Love, 4/5. NC-17
I am apparently so exhausted that I slept through my alarm this morning and I still feel tired. ::facepalm:: So, since I'm here early at work, have a chapter before I get going into Actual Work for the day and get swamped catching up.
Title: Love
Series: #21 in Ready For The Siege
(#1 - Look Over Your Shoulder, #2 - Armed Up To The Teeth, #3 - Misery Inspires, #4 - Broken Underneath, #5 - Change Is Coming Soon, #6 - Lick Your Wounds, #7 - Bitter Sparks, #8 - Father's Will, #9 - To Feel Safe Again, #10 - Hit Your Prime, #11 - Open Your Eyes, #12 - Can't Be Ignored, #13 - Make You Ill, #14 - Aim Straight, #15 - Not The First Time, #16 - Friendly Fire, #17 - Relieved, #18 - Release, #19 - Never Noticed, #20 - How You Live And Breathe)
Author: Eustacia Vye
Author's e-mail: eustacia_vye28@hotmail.com
Rating: NC17
Pairing: Loki/Natasha, Natasha/Bucky, Clint/Darcy
Disclaimer: Not mine! Some comic backstory is incorporated into characterizations, but this is still primarily movieverse. Warning for mentions of suicide.
Spoilers/Warnings: Post-Avengers, AU to the rest of MCU.
Title and series title from "The Royal We" by Silversun Pickups.
Summary: There are many different ways to express emotion, affection and love. There are just as many different ways to protect others.
Prior chapters:
One - New Faces
Two - Bad Days
Three - Ownership
Four - Dinner and Dancing
Benefit dinners were generally full of polite schmoozing among socialites, politicians, prominent businessmen and whatever staff was necessary to make such events go smoothly. Darcy Lewis might have been newly hired on into Stark Industries' HR department, but she was in no way deluding herself into thinking she was important enough at SI to have to attend. However, it being a benefit for the NYC Board of Education and their science department, Jane Foster was attending with Thor. She requested that Bruce attend, but he bowed out to run some kind of experiment on Wanda's magical ability. Jane then requested to have Darcy along, and Pepper was happy enough to oblige. She was attending with Tony Stark, and they managed to get Steve Rogers to agree to go with Sif as well. With Clint along as Darcy's date for the evening, half of the Avengers were present.
"So... Not intimidating at all," Darcy began soon after introductions with Clint. She was wearing a silver and black evening dress that managed to make her chest look somewhat less impressive than it generally was. Clint must have gotten the memo about her dress even though Natasha had been busy with Loki and James and doing God only knew what with them for the past few days or so. Wanda had said something about Loki investigating deaths and being unconscionably rude to local magic users.
"You mean being with all the powerful people in New York?" Clint asked, eyebrow raised. He was in a black suit and white dress shirt, but all the accents on the suit were in silver. They looked very coordinated to be on a first date.
Wait, was this even a date? Both had been voluntold to attend the dinner. Remembering how pleased Natasha had been with Darcy and her irritated announcements about relationships and sex and men in general, she had to assume that she was.
"I guess? I mean, what would I even say? I don't belong at a place like this."
Clint merely smiled at her, and Darcy blinked at the way it transformed his features. Not that he wasn't handsome before, but this time it was directed at her, and she couldn't remember how to breathe for a moment.
"Follow my lead. Think about it as being undercover. You're not Darcy Lewis, SI HR employee tonight. You're going to be Darcy Lewis, spy extraordinaire."
"Oh, come on. Me as a spy?" she scoffed, though she grinned at him. The idea was just ridiculous, she didn't know how to do that kind of thing.
"It's a matter of listening and saying the things that the other people want you to say. You'd be surprised what they let slip, especially if you act like you belong here. Wanna make a bet that you can get some pretty good gossip?"
"Is this how you make dinners like this interesting?" Darcy asked suspiciously.
"Absolutely," Clint replied immediately. He grinned at her again, and she had to laugh and shake her head a little. "C'mon. It'll make the time go faster until we get to the actual dinner part. Then the speeches. Don't forget the speeches. Dinners like this always have lots of speeches."
"I think Jane has to make one."
"I rest my case," Clint said, gesturing toward her. "Well?"
She paused, then nodded. "Okay, you're on. But I'm a total noob at this, and you have like, years of experience and ooze charm."
He snorted. "Please. I'm a sniper, that's where I'm most comfortable. You, you're social. You'll be able to get more fun details than I will."
Darcy shook her head. "And what constitutes fun gossip anyway?"
"We'll compare notes at the end of the night, how's that? We'll agree on what's good or fun."
It didn't seem entirely fair, but she was good at getting people to talk and this wasn't exactly a romantic date anyway. She shrugged, accepting the challenge, and the two were either together or on their own to chat up the other guests during the cocktail hour. Feeling as though she had a secret and was monitoring the boring politicians in the room did make her feel a little superior, and it kept her awake and attentive. Which was probably the point, but it worked, so she wasn't about to feel mad about it.
Jane and a few others had speeches during dinner, most of which Darcy tuned out. Science was important, blah, blah, blah, kids needed to learn more, blah, blah, blah, labs and funding and teachers were vital for the future of education in STEM and especially for girls. It was everything Darcy knew from spending time with Jane and doing her Ph.D. thesis, so that was deadly dull for her. Clint didn't seem to be paying attention either, and was frequently looking around the room in a nonchalant manner. The motion was too practiced, too casually bored and apathetic to be real, so Darcy had the feeling that they were being used as bait. Still, the food was good, and Clint wasn't above cracking jokes to keep her entertained.
All in all, the evening flew by quickly. Once she stopped thinking about the fact that she was at the same table as Avengers and started thinking of Clint as the guy she having dinner with, her nerves fell away. She even teasingly applauded the fact that he was no longer officially a jackbooted thug, and that he obviously had good taste in music if he enjoyed the playlists she had on her Ipod. It started with music, then conversation gravitated to movies and science fiction, then segued into science itself and how ridiculous politicians could be in suddenly changing standards in schools and testing kids every few months rather than letting kids learn as they developed. "I may have been listening to Jane rant about it over Skype every once in a while," Darcy said with a laugh. "She takes her sciencing very, very seriously."
