Chapter Text
The waitress puts the slice of chocolate cake down between Darcy and Steve. It’s a pretty thing, Darcy has to admit, a rich and fluffy looking cake covered with a light buttercream, layered with raspberry filling and a raspberry drizzle over the top. “We were told you were celebrating an anniversary tonight, congratulations.”
Darcy fights hard to not shoot a death glare over at Sam and Bucky, who are clearly holding back laughter. Besides, she knows that Steve will take care of that for her. “Uh, thank you,” Darcy says. “It looks delicious,” which isn’t a lie.
The waitress leaves them be, which gives Darcy the opportunity to ball up her napkin and toss it at Bucky’s smirking face. “You’re not funny.”
“It is technically your first anniversary,” Bucky points out, still grinning.
“Of a marriage that’s built on a layer of fakery and bullshit,” Darcy fires back.
“And healthcare, don’t forget that,” Steve adds, mouth full of the cake that he’s helped himself to.
“And healthcare.”
Which is the heart of the matter, really. While Steve isn’t the skinny little boy she’d been friends with in high school anymore, not even a gym membership and a growth spurt could help lungs that had been damaged by childhood illnesses. So after he’d been hospitalized with pneumonia and been laid off from his job right afterwards the year before, they’d cooked up the plan to get married so that Steve could get onto her health plan. Her job at Stark Industries may be boring as hell, but the benefits were top notch.
One trip to city hall and two witnesses later, Darcy and Steve had a shiny new piece of paper showing that they had a real, adult domestic partnership thing happening.
Darcy’s mother gave her an earful over the phone when she found out about it, but whatever. They don’t have that great of a relationship anyway, and the found family she’s created with Steve, Sam, Bucky, and all the rest of their friends matters that much more.
Even if they are a whole pack of assholes.
(Even if Darcy’s feelings may have grown to be more than mere friendship over the past year. She’ll take that secret to the grave with her, however. What they have right now is too good to wreck with messy things like emotions and romance.)
“So, you two doing anything special to celebrate your anniversary later?” Sam asks, waggling his eyebrows in a truly obnoxious way.
Steve, bless him, doesn’t take the bait. “Going back to our apartment and sleeping in our separate bedrooms. We’re an old married couple, that’s how we spend our exciting Friday nights.”
Bucky frowns, reaching over to dig his fork into the cake. “Really? Still with the separate bedrooms?”
Darcy just nods, beating his fork to the cake and stealing the buttercream rosette he was aiming for as retaliation for such a dumb question. “Yup. Steve’s feet are like ice blocks.”
“And Darcy snores. It’s not conducive for a good night’s sleep.”
“Sad, but true,” she adds.
Sam glances over at Bucky with a look that Darcy can’t make heads or tails out of. “I think they’ve moved way too fast into the old married couple stage.”
Steve reaches out and claps his right hand over Darcy’s left, squeezing lightly enough so that it doesn’t dig her rings into her skin. “Yep. We are old and boring and like it that way.”
This time Darcy shoots Steve a smile of her own. Even if the marriage itself is technically a sham, they still understand each other, far better than anyone else ever could.