fic: Direction (3/3)
Part 2
Darcy loaded up his iPod with all sorts of music, as well as making several playlists, such as: old man music, Elvis is the best, and get off my lawn, you damn kids!. Mostly he listens to it while he's on his run; he sticks to the streets in the early mornings or late afternoons when there aren't so many people around. There's too much construction going on in Brooklyn Bridge Park, and he tries to avoid the war memorial at Cadman Plaza altogether. His name is right underneath Bucky's on the plaque there; he laid flowers the week after he moved into his apartment, but decided that that was enough.
It's almost six when he gets back home, slowing to jog as he approaches his building. There's a bright red soft top car parked outside, looking like a great big target for thieves among the SUVs and Ford Fiestas that line the street, and two feet visible on the stoop of his building. Steve pulls an earbud out and walks up to the steps.
“Tony?”
Tony looks up from his cellphone. “Man, you've been gone forever-- is that an iPod?”
Steve tugs out the other earbud and takes the iPod out of his armband to thumb it off. “Why're you here?”
“'Oh hi, Tony, I haven't seen you in ages! I've missed you! Have you lost weight, you look great!'” Tony says, and stands up, brushing dirt off his jeans.
“Hi, Tony, I haven't seen you in ages,” Steve repeats back at him and pulls his keys out of his pocket. Tony rolls his eyes and shuffles to one side to let Steve pass. “What are you doing here?”
“I was in the area.”
“You just happened to be driving around Brooklyn in that?” he asks, glancing over at the car as he unlocks the front door.
Tony shrugs. “I was bored, thought I'd do a bit of 'Meals on Wheels'.”
Steve raises his eyebrows.
“I think there are some Hersey's Kisses in the glovebox,” Tony says. “Can I come in? I'm like a vampire, I have to be invited.”
“Of course you do. Why don't you come in?”
“Why thank you,” Tony says and sweeps right past him. Steve closes the door behind them and goes over to his mailbox; he hasn't really been bothering to check it recently. All bills. Nobody writes letters these days. “I'm still stuck on the iPod,” Tony adds.
“Let it go,” he says.
“Fine. This place is quaint. Cute. I like it.”
“Thanks,” Steve mutters. “My apartment is just over there,” he adds, pointing to his door.
Tony follows him in, and stops just inside of the doorway. “Wow, minimalist, that's, uh, that's... cool.”
Steve grits his teeth, but it's true. He has a couch, a table, and a bookcase in the living area, and a chest of drawers and bed in the bedroom, not to mention an incredible dearth of personal items. It's a little better than it looks, though, because half of his things - his books, art supplies, most of his clothes - are at Darcy's, but he doesn't want to get into that with Tony. He and Darcy have been going out for a couple of months, sleeping in the same bed for a few of weeks, and he doesn't want to share it, doesn't want it to become public property, and definitely doesn't want Tony Stark to ruin it.
“I'm not much of an interior decorator,” Steve concedes, dropping his mail on the table.
Tony looks at him funny. “Where did you learn that phrase?”
He shrugs. “I'm going to get changed, do you want to... go get a drink or something?” He doesn't really want to, he wants to go over to Darcy's, sit on her couch, and watch TV with her, but fostering good relations with the team is probably a good thing. With Tony, maybe less so, but he's the only member of the team who's ever reliably around.
Tony's still looking at him a little funny. “Sure, okay.”
There's an Irish pub not too far from his apartment, where Darcy got fantastically drunk last month and had to be carried back to his apartment, which had been a trial in and of itself because she's a squirmy drunk and even more ridiculous than usual. By the time he got them home, he was laughing pretty damn hard himself.
He shoves Tony into a corner booth and insists on buying the drinks; the last thing he needs is everyone there to start falling over themselves because of Tony,that would pretty effectively rumble his baseball cap disguise.
Tony narrows his eyes at the pint of beer that Steve puts in front of him. “Really? I've drunk three thousand dollar bottles of wine sitting on the floor of my basement.”
“That sounds healthy,” Steve says as he takes the seat across from him.
“You're getting kind of spicy, you know.” Tony stares at him until he seems satisfied that Steve isn't going to say anything in answer to that, then takes a sip of the beer. He wrinkles his nose up. “Not too bad, I guess.”
“Glad it passes inspection.”
“Still as grumpy as ever, huh?”
Steve smiles. “I'm working on it. So, Tony, why are you here?”
“You're the one who brought me here. I was thinking like a bar or a strip joint or something.” He pauses and twists his mouth worriedly. “Not a strip joint, pretend I didn't say that, no strippers for Tony.”
“I meant in Brooklyn.”
“Ah, well. Fury told me to make friends.”
“And you listened to him?”
Tony takes another sip of his beer and glares at Steve over the rim of his glass. “Pepper told me to, as well. And Rhodey.”
That sounds a little closer to the truth. He's not really sure why anyone should care about he and Tony being friends, but he guesses that the sentiment is nice enough. “So, how was California?”
“Hot,” he says, and winks at Steve. Tony must be feeling off his game, if that's meant to be innuendo.
The problem with Tony - one of the problems - is that Steve just doesn't know what to say to him most of the time, unless they're fighting. Tony confuses him: he's both younger and older than Steve, familiar and unfamiliar, unpleasantly brash and surprisingly sensitive. What the hell is Steve supposed to do with that?
His phone buzzes in his pocket, saving him the trouble of thinking of something else to say to Tony for a minute. Tony tips his chin up, trying to catch what's on the screen; Steve cups his hand over the top of the phone and reads the message: wrking late, pls make food 4 me.
Tony's eyebrows jump up when Steve turns the phone on its side and slides the keyboard out (it's the crappiest slider phone on the market, Darcy told him, fifty dollars from ebay, but texting the other way frustrated him to the point of throwing his first phone against the wall and shattering it).
Okay, he replies. I'm having a beer with Tony right now.
His phone buzzes in response almost immediately: tell that idiot 2 stop creating more pprwrk 4 every1.
“Peanuts compliments of the house,” someone says, and he looks up from his phone to see the barmaid dropping a couple of bags of peanuts on the table. “Thanks for dealing with that guy a couple of weeks ago.”
“That's okay,” he says, feeling, rather than seeing, Tony perk up.
“Did you get your friend home okay?” she continues.
“Yeah, uh, yeah,” he mutters, and risks a glance at Tony. Tony's smiling knowingly at him.
“For someone so small, she sure can sing loud,” the barmaid says.
Steve presses his lips together. “Mmhm,” he hums, looking back down at his phone.
“What's this?” Tony asks. Steve's surprised it took him this long.
“Nothing important,” Steve says quickly, but now the barmaid is looking at Tony, frowning.
“Are you--?”
“He gets that a lot, but no,” Steve jumps in. “Thank you for the peanuts, miss.”
“You're welcome...” she says slowly, and now she's looking more closely at his face under the brim of his hat. Damn.
At least Tony waits for her to get back to the bar before leaning across the table. “Stevie, what haven't you been telling me?”
“Don't call me that.”
“Aw,” Tony says, then his hand darts out to snatch the phone from Steve's lap. Steve's gripping his wrist in a split second, but Tony just takes the phone from his trapped hand with his other hand. Steve squeezes his wrist a little harder in retaliation, then lets go.
“'Idiot'?” Tony mutters after a couple of seconds of fiddling with Steve's phone. He sounds vaguely affronted. It can't be the first time the word's been used in conjunction with him, Steve thinks.
“So, I'm guessing that 'Darcy' is a chick, unless my gaydar is really on the fritz.”
Steve scowls at him.
“Have you been-- wait a minute,” Tony cuts himself off, and raises his hand to Steve, as if Steve was interrupting him. “Is this you wearing a dime store Captain America costume?” he asks, and shoves the phone in front of Steve's face.
Steve hates camera phones. “It was Halloween,” he mutters. Darcy thought it would be funny.
Tony pulls the phone back and continues bashing on it. “And another one! And-- whoa, that is one sexy Catwoman. And here you are kissing her. Wow, get it, Cap.”
“Okay, that's enough,” Steve snaps, snatching the phone back, Tony's thumbs left pressing air. He hasn't actually looked at the pictures, because that costume was ridiculously embarrassing, ill-fitting, scratchy, and he tore the back of it open by the end of the night, but he can't help but smile at the picture that Tony's pulled up: sometime after Steve had tossed out the guy who desperately wanted to start a bar fight no one else was interested in and before Darcy started singing sea shanties, she hopped onto his lap on the bar stool, mashed their faces together, and snapped the picture. He kind of likes it.
“Didn't take you for a ladykiller,” Tony says, rousing him from staring at the picture.
“What?”
“Making out with Catwoman. Tell me that's the friend that you 'got home okay'. Come on, please tell me that.”
“It wasn't like that.”
“It sure as hell looks like that.”
“Well, it isn't,” Steve says, and shoves his phone back in his pocket.
Tony doesn't say anything for a couple of minutes while Steve nurses his beer, which is possibly even worse than when he won't stop talking, because Steve's pretty sure he's one of those people who's at their most dangerous when they're silent.
