with Wednesdays anyway?-- with the realisation that she would have tried to make changes in her life to be with him. Not everything because, fuck that, she had SciencesPo and LSE fighting over her proposed research project, but if he had asked, if at any point she felt like he wanted to make room for a relationship instead of filling in the gaps in his schedule with pieces of her...
Darcy chose SciencesPo. She needed to work on her French anyway.