Archive of Our Own ^beta

The subway was around before he spent time ‘on ice’—a few insensitive SHIELD agents have coined that term—but what it had turned into was something marvelous and disturbing.

Just like everything else in Steve Roger’s life.

He rode it a few times with Bucky back in the day—not too often, since they hadn’t a need to leave Brooklyn often when they were younger—and it was a spectacular piece of machinery. That being said, it ran only a few times per day. Now he could stand on the platform for ten minutes and watch a dozen trains go past. The efficiency of it all was why so many New Yorkers rode it, and he didn’t blame them.

That meant it was packed. The cabins seemed spacious at first glance, until you were packed in like sardines during the busy hours. In all fairness, it could just seem like they were sardines; the last time Steve rode the trains, he was a third his current size—now he received more glares than ever when someone was shoved up against him, angered by his stature, as if he disturbed their ride so harshly just by being big-and-tall.

Those were the moments he felt more out of place than ever.

This afternoon, though, the train wasn’t as bad. There was room to sit, and Steve was perched on a hard, uncomfortable bench beside a window. Brooklyn sped past in a blur; it was too much like life. Everything was a blur. Sometimes the eye would catch something familiar—and maybe it didn’t, maybe it was a trick of the mind—and he could jump at it to try and catch a better glimpse, only for the familiarity to disappear and all he would stare at was something strange, foreign.

He was so tired. Tired of jumping at every chance of feeling something like home. It didn’t take long for him to stop looking; he’d only feel like a chump, and the act was getting old.

So for this ride he sat, quiet as usual, staring down at his worrying hands. Everyone around him had their eyes on personal machines—cell phones, iPods, you name it—so there was no point in looking up. There was no human connection to be made by staring around. Everyone’s gaze was glazed. They were somewhere else, somewhere in that social network phenomenon that made them feel connections. Steve didn’t see the appeal and didn’t get it one bit.

The train pulled into its last stop in Brooklyn before it would cross the bridge into Manhattan. A few folks got off—he didn’t want to be considered a whimp, but the last thing you would catch him doing is walking off the train onto the platform without watching where he stepped, but no one looked up from their phones—and a few came on. The doors closed and the train began to move again.

And that’s when he noticed a person who wasn’t staring at her phone.

She sat opposite him, a few feet away. Her legs were crossed—legs covered in rust-coloured tights, her boot-covered foot bouncing in the air to some unknown tune. When Steve looked up further (thinking she must have her head plugged in to her iPod with those annoying telltale white headphones) he saw her deep blue sweater dress and her canvas bag. He saw her brown hair, curling around her shoulders and falling out of her hat. A leather coat was sitting in her lap. Her arms were crossed.

And there were no white cords in sight.

She must have felt him staring—and it was hard not to. Someone in New York not plugged in to any kind of device was an anomaly; like Halley’s Comet—because there was a slight turn of her head his way.

She didn’t glare like most women in New York had a tendency to do when they assumed someone was leering at them. Instead her green eyes noted him and her red lips pursed thoughtfully.

Acting defensively, he did his best to smile—not too much, but perhaps a bit crookedly.

Darcy Lewis thought it was the most adorable smile she had ever seen in her life.

For a moment, she was dumbstruck by it. Smiles on the subway were a rare find, and in her experience they were accompanied by a grope in her direction or a leer at her boobs. Sometimes the smile had ‘serial killer’ written all over it, and she would have to put her hand in her bag and pull out her taser (just the hilt of it, so as not to start a panic on the subway) to show the wannabe murderer that she was the wrong single-white-female to be targeting today.

But none of her warning bells were ringing when this guy smiled at her. It was small but it went all the way to his eyes. The last time someone actually smiled that pleasantly at her had to have been... at least back in middle school, when Tommy Gregors had a crush on her.

So, just for this guy, Darcy smiled back. Just for two seconds—any more may seem too much—before she ducked her head and resumed her position: staring across the aisle at the ABC-gum-and-wrapper stuck to a bench.