Clint grinned. "I may have noticed that, yes. So what do you take seriously?"
Darcy actually thought about that. "I don't know that I've found it yet. I fell into poli sci because it was interesting and I didn't like sociology enough to stick with the major. Most English professors I had were blowhards trying to hawk their books. I'm not a fan of physics or bio or that kind of thing, and I'm hardly an artist. Editing photos on Photoshop is a little beyond me sometimes, but if you don't care that it's obviously cropped, I'm your girl."
"And now you work in Human Resources."
"A fancy way of saying I'm a people person and the one that they yell at if they're fired."
"Pretty much. Hasn't there been anything that really drives you? Makes you want to get up in the morning because you feel alive?"
"I don't think I've loved anything that much. What about you?"
"It's probably really trite, but I do love archery. I'd do it even if it wasn't my thing with SHIELD and then the Avengers. There's power in it, the motion of the string on the bow, the way the arrow moves through the air, hits the target..."
Darcy quirked her lips into a half smile. "You describe it in a very zen kind of way."
"I suppose it is a meditation for me."
"And you really love your arrows, don't you?"
Clint laughed, and it was then that she decided that she really liked the sound of it. They had similar senses of humor, but the real laughter and not the polite or mocking laughs got to her. He was fun to be around, and wasn't simply a soulless body behind a badge.
"I'm sorry I called you a jackbooted thug."
"Why?" he asked, shrugging. "I was one. I was following orders that day. I don't always, not if they don't make sense, but that day I was."
"And now?"
He shrugged. "Coming with you today was a not-so-gentle suggestion. Tasha thinks I've been spending too much downtime playing Assassin's Creed."
"Aren't you like, an assassin for real? Why would you want to play that?"
"Have you ever played?" She shook her head. "It's fun. You live in the Tower now, right? Come on over sometime and we'll play. The graphics are really good, and we'll just ignore the storyline outside of the assassining bits."
"You mean there's an actual plot to them?"
"Of course there is. But I play the game just like everybody else does: so I can get lost in it for a little while and not think. Because as much as I love what I do, that I know there's a purpose for it, some days are still hard to take. It's nice to zone out and be somebody else for a while."
"Huh. Makes being yelled at in HR a cakewalk." Darcy paused. "Your job is really dangerous."
"Yeah, it is."
"But you love it," she observed.
He grinned again, eyes crinkling in joy. "Yeah. I'm nuts that way."
"It takes all kinds," Darcy teased, shaking her head a little. But she leaned into him when they hugged good night, and his soft kiss made her toes curl inside her shoes.
***
While Clint and Darcy went on a second date, Natasha grinned at James as she straightened out his tie. He was in a fitted suit and light blue shirt, thin black gloves over his hands to mask the metal hand. She was in a tight violet sheath dress, throat bare and amethyst earrings dangling down from her ears. Her hair was up in a twist, ringlets tumbling down artfully from the carefully placed jeweled pins she had gotten in Asgard. She wore the gauntlets that had been gold plated, so they looked like linked cuff bracelets. Loki had gone off in a sulk when he had seen her dressed this way, knowing that there were no plans with him included, and she hoped that he was at least going to use the time to teach Wanda more magic. Natasha had caught her in the common areas several times levitating items, a distant look on her face and a red glow about her fingers as they twisted and curled in the air. It was more than just seidr, but Natasha didn't know anything about magic other than the cloying feel of it against her skin.
"A date," James said for perhaps the fifth time. "Like ordinary people."
"We can do it."
"If I get a flashback-"
"Then we'll leave."
James sighed. "When you got all dolled up for me?"
"If you like what you see here, you'll love what's underneath the dress."
He perked up at the sultry tone of her voice. "You sure do know how to motivate a fella."
Natasha only laughed and patted his chest. "I might have an ulterior motive tonight."
"Of course you do," he said, eyebrow lofted. "Do I get to know what it is?"
"Maybe. You'll probably figure it out once we get there."
It turned out that Steve and Sif were going on a double date with Thor and Jane in the Upper West Side, Pepper and Tony were flying to Malibu for a few days, Bruce was corresponding with Dr. Selvig and tentatively with Dr. Betty Ross, and Loki and Wanda were the only ones that would be left in the Tower.
"So you made sure he'd teach her out of boredom?" James asked, eyebrow raised.
"That's part of it," she said with a smile. They made their way to Carnegie Hall. "An added bonus, really. Do you mind being my arm candy for the evening?"
James laughed heartily, a genuine sound that warmed Natasha. "Doll face, I'm at your beck and call. You know that."
"Yes, James, I do." Her smile curled through her lips, eyelids dropping slightly. It was meant to remind him of her bedroom and the promises she had made, and the way he swallowed before looking away told her that he got the hint loud and clear.
He liked the concert and the walk through the area, seeing street level Manhattan lit up and glowing. The restaurant Natasha picked for dinner was off the tourist's path, the ground floor of a brownstone with wide steps and antique furnishings. "Pulling out all the stops?" he teased.
"For you? Of course I would."
They didn't talk much over dinner, just smiling at each other and occasionally touching their fingers. He grinned when she lifted her foot out of her shoe to brush it along the inside of his ankle, a smirk on her lips. It was silly, getting such a thrill out of this, but Natasha couldn't help it. This was the life they'd never been able to lead before, the quiet and sensual moments that they used to whisper about.
Someday was here, and she wanted to cling to every second of it.
"So who are we watching?" he asked during the second course, making her laugh. "What? I do notice you looking around at more than just me."
"Take a guess."
Leaning back in his chair, James took stock of the dining area. There were only two other couples there, the busboy occasionally coming around with the pitcher of water, and there was a single waitress with dark shadows under her eyes. The couples seemed rather bland, ordinary Upper West Siders out for a Thursday night dinner. He dismissed them easily. The busboy was moving easily, and had an open, honest face. James dismissed him, too. That left their waitress, her dark hair pulled back from her face, the shadows under her eyes poorly concealed by makeup and the dim lighting. Her dusky skin seemed a little sallow, and she wore long sleeves under the embroidered apron that was her uniform. Her movements were stiff when she thought no one was looking.
