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“You’re to be commended, Ms. Lewis.”
Darcy started as the tall redhead came to a stop beside her. She’d been hanging over the balustrade on the mezzanine floor, a small space elevated slightly above the main foyer floor and affording her a decent vantage point from which to keep an eye on the proceedings.
“I am?” She asked in confusion. It wasn’t all that often that Darcy found herself commended. Condemned, on the other hand, seemed to be a semi regular occurrence.“For what?”
Pepper gave her a small smile and gestured down towards the main foyer, where groups of people had gathered, suited, booted and drinks in hand. The Stark Foundation Annual Charity Ball, founded by Tony - although in reality organised in its entirety by Pepper, of course - was in full swing. Avengers and those considered to be Avengers-adjacent mingled, with varying levels of confidence.
Tony was - as to be expected - holding court in one corner, scotch in one hand and gesticulating wildly with his other, entirely in his element. Natasha moved freely through the mass of guests, dropping a small smile here and there with a tight grip on her glass of champagne. Barton lurked at the edges, one hand shoved in his trouser pocket and an eye on the catering tables. Banner similarly skulked at the edges, shirt collar open and a reluctant look on his face as Tony beckoned him over.
Steve, shoulder to shoulder with Thor and them both improbably in suits with proportions that must have stretched Tony’s tailor to the limits of his - admittedly broad - sewing skills, surveyed the floor and the gathered peoples upon it. Most people would have assumed he was simply falling back on his soldiering experience, and they’d be somewhere near the mark but not quite on the money.
Darcy knew that Steve was actually keeping a close eye on his friend.
Bucky too was wearing a suit, something Darcy hadn’t been confident he’d be interested in wearing, but perhaps as he’d seen Steve already squeezed into his own, had wriggled into it without comment. The sleeve was stretched a little over his metal arm, and Darcy could tell even from her position on the mezzanine above the foyer floor that he was itching to rip that off.
“He seems to be doing rather well,” Pepper remarked, as Bucky moved through the crowd.
“Yeah, we did a lot of… practice,” Darcy admitted.
“I know the feeling,” Pepper said wryly. “I have something of a rescue for a boyfriend myself.”
As the two women watched, Bucky approached a middle-aged and somewhat balding man, who looked faintly terrified to be on the receiving end of the Winter Soldier. Presenting himself in front of the other man - who Darcy vaguely recognised as Tony’s long-suffering bank manager - Bucky grasped a hand firmly and began to shake it. Thankfully, Darcy thought, with his right hand. They’d practiced that, too.
“Hi-nice-to-meet-you-my-name-is-Bucky-Barnes-my-friend-is-Steve-Rogers-you’ve-probably-heard-of-him-as-he-is-Captain-America-and-part-of-the-Avengers-”
“Oh,” Pepper said, raising a hand to her face, concealing the smile that threatened to overcome her typically calm demeanour.
“It’s the cue cards,” Darcy explained through teeth that were ostensibly smiling, though her grip tightened on the balustrade as she kept her eyes on Bucky, who was still loudly running through all the phrases they’d gone over in the weeks before.
“Cue cards?”
“We thought maybe… He’s not all that-”
“Talkative?”
“Exactly,” Darcy agreed. “So we made up some cue cards with short small talk phrases on them, just to help a bit-”
“I see,” Pepper nodded in understanding.
“But now-”
“He appears to be saying all of them, at once.”
“Perhaps I’ll just-” Darcy made to move towards him, heading for the small flight of stairs to her right, but Jane - making her way quickly through the mass of people - had already reached his elbow, the one that wasn’t pumping the other man’s hand with a determined enthusiasm.
The scientist smiled brightly as she arrived at Bucky’s side, laying a light hand on his arm to let him know that she was there. Tony’s bank manager turned concerned eyes to Jane, flicking between her and the soldier hanging onto him.
“Bucky,” Jane said easily, keeping the smile plastered across her face. “Is everything okay?”
Bucky smoothly switched lanes on his monologue, still shaking the man’s hand.
“This-is-Jane-Foster-she-is-an-award-winning-astrophysicist-”
Jane flushed, pleased if slightly embarrassed, patting Bucky lightly on the arm.
“-and-the-girlfriend-of-Thor-Odinson-”
“You can probably stop there, Bucky,” she said, laughing.
“-they-live-in-the-apartment-next-door-and-they-are-very-loud-together-at-night-”
“Bucky!” Jane yelped, her flush a much deeper scarlett now, though the man whose hand was still being shaken by the super soldier looked significantly more interested than he had when Bucky had been discussing her scientific achievements.
