Archive of Our Own

Darcy's not from New Mexico. Hell no. She's not, like, horrified that someone would think she is—New Mexico's not like Jersey or Cleveland or whatever—but she's not from the desert. Now, Jane is. She's like one of those cactuses—cactuseses? cacti?—all prickly on the outside and soft on the inside, really interested in physics at the expense of blooming pretty cactus flowers and this metaphor has gotten a bit out of hand.

Darcy's not like Jane. And she doesn't want to be like Jane, even though Jane is in probably in the top five coolest people Darcy's ever met and the only reason she's not higher is, hello, she met a freaking Norse god. Five, actually. But Jane's still cool, just not in the way Darcy defined cool in high school because who knows what’s cool in high school? Jane is Darcy’s new definition of cool, where you about something so stupidly much that you'll literally move heaven and earth to make it happen and you don’t care who knows it. That's badass by any scale. And Jane's probably that way because she grew up in the land of enchantment where the sand gets everywhere and the nights are always way colder than you think they'll be. So New Mexico is good for people like Jane.

And Darcy? Darcy's from Seattle.

She likes Seattle. She misses Seattle. She misses Seattle like that thing you get when someone chops off your hand and forgets to tell your brain. Because what Seattle’s got, you can’t get anywhere else. Like coffee. And family. And that doesn’t sound like much, then you’ve got to consider that, one, Seattle’s got the best coffee in the freaking world, and as a grad student Darcy pretty much runs on coffee and ramen and overly ambitious plans for the future. And two, the Lewis clan is pretty much the best bunch of freaks Darcy’s ever met, and considering Darcy and Jane now work with SHIELD, that means something.

But what she misses most about Seattle is the rain—not that she doesn't miss the coffee or her family, but Starbucks and Skype are okay substitutes in the same way that nicotine gum is an okay substitute for smoking—it’s not, but it’ll do until it won’t. There’s no substitute for rain. And no, Jane, a shower isn’t an acceptable replacement. Some days in this land of what the fuck is up with all this sunlight and why is everything so orange, Darcy feels the dryness in her bones like she’s gonna crack from the inside out. And then she complains about it to Jane, which is the most pointless thing in the world because all Jane does is suggest that Darcy has a slight obsession with a natural meteorological event, and they move onto the next topic. It’s like ritual by now. That does make Darcy pause, though. When Jane thinks you're too obsessed with something, you should probably step back and reexamine your values.

Which Darcy did. And she still misses the stupid rain.

“It’s just water,” Jane says without listening. They should be having a peaceful, nonwork-filled lunch except Jane has a napkin full of calculations that will somehow equal Thor, and Darcy’s got an outline for a thesis paper on campaign finance reform that seems less and less important the more superheroes they meet. So the meal’s not peaceful or work-free or even productive because no one can do real work in a place called Mucho Mexican. But the tacos are pretty good.

“It’s not just water, it’s rain.” It’s a conversation they’ve had so many times that they’ve memorized their parts. Jane acts all dismissive and snobby towards rain and Darcy makes her case and then they split the tip and go back to the lab for science. It’s nice to have a routine. “You just don’t appreciate it.”

Jane scoffs. “I appreciate rain just fine. There’s not that much to appreciate.”

“Ugh, that’s not even true.” Really. “Rain’s like, a shower, but instead of it just being for you, it’s for everything. It makes the world cleaner and all that hippie stuff.”

Jane writes an equation with so many variables it looks like a sentence. “Still haven’t learned about acid rain, huh?”

Darcy rolls her eyes and finishes her tacos because Jane’s got no romance in her heart, no matter what her current obsession may suggest. Darcy looks out the dusty window at the dusty street with her dusty eyes. “My dad always tells me that God is in the rain.”

“No, He’s in the details,” Jane says. She scratches out something she wrote down and scrunches up her nose. “Isn’t that quote from V for Vendetta?”

Darcy sighs. “Dad loves that movie.”

Jane leans back and stretches her back. It sounds like someone stepped on bubble wrap. Darcy and Erik should probably make her leave the desk more. Maybe they can lure her out with the promise of a new multivariable math thingie magic ray and trap her in a spa for a day. “Well, back to the lab.”

“Joy.”