"What'd she do?" James asked, flicking his eyes toward the waitress.
Natasha smiled, eyes dancing in amusement. She had catalogued is observations, though his expression had remained impassive. "Not her. It's who she lives with."
"Taking on a job for SHIELD, then? I didn't think you had anything active for them."
"I don't. It's something I noticed when I was out on a run a while ago. I'm thinking... I have free time. More than I know what to do with, and just working out or sleeping with you doesn't feel like enough. No offense, James."
He snickered. "Takes a lot more than that to destroy my ego."
"I noticed," she replied in droll tones, making him laugh. "But I'm thinking... SHIELD is only saving me for things that can be public. But maybe, even with my face plastered all over the news when I work with the Avengers, I can still do the work I'm good at. I can go behind the scenes, fix the problems that others don't see."
"How can I help?"
Natasha grinned, her entire being lighting up. "I think I love you, James Buchanan Barnes."
"Of course you do," he answered, smiling just as wide as she did. He reached across the table and took her hand in his. "So we'll fall back, follow her, see what's going on in the homestead. You got some tricks up that sleeveless dress?"
"I was only planning on recon tonight."
"You've been itching to do more. I'm with you. Let's make a move tonight."
After dinner, they loitered in the area until the end of the waitress' shift. She walked with a slow pace and hunched shoulders, not looking forward to going home. But she had nowhere else to go, and finally let herself into a tall apartment building where the neighborhood started transitioning into Spanish Harlem. Natasha and James stood out in this area, but neither particularly cared about that at the moment. Whatever gangbanger that tried to attack them would regret it soon enough.
She checked the signal for the tracking device that she had attached to their waitress' sleeve when she had paid the check. "Fifth floor," she reported, looking at James from her left wristlet.
"What are you looking for?"
"I think her boyfriend is the one putting the bad drugs out on the street. The one that killed seven people in the past three days." She shrugged at his inquisitive stare. "I do get out of the Tower, and not just to be Loki's domme."
"I didn't say anything."
"You were thinking it."
"Okay, I was."
"There was a girl at the Rockefeller subway stop," she said quietly. "She played the clarinet to make some cash. She told me she lived up this way, and I'd toss her a few dollars whenever I saw her. She disappeared, and her face was one of the ones on the police blotter."
James sighed and pulled her into a tight embrace. "Can't save them all."
"I know. It won't stop me from trying."
"One of the many things I love about you, Natalia," James murmured. "Okay. You have your bites and line. I have my fists and the knife at my waist. How do you want to do this?"
"We're not quite in gang territory, but you never know. It could be worse than I think it is."
"Well... Knowing us, that dress and this suit would've been toast anyway. So we go in, take it all down, stop this guy from dealing, find the bigger fish he works with. That the plan?"
"Pretty much," she agreed.
"Let's go bust some heads."
They walked into the building as if they owned it, moving straight up to the waitress' apartment in the building. This floor had graffiti and slash marks in the walls from knife fights, shabby, stained carpeting and a few apartments whose doors didn't even close or lock properly. The signal from the waitress was halfway down the hall, and James grinned at her playful gesture for him to go first. Rap music blared from inside the apartment, and his metal hand banging on the door to get their attention barely registered. The waitress wasn't the one that answered the door, but a muscular young man wearing a blue bandanna on his head, low slung oversize jeans and an undershirt stained with blood. "Who da fuck are you?" he growled, raking bloodshot eyes over James' formal clothes. He caught sight of Natasha in her dress nearby. "This is new. Jamal send you over, then? You must be desperate to come here."
James lifted him by his throat with his metal hand and smiled cheerfully at him. "Why don't you tell me everything about this business proposition of yours?"
The bloodstains belonged to the waitress, Gina. She hadn't handed over all of her tips from the evening, and he hadn't been particularly happy about it. The man wasn't a boyfriend but her older brother, and their parents were long dead from drug overdoses. They had been abusive before, and Gina's brother simply took over where they left off. He didn't reveal who he was working for until James broke all of his fingers, one at a time, and with Gina's grim approval. Afterward, he threatened to beat Gina worse than before, or that he would have his friends take turns with her for this betrayal.
Natasha had James' knife against his throat then. "What do you want to do?" she asked Gina.
"If he ain't dead, I won't ever get away," Gina told them gravely. "But even if he's dead, I won't be safe. His boys know me."
"If we could move you somewhere?" James asked as Natasha glared down at Gina's brother.
"Then do what you need to do. But your dress..."
"I'll be fine," Natasha said. Her hand moved swiftly enough that he fell to the floor and she was able to stand and step back before the blood spilled. "Let's get your things and get you settled somewhere safe." Her mind whirred; no need to get the Avengers involved in her activities, since they were more like side projects. Loki had bought the building the Astoria apartment was in, and there were at least one or two empty ones that Gina could stay in. She smiled gently at Gina, who stared at her in shock. "It's all right. We'll take care of everything."
"Why?" she blurted, looking from Natasha to James and then back again. No fear, just startled curiosity. It was obvious the two of them could have harmed her if they wanted to.
"Because someone has to," Natasha said quietly.
Later, after Gina was tucked away in Astoria, she hugged James tightly. "Thank you. Little girls shouldn't be left to die in alleys or made to do terrible things to survive."
He kissed her forehead reverently. "So let's be their guardian angels."
It probably quieted his memories of being the Asset. She knew it helped quiet her own guilt.
It was James' idea to simply go upstairs to the hideaway apartment. "You don't have to tell me what to do, that's not the point of this. But why head back to the Tower? I don't feel like sitting on the subway again."
"You have a point," Natasha allowed. "And if we're feeling really lazy, there's always calling Loki to create a portal in the morning."
Up the stairs and past the wards, they fell into each others' arms right away. "You're amazing," James said against her lips as he lifted her into a kiss. "For all that's happened, somehow you still have it in you to be kind."
"I don't necessarily think of myself as kind," she said against his mouth as she unbuttoned his shirt. "Killing isn't a kindness."
"Sometimes it can be. But I meant finding a place for Gina. Not leaving her behind once you got the information you wanted."