“That was not on the cue cards,” she hissed into Bucky’s ear, tightening her grip on his arm but still attempting the false smile she’d put on for the sake of Tony’s bank manager. It was a little manic, with slightly too many teeth. Bucky, surprised but still enthusiastically shaking the man’s hand, turned to look at the scientist. It was at this point she noticed the glass he was holding in his free hand.
“Bucky, are you-” she plucked the now empty tumbler from his hand and sniffed it cautiously. “Thor, I am going to kill you,” Jane said grimly, her smile disappearing completely. The bank manager beat a hasty retreat as she whirled on the spot, bouncing on her toes in an attempt to spot the Asgardian.
“Thor!”
The man himself appeared at her side, smiling broadly.
“Jane, my love-”
“What’s this?” Jane demanded, thrusting the glass tumbler under his nose and, as if by magic, the grin disappeared, shortly followed by the man himself.
Steve had appeared at Bucky’s other arm, sensing from across the room that Jane was running into trouble. He eased Bucky’s grip from around the bank manager’s hand, who clutched it to his chest as soon as it was released.
“He’s had some of Thor’s Asgardian shit,” Jane hissed from the other side of Bucky.
“He’s had what?” Steve hissed back, his grip on Bucky’s arm tightening.
“Thor’s Asgardian shit,” Bucky repeated, helpfully and slightly too loudly.
Both his volume and his timing were particularly unfortunate, as they came just as the music lulled for a beat or two. Above them, Pepper bit her lip in an attempt to swallow down the smile that threatened to take over her otherwise serene expression. Darcy, still forcing her way through the crowd toward the trio, shook her head with a laugh that was also something of a sigh and avoided looking up at Pepper.
Tony, popping his head up at the sound of Bucky’s voice like a meerkat from across the room, put a hand to Banner’s chest and stopped him in the middle of a particularly involved explanation about gamma ray radiation and its practical applications for modern archeology. Taking a long drag of the bourbon in his glass, he made his way over to the small group with slightly more effectiveness than Darcy was having.
“Enjoying the festivities?” He said with a wide grin as he reached them, clapping a hand to Bucky’s shoulder and wincing slightly when he came into contact with hard vibranium. He clinked his glass against the empty tumbler that Jane was still clutching, and she shot a look at Steve whose expression had turned steely.
“You knew about this?”
“What I knew about was the cue card system, and having seen that in action, I calculated the rate of success as poor,” Tony answered breezily, though he squared his shoulders somewhat as he faced the other man.
“You-” Steve broke off, closing his eyes slowly before opening them again and fixing his stare back on Tony. “You calculated-” he emphasised the second word, hard. “-giving him Asgardian liquor? At a public event?”
“It was a tactical move, and a measured calculation. He’s only had a little.”
“You can’t go around spiking people’s drinks, Tony,” Steve said with a groan.
“I spiked nothing,” the other man answered, offended. “I just walked up and asked him if he wanted some.”
“You can’t-” Steve broke off, one hand rubbing his temple and the other on his hip. At his side, Bucky watched with interest, though his attention turned away from the verbal tennis match when Darcy finally pushed her way through to them. He smiled down at her, and she crooked one back at him in return.
“People have been using alcohol as a social lubricant for thousands of years,” Tony pointed out, gesturing with his own drink and losing some of it in the process. “You want him to be normal? This is normal.”
“Plenty of people are social without the need for alcohol-“ Steve pinched the bridge of his nose and breathed deeply, trying to remember all the grounding techniques his therapist had mentioned, although she had at the time been recommending them for use in situations where his combat PTSD flared up.
“-plenty of boring ones,” Tony said with a snort.
“I don’t drink, Tony,” Steve ground out.
“Exhibit A,” the other man retorted, brandishing his glass again in Steve’s direction.
Jane, looking from one superhero to the other and noting that Steve’s face was rapidly approaching the same shade of red that Stark used for his Iron Man suits, looked to her assistant with a grimace.
“Darcy, you’d better-”
“On it,” she smiled in return, taking Bucky by the hand. “C’mon, big guy, want some fresh air?”
It was low-hanging fruit, Bucky tended to prefer to be outside. Darcy’s pet theory was that, as he’d been kept inside and underground for so much time, he had a need to feel fresh air on his face.
“Thor’s Asgardian shit, huh?” She said, giving him a side-long glance as they exited to the balcony, Bucky pushing one of the enormous glass doors open with one hand and waiting for Darcy to duck under it. He threw her a knowing grin in return, a grin that let her know the man at her side had been a willing participant in Stark’s plan. The other-worldly alcohol, though it did nothing at all for Steve - save raise his blood pressure whenever Bucky had a hold of it - loosened the soldier up and let his words come more easily. Darcy, like Steve, was a little hesitant in wanting Bucky to rely on it, but she knew he struggled with expressing himself. The man contained multitudes, but barely any of it made it to the surface without a little extra help.