“What?” he finally caves, and Tony tilts his head to one side.
“Is this the girl from the park?”
Steve clears his throat. “Yeah.”
“Holy shit, are you dating her?”
In for a penny, Steve thinks. “I'm basically living with her.”
“Oh, wow,” Tony says, and sets his elbows on the table with a thump. “You're in the bubble, that's adorable.”
Steve sighs, and leans his head back against the cushioned booth. “What?”
“I heard it on the TV show or something: it's when you first get together with someone, and you want to do everything with them and never leave their side. When me and Pepper got together, I didn't want to do anything without her. Pretty sure she considered dumping me just so that she could have a bubble bath in peace once a week.” He pauses and smiles. “To be honest, that feeling never really went away for me.”
“Yeah, I guess that's, that's pretty accurate,” Steve says, and picks up the packet of peanuts.
Tony looks incredibly pleased with himself. “You know, you are way more relatable like this.”
“That's ironic, coming from you.”
Tony shrugs. “Well, I am 'Iron' Man.”
“Wow,” Steve dead pans.
“Jealous,” Tony says.
“Okay.”
Tony takes another sip of his beer, wrinkles his nose again, and says, “So, do you love her?”
“I don't want to talk about this with you, Tony.”
“Hey, look, do you have any other friends? 'Cause I don't think you do, and talking about this stuff helps sometimes. At least, that's what I've heard.”
Steve's pretty sure that Tony just referred to himself as Steve's friend, and he finds it somewhat depressing that it appears to be true. “There's nothing to talk about.”
“Really? Like you never had a sweetheart who you were sure you were gonna marry and have a litter of transatlantic kids with? And then you woke up one day and she'd got married and divorced and died in the interim? That never happen to you?”
Steve clenches his jaw.
“Look, it'll probably come as a surprise to you that I'm not actively trying to piss you off, hell it's surprising me, but... look, losing people you love is hard, trust me, and if I lost Pepper and Rhodey I'd go even more crazy than I already am. So I, uh, I admire that you haven't gone crazy - I mean, I assume you're not crazy, I guess I don't actually know you that well - but talking about this stuff sort of... helps.” He shrugs. “I've heard.”
“I think there's a nice sentiment in there somewhere.”
Tony pulls a face. “Doubt it.”
Steve runs his fingernail along the condensation around the bottom of his glass and flicks his eyes back to Tony. “When did you realise how you felt about Ms Potts?”
“There's only ever been Pepper, but... it was recent. Way too recent. What about you and Peggy?”
Steve shrugs. “I don't know.”
Tony sighs. “It sucks, man.”
“What does?”
“All of it. Your life's kind of a crapshoot.”
“That's your advice? My life is crap?”
“No, that's not my advice.” Tony pauses, stares at him, then lifts his beer to his lips and downs half of it in thirty seconds flat. Christ, he is like his father. Tony clears his throat and looks back at him. “My advice, Capiscle, is: just enjoy it.”
“Enjoy what?”
“Whatever there is to enjoy. 'Cause it won't last forever.” He drains the rest of his beer, then reaches out towards Steve's. “Hey, can I? Pep's parents are coming over this evening, and I am not nearly buzzed enough.”
Steve frowns at him, and Tony throws his palms up. “Hey, Pepper's been drinking since after her last meeting, I've got a lot of catching up to do here, okay, you'll know what in-laws are like soon enough.”
He pushes the drink over to Tony wordlessly, who starts drinking it greedily.
He wonders what Darcy's parents are like.
-
Sometimes Darcy wishes for a little excitement at work. Not, like, another Loki or any of the crazy guys who pursue Stark, but just a minor villain, someone to distract her from the slow drag of paperwork and data entry. This is not exactly the life she had imagined for herself. Of course, her imagined life involved discovering that she had an until now hidden talent that would get her a high paying, stress-free job, and everyone would love her and maybe she'd get her picture in the paper occasionally. She's used to being directionless, but her lack of direction used to be fun, alcohol-fuelled, and sexually stimulating. Now it's sometimes the first, occasionally the second, and never the third.
At least Steve has food in the oven and a DVD in the player when she gets home. She eats dinner to stories of Tony leaving the pub tipsy, in a cab, abandoning his sports car outside Steve's. He seems kind of offended by the flashiness of it, but in a slightly more affectionate way than normal, and despite his disagreement, he's not so offended by Stark's existence any more. Darcy kind of digs the idea of them becoming actual friends; she definitely wouldn't say no to going to one of those legendary bashes at Stark Tower.
The movie is a bust. Mostly because, as with so many other nights, they start kissing, and Jimmy Stewart is left to drone on ignored in the background. Only tonight things have progressed horizontally. Steve is way too big for the couch on a good day, so it's patently ridiculous now that his bent knees keep banging against the armrest - or at least it would be if Steve didn't just keep going and going, making all these little noises every time she touches him, like, anywhere. Someone is really, really horny.
The other thing that's different is that she's pretty sure he's not rubbing his gun against her leg over and over again, and she's doubly sure that he doesn't even realise he's doing it, so she elects to not point it out. She drags him away from where he's working on her neck and fits their mouths together again. He groans and pulls himself up, hunching his shoulders in to curl around her more. She feels his erection slide up and hit the crease of her leg and, man, that feels good. It reminds her of their first kiss - he's so fucking strong, even just in his little thrusts against her thigh, and Jesus Christ she wants him to let go, if only for a couple of minutes. It'd be the best couple of minutes of both their lives, she's pretty sure.
He presses his mouth to her jaw, panting hard, and tightens his hand in her hair. His hips stutter against hers, he whines in her ear, and starts trying to push himself up onto his elbows.
“Damn,” he groans, his eyelids fluttering. She twists her fingers in the front of his shirt and tugs.
“Hey,” she says, “you don't have to go.” Quite honestly, she doesn't think he'd make it; he's right on the knife's edge of orgasm, eyes dark as he stares at her, mouth hanging open, taking shorts sharp breaths. He sure as hell isn't going to get to the bathroom in time.
And she must be right, because he doesn't even argue, just drops back down and buries his face in her neck. She wraps her arms around his back tightly, and a couple of shallow thrusts later, he's shuddering through his orgasm, his muscles tightening around her. It's one hell of an orgasm, by the feel of it, and long. She's not exactly inclined to check the clock right now, but it's got to be sixty seconds, maybe even a little longer. Goddamnit, she wants that to happen in her.
He slumps against her, and she strokes his back for a moment before he sits up, falling back on his haunches around her legs.
“Um,” he says breathlessly.
“Yeah,” she says, as cool as she ever is (very cool), but really, he came in his pants just from a little kissing and rubbing. She's got skills.
He looks down at the stain on his slacks and flushes a deeper pink than his face already was.
“Sorry,” he mutters, and swings his legs off the couch to get up.
“I'll get you some clean pants,” she says, dragging herself back up.
Steve acts as if the whole situation is the most mortifying thing to ever happen to him. And really, Darcy's done more embarrassing things within the first three hours of waking up. He rinses his slacks and boxers in the sink and she puts them in the laundry basket - she sure as hell isn't shelling out a buck fifty for two pieces of clothing, they can wait till the weekend - then grabs him by the waist and pushes him against the sink.
“Hey, don't get all wallflower on me.”
“Isn't a wallflower someone who won't socialise at parties?”
She shrugs. “The point I'm making is...” She hooks her fingers through the belt loops of his new pants and tugs. “That was so hot. And also, you owe me one orgasm. I'd like to collect. Otherwise there'll be interest on it and-- well, that would be good, actually...”
He sighs, his deep sad sigh. Okay, not the time to work on his funny bone. “I'm sorry,” he says.
“Sorry for what?”
“For being such a... repressed weirdo.”
“Oh. Well, that's okay. I forgive you?”
He snorts and shakes his head. “That doesn't really help you though, does it?”
Whoa, he's taken a critical hit to the self-esteem and she didn't even see it coming. “If you're about to self-sacrificingly dump me so I can find true love like some romcom idiot, then you'd better shut the fuck up right now.”
“I wouldn't dare,” he says softly, biting his lip.
She nods. “Good. So...”
“I guess I've just spent so much time waiting,” he continues quietly. Oh, so they're having this conversation. “And I thought... I thought things would be different.”
“You thought you'd be boning Agent Carter.” Oh, and apparently she's taken a critical hit to her brain-to-mouth filter.
He screws his face up. “Yeah.”
“Well, that's okay,” she says.
“But she's dead...” he says, “and... I'm not going to have my perfect white picket fence family. I was never going to, not with Peggy.” He smooths his hands over her shoulders. “I don't want to live in the past.”
“Okay?” She frowns. This seems like progress, but... “Oh my God, you're not, like, going to propose to me, are you? Because I love you, but I'm not, uh, I mean...”
“You love me?”
“Uhhh,” she hedges, “yeah, but I'm not, not ready to get married for at least, like, ten years.”
“I love you too,” he says. His grin could light up Christmas trees, she has no doubt, and it's kind of really contagious.