The movement in the corner of her eye suddenly had her worried; his hands were moving. Ugh, please tell me he isn’t grabbing himself just because I smiled at him. Are guys in New York that hard up? Honestly? Her lips pursed in a line and she dared a peek his way in her peripherals.

And to her own surprise, he wasn’t doing anything. He wasn’t grabbing himself or making an obscene gesture. All he did was play with his hands. He wringed them back and forth, like he had nothing to do to pass the time.

He seemed nervous and out of his element.

At least, that’s how Darcy usually felt when she started rubbing her hands together in public. Curiosity got the better of her. Slowly, she tilted her head to get a better look at him without full-on staring. He was tall and took up his whole seat, but instinct told her that was all muscle. No way could a man have shoulders that broad and a neck and jaw that strong and not be pure muscle.

Holy crap, she happened to pick a seat next on the subway next to the walking definition of handsome.

Steve watched her purse her lips; obviously she was thinking hard about something, but she didn’t seem annoyed. He could only imagine that she was amused; even though those red lips pushed forward, every now and then they would pull away from her worrying teeth and smirk, almost grin. She was doing her damndest to suppress it. Why she was, he had no idea.

She looked great when she smiled. In his opinion.

He liked red lips. Back in his time, every gal wore red lips; nowadays he noticed that the darker the lip, the more outspoken a woman was. Once in a while Natasha would go out on a solo undercover mission, and he would see her dressed in whatever person she would play for it. The darker the lips, the more fun she had (or so he thought. She usually came back from those missions smirking; he assumed it was because she didn’t have to act as hard to be someone else and it pleased her more. Or she kicked some serious ass. Could be both).

Steve liked outspoken women. They didn’t scare him off, like they did Bucky sometimes. Those women were the most fascinating out of them all. They didn’t have to force their femininity by brushing their hair back, giggling daintily and acting like a fragile flower. These women oozed felinity without even trying.

And this gal... this woman was pretty feminine.

Steve tried his best not to stare, but she peeked back at him out of the corner of her eyes. Just as he had done to her, those green eyes gazed him up and down. It was an appreciative glance, one that should make him feel self conscious about this body of his that still made him feel alien sometimes. It had the opposite effect though—instead of feeling nervous, her gaze landed on his, and stayed there for a long time.

It was breathtaking for a moment, and the smile that crept to his lips happened without thinking.

Suddenly Darcy was back in high school because she felt the blush cover her whole body, starting with her cheeks and spreading back to her neck. The attractiveness of this random stranger on the subway was something she hadn’t fully evaluated before, and it was enough to make her weak in the knees. And that’s saying something since she had been sitting through this entire encounter.

This was it. This was that cheesy ‘meet cute’ that happens in those damn romantic comedies that Darcy insisted she hated. This is that moment where someone’s gaze lingered, or picked up someone’s fallen handkerchief.

Now her and this guy were destined to meet atop the Empire State Building on Valentine’s Day. It was foretold. For generations after, she would be that corny grandma that told her grandkids about the day she met the love of her love.

And to think she wouldn’t have noticed him if she hadn’t forgotten her iPod at home that morning.

His eyes crinkled when he smiled. That’s when she noticed a few freckles.

The magic moment was broken when the conductor announced loudly that they were reaching Grand Central Station. Everyone started to move as the train slowed. Reluctantly, Darcy looked away and picked up her jacket. This sucked. The meet-cute was over and she was already late for work; there wasn’t even a chance to exchange numbers. And in all fairness, they hadn’t even said ‘hi’ yet. Getting to the number-exchange portion of courtship could take too long and she’d miss her stop.

What she hadn’t noticed at first was that Steve was grabbing his bag and standing as well. It wasn’t until she was off the train and down the first flight of stairs before she saw that he was a few feet behind her. At first she looked up, surprised, and he didn’t miss it.

Instantly Steve felt remorseful; he finally gets the guts to grin at a girl and now she must think he’s stalking her. Doing his best, he lingered, walking more slowly than the rest of the crowd, until by the time they were in the main terminal, she had yards between them. For a second she looked like she was shaking her head, just to brush her hair out of her face, but he picked up on her eyes looking over her shoulder. She was checking to see how close he was following.