"Is that kind? I've uprooted her life and put her somewhere else. She doesn't know if she can even go back to her job. I've upset everything and possibly put her in harm's way."
"But you'll stop these drug dealers. Keep other kids from dying. She knows that, she's not dumb." He unzipped her dress and spun her around to drop kisses onto her shoulder. "You didn't have to help her here. Just like you don't have to help faceless kids from drug dealers that kill them with tainted shit."
"I can't just leave them to die..."
"That's the difference between you and the handlers we once had," he said, pushing her dress off of her body. His breath caught when he realized she was wearing nothing but thigh high stockings beneath the dress. "Oh, you naughty girl."
Natasha laughed and spun around to loop her arms around his neck. "You like?"
"Hell yeah," he growled, then seized her mouth in another kiss.
He backed her up against the wall of the apartment, lifting one of her legs up to his waist to caress her calf and thigh. His tongue in her mouth, he smiled as she wound her arms around his neck and stroked his tongue with hers. It was a dance, sensual and graceful, and he let his hand fall from his thigh to her open center. Brushing the red curls aside, he found her slit easily and slipped two fingers inside. She was already damp to his touch, and pumping his fingers inside her brought more moisture. He used that to rub her clit, making her gasp against his mouth and arch up against him.
"I'm still wearing pants," he said against her mouth, liking the feel of her fingers brushing against the skin of his back. He couldn't feel anything but pressure against the metal arm, but he imagined it to be a soft caress, just like against his other shoulder.
"Fix that," she replied, and the metal hand ripped through fabric until it was in tatters around his ankles on the floor. She laughed as he toed off the expensive dress shoes, leaving him wearing nothing in his socks. "I see we match, then."
He laughed along with her, then kissed her again. There were two fingers inside her, his thumb at her clit, all moving in a relentless rhythm that made her gasp and shiver. James had to grab her hip with his metal hand, though he was careful not to squeeze too hard. Too many blood vessels in the hip, too many nerves. He was very aware of how much damage he could do to her, even accidentally, though Natasha had always said she trusted him and didn't care about the metal arm. He remembered her kissing his metal palm, touching the plates, telling him to hold still so she could fuck herself on his fingers.
Then she was coming apart in his arms, and he was rock hard from wanting her. He wrapped his metal arm around her and lifted her from the wall, his fingers still inside her, thumb still moving against her clit in a steady rhythm. Natasha moaned and clutched at his shoulders as he turned and walked toward the couch. He laid her down as gently as he could, kneeling on the floor beside her so he could mouth and suckle a breast as he continued to work her body with his fingers. She panted softly, fingers threading through his hair, and he could hear fractured Russian endearments falling from her lips. James moved from one breast to the other, his bare chest rubbing the wet peak and making her mewl in pleasure.
"Your mouth, too," she gasped after a while, her entire body thrumming with tension as she bucked up against his hand.
It was easy enough to oblige her when he liked that, too. Falling back to his haunches, James shifted his hand between her legs so he could thrust his fingers inside her as he licked at her clit, making her moan in earnest. Natasha grabbed the back of his head to keep him from moving away, not that he had any intention of doing so. He laved at her flesh, swirling the tip of his tongue over the clit at intervals, savoring the sound of her gasps and moans. She keened when he sucked on her clit as he thrust hard with his fingers and curled them up into her, stretching and filling her. The sensation was enough to get her coming, squeezing tightly on his fingers and moaning loudly. The sound would have gotten them into trouble back in the day.
James pulled back and made a show of licking his fingers. Her eyes were blown wide, lips swollen from kisses and biting it. Grinning, he rose up and lifted one of her legs high and pressed it to the side of the couch. He finally guided his cock to her entrance and slid in slowly, torturing them both, until he was fully seated inside of her. Her breath caught, and she reached for him. James stayed just out of reach, grinning in a taunting manner now, and started to slowly move in and out of her. It was agonizing, especially when he wanted to slam into her over and over again until he made her nearly scream, until his vision whited out from the pleasure. But no, he still moved slowly, steadily, until she was starting to snarl at him to get it over with already, move it now, make me come.
At that point, he moved the way he wanted to, until her cries were incoherent and he skated right over the edge into orgasm before he meant to. Still he moved, gritting his teeth so hard that he thought his teeth would crack.
"You did, didn't you?" she gasped, trying to hitch her hips up higher. "You don't feel the same."
"Yeah," he admitted, finally slowing down.
He laughed at her playful pout, then pulled her to standing. His come would drip if she stayed that way, but he swept her up into his arms and brought her into the bedroom. Loki had put some kind of spellwork into the entire room so that things didn't stain and it was easier to clean. James had missed most of the explanation, and it didn't matter anyway.
Natasha shook her head when he laid her gently down on the bed. "Not what I'm in the mood for right now," she purred, moving to rest on all fours. She wiggled her rear at him, laughing. "Get ready and let me finish."
"Two isn't enough?" he teased, taking his cock in hand and pulling roughly to try to work himself hard enough to penetrate her again.
"When was it ever?" she teased him back.
"Never," James laughed.
It took a while, and she was impatient enough to reach between her legs to finger her own clit, chest heaving as she panted. James recognized the sound of it, knew she was close to coming, but he wasn't quite ready enough yet. He didn't ask her to wait, and thrust into her as the orgasm hit her. She was slick and tight, perfect, and her groan of pleasure hit him all the way down to his balls. Yes, he thought dizzily, grasping her hips and fucking into her with reckless abandon. Grunting with the effort, he kept going until he felt her tighten again. At that point, he pulled out despite her protests and nudged her to move onto her back. She made a moue at him and reached down for her clit again, but he batted her hand away. Without a word, he spread her legs wide enough for his hips and thrust into her, hard and fast, never breaking eye contact.
I love you, I love you, I love you, he thought, seeing her buck and squirm beneath him. He wanted to watch her come, wanted to see her skin flushed with a light sheen of sweat, wanted her near incoherent.
Afterward, spent and sweaty, tangled together in dirty sheets, James allowed himself a smile of satisfaction. Maybe they were sociopaths by ordinary convention, but this was a good day. He had been himself, had a date with Natasha and did something good for the city.