“Okay,” she says, and slips her hands up higher to rest on his ribcage. “But no marriage, right?”
“No marriage. We're...” He pulls a face. “We're young, I guess. I don't want to wait any more, though.”
Whoa. She does not need to be told twice. She pushes herself up onto her tiptoes and slaps her hand on the back of his neck to pull him down to her. “You meant you don't want to wait for sex, not takeout or something, right?”
He rolls his eyes and kisses her. She throws her other arm around his neck and pulls herself up, locking her legs around his waist as he catches her. All that working out in the gym really has been the best thing ever, because this shit is harder than it looks in the movies. For her, at least; he carries her to the bedroom like she's the weight of the feather, and she knows she's not.
He deposits her very carefully on the end of the bed and moves half a step back to look at her. He looks like a mess; his hair is all tousled, his cheeks and mouth are still pink, and she doesn't remember undoing the top buttons of his shirt but there they are. She starts working on the rest of them while he continues to stare. She tugs the bottom of the shirt out of his pants (she teases him for always tucking his shirt in, but honestly, it kind of works for him), pushes his undershirt up and over his head, and runs her hands over his stomach.
“God, your body is ridiculous.”
He blinks heavily a couple of times, then reaches out to pull up her t-shirt. “So's yours. If that's a good thing?”
“It's a very good thing,” she confirms, helping him get the t-shirt over her head. If she'd known that today was going to be the day, then maybe she'd have worn the lacy, scratchy balconette bra that her cousin told her was an absolute must, but as it is, she's in her old beige boulder holder and Steve couldn't seem to care less. He rocks forward and kisses her as she scoots back further onto the bed, pulling him forward with her until he's kneeling over her.
“Pants,” she says.
“Mm?”
She threads her fingers through his hair and tugs his head back. “We should take our pants off.”
“We should,” he agrees. He gets back off the bed and starts to undo his belt while she works at shucking out of her jeans; why did she decide to wear skinny jeans today, they're the work of the fucking devil. Steve grabs the hems of them and helps her out of them once his pants are around his ankles. It's like the opposite of sexy.
“Okay, get back up here. And take your socks off.”
“Oh, right,” he mutters, hopping from foot to foot as he pulls them off. She smothers a laugh and sits up, reaching out for him as he gets back on the bed. He kneels in front of her, looking a little nervous.
“You look nervous.”
He snorts. “I am.”
“Well,” she says, and puts her hand on the small of his back, jerking him to her. God, his skin is so warm. “I'll kiss it better.”
He grins into the kiss, and loosens up pretty fast, wrapping his hands around her waist, his index fingers and thumbs almost touching. She drops her hand to his boxers and presses her palm against his dick. He groans into her mouth and pushes forward, his forehead to hers.
“Wow, you're already half hard again? That's impressive, dude.”
He groans again, his breath coming out in puffs across her lips. She hooks a finger around the waistband of his boxers and gives them an experimental tug, just to see what he's going to make of it. He squirms and kisses her temple.
“Yeah?” she asks.
“Yeah,” he pants back.
She gets another finger under his waistband to drags the boxers down while he nuzzles his face against her shoulder. She's pleasantly surprised by what she finds; it had occurred to her that he might be a bit of a monster downstairs and that she'd have to tell him that there was no way that was fitting in her lady cave, but he's just about perfect. She gives him a couple of a quick, rough strokes until he's shuddering against her again, then lets go and reaches back to her night stand to grab her long unloved packet of condoms. Steve straight up whines, clenching his fists in the sheets.
“Patience,” she says, and rips the foil packet open with her teeth just for show. “Okay, come on.”
“I can do that,” he says, as she gets ready to roll it on.
“Have you ever put one on?”
“No, but I've read the back of packets.”
“Well, since out of the two of us, I'm the one with the experience, let's make sure that your super sperm don't try to do battle with my birth control pills. I promise if Loki bursts in while we're going at it, I'll let you deal with that.”
He doesn't actually pout, but there's the ghost of one there.
“Now really isn't the time to get your manly ego on,” she adds.
“It's... not that,” he mutters, ducking his head.
“Oh, okay,” she says, and starts to roll the condom on. His eyelashes flutter, his tongue darting out to wet his lips. “Okay,” she repeats, a little more shakily.
“Can I...?” he mumbles, nudging her back until she lies down. She suddenly starts to feel a little shy, and it has seriously been years since she's felt shy with a guy, but wow, he is honestly the most beautiful man she has ever seen. It's not like she hasn't noticed this little fact before, but having it in front of her, naked, is actually a little... intimidating.
He leans down and presses a kiss just below her belly button, then up and up until her breasts are outlined by his hair. She can't say she's never slept with someone who actually enjoys foreplay, but it's definitely been a damn long time, and she feels herself flush all over from all the attention.
He lifts his head and looks at her, then her breasts, then back at her.
“Go ahead,” she says, her voice unexpectedly catching.
He leans up and presses his mouth to the skin just above the band of her bra, then the tops of both her breasts, paying both a hell of a lot of attention before letting out a long breath. “I've wanted to do that for so long,” he confesses.
“Welcome to the club, Steven,” she says. “Okay, I think... I think five months of foreplay is long enough, don't you?” Her voice doesn't shake as much as she feared it would. Wow, she really is nervous, this is kind of interesting.
“Yeah. So..” Steve says, glancing down between their bodies.
Right. She reaches down and tugs her underwear off, spreads her legs and wraps them around his waist. “Just, uh...” The direct approach is probably the best, she decides, and reaches to wrap her fingers around his dick, lining him up. “Just shove it in.” God, awkward. But Steve is a total champ at following directions, so he does what he's told, and somehow manages to hit her g-spot. On the first try! Skills, man.
She clenches around him - she has awesome pelvic floor muscles - and he pants against her chest.
“Wow,” he says.
“You're a natural.”
“I am?”
“Yeah.”
“Okay. So, this is what I've been missing out on all these years,” he comments, his voice starting to go a little thin.
“Yep. You should move now.”
“Okay,” he murmurs, pulls out a little and pushes back in gently. A little too gently, really.
“You could do that harder,” she suggests.
He tries again and it's, well, maybe it's infinitesimally harder, but she'd need some kind of empirical scale to find out. Okay, new tack. She buries her fingers in his hair and pulls him up for another kiss, which is always a winner for him. If she can scramble his brains long enough, maybe he'll forget that she's such a delicate fucking flower.
She slides herself down a couple of inches, taking him in even further and oh oh oh. They groan in unison and he pushes into her just a touch harder and, okay, she has got to get him into the swing of this, because that was a little bit awesome.
“Steve,” she moans, “Steve, Steve, come on.”
He makes a sort of questioning noise against her cheek and she grabs a handful of his ass. “Harder,” she practically growls into his ear, and he gasps, burying his face in her shoulder and finally, finally slamming into her.
It's like the Fourth of fucking July (ironic, considering...); she arches her back, digging her nails into his shoulder blades and pushes down against him. She doesn't normally come this fast, but fuck, it's Captain America, it's basically unpatriotic to not spontaneously orgasm the moment you look at him.
“Come on, fuck me through my orgasm, Steve,” she says, and it's the most ridiculous thing she's ever said during sex (aside from 'oh yeah, baby, give it to me hard', but she was seventeen, no one can hold that against her), but it seems to work for Steve, who gasps something unintelligible into her skin and curls around her. His hips work unevenly, alternatively shallow and hard, and God, he could fuck her through the bed with those hips. Maybe next time.
He's still gasping and shuddering when she realises that he's starting to unravel, slowly losing control and just doing what feels good. And it feels really, really good. She clenches down around him as she comes, and the sound he makes is almost a wail as he keeps going, building and building on her sensitivity until she's actually... Jesus, she's actually coming again. She has to bite down on his shoulder to stop from yelling and apparently that really does it for him, because she can almost sense the moment he snaps; he scrambles to grab her leg and hold it flush to his hip, and she'd call his pace exhausting if it wasn't so damn amazing. He mumbles a string of mostly unintelligible words into her neck, seemingly trying to burrow himself into her as he comes; she wishes she could see his face right now, but there's always next time. And, by God, there's going to be a next time.
His weight on top of her is kind of suffocating, but she savours it anyway, rubbing his back. She can't help but notice that he's sweating; she's never seen him sweat before, and she decides that she's going to take full responsibility for it. Eventually he comes back to his senses enough to roll off her, and hits the bed with a pant. Her bra is still on, she realises, though it's all skewed to one side, her tits spilling out of the top, the band digging into her ribs. She pulls herself up to grapple with the clasps, then throws it onto the floor, Steve watching her the whole time. It's actually the first time he's got a good look at them, so she turns to him and lets him have it.
“Hey,” he mumbles. He's spread out on the bed, one leg bent, one arm thrown across her pillow. He looks like a Michelangelo painting, or some shit; she wishes she had a camera with her. And a boyfriend who wouldn't absolutely freak out at the idea.
“Was it everything you hoped and dreamed of?” she asks.
“Yeah,” he says.
