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“Damn it Jane!” she yells. “I’ve got dirt in places I forgot existed.” She bangs her elbow. Ow. She hears Jane shout something but she’s too far away and, well, metal distorts sounds like nowhere else. She doesn’t know how Jane convinced her to do this. Jane’s smaller than her. And, well, it’s not exactly like they got permission from Stark to route one of Jane’s rainbow road trackers through the ventilation systems. Darcy had thought ventilation systems were too small and too flimsy to hold people but these ones weren’t. In fact, it really seemed like- yes, that was definitely a reinforcement. If only she’d known she was going to be scrambling through ceilings whens he rolled out of bed this morning, she wouldn’t have worn this cute skirt with her safari blouse.
And then something grabbed her ankle and she screamed as loud as she could before kicking out, her shoe landing solidly on something that was hard. She scrabbled further forward, disregarding the hot spots that had started forming on her elbows and knees. “JANE!” It was only when she reached a turn in the duct work that she managed to look behind her. She’d managed to leave him in the dust (damn right). He was clutching his head and staring at her like she was crazy. “I can taser you!” She yells and he looks at her quizzically.
“You’ll have to speak up,” he finally says. “Mostly deaf.” Great.
“I. Can. Taser. You.” She speaks slowly.
“So you want to electrocute yourself too?” He gestures around them and Dary’s heart plummets. She didn’t even have the taser in here. “Well, I can kick!”
“I figured that one out.”
“Darcy, Jane says you are in trouble?” Thor’s voice echoes through the shaft.
Darcy relaxes. “Thor! I’m being held hostage by a deaf guy!” Deaf.Guy glares at her and she shrugs. What is she supposed to do. It’s her first day working in Avengers Tower and it wasn’t like she was even expecting to be in the ventilation shaft let alone be found out by some guy who is not Tony Stark crawling around in the ventilations hafts. “What are you doing in here anyways?” He blinks at her and she repeats herself slower. He shrugs, wincing at the movement and she almost feels bad. Almost. Finally, though, Thor’s face pops up behind Deaf.Guy.
“Ah, I see you have met Clint!” Deaf.Guy is scrambling backwards and flips down out of the ventilation shaft. Well. If Thor’s there, he can just use Mewmew on him if he tries to murder Darcy. So. She shimmies backwards after taping the antenna down. Hopefully she won’t ever have to go back into that damn shaft. She scrambles over the opening and looks down. Thor and Deaf.Guy-Clint are standing there and she shoos at Thor.
“Go away Thor, unless you really want to see my underwear!” He turns his back but Clint is still looking up at her. “Dude! You heard me.” He grins at her and turns and she flips him off before scrambling down, using the chair to land on before stepping down.
“Jane, I want to lodge a formal complaint against the idea of moving to New York.”
Jane rolls out from under her thing-a-ma-jig that she’s been putting together after shipment from England. “Darcy, you’re going to be paid here.”
“Never mind, I rescind that complaint.” She sighs. “I got the antenna 20 feet down the ventilation.”
“Darcy- we need to get it as close to the outside of the building as possible.”
“Well I’m not going back in there!” She might have a panic attack but no way is she copping to that to her boss.
“I'm not flashing any more people who crawl around creepily in ventilation shafts.” She glances at Deaf-Clint and she could swear she sees a smirk. “Make him do it!”
“What’s your name?”
“This, my love, is Clint. Others call him Hawkeye. He is a good teammate, nearly as good as Sif and the Warriors Three.” Thor looks like a puppy, Darcy decides. He's so overly excited to introduce his Avengers friends to his Jane.
“Can you get the antenna out to the exit shaft?” Jane asks. In answer, he leaps and pulls himself up into the shaft. Darcy huffs. She’s pretty sure she didn’t even look a quarter as graceful he did leaping up there.
“Thor, why was Clint in the ventilation shaft?” Darcy finally says. Thor shrugs, which makes her wonder what Jane has gotten them into this time.