This was a good day, and that had to count for something.
***
***
To Chapter Five - Relationships
Title: Love
Series: #21 in Ready For The Siege
(#1 - Look Over Your Shoulder, #2 - Armed Up To The Teeth, #3 - Misery Inspires, #4 - Broken Underneath, #5 - Change Is Coming Soon, #6 - Lick Your Wounds, #7 - Bitter Sparks, #8 - Father's Will, #9 - To Feel Safe Again, #10 - Hit Your Prime, #11 - Open Your Eyes, #12 - Can't Be Ignored, #13 - Make You Ill, #14 - Aim Straight, #15 - Not The First Time, #16 - Friendly Fire, #17 - Relieved, #18 - Release, #19 - Never Noticed, #20 - How You Live And Breathe)
Author: Eustacia Vye
Author's e-mail: eustacia_vye28@hotmail.com
Rating: NC17
Pairing: Loki/Natasha, Natasha/Bucky, Clint/Darcy
Disclaimer: Not mine! Some comic backstory is incorporated into characterizations, but this is still primarily movieverse. Warning for mentions of suicide.
Spoilers/Warnings: Post-Avengers, AU to the rest of MCU.
Title and series title from "The Royal We" by Silversun Pickups.
Summary: There are many different ways to express emotion, affection and love. There are just as many different ways to protect others.
Prior chapters:
One - New Faces
Two - Bad Days
Three - Ownership
Four - Dinner and Dancing
Benefit dinners were generally full of polite schmoozing among socialites, politicians, prominent businessmen and whatever staff was necessary to make such events go smoothly. Darcy Lewis might have been newly hired on into Stark Industries' HR department, but she was in no way deluding herself into thinking she was important enough at SI to have to attend. However, it being a benefit for the NYC Board of Education and their science department, Jane Foster was attending with Thor. She requested that Bruce attend, but he bowed out to run some kind of experiment on Wanda's magical ability. Jane then requested to have Darcy along, and Pepper was happy enough to oblige. She was attending with Tony Stark, and they managed to get Steve Rogers to agree to go with Sif as well. With Clint along as Darcy's date for the evening, half of the Avengers were present.
"So... Not intimidating at all," Darcy began soon after introductions with Clint. She was wearing a silver and black evening dress that managed to make her chest look somewhat less impressive than it generally was. Clint must have gotten the memo about her dress even though Natasha had been busy with Loki and James and doing God only knew what with them for the past few days or so. Wanda had said something about Loki investigating deaths and being unconscionably rude to local magic users.
"You mean being with all the powerful people in New York?" Clint asked, eyebrow raised. He was in a black suit and white dress shirt, but all the accents on the suit were in silver. They looked very coordinated to be on a first date.
Wait, was this even a date? Both had been voluntold to attend the dinner. Remembering how pleased Natasha had been with Darcy and her irritated announcements about relationships and sex and men in general, she had to assume that she was.
"I guess? I mean, what would I even say? I don't belong at a place like this."
Clint merely smiled at her, and Darcy blinked at the way it transformed his features. Not that he wasn't handsome before, but this time it was directed at her, and she couldn't remember how to breathe for a moment.
"Follow my lead. Think about it as being undercover. You're not Darcy Lewis, SI HR employee tonight. You're going to be Darcy Lewis, spy extraordinaire."
"Oh, come on. Me as a spy?" she scoffed, though she grinned at him. The idea was just ridiculous, she didn't know how to do that kind of thing.
"It's a matter of listening and saying the things that the other people want you to say. You'd be surprised what they let slip, especially if you act like you belong here. Wanna make a bet that you can get some pretty good gossip?"
"Is this how you make dinners like this interesting?" Darcy asked suspiciously.
"Absolutely," Clint replied immediately. He grinned at her again, and she had to laugh and shake her head a little. "C'mon. It'll make the time go faster until we get to the actual dinner part. Then the speeches. Don't forget the speeches. Dinners like this always have lots of speeches."
"I think Jane has to make one."
"I rest my case," Clint said, gesturing toward her. "Well?"
She paused, then nodded. "Okay, you're on. But I'm a total noob at this, and you have like, years of experience and ooze charm."
He snorted. "Please. I'm a sniper, that's where I'm most comfortable. You, you're social. You'll be able to get more fun details than I will."
Darcy shook her head. "And what constitutes fun gossip anyway?"
"We'll compare notes at the end of the night, how's that? We'll agree on what's good or fun."
It didn't seem entirely fair, but she was good at getting people to talk and this wasn't exactly a romantic date anyway. She shrugged, accepting the challenge, and the two were either together or on their own to chat up the other guests during the cocktail hour. Feeling as though she had a secret and was monitoring the boring politicians in the room did make her feel a little superior, and it kept her awake and attentive. Which was probably the point, but it worked, so she wasn't about to feel mad about it.
Jane and a few others had speeches during dinner, most of which Darcy tuned out. Science was important, blah, blah, blah, kids needed to learn more, blah, blah, blah, labs and funding and teachers were vital for the future of education in STEM and especially for girls. It was everything Darcy knew from spending time with Jane and doing her Ph.D. thesis, so that was deadly dull for her. Clint didn't seem to be paying attention either, and was frequently looking around the room in a nonchalant manner. The motion was too practiced, too casually bored and apathetic to be real, so Darcy had the feeling that they were being used as bait. Still, the food was good, and Clint wasn't above cracking jokes to keep her entertained.
All in all, the evening flew by quickly. Once she stopped thinking about the fact that she was at the same table as Avengers and started thinking of Clint as the guy she having dinner with, her nerves fell away. She even teasingly applauded the fact that he was no longer officially a jackbooted thug, and that he obviously had good taste in music if he enjoyed the playlists she had on her Ipod. It started with music, then conversation gravitated to movies and science fiction, then segued into science itself and how ridiculous politicians could be in suddenly changing standards in schools and testing kids every few months rather than letting kids learn as they developed. "I may have been listening to Jane rant about it over Skype every once in a while," Darcy said with a laugh. "She takes her sciencing very, very seriously."
Clint grinned. "I may have noticed that, yes. So what do you take seriously?"