They smile stupidly at each other for a minute, before she leans over and kisses him softly. “We should probably take this off,” she says, pulling back to remove the condom. She ties it off, climbs over him, and throws it into the bin.
“You really know what you're doing with that,” Steve says slowly.
She rests her elbows on the edge of the bed and frowns at him. “Are you calling me easy?”
His eyebrows jump up into his hairline. “No, I didn't--”
She smacks him on the shoulder and stands up. “Kidding, soldier. I'm gonna go wash up.”
Her everything is sore, her lips are dry and chapped, her legs ache - there are some muscles in play here that she wasn't aware she even had - but it's the best kind of pain ever. She thinks on this as she brushes her teeth. This is quite certainly the most satisfying end to a dry spell that she's ever had. It deserves some sort of acknowledgement.
She grabs her cell off the kitchen counter and texts Jane, i just had sex!
hate you, Jane replies within a couple of minutes.
She grins and texts back, love u 2 :), wandering back into the bedroom. Steve's sitting up, which is sad, with the sheets up to his waist, which is doubly sad. “I just told Jane we had sex, I hope that's okay.”
He looks at her with big eyes. “I didn't mean to imply that you're... easy, Darcy.”
She ignores the phone buzzing again, probably Jane telling her off for using text speak, and sits down on the bed. “You're still on this?”
“I just don't want to...”
“I am easy,” she says, putting her hands on his shoulders and pushing at them until he lies back down. “I like having sex and it doesn't take much to convince me. I'm also extremely hard to offend, you may have noticed.”
He smiles. “Right, okay. Sorry.”
“You're still a repressed weirdo, it's okay,” she says, and gets under the covers with him. “I'll fuck that out of you, don't worry.”
He just laughs, and rolls over to cuddle up next to her. He runs his fingers up and down her stomach for a couple of minutes, smiling when he hits a ticklish spot and her muscles twitch, before saying, “Hey, you don't have any tattoos.”
“You sound disappointed.”
He smiles into her shoulder. “Maybe a little.”
“Oh, have a little body art fetish, huh?”
He chuckles, reaching up to kiss her on the neck. “I could draw you something.”
“As long as it's not your shield.”
“What's wrong with my shield?”
“Would you want it tattooed onto your body?”
He shifts a little and throws an arm over her stomach. “I wouldn't mind,” he mutters.
“Okay, go to sleep, Steve.”
-
She wakes up however many hours later to Steve shaking her gently. She opens one eye. It's still dark. “What time is it?” she mumbles, plaintive.
“Just after five,” Steve says quietly, his voice still sleep-rough.
“Go back to sleep.”
“Your phone's buzzing,” he replies.
“It does that. Go back to sleep.”
There's a pause and, okay, they've just established that she loves him, but she will for real hit him if he keeps arguing this point. Thankfully after a couple more seconds she feels him put his head back on her chest. She pats him vaguely on the cheek and gets back down to that dream about swimming with dolphins. Or maybe she was the dolphin? She doesn't get to find out the answer to this important question, though, before there's a god awful ringing sound. Steve's phone.
He's out of bed in a shot, grabbing his pants from the floor to get the phone out of the pocket. “It's Agent Hill.”
Darcy sits up, squinting at Steve in the darkness as he answers the call.
“Agent Hill?” he says in his most Captain America-y voice. He listens for a moment, frowns, then lowers the phone. “She wants to speak to you.”
“O...kay?” she says, reaching over to take it from him. “Agent Hill, ma'am?” She sounds like Steve, but it's always a good idea to be super polite to people who could have you killed.
“Agent Lewis, could you tell your boyfriend to put the television onto a twenty four hour news channel, please.”
“Um.” Shit. She gets out of bed and walks into the living room, Steve close at her heels. She grabs the remote off the couch and switches the TV on, flipping over to CNN.
“--and in entertainment news, our reclusive first Avenger has finally been spotted out and about, joined by an unnamed young woman...”
Steve's eyes go round as they bring up a picture of the two of them kissing, sitting outside a café, Jane looking at them, his baseball cap in Darcy's hands. That fucking cap.
She lifts the phone back to her mouth. “Oops?”
“Yes. Director Fury would like to see both of you in his office at six thirty.”
“Of course, ma'am,” she mutters into the phone before hanging up.
Steve looks at her accusingly. “I told you there was a reason I wear the baseball cap all the time.”
-
Standing in front of Fury in his office before it's even fully light out puts Steve in mind of being pulled up in front of the nuns at the orphanage as a child. If the nun had a eye patch and was eating Ibuprofen like it was candy.
“Arrr, matey,” Darcy mutters under her breath and Steve covers his snort of laughter with a cough.
“Not coming down with a cold, are you, Captain?” Fury asks, glaring even harder at him. God, Steve thinks, it isn't funny, stop laughing.
“No, no, sir,” he manages.
“Good. Now...” He slaps a printout of the offending photograph onto his desk. “Let's talk about this.”
“Yeah, how'd they even get this?” Darcy asks. “This was weeks ago. Wouldn't the paparazzi have had it in magazines really quick?”
Fury sighs. “Somehow you got into the background of someone's holiday snaps. They didn't notice until the damn slide show for the kids, and then with the magic of digital photography they were able to blow it up enough to make out your fucking faces. Then Twitter and so forth.”
“And we'd have got away with it, too, if it wasn't for that damn Twitter!” Darcy mutters, shaking her fist slightly.
“You think so?” Fury produces a folder from his desk drawer and slaps it down on top of the photograph. “You haven't exactly been subtle.”
Darcy picks up the folder with a glance to Steve, flips it open, and slides out the contents. More pictures, and as Darcy goes through them, Steve can identify several of the days: them at the sushi place near his apartment, them outside his gym, them at the movie theatre in Queens - that was months ago.
“You've been following us?” he asks, fighting to keep his voice level. This has abruptly stopped being funny.
Fury looks at him like it's the stupidest question he's ever heard.
“Okay, so you're a shadowy organisation that knows everyone's movements at all times, I get that, but why the pictures?” Darcy asks. “Is this like a blackmail thing? Because I don't have any money, so that won't get you very far. Oh, this one is pretty nice.” She pulls out a shot of them at Coney Island, Steve sitting on his bike, Darcy holding his chin, her fingers in his hair, their faces inches apart. “Hey, can I keep this one?”
Fury waves his hand. “We have more,” he says.
“Creepy,” she mutters as she tucks it into her jacket pocket.
Steve takes a deep breath and pushes his shoulders back. “Director, I don't appreciate being followed.”
Darcy looks at him like he's just expressed his desire to become a showgirl.
“You don't have a choice, Cap,” Fury says. “The men above me think they own you, and you sure as hell want me watching you rather than them. They aren't exactly happy about this little office romance.”
Steve grits his teeth. “I am not a possession, sir. Darcy's not in my chain of command, and frankly it's none of their business what I do in my personal life.”
Fury rolls his eye. “Cut the adolescent act, Captain, it's unbecoming of a man of your years. I'm not the girl's father, you don't need to sell me on your epic love. And did I say that you should care what the council think? A little appreciation of the lengths we go to shield you wouldn't go amiss, though.”
“Ha, name check,” Darcy mutters, then bumps her hip into Steve's. “We can go, right, Mr. Director, sir?”
“You can.”
She reaches out and lays her hand over a fist that Steve didn't even realise he was making. He relaxes his hand and turns to press his palm against hers. Fury eyes them for a moment. “This revelation was well timed for Thanksgiving, it seems,” he says.
“My dad does make a mean deep fried turkey,” Darcy muses. She looks up at Steve. “My family deep fry everything, is that going to be a problem for you?”
“No...” Steve says slowly.
“Could you get out now?” Fury says, face mostly blank, although he looks slightly less menacing than normal.
“Oh, Jesus,” Darcy mutters, “come on.” She pulls him out of the room, past the early morning shift of agents who, to their credit, don't even look up from their work.
“Well, that went better than expected,” she says. She lifts up their entwined hands. “Look, we've still got all our fingers.”
“Yeah,” he says, “yeah, I guess it did.”
“And I always wanted to get on TV, you know.” She fluffs the bottom of her hair and glances up at him. “Of course, if I'd known I was having my picture taken, I'd have worn some lipstick.”
“Will your parents be upset that you didn't tell them?”
“They'll just be annoyed that they didn't find you first,” she says.
Steve does a double take and she starts laughing, ducking her head and clamping a hand over her mouth.
“I hope that's a joke...” he mutters, trailing off as his phone starts to buzz. He pulls it out of his pocket and has a look. There's a new message coming in every couple of seconds, it seems like. The only person who ever sends him text messages is Darcy, but obviously they're not from her, and when he checks he doesn't even recognise the number. The first three just say, 'oh my god', then, 'this is hilarious' and 'now they're speculating that you've got 2 girls on the go', swiftly followed by, 'dr foster is kinda hot' and 'wait, i didn't say that, delete that message'.
“Tony's enjoying himself,” he says, as the phone buzzes again. It says, 'btw pepper extends her invitation to dinner. she says, quote, it'll be nice to be around mature people for once. i think it'll be LOADS of fun, myself'.