Jane tosses twenty bucks down on the table and Darcy swaps it out for a ten because the service isn’t that good, Jane, let’s not go crazy here, and they leave. The sun’s not as blinding when they step out as it was when they stepped in. There’s a cloud cover moving in from the west—thick, white, cotton ball clouds where the sky had been clear before. Darcy nudges Jane and points at one. “That one looks like a ship.” Jane hums a nonanswer and tries to keep working on her math-filled notebook. Darcy swings her arm around Jane’s waist and steers her away from traffic. “That one’s a horse.”

A minute later, Jane asks, “What?”

Darcy shakes her head and glances up as a shadow passes over them. A massive black cloud covers the sky where a minute ago there had been blue sky. “Uh, Jane? I think we should—”

Jane squeaks as what feels like twenty pounds of water hits them at the same time. They’re soaked in an instant, then they’re beyond soaked. Jane shoves her notebook up her shirt and sprints for cover, hunched over like an old lady. And Darcy? Darcy raises her hands to the sky and laughs like this is the funniest thing ever because it kinda is. And what’s the point of running now?

“Come on!” Jane shouts, huddled against a wall.

Darcy whirls around. Her shoes are already caked in mud. They’re ruined, definitely, and she should be pissed about that because you can’t even imagine how cool these flats are, but she’s not, she’s fine, she’s better than fine. “It’s rain!”

“Clearly!”

Darcy runs—splashes, frolics, wades—over to Jane and grabs her hand. “Come on, you’re already wet.”

Jane shook her head and her wet hair slapped her red cheeks. “You’re crazy.”

“Says the girl dating Thor.”

“The two things aren’t connected.”

“Really?”

BOOM.

They jump as the thunder and lightning crash together, bright enough to blind Darcy, loud enough to make her ears ring in the silence that follows. “Okay,” Jane says, “now we have to get out of here.”

“Wait, wait!” Darcy grabs Jane’s arm as Jane turns away because she’s thought of something, oh, has she thought of something. And as Jane’s yanking her arm away and opening her mouth to say something sensible, Darcy says, “Isn’t Thor supposed to be the god of thunder?”

And it’s like Jane’s seeing math for the first time, it really is. It’s this look that’s somewhere between wonder and love and “What does this mean?” and “I am going to find out.” It’s the look she got when Thor in full-on Thor mode came back from the dead and kissed her hand, and Darcy’s never felt anything like it herself, not once, and now she realizes what a tragedy that is. Eyes fixed on the sky, Jane takes one step out then another. The rain rolls down her face and into her eyes and Jane doesn’t even blink. “Thor?” she asks so quietly Darcy might have imagined it if Jane hadn’t repeated, shouting this time, “Thor?”

Thunder and lightning clap together again, the light and the boom. Darcy flattens herself against the wall, but Jane just raises her hands in front of her face and cups them together, letting the rain collect and spill out over the top and through her fingers, draining as fast as it fills. Then she turns back to Darcy, who’s feeling more and more like she’s invading on something so intimate it makes her heart do this sad little twisty thing. Jane smiles bright as the sun. “Your dad’s right!” she shouts over the din. “At least one god’s in the rain!”

And what do you even say to that besides what Darcy does say which is some weird half-snort, half-giggle, half-sob, and if that adds up to more than it should, well, so does the universe.

Then Jane, impossibly cool and brilliant Jane, throws her crazy head back and shouts at the sky, “Hello, hello, hello,” until the thunder claps in response. She and Darcy stay there in the cold and the wet and the beautiful until it feels like all the dirt that’s ever been has been washed away and all the buds conserving their energy have finally bloomed.

The storm ends. The clouds disappear. The sun blazes. And Jane wrings out her hair before she turns to Darcy and says, “Come on. We’ve got to finish up the calculations for the Schwarzschild metric before the meeting with Coulson on Tuesday.”

Darcy tries to dry her glasses on her wet shirt. “You have literally no magic in your soul.”

“Nope,” Jane says happily. “Just sufficiently advanced science.”

Then they slog through the mud to the lab, dry off, and get back to the work of ripping a hole in the impossible and making the odds suck it because this is Darcy’s life now. And even Darcy will admit that, yes, fine, God, okay, this is something Seattle can’t begin to touch, that her life back home has never once ever come close to equaling and that, that is pretty damn amazing and pretty damn humbling.

But Darcy will argue the coffee thing until the day she dies.