Darcy actually thought about that. "I don't know that I've found it yet. I fell into poli sci because it was interesting and I didn't like sociology enough to stick with the major. Most English professors I had were blowhards trying to hawk their books. I'm not a fan of physics or bio or that kind of thing, and I'm hardly an artist. Editing photos on Photoshop is a little beyond me sometimes, but if you don't care that it's obviously cropped, I'm your girl."
"And now you work in Human Resources."
"A fancy way of saying I'm a people person and the one that they yell at if they're fired."
"Pretty much. Hasn't there been anything that really drives you? Makes you want to get up in the morning because you feel alive?"
"I don't think I've loved anything that much. What about you?"
"It's probably really trite, but I do love archery. I'd do it even if it wasn't my thing with SHIELD and then the Avengers. There's power in it, the motion of the string on the bow, the way the arrow moves through the air, hits the target..."
Darcy quirked her lips into a half smile. "You describe it in a very zen kind of way."
"I suppose it is a meditation for me."
"And you really love your arrows, don't you?"
Clint laughed, and it was then that she decided that she really liked the sound of it. They had similar senses of humor, but the real laughter and not the polite or mocking laughs got to her. He was fun to be around, and wasn't simply a soulless body behind a badge.
"I'm sorry I called you a jackbooted thug."
"Why?" he asked, shrugging. "I was one. I was following orders that day. I don't always, not if they don't make sense, but that day I was."
"And now?"
He shrugged. "Coming with you today was a not-so-gentle suggestion. Tasha thinks I've been spending too much downtime playing Assassin's Creed."
"Aren't you like, an assassin for real? Why would you want to play that?"
"Have you ever played?" She shook her head. "It's fun. You live in the Tower now, right? Come on over sometime and we'll play. The graphics are really good, and we'll just ignore the storyline outside of the assassining bits."
"You mean there's an actual plot to them?"
"Of course there is. But I play the game just like everybody else does: so I can get lost in it for a little while and not think. Because as much as I love what I do, that I know there's a purpose for it, some days are still hard to take. It's nice to zone out and be somebody else for a while."
"Huh. Makes being yelled at in HR a cakewalk." Darcy paused. "Your job is really dangerous."
"Yeah, it is."
"But you love it," she observed.
He grinned again, eyes crinkling in joy. "Yeah. I'm nuts that way."
"It takes all kinds," Darcy teased, shaking her head a little. But she leaned into him when they hugged good night, and his soft kiss made her toes curl inside her shoes.
***
While Clint and Darcy went on a second date, Natasha grinned at James as she straightened out his tie. He was in a fitted suit and light blue shirt, thin black gloves over his hands to mask the metal hand. She was in a tight violet sheath dress, throat bare and amethyst earrings dangling down from her ears. Her hair was up in a twist, ringlets tumbling down artfully from the carefully placed jeweled pins she had gotten in Asgard. She wore the gauntlets that had been gold plated, so they looked like linked cuff bracelets. Loki had gone off in a sulk when he had seen her dressed this way, knowing that there were no plans with him included, and she hoped that he was at least going to use the time to teach Wanda more magic. Natasha had caught her in the common areas several times levitating items, a distant look on her face and a red glow about her fingers as they twisted and curled in the air. It was more than just seidr, but Natasha didn't know anything about magic other than the cloying feel of it against her skin.
"A date," James said for perhaps the fifth time. "Like ordinary people."
"We can do it."
"If I get a flashback-"
"Then we'll leave."
James sighed. "When you got all dolled up for me?"
"If you like what you see here, you'll love what's underneath the dress."
He perked up at the sultry tone of her voice. "You sure do know how to motivate a fella."
Natasha only laughed and patted his chest. "I might have an ulterior motive tonight."
"Of course you do," he said, eyebrow lofted. "Do I get to know what it is?"
"Maybe. You'll probably figure it out once we get there."
It turned out that Steve and Sif were going on a double date with Thor and Jane in the Upper West Side, Pepper and Tony were flying to Malibu for a few days, Bruce was corresponding with Dr. Selvig and tentatively with Dr. Betty Ross, and Loki and Wanda were the only ones that would be left in the Tower.
"So you made sure he'd teach her out of boredom?" James asked, eyebrow raised.
"That's part of it," she said with a smile. They made their way to Carnegie Hall. "An added bonus, really. Do you mind being my arm candy for the evening?"
James laughed heartily, a genuine sound that warmed Natasha. "Doll face, I'm at your beck and call. You know that."
"Yes, James, I do." Her smile curled through her lips, eyelids dropping slightly. It was meant to remind him of her bedroom and the promises she had made, and the way he swallowed before looking away told her that he got the hint loud and clear.
He liked the concert and the walk through the area, seeing street level Manhattan lit up and glowing. The restaurant Natasha picked for dinner was off the tourist's path, the ground floor of a brownstone with wide steps and antique furnishings. "Pulling out all the stops?" he teased.
"For you? Of course I would."
They didn't talk much over dinner, just smiling at each other and occasionally touching their fingers. He grinned when she lifted her foot out of her shoe to brush it along the inside of his ankle, a smirk on her lips. It was silly, getting such a thrill out of this, but Natasha couldn't help it. This was the life they'd never been able to lead before, the quiet and sensual moments that they used to whisper about.
Someday was here, and she wanted to cling to every second of it.
"So who are we watching?" he asked during the second course, making her laugh. "What? I do notice you looking around at more than just me."
"Take a guess."
Leaning back in his chair, James took stock of the dining area. There were only two other couples there, the busboy occasionally coming around with the pitcher of water, and there was a single waitress with dark shadows under her eyes. The couples seemed rather bland, ordinary Upper West Siders out for a Thursday night dinner. He dismissed them easily. The busboy was moving easily, and had an open, honest face. James dismissed him, too. That left their waitress, her dark hair pulled back from her face, the shadows under her eyes poorly concealed by makeup and the dim lighting. Her dusky skin seemed a little sallow, and she wore long sleeves under the embroidered apron that was her uniform. Her movements were stiff when she thought no one was looking.
"What'd she do?" James asked, flicking his eyes toward the waitress.