“Oh God,” he says, giving his phone to her when she tugs at his hand. “What have you got me into?”
For those of you who don't read the comics, or at least don't read Avenging Spider-man, please enjoy Steve's glorious liberty bonds comic. Also, I am almost certainly going to write that 'Steve and Darcy dress up for Halloween' fic.
Darcy loaded up his iPod with all sorts of music, as well as making several playlists, such as: old man music, Elvis is the best, and get off my lawn, you damn kids!. Mostly he listens to it while he's on his run; he sticks to the streets in the early mornings or late afternoons when there aren't so many people around. There's too much construction going on in Brooklyn Bridge Park, and he tries to avoid the war memorial at Cadman Plaza altogether. His name is right underneath Bucky's on the plaque there; he laid flowers the week after he moved into his apartment, but decided that that was enough.
It's almost six when he gets back home, slowing to jog as he approaches his building. There's a bright red soft top car parked outside, looking like a great big target for thieves among the SUVs and Ford Fiestas that line the street, and two feet visible on the stoop of his building. Steve pulls an earbud out and walks up to the steps.
“Tony?”
Tony looks up from his cellphone. “Man, you've been gone forever-- is that an iPod?”
Steve tugs out the other earbud and takes the iPod out of his armband to thumb it off. “Why're you here?”
“'Oh hi, Tony, I haven't seen you in ages! I've missed you! Have you lost weight, you look great!'” Tony says, and stands up, brushing dirt off his jeans.
“Hi, Tony, I haven't seen you in ages,” Steve repeats back at him and pulls his keys out of his pocket. Tony rolls his eyes and shuffles to one side to let Steve pass. “What are you doing here?”
“I was in the area.”
“You just happened to be driving around Brooklyn in that?” he asks, glancing over at the car as he unlocks the front door.
Tony shrugs. “I was bored, thought I'd do a bit of 'Meals on Wheels'.”
Steve raises his eyebrows.
“I think there are some Hersey's Kisses in the glovebox,” Tony says. “Can I come in? I'm like a vampire, I have to be invited.”
“Of course you do. Why don't you come in?”
“Why thank you,” Tony says and sweeps right past him. Steve closes the door behind them and goes over to his mailbox; he hasn't really been bothering to check it recently. All bills. Nobody writes letters these days. “I'm still stuck on the iPod,” Tony adds.
“Let it go,” he says.
“Fine. This place is quaint. Cute. I like it.”
“Thanks,” Steve mutters. “My apartment is just over there,” he adds, pointing to his door.
Tony follows him in, and stops just inside of the doorway. “Wow, minimalist, that's, uh, that's... cool.”
Steve grits his teeth, but it's true. He has a couch, a table, and a bookcase in the living area, and a chest of drawers and bed in the bedroom, not to mention an incredible dearth of personal items. It's a little better than it looks, though, because half of his things - his books, art supplies, most of his clothes - are at Darcy's, but he doesn't want to get into that with Tony. He and Darcy have been going out for a couple of months, sleeping in the same bed for a few of weeks, and he doesn't want to share it, doesn't want it to become public property, and definitely doesn't want Tony Stark to ruin it.
“I'm not much of an interior decorator,” Steve concedes, dropping his mail on the table.
Tony looks at him funny. “Where did you learn that phrase?”
He shrugs. “I'm going to get changed, do you want to... go get a drink or something?” He doesn't really want to, he wants to go over to Darcy's, sit on her couch, and watch TV with her, but fostering good relations with the team is probably a good thing. With Tony, maybe less so, but he's the only member of the team who's ever reliably around.
Tony's still looking at him a little funny. “Sure, okay.”
There's an Irish pub not too far from his apartment, where Darcy got fantastically drunk last month and had to be carried back to his apartment, which had been a trial in and of itself because she's a squirmy drunk and even more ridiculous than usual. By the time he got them home, he was laughing pretty damn hard himself.
He shoves Tony into a corner booth and insists on buying the drinks; the last thing he needs is everyone there to start falling over themselves because of Tony,that would pretty effectively rumble his baseball cap disguise.
Tony narrows his eyes at the pint of beer that Steve puts in front of him. “Really? I've drunk three thousand dollar bottles of wine sitting on the floor of my basement.”
“That sounds healthy,” Steve says as he takes the seat across from him.
“You're getting kind of spicy, you know.” Tony stares at him until he seems satisfied that Steve isn't going to say anything in answer to that, then takes a sip of the beer. He wrinkles his nose up. “Not too bad, I guess.”
“Glad it passes inspection.”
“Still as grumpy as ever, huh?”
Steve smiles. “I'm working on it. So, Tony, why are you here?”
“You're the one who brought me here. I was thinking like a bar or a strip joint or something.” He pauses and twists his mouth worriedly. “Not a strip joint, pretend I didn't say that, no strippers for Tony.”
“I meant in Brooklyn.”
“Ah, well. Fury told me to make friends.”
“And you listened to him?”
Tony takes another sip of his beer and glares at Steve over the rim of his glass. “Pepper told me to, as well. And Rhodey.”
That sounds a little closer to the truth. He's not really sure why anyone should care about he and Tony being friends, but he guesses that the sentiment is nice enough. “So, how was California?”
“Hot,” he says, and winks at Steve. Tony must be feeling off his game, if that's meant to be innuendo.
The problem with Tony - one of the problems - is that Steve just doesn't know what to say to him most of the time, unless they're fighting. Tony confuses him: he's both younger and older than Steve, familiar and unfamiliar, unpleasantly brash and surprisingly sensitive. What the hell is Steve supposed to do with that?
His phone buzzes in his pocket, saving him the trouble of thinking of something else to say to Tony for a minute. Tony tips his chin up, trying to catch what's on the screen; Steve cups his hand over the top of the phone and reads the message: wrking late, pls make food 4 me.
Tony's eyebrows jump up when Steve turns the phone on its side and slides the keyboard out (it's the crappiest slider phone on the market, Darcy told him, fifty dollars from ebay, but texting the other way frustrated him to the point of throwing his first phone against the wall and shattering it).
Okay, he replies. I'm having a beer with Tony right now.
His phone buzzes in response almost immediately: tell that idiot 2 stop creating more pprwrk 4 every1.
“Peanuts compliments of the house,” someone says, and he looks up from his phone to see the barmaid dropping a couple of bags of peanuts on the table. “Thanks for dealing with that guy a couple of weeks ago.”
“That's okay,” he says, feeling, rather than seeing, Tony perk up.
“Did you get your friend home okay?” she continues.
“Yeah, uh, yeah,” he mutters, and risks a glance at Tony. Tony's smiling knowingly at him.
“For someone so small, she sure can sing loud,” the barmaid says.
Steve presses his lips together. “Mmhm,” he hums, looking back down at his phone.
“What's this?” Tony asks. Steve's surprised it took him this long.
“Nothing important,” Steve says quickly, but now the barmaid is looking at Tony, frowning.
“Are you--?”
“He gets that a lot, but no,” Steve jumps in. “Thank you for the peanuts, miss.”
“You're welcome...” she says slowly, and now she's looking more closely at his face under the brim of his hat. Damn.
At least Tony waits for her to get back to the bar before leaning across the table. “Stevie, what haven't you been telling me?”
“Don't call me that.”
“Aw,” Tony says, then his hand darts out to snatch the phone from Steve's lap. Steve's gripping his wrist in a split second, but Tony just takes the phone from his trapped hand with his other hand. Steve squeezes his wrist a little harder in retaliation, then lets go.
“'Idiot'?” Tony mutters after a couple of seconds of fiddling with Steve's phone. He sounds vaguely affronted. It can't be the first time the word's been used in conjunction with him, Steve thinks.
“So, I'm guessing that 'Darcy' is a chick, unless my gaydar is really on the fritz.”
Steve scowls at him.
“Have you been-- wait a minute,” Tony cuts himself off, and raises his hand to Steve, as if Steve was interrupting him. “Is this you wearing a dime store Captain America costume?” he asks, and shoves the phone in front of Steve's face.
Steve hates camera phones. “It was Halloween,” he mutters. Darcy thought it would be funny.
Tony pulls the phone back and continues bashing on it. “And another one! And-- whoa, that is one sexy Catwoman. And here you are kissing her. Wow, get it, Cap.”
“Okay, that's enough,” Steve snaps, snatching the phone back, Tony's thumbs left pressing air. He hasn't actually looked at the pictures, because that costume was ridiculously embarrassing, ill-fitting, scratchy, and he tore the back of it open by the end of the night, but he can't help but smile at the picture that Tony's pulled up: sometime after Steve had tossed out the guy who desperately wanted to start a bar fight no one else was interested in and before Darcy started singing sea shanties, she hopped onto his lap on the bar stool, mashed their faces together, and snapped the picture. He kind of likes it.
“Didn't take you for a ladykiller,” Tony says, rousing him from staring at the picture.
“What?”
“Making out with Catwoman. Tell me that's the friend that you 'got home okay'. Come on, please tell me that.”
“It wasn't like that.”
“It sure as hell looks like that.”