But he backed off and let it be, eventually coming to a full stop in the main terminal. Folks brushed past him, bumping into his shoulder, blurring together; he looked after her retreating back, climbing the stairs to the Park Avenue exit. What started off as a good morning with a smile from a pretty girl was now Steve living in a blur. Familiarity coming only in glimpses before lost in the crowd.

Damn it, Rogers.

Or so he thought.

After feeling sorry for himself for only a minute, he left out the same exit she had. This was the quickest way to Stark Tower, and the secret SHIELD headquarters. As he took the regular path to work, there she was; the glimpse of her dress through the crowd happened over and over again. She was heading the same way.

It was silly to be this hopeful, but his pace picked up as they neared the Tower’s entrance. He pleaded for her to keep walking that way. Then he begged her to keep walking towards the main doors. And as soon as she went through the revolving doors, he was grinning all over again.

Here’s the thing about Stark Tower: the lobby is big and open, but split in two parts. First, closest to the doors, are a reception desk for visitors and Stark staff, and four elevators for ‘public use.’ The second half was another set of elevators, but it was a daunting task to reach them. A row of heavy-duty turnstiles, along with a half-dozen security personnel permitted only SHIELD agents to enter past that point. Not only was a SHIELD agent’s card pressed against a scanner on the turnstile to prove authenticity with an annoyingly loud ‘beep,’ but the SHIELD agent would inspect the card himself. What was worse was that they had hand-held retina scanners.

Darcy hated getting her eyes scanned. Especially on days like today when she had her contacts in. But for once she was willing to go through with it; considering the unfortunate paranoia that followed her, she welcomed the well-concealed-but-heavily-armed agents. Once she was through the turnstiles, she would head towards the elevators, specifically the one at the far end. The elevator at the far end was reserved for the highest security clearance, which meant you were either an Avenger (not her), working directly for Director Fury (also not her, thank god) or working for an Avenger (her! Kind of. She worked for Jane, who worked for Dr. Banner and Mr. Stark. She got high security clearance on a technicality).

Darcy’s boots clacked against the marble, her steps sure and strong, feeling better having passed this level of protection. Bad experiences made her this way; one too many guys took a smile to be a bigger invitation than just polite greeting, and while she lived heavily by idea that parents shouldn’t teach their daughters to be smarter, but for their sons to be better men, she thought herself pretty smart and carried her taser. The guy on the subway was obviously much larger than her and could take her easily, and for a few scary minutes she worried that he wouldn’t even go down if she had tased him.

But that was behind her. All was well once she was in SHIELD’s fortress. Her mind started to drift to her work for the day. There was a pile of data sitting on her desk for sure; and she would have to run out for the scientists’ lunches in a few hours...

This private elevator had no buttons; where the standard ‘up/down’ buttons would be, there was a computer touch-screen. She was required to press her ID badge against it for a second before JARVIS recognized her through a tiny camera and opened the elevator doors for her. She stepped inside, still lost in thought about work as the elevator doors closed.

Two seconds later, the doors opened again.

Darcy tried not to jump, because she’d never had her elevator ride interrupted before.

Steve stared at her from the other side, pulling back his ID badge from the screen.

In true JARVIS fashion, as he usually did when someone came into work, the AI greeted them.

“Good morning, Captain Rogers, Miss Lewis.”

Of course. The one Avenger that Darcy hadn’t met yet.

Darcy could only bite her bit red lips together to stop gaping like a goldfish, but it did nothing to suppress the grin that took over her face as she felt silly, ridiculous and giddy all at once. The same type of grin she had when she gave Steve that look on the train. No matter how much she bit her lips, her eyes were still bright with hope and promise.

And after a moment’s hesitation, mostly to gauge her response, Steve grinned sheepishly and stepped in beside her.

They stood next to each other, but facing forward, and suddenly it was a dare for whoever to speak up first.

“Stark has a decent bar in his study.”

Darcy tilted her head. Steve wasn’t looking at her, but he was smirking at the doors. “I’ve heard you know how to break into it.”

Darcy gaped for a second before snickering. “I might.”