Natasha smiled, eyes dancing in amusement. She had catalogued is observations, though his expression had remained impassive. "Not her. It's who she lives with."
"Taking on a job for SHIELD, then? I didn't think you had anything active for them."
"I don't. It's something I noticed when I was out on a run a while ago. I'm thinking... I have free time. More than I know what to do with, and just working out or sleeping with you doesn't feel like enough. No offense, James."
He snickered. "Takes a lot more than that to destroy my ego."
"I noticed," she replied in droll tones, making him laugh. "But I'm thinking... SHIELD is only saving me for things that can be public. But maybe, even with my face plastered all over the news when I work with the Avengers, I can still do the work I'm good at. I can go behind the scenes, fix the problems that others don't see."
"How can I help?"
Natasha grinned, her entire being lighting up. "I think I love you, James Buchanan Barnes."
"Of course you do," he answered, smiling just as wide as she did. He reached across the table and took her hand in his. "So we'll fall back, follow her, see what's going on in the homestead. You got some tricks up that sleeveless dress?"
"I was only planning on recon tonight."
"You've been itching to do more. I'm with you. Let's make a move tonight."
After dinner, they loitered in the area until the end of the waitress' shift. She walked with a slow pace and hunched shoulders, not looking forward to going home. But she had nowhere else to go, and finally let herself into a tall apartment building where the neighborhood started transitioning into Spanish Harlem. Natasha and James stood out in this area, but neither particularly cared about that at the moment. Whatever gangbanger that tried to attack them would regret it soon enough.
She checked the signal for the tracking device that she had attached to their waitress' sleeve when she had paid the check. "Fifth floor," she reported, looking at James from her left wristlet.
"What are you looking for?"
"I think her boyfriend is the one putting the bad drugs out on the street. The one that killed seven people in the past three days." She shrugged at his inquisitive stare. "I do get out of the Tower, and not just to be Loki's domme."
"I didn't say anything."
"You were thinking it."
"Okay, I was."
"There was a girl at the Rockefeller subway stop," she said quietly. "She played the clarinet to make some cash. She told me she lived up this way, and I'd toss her a few dollars whenever I saw her. She disappeared, and her face was one of the ones on the police blotter."
James sighed and pulled her into a tight embrace. "Can't save them all."
"I know. It won't stop me from trying."
"One of the many things I love about you, Natalia," James murmured. "Okay. You have your bites and line. I have my fists and the knife at my waist. How do you want to do this?"
"We're not quite in gang territory, but you never know. It could be worse than I think it is."
"Well... Knowing us, that dress and this suit would've been toast anyway. So we go in, take it all down, stop this guy from dealing, find the bigger fish he works with. That the plan?"
"Pretty much," she agreed.
"Let's go bust some heads."
They walked into the building as if they owned it, moving straight up to the waitress' apartment in the building. This floor had graffiti and slash marks in the walls from knife fights, shabby, stained carpeting and a few apartments whose doors didn't even close or lock properly. The signal from the waitress was halfway down the hall, and James grinned at her playful gesture for him to go first. Rap music blared from inside the apartment, and his metal hand banging on the door to get their attention barely registered. The waitress wasn't the one that answered the door, but a muscular young man wearing a blue bandanna on his head, low slung oversize jeans and an undershirt stained with blood. "Who da fuck are you?" he growled, raking bloodshot eyes over James' formal clothes. He caught sight of Natasha in her dress nearby. "This is new. Jamal send you over, then? You must be desperate to come here."
James lifted him by his throat with his metal hand and smiled cheerfully at him. "Why don't you tell me everything about this business proposition of yours?"
The bloodstains belonged to the waitress, Gina. She hadn't handed over all of her tips from the evening, and he hadn't been particularly happy about it. The man wasn't a boyfriend but her older brother, and their parents were long dead from drug overdoses. They had been abusive before, and Gina's brother simply took over where they left off. He didn't reveal who he was working for until James broke all of his fingers, one at a time, and with Gina's grim approval. Afterward, he threatened to beat Gina worse than before, or that he would have his friends take turns with her for this betrayal.
Natasha had James' knife against his throat then. "What do you want to do?" she asked Gina.
"If he ain't dead, I won't ever get away," Gina told them gravely. "But even if he's dead, I won't be safe. His boys know me."
"If we could move you somewhere?" James asked as Natasha glared down at Gina's brother.
"Then do what you need to do. But your dress..."
"I'll be fine," Natasha said. Her hand moved swiftly enough that he fell to the floor and she was able to stand and step back before the blood spilled. "Let's get your things and get you settled somewhere safe." Her mind whirred; no need to get the Avengers involved in her activities, since they were more like side projects. Loki had bought the building the Astoria apartment was in, and there were at least one or two empty ones that Gina could stay in. She smiled gently at Gina, who stared at her in shock. "It's all right. We'll take care of everything."
"Why?" she blurted, looking from Natasha to James and then back again. No fear, just startled curiosity. It was obvious the two of them could have harmed her if they wanted to.
"Because someone has to," Natasha said quietly.
Later, after Gina was tucked away in Astoria, she hugged James tightly. "Thank you. Little girls shouldn't be left to die in alleys or made to do terrible things to survive."
He kissed her forehead reverently. "So let's be their guardian angels."
It probably quieted his memories of being the Asset. She knew it helped quiet her own guilt.
It was James' idea to simply go upstairs to the hideaway apartment. "You don't have to tell me what to do, that's not the point of this. But why head back to the Tower? I don't feel like sitting on the subway again."
"You have a point," Natasha allowed. "And if we're feeling really lazy, there's always calling Loki to create a portal in the morning."
Up the stairs and past the wards, they fell into each others' arms right away. "You're amazing," James said against her lips as he lifted her into a kiss. "For all that's happened, somehow you still have it in you to be kind."
"I don't necessarily think of myself as kind," she said against his mouth as she unbuttoned his shirt. "Killing isn't a kindness."
"Sometimes it can be. But I meant finding a place for Gina. Not leaving her behind once you got the information you wanted."
"Is that kind? I've uprooted her life and put her somewhere else. She doesn't know if she can even go back to her job. I've upset everything and possibly put her in harm's way."
"But you'll stop these drug dealers. Keep other kids from dying. She knows that, she's not dumb." He unzipped her dress and spun her around to drop kisses onto her shoulder. "You didn't have to help her here. Just like you don't have to help faceless kids from drug dealers that kill them with tainted shit."
"I can't just leave them to die..."
"That's the difference between you and the handlers we once had," he said, pushing her dress off of her body. His breath caught when he realized she was wearing nothing but thigh high stockings beneath the dress. "Oh, you naughty girl."
Natasha laughed and spun around to loop her arms around his neck. "You like?"
"Hell yeah," he growled, then seized her mouth in another kiss.
He backed her up against the wall of the apartment, lifting one of her legs up to his waist to caress her calf and thigh. His tongue in her mouth, he smiled as she wound her arms around his neck and stroked his tongue with hers. It was a dance, sensual and graceful, and he let his hand fall from his thigh to her open center. Brushing the red curls aside, he found her slit easily and slipped two fingers inside. She was already damp to his touch, and pumping his fingers inside her brought more moisture. He used that to rub her clit, making her gasp against his mouth and arch up against him.
"I'm still wearing pants," he said against her mouth, liking the feel of her fingers brushing against the skin of his back. He couldn't feel anything but pressure against the metal arm, but he imagined it to be a soft caress, just like against his other shoulder.
"Fix that," she replied, and the metal hand ripped through fabric until it was in tatters around his ankles on the floor. She laughed as he toed off the expensive dress shoes, leaving him wearing nothing in his socks. "I see we match, then."
He laughed along with her, then kissed her again. There were two fingers inside her, his thumb at her clit, all moving in a relentless rhythm that made her gasp and shiver. James had to grab her hip with his metal hand, though he was careful not to squeeze too hard. Too many blood vessels in the hip, too many nerves. He was very aware of how much damage he could do to her, even accidentally, though Natasha had always said she trusted him and didn't care about the metal arm. He remembered her kissing his metal palm, touching the plates, telling him to hold still so she could fuck herself on his fingers.
Then she was coming apart in his arms, and he was rock hard from wanting her. He wrapped his metal arm around her and lifted her from the wall, his fingers still inside her, thumb still moving against her clit in a steady rhythm. Natasha moaned and clutched at his shoulders as he turned and walked toward the couch. He laid her down as gently as he could, kneeling on the floor beside her so he could mouth and suckle a breast as he continued to work her body with his fingers. She panted softly, fingers threading through his hair, and he could hear fractured Russian endearments falling from her lips. James moved from one breast to the other, his bare chest rubbing the wet peak and making her mewl in pleasure.
"Your mouth, too," she gasped after a while, her entire body thrumming with tension as she bucked up against his hand.
It was easy enough to oblige her when he liked that, too. Falling back to his haunches, James shifted his hand between her legs so he could thrust his fingers inside her as he licked at her clit, making her moan in earnest. Natasha grabbed the back of his head to keep him from moving away, not that he had any intention of doing so. He laved at her flesh, swirling the tip of his tongue over the clit at intervals, savoring the sound of her gasps and moans. She keened when he sucked on her clit as he thrust hard with his fingers and curled them up into her, stretching and filling her. The sensation was enough to get her coming, squeezing tightly on his fingers and moaning loudly. The sound would have gotten them into trouble back in the day.
James pulled back and made a show of licking his fingers. Her eyes were blown wide, lips swollen from kisses and biting it. Grinning, he rose up and lifted one of her legs high and pressed it to the side of the couch. He finally guided his cock to her entrance and slid in slowly, torturing them both, until he was fully seated inside of her. Her breath caught, and she reached for him. James stayed just out of reach, grinning in a taunting manner now, and started to slowly move in and out of her. It was agonizing, especially when he wanted to slam into her over and over again until he made her nearly scream, until his vision whited out from the pleasure. But no, he still moved slowly, steadily, until she was starting to snarl at him to get it over with already, move it now, make me come.
At that point, he moved the way he wanted to, until her cries were incoherent and he skated right over the edge into orgasm before he meant to. Still he moved, gritting his teeth so hard that he thought his teeth would crack.
"You did, didn't you?" she gasped, trying to hitch her hips up higher. "You don't feel the same."
"Yeah," he admitted, finally slowing down.
He laughed at her playful pout, then pulled her to standing. His come would drip if she stayed that way, but he swept her up into his arms and brought her into the bedroom. Loki had put some kind of spellwork into the entire room so that things didn't stain and it was easier to clean. James had missed most of the explanation, and it didn't matter anyway.
Natasha shook her head when he laid her gently down on the bed. "Not what I'm in the mood for right now," she purred, moving to rest on all fours. She wiggled her rear at him, laughing. "Get ready and let me finish."
"Two isn't enough?" he teased, taking his cock in hand and pulling roughly to try to work himself hard enough to penetrate her again.
"When was it ever?" she teased him back.
"Never," James laughed.
It took a while, and she was impatient enough to reach between her legs to finger her own clit, chest heaving as she panted. James recognized the sound of it, knew she was close to coming, but he wasn't quite ready enough yet. He didn't ask her to wait, and thrust into her as the orgasm hit her. She was slick and tight, perfect, and her groan of pleasure hit him all the way down to his balls. Yes, he thought dizzily, grasping her hips and fucking into her with reckless abandon. Grunting with the effort, he kept going until he felt her tighten again. At that point, he pulled out despite her protests and nudged her to move onto her back. She made a moue at him and reached down for her clit again, but he batted her hand away. Without a word, he spread her legs wide enough for his hips and thrust into her, hard and fast, never breaking eye contact.
I love you, I love you, I love you, he thought, seeing her buck and squirm beneath him. He wanted to watch her come, wanted to see her skin flushed with a light sheen of sweat, wanted her near incoherent.
Afterward, spent and sweaty, tangled together in dirty sheets, James allowed himself a smile of satisfaction. Maybe they were sociopaths by ordinary convention, but this was a good day. He had been himself, had a date with Natasha and did something good for the city.
This was a good day, and that had to count for something.
***
***
To Chapter Five - Relationships