“Well, it isn't,” Steve says, and shoves his phone back in his pocket.
Tony doesn't say anything for a couple of minutes while Steve nurses his beer, which is possibly even worse than when he won't stop talking, because Steve's pretty sure he's one of those people who's at their most dangerous when they're silent.
“What?” he finally caves, and Tony tilts his head to one side.
“Is this the girl from the park?”
Steve clears his throat. “Yeah.”
“Holy shit, are you dating her?”
In for a penny, Steve thinks. “I'm basically living with her.”
“Oh, wow,” Tony says, and sets his elbows on the table with a thump. “You're in the bubble, that's adorable.”
Steve sighs, and leans his head back against the cushioned booth. “What?”
“I heard it on the TV show or something: it's when you first get together with someone, and you want to do everything with them and never leave their side. When me and Pepper got together, I didn't want to do anything without her. Pretty sure she considered dumping me just so that she could have a bubble bath in peace once a week.” He pauses and smiles. “To be honest, that feeling never really went away for me.”
“Yeah, I guess that's, that's pretty accurate,” Steve says, and picks up the packet of peanuts.
Tony looks incredibly pleased with himself. “You know, you are way more relatable like this.”
“That's ironic, coming from you.”
Tony shrugs. “Well, I am 'Iron' Man.”
“Wow,” Steve dead pans.
“Jealous,” Tony says.
“Okay.”
Tony takes another sip of his beer, wrinkles his nose again, and says, “So, do you love her?”
“I don't want to talk about this with you, Tony.”
“Hey, look, do you have any other friends? 'Cause I don't think you do, and talking about this stuff helps sometimes. At least, that's what I've heard.”
Steve's pretty sure that Tony just referred to himself as Steve's friend, and he finds it somewhat depressing that it appears to be true. “There's nothing to talk about.”
“Really? Like you never had a sweetheart who you were sure you were gonna marry and have a litter of transatlantic kids with? And then you woke up one day and she'd got married and divorced and died in the interim? That never happen to you?”
Steve clenches his jaw.
“Look, it'll probably come as a surprise to you that I'm not actively trying to piss you off, hell it's surprising me, but... look, losing people you love is hard, trust me, and if I lost Pepper and Rhodey I'd go even more crazy than I already am. So I, uh, I admire that you haven't gone crazy - I mean, I assume you're not crazy, I guess I don't actually know you that well - but talking about this stuff sort of... helps.” He shrugs. “I've heard.”
“I think there's a nice sentiment in there somewhere.”
Tony pulls a face. “Doubt it.”
Steve runs his fingernail along the condensation around the bottom of his glass and flicks his eyes back to Tony. “When did you realise how you felt about Ms Potts?”
“There's only ever been Pepper, but... it was recent. Way too recent. What about you and Peggy?”
Steve shrugs. “I don't know.”
Tony sighs. “It sucks, man.”
“What does?”
“All of it. Your life's kind of a crapshoot.”
“That's your advice? My life is crap?”
“No, that's not my advice.” Tony pauses, stares at him, then lifts his beer to his lips and downs half of it in thirty seconds flat. Christ, he is like his father. Tony clears his throat and looks back at him. “My advice, Capiscle, is: just enjoy it.”
“Enjoy what?”
“Whatever there is to enjoy. 'Cause it won't last forever.” He drains the rest of his beer, then reaches out towards Steve's. “Hey, can I? Pep's parents are coming over this evening, and I am not nearly buzzed enough.”
Steve frowns at him, and Tony throws his palms up. “Hey, Pepper's been drinking since after her last meeting, I've got a lot of catching up to do here, okay, you'll know what in-laws are like soon enough.”
He pushes the drink over to Tony wordlessly, who starts drinking it greedily.
He wonders what Darcy's parents are like.
-
Sometimes Darcy wishes for a little excitement at work. Not, like, another Loki or any of the crazy guys who pursue Stark, but just a minor villain, someone to distract her from the slow drag of paperwork and data entry. This is not exactly the life she had imagined for herself. Of course, her imagined life involved discovering that she had an until now hidden talent that would get her a high paying, stress-free job, and everyone would love her and maybe she'd get her picture in the paper occasionally. She's used to being directionless, but her lack of direction used to be fun, alcohol-fuelled, and sexually stimulating. Now it's sometimes the first, occasionally the second, and never the third.
At least Steve has food in the oven and a DVD in the player when she gets home. She eats dinner to stories of Tony leaving the pub tipsy, in a cab, abandoning his sports car outside Steve's. He seems kind of offended by the flashiness of it, but in a slightly more affectionate way than normal, and despite his disagreement, he's not so offended by Stark's existence any more. Darcy kind of digs the idea of them becoming actual friends; she definitely wouldn't say no to going to one of those legendary bashes at Stark Tower.
The movie is a bust. Mostly because, as with so many other nights, they start kissing, and Jimmy Stewart is left to drone on ignored in the background. Only tonight things have progressed horizontally. Steve is way too big for the couch on a good day, so it's patently ridiculous now that his bent knees keep banging against the armrest - or at least it would be if Steve didn't just keep going and going, making all these little noises every time she touches him, like, anywhere. Someone is really, really horny.
The other thing that's different is that she's pretty sure he's not rubbing his gun against her leg over and over again, and she's doubly sure that he doesn't even realise he's doing it, so she elects to not point it out. She drags him away from where he's working on her neck and fits their mouths together again. He groans and pulls himself up, hunching his shoulders in to curl around her more. She feels his erection slide up and hit the crease of her leg and, man, that feels good. It reminds her of their first kiss - he's so fucking strong, even just in his little thrusts against her thigh, and Jesus Christ she wants him to let go, if only for a couple of minutes. It'd be the best couple of minutes of both their lives, she's pretty sure.
He presses his mouth to her jaw, panting hard, and tightens his hand in her hair. His hips stutter against hers, he whines in her ear, and starts trying to push himself up onto his elbows.
“Damn,” he groans, his eyelids fluttering. She twists her fingers in the front of his shirt and tugs.
“Hey,” she says, “you don't have to go.” Quite honestly, she doesn't think he'd make it; he's right on the knife's edge of orgasm, eyes dark as he stares at her, mouth hanging open, taking shorts sharp breaths. He sure as hell isn't going to get to the bathroom in time.
And she must be right, because he doesn't even argue, just drops back down and buries his face in her neck. She wraps her arms around his back tightly, and a couple of shallow thrusts later, he's shuddering through his orgasm, his muscles tightening around her. It's one hell of an orgasm, by the feel of it, and long. She's not exactly inclined to check the clock right now, but it's got to be sixty seconds, maybe even a little longer. Goddamnit, she wants that to happen in her.
He slumps against her, and she strokes his back for a moment before he sits up, falling back on his haunches around her legs.
“Um,” he says breathlessly.
“Yeah,” she says, as cool as she ever is (very cool), but really, he came in his pants just from a little kissing and rubbing. She's got skills.
He looks down at the stain on his slacks and flushes a deeper pink than his face already was.
“Sorry,” he mutters, and swings his legs off the couch to get up.
“I'll get you some clean pants,” she says, dragging herself back up.
Steve acts as if the whole situation is the most mortifying thing to ever happen to him. And really, Darcy's done more embarrassing things within the first three hours of waking up. He rinses his slacks and boxers in the sink and she puts them in the laundry basket - she sure as hell isn't shelling out a buck fifty for two pieces of clothing, they can wait till the weekend - then grabs him by the waist and pushes him against the sink.
“Hey, don't get all wallflower on me.”
“Isn't a wallflower someone who won't socialise at parties?”
She shrugs. “The point I'm making is...” She hooks her fingers through the belt loops of his new pants and tugs. “That was so hot. And also, you owe me one orgasm. I'd like to collect. Otherwise there'll be interest on it and-- well, that would be good, actually...”
He sighs, his deep sad sigh. Okay, not the time to work on his funny bone. “I'm sorry,” he says.
“Sorry for what?”
“For being such a... repressed weirdo.”
“Oh. Well, that's okay. I forgive you?”
He snorts and shakes his head. “That doesn't really help you though, does it?”
Whoa, he's taken a critical hit to the self-esteem and she didn't even see it coming. “If you're about to self-sacrificingly dump me so I can find true love like some romcom idiot, then you'd better shut the fuck up right now.”
“I wouldn't dare,” he says softly, biting his lip.
She nods. “Good. So...”
“I guess I've just spent so much time waiting,” he continues quietly. Oh, so they're having this conversation. “And I thought... I thought things would be different.”
“You thought you'd be boning Agent Carter.” Oh, and apparently she's taken a critical hit to her brain-to-mouth filter.
He screws his face up. “Yeah.”
“Well, that's okay,” she says.
“But she's dead...” he says, “and... I'm not going to have my perfect white picket fence family. I was never going to, not with Peggy.” He smooths his hands over her shoulders. “I don't want to live in the past.”
“Okay?” She frowns. This seems like progress, but... “Oh my God, you're not, like, going to propose to me, are you? Because I love you, but I'm not, uh, I mean...”