“You’re a bad man, Bucky Barnes,” she shook her head with a smile.
“Cosmopolitan says women like bad boys,” he answered solemnly.
“You need to consider how much time you hang around the foyer,” Darcy answered with a snort. Bucky had taken to spending his time lounging on the couch in the Avengers tower lobby, dedicatedly making his way through the magazines that Happy left out in what appeared to be an attempt to catch himself up to the modern world. Unfortunately for them all, most had been there for some years and were wildly out of date, meaning that on frequent occasions Barnes would regale the group with a piece of news that most of them had forgotten, if they’d even known it at all.
“Sometimes I just…” he trailed off, putting his hands into his trouser pockets and staring up at the night sky. Darcy, looking up at him, waited patiently. Bucky wasn’t a verbose man, though he was starting to share more.
“Sometimes, it’s nice to feel a bit normal,” he finished, eventually, still not looking at her. Darcy winced internally at the use of ‘normal’, thinking back to Tony’s own liquor-fuelled defense to Steve. She put her head on his shoulder and he slipped an arm around her, drawing her into his side fully and resting his chin on the top of her head, though not before pressing a gentle kiss to her forehead.
“What is normal, anyway?” She said with as much of a shrug as she could manage when pressed into his side, a question that she wasn’t intending him to answer. She traced a finger over his stomach, dancing along the line of buttons before squeezing him tight. “If you’re judging by the rest of us, you’ve picked a poor control group, I’m afraid.”
It didn’t get the laugh she was expecting from him, and it was a moment before he responded.
“Having a few drinks with friends,” Bucky said slowly, his voice quiet, eyes still trailing an airplane that made its way across the night sky above them, blinking lights marking its path. “Attending a party where no-one is worried you’ll flip out and skewer another guest to the buffet table.”
Darcy looked up at him, saw the crooked way his smile twisted the corners of his mouth, and hugged him a little tighter. He squeezed back carefully, mindful that it was his left arm that looped around her.
“Not having flash cards to help you along-”
“I’m sorry,” Darcy said immediately, twisting under the weight of his arm to face him properly. “I just thought it might help-”
“I know,” he said, cutting her off and dropping another kiss to her forehead. This time, although still small and a little hesitant, his smile did reach his blue eyes. “I get it. I am what I am. But sometimes, I wish I was a regular guy for you.”
Darcy tilted her head to one side and looked up at him seriously.
“Well, I happen like the guy that you are,” she said honestly, giving a one-shouldered shrug as she spoke. “I know…” she trailed off, biting her lower lip as she considered her next words. Bucky waited patiently, hands having drifted to her hips. Darcy collected herself and smiled up at him before trying again.
“I know it’s been a long, hard road to this guy,” she said softly, gesturing toward him, and he looked back at her with serious blue eyes, the strings of fairy lights strung about the balcony reflected back in them. “And I know you’re worlds away from who you started out as,” she shook her head and ran her hands along the edges of his suit jacket, tugging them together over his chest as she spoke. “But, selfishly, I didn’t know him. But I do know you. And I…”
She broke off, thinking it hard but not quite able to say the words out loud. Not to him, not just yet. Bucky nodded slowly, one hand drifting up to cup her cheek, his thumb caressing her softly.
“Yes,” he said, the word quiet and small but also somehow loud and echoing. Darcy swallowed slightly and blinked up at him, covered his hand - still cupping her face - with one of her own. Behind them, the party carried on, music thumping, drifting out to them even through the reinforced glass.
“Well, I don’t know about a regular guy,” she said, breaking the silence between them. “But would this guy like to dance?” She accompanied her words with a gentle poke of her index finger to his chest. He glanced over his shoulder at the crowds on the dancefloor inside, noting that Steve and Tony still appeared to be arguing, before looking back at her.
“Not in there,” he said firmly, taking her by the waist with a careful left-handed grip and sliding the other the length of her arm until he was holding her hand gently.
“Not in there,” she agreed, pressing herself against him and resting her cheek against his chest with a happy sigh. Together they danced to a music only they could hear, the twinkle of fairy lights dancing above their heads.
Later, when the last guests had finally departed and even Steve and Tony had called it quits - or, rather, Pepper had gotten in between the pair of them and pointedly reminded them both that it was less a party and more a charity event where they were expected to press hands and mingle with people, not spend their time arguing - Bucky and Darcy made their way back inside.
“Commendable, Ms. Lewis,” Pepper said under her breath as they passed, and Darcy flashed her a quick grin.