“You love me?”
“Uhhh,” she hedges, “yeah, but I'm not, not ready to get married for at least, like, ten years.”
“I love you too,” he says. His grin could light up Christmas trees, she has no doubt, and it's kind of really contagious.
“Okay,” she says, and slips her hands up higher to rest on his ribcage. “But no marriage, right?”
“No marriage. We're...” He pulls a face. “We're young, I guess. I don't want to wait any more, though.”
Whoa. She does not need to be told twice. She pushes herself up onto her tiptoes and slaps her hand on the back of his neck to pull him down to her. “You meant you don't want to wait for sex, not takeout or something, right?”
He rolls his eyes and kisses her. She throws her other arm around his neck and pulls herself up, locking her legs around his waist as he catches her. All that working out in the gym really has been the best thing ever, because this shit is harder than it looks in the movies. For her, at least; he carries her to the bedroom like she's the weight of the feather, and she knows she's not.
He deposits her very carefully on the end of the bed and moves half a step back to look at her. He looks like a mess; his hair is all tousled, his cheeks and mouth are still pink, and she doesn't remember undoing the top buttons of his shirt but there they are. She starts working on the rest of them while he continues to stare. She tugs the bottom of the shirt out of his pants (she teases him for always tucking his shirt in, but honestly, it kind of works for him), pushes his undershirt up and over his head, and runs her hands over his stomach.
“God, your body is ridiculous.”
He blinks heavily a couple of times, then reaches out to pull up her t-shirt. “So's yours. If that's a good thing?”
“It's a very good thing,” she confirms, helping him get the t-shirt over her head. If she'd known that today was going to be the day, then maybe she'd have worn the lacy, scratchy balconette bra that her cousin told her was an absolute must, but as it is, she's in her old beige boulder holder and Steve couldn't seem to care less. He rocks forward and kisses her as she scoots back further onto the bed, pulling him forward with her until he's kneeling over her.
“Pants,” she says.
“Mm?”
She threads her fingers through his hair and tugs his head back. “We should take our pants off.”
“We should,” he agrees. He gets back off the bed and starts to undo his belt while she works at shucking out of her jeans; why did she decide to wear skinny jeans today, they're the work of the fucking devil. Steve grabs the hems of them and helps her out of them once his pants are around his ankles. It's like the opposite of sexy.
“Okay, get back up here. And take your socks off.”
“Oh, right,” he mutters, hopping from foot to foot as he pulls them off. She smothers a laugh and sits up, reaching out for him as he gets back on the bed. He kneels in front of her, looking a little nervous.
“You look nervous.”
He snorts. “I am.”
“Well,” she says, and puts her hand on the small of his back, jerking him to her. God, his skin is so warm. “I'll kiss it better.”
He grins into the kiss, and loosens up pretty fast, wrapping his hands around her waist, his index fingers and thumbs almost touching. She drops her hand to his boxers and presses her palm against his dick. He groans into her mouth and pushes forward, his forehead to hers.
“Wow, you're already half hard again? That's impressive, dude.”
He groans again, his breath coming out in puffs across her lips. She hooks a finger around the waistband of his boxers and gives them an experimental tug, just to see what he's going to make of it. He squirms and kisses her temple.
“Yeah?” she asks.
“Yeah,” he pants back.
She gets another finger under his waistband to drags the boxers down while he nuzzles his face against her shoulder. She's pleasantly surprised by what she finds; it had occurred to her that he might be a bit of a monster downstairs and that she'd have to tell him that there was no way that was fitting in her lady cave, but he's just about perfect. She gives him a couple of a quick, rough strokes until he's shuddering against her again, then lets go and reaches back to her night stand to grab her long unloved packet of condoms. Steve straight up whines, clenching his fists in the sheets.
“Patience,” she says, and rips the foil packet open with her teeth just for show. “Okay, come on.”
“I can do that,” he says, as she gets ready to roll it on.
“Have you ever put one on?”
“No, but I've read the back of packets.”
“Well, since out of the two of us, I'm the one with the experience, let's make sure that your super sperm don't try to do battle with my birth control pills. I promise if Loki bursts in while we're going at it, I'll let you deal with that.”
He doesn't actually pout, but there's the ghost of one there.
“Now really isn't the time to get your manly ego on,” she adds.
“It's... not that,” he mutters, ducking his head.
“Oh, okay,” she says, and starts to roll the condom on. His eyelashes flutter, his tongue darting out to wet his lips. “Okay,” she repeats, a little more shakily.
“Can I...?” he mumbles, nudging her back until she lies down. She suddenly starts to feel a little shy, and it has seriously been years since she's felt shy with a guy, but wow, he is honestly the most beautiful man she has ever seen. It's not like she hasn't noticed this little fact before, but having it in front of her, naked, is actually a little... intimidating.
He leans down and presses a kiss just below her belly button, then up and up until her breasts are outlined by his hair. She can't say she's never slept with someone who actually enjoys foreplay, but it's definitely been a damn long time, and she feels herself flush all over from all the attention.
He lifts his head and looks at her, then her breasts, then back at her.
“Go ahead,” she says, her voice unexpectedly catching.
He leans up and presses his mouth to the skin just above the band of her bra, then the tops of both her breasts, paying both a hell of a lot of attention before letting out a long breath. “I've wanted to do that for so long,” he confesses.
“Welcome to the club, Steven,” she says. “Okay, I think... I think five months of foreplay is long enough, don't you?” Her voice doesn't shake as much as she feared it would. Wow, she really is nervous, this is kind of interesting.
“Yeah. So..” Steve says, glancing down between their bodies.
Right. She reaches down and tugs her underwear off, spreads her legs and wraps them around his waist. “Just, uh...” The direct approach is probably the best, she decides, and reaches to wrap her fingers around his dick, lining him up. “Just shove it in.” God, awkward. But Steve is a total champ at following directions, so he does what he's told, and somehow manages to hit her g-spot. On the first try! Skills, man.
She clenches around him - she has awesome pelvic floor muscles - and he pants against her chest.
“Wow,” he says.
“You're a natural.”
“I am?”
“Yeah.”
“Okay. So, this is what I've been missing out on all these years,” he comments, his voice starting to go a little thin.
“Yep. You should move now.”
“Okay,” he murmurs, pulls out a little and pushes back in gently. A little too gently, really.
“You could do that harder,” she suggests.
He tries again and it's, well, maybe it's infinitesimally harder, but she'd need some kind of empirical scale to find out. Okay, new tack. She buries her fingers in his hair and pulls him up for another kiss, which is always a winner for him. If she can scramble his brains long enough, maybe he'll forget that she's such a delicate fucking flower.
She slides herself down a couple of inches, taking him in even further and oh oh oh. They groan in unison and he pushes into her just a touch harder and, okay, she has got to get him into the swing of this, because that was a little bit awesome.
“Steve,” she moans, “Steve, Steve, come on.”
He makes a sort of questioning noise against her cheek and she grabs a handful of his ass. “Harder,” she practically growls into his ear, and he gasps, burying his face in her shoulder and finally, finally slamming into her.
It's like the Fourth of fucking July (ironic, considering...); she arches her back, digging her nails into his shoulder blades and pushes down against him. She doesn't normally come this fast, but fuck, it's Captain America, it's basically unpatriotic to not spontaneously orgasm the moment you look at him.
“Come on, fuck me through my orgasm, Steve,” she says, and it's the most ridiculous thing she's ever said during sex (aside from 'oh yeah, baby, give it to me hard', but she was seventeen, no one can hold that against her), but it seems to work for Steve, who gasps something unintelligible into her skin and curls around her. His hips work unevenly, alternatively shallow and hard, and God, he could fuck her through the bed with those hips. Maybe next time.
He's still gasping and shuddering when she realises that he's starting to unravel, slowly losing control and just doing what feels good. And it feels really, really good. She clenches down around him as she comes, and the sound he makes is almost a wail as he keeps going, building and building on her sensitivity until she's actually... Jesus, she's actually coming again. She has to bite down on his shoulder to stop from yelling and apparently that really does it for him, because she can almost sense the moment he snaps; he scrambles to grab her leg and hold it flush to his hip, and she'd call his pace exhausting if it wasn't so damn amazing. He mumbles a string of mostly unintelligible words into her neck, seemingly trying to burrow himself into her as he comes; she wishes she could see his face right now, but there's always next time. And, by God, there's going to be a next time.
His weight on top of her is kind of suffocating, but she savours it anyway, rubbing his back. She can't help but notice that he's sweating; she's never seen him sweat before, and she decides that she's going to take full responsibility for it. Eventually he comes back to his senses enough to roll off her, and hits the bed with a pant. Her bra is still on, she realises, though it's all skewed to one side, her tits spilling out of the top, the band digging into her ribs. She pulls herself up to grapple with the clasps, then throws it onto the floor, Steve watching her the whole time. It's actually the first time he's got a good look at them, so she turns to him and lets him have it.
“Hey,” he mumbles. He's spread out on the bed, one leg bent, one arm thrown across her pillow. He looks like a Michelangelo painting, or some shit; she wishes she had a camera with her. And a boyfriend who wouldn't absolutely freak out at the idea.
“Was it everything you hoped and dreamed of?” she asks.
“Yeah,” he says.
They smile stupidly at each other for a minute, before she leans over and kisses him softly. “We should probably take this off,” she says, pulling back to remove the condom. She ties it off, climbs over him, and throws it into the bin.
“You really know what you're doing with that,” Steve says slowly.
She rests her elbows on the edge of the bed and frowns at him. “Are you calling me easy?”
His eyebrows jump up into his hairline. “No, I didn't--”
She smacks him on the shoulder and stands up. “Kidding, soldier. I'm gonna go wash up.”
Her everything is sore, her lips are dry and chapped, her legs ache - there are some muscles in play here that she wasn't aware she even had - but it's the best kind of pain ever. She thinks on this as she brushes her teeth. This is quite certainly the most satisfying end to a dry spell that she's ever had. It deserves some sort of acknowledgement.
She grabs her cell off the kitchen counter and texts Jane, i just had sex!
hate you, Jane replies within a couple of minutes.
She grins and texts back, love u 2 :), wandering back into the bedroom. Steve's sitting up, which is sad, with the sheets up to his waist, which is doubly sad. “I just told Jane we had sex, I hope that's okay.”
He looks at her with big eyes. “I didn't mean to imply that you're... easy, Darcy.”
She ignores the phone buzzing again, probably Jane telling her off for using text speak, and sits down on the bed. “You're still on this?”
“I just don't want to...”
“I am easy,” she says, putting her hands on his shoulders and pushing at them until he lies back down. “I like having sex and it doesn't take much to convince me. I'm also extremely hard to offend, you may have noticed.”
He smiles. “Right, okay. Sorry.”
“You're still a repressed weirdo, it's okay,” she says, and gets under the covers with him. “I'll fuck that out of you, don't worry.”
He just laughs, and rolls over to cuddle up next to her. He runs his fingers up and down her stomach for a couple of minutes, smiling when he hits a ticklish spot and her muscles twitch, before saying, “Hey, you don't have any tattoos.”
“You sound disappointed.”
He smiles into her shoulder. “Maybe a little.”
“Oh, have a little body art fetish, huh?”
He chuckles, reaching up to kiss her on the neck. “I could draw you something.”
“As long as it's not your shield.”
“What's wrong with my shield?”
“Would you want it tattooed onto your body?”
He shifts a little and throws an arm over her stomach. “I wouldn't mind,” he mutters.
“Okay, go to sleep, Steve.”
-
She wakes up however many hours later to Steve shaking her gently. She opens one eye. It's still dark. “What time is it?” she mumbles, plaintive.
“Just after five,” Steve says quietly, his voice still sleep-rough.
“Go back to sleep.”
“Your phone's buzzing,” he replies.
“It does that. Go back to sleep.”
There's a pause and, okay, they've just established that she loves him, but she will for real hit him if he keeps arguing this point. Thankfully after a couple more seconds she feels him put his head back on her chest. She pats him vaguely on the cheek and gets back down to that dream about swimming with dolphins. Or maybe she was the dolphin? She doesn't get to find out the answer to this important question, though, before there's a god awful ringing sound. Steve's phone.
He's out of bed in a shot, grabbing his pants from the floor to get the phone out of the pocket. “It's Agent Hill.”
Darcy sits up, squinting at Steve in the darkness as he answers the call.
“Agent Hill?” he says in his most Captain America-y voice. He listens for a moment, frowns, then lowers the phone. “She wants to speak to you.”
“O...kay?” she says, reaching over to take it from him. “Agent Hill, ma'am?” She sounds like Steve, but it's always a good idea to be super polite to people who could have you killed.
“Agent Lewis, could you tell your boyfriend to put the television onto a twenty four hour news channel, please.”
“Um.” Shit. She gets out of bed and walks into the living room, Steve close at her heels. She grabs the remote off the couch and switches the TV on, flipping over to CNN.
“--and in entertainment news, our reclusive first Avenger has finally been spotted out and about, joined by an unnamed young woman...”
Steve's eyes go round as they bring up a picture of the two of them kissing, sitting outside a café, Jane looking at them, his baseball cap in Darcy's hands. That fucking cap.
She lifts the phone back to her mouth. “Oops?”
“Yes. Director Fury would like to see both of you in his office at six thirty.”
“Of course, ma'am,” she mutters into the phone before hanging up.
Steve looks at her accusingly. “I told you there was a reason I wear the baseball cap all the time.”
-
Standing in front of Fury in his office before it's even fully light out puts Steve in mind of being pulled up in front of the nuns at the orphanage as a child. If the nun had a eye patch and was eating Ibuprofen like it was candy.
“Arrr, matey,” Darcy mutters under her breath and Steve covers his snort of laughter with a cough.
“Not coming down with a cold, are you, Captain?” Fury asks, glaring even harder at him. God, Steve thinks, it isn't funny, stop laughing.
“No, no, sir,” he manages.
“Good. Now...” He slaps a printout of the offending photograph onto his desk. “Let's talk about this.”
“Yeah, how'd they even get this?” Darcy asks. “This was weeks ago. Wouldn't the paparazzi have had it in magazines really quick?”
Fury sighs. “Somehow you got into the background of someone's holiday snaps. They didn't notice until the damn slide show for the kids, and then with the magic of digital photography they were able to blow it up enough to make out your fucking faces. Then Twitter and so forth.”
“And we'd have got away with it, too, if it wasn't for that damn Twitter!” Darcy mutters, shaking her fist slightly.
“You think so?” Fury produces a folder from his desk drawer and slaps it down on top of the photograph. “You haven't exactly been subtle.”
Darcy picks up the folder with a glance to Steve, flips it open, and slides out the contents. More pictures, and as Darcy goes through them, Steve can identify several of the days: them at the sushi place near his apartment, them outside his gym, them at the movie theatre in Queens - that was months ago.
“You've been following us?” he asks, fighting to keep his voice level. This has abruptly stopped being funny.
Fury looks at him like it's the stupidest question he's ever heard.
“Okay, so you're a shadowy organisation that knows everyone's movements at all times, I get that, but why the pictures?” Darcy asks. “Is this like a blackmail thing? Because I don't have any money, so that won't get you very far. Oh, this one is pretty nice.” She pulls out a shot of them at Coney Island, Steve sitting on his bike, Darcy holding his chin, her fingers in his hair, their faces inches apart. “Hey, can I keep this one?”
Fury waves his hand. “We have more,” he says.
“Creepy,” she mutters as she tucks it into her jacket pocket.
Steve takes a deep breath and pushes his shoulders back. “Director, I don't appreciate being followed.”
Darcy looks at him like he's just expressed his desire to become a showgirl.
“You don't have a choice, Cap,” Fury says. “The men above me think they own you, and you sure as hell want me watching you rather than them. They aren't exactly happy about this little office romance.”
Steve grits his teeth. “I am not a possession, sir. Darcy's not in my chain of command, and frankly it's none of their business what I do in my personal life.”
Fury rolls his eye. “Cut the adolescent act, Captain, it's unbecoming of a man of your years. I'm not the girl's father, you don't need to sell me on your epic love. And did I say that you should care what the council think? A little appreciation of the lengths we go to shield you wouldn't go amiss, though.”
“Ha, name check,” Darcy mutters, then bumps her hip into Steve's. “We can go, right, Mr. Director, sir?”
“You can.”
She reaches out and lays her hand over a fist that Steve didn't even realise he was making. He relaxes his hand and turns to press his palm against hers. Fury eyes them for a moment. “This revelation was well timed for Thanksgiving, it seems,” he says.
“My dad does make a mean deep fried turkey,” Darcy muses. She looks up at Steve. “My family deep fry everything, is that going to be a problem for you?”
“No...” Steve says slowly.
“Could you get out now?” Fury says, face mostly blank, although he looks slightly less menacing than normal.
“Oh, Jesus,” Darcy mutters, “come on.” She pulls him out of the room, past the early morning shift of agents who, to their credit, don't even look up from their work.
“Well, that went better than expected,” she says. She lifts up their entwined hands. “Look, we've still got all our fingers.”
“Yeah,” he says, “yeah, I guess it did.”
“And I always wanted to get on TV, you know.” She fluffs the bottom of her hair and glances up at him. “Of course, if I'd known I was having my picture taken, I'd have worn some lipstick.”
“Will your parents be upset that you didn't tell them?”
“They'll just be annoyed that they didn't find you first,” she says.
Steve does a double take and she starts laughing, ducking her head and clamping a hand over her mouth.
“I hope that's a joke...” he mutters, trailing off as his phone starts to buzz. He pulls it out of his pocket and has a look. There's a new message coming in every couple of seconds, it seems like. The only person who ever sends him text messages is Darcy, but obviously they're not from her, and when he checks he doesn't even recognise the number. The first three just say, 'oh my god', then, 'this is hilarious' and 'now they're speculating that you've got 2 girls on the go', swiftly followed by, 'dr foster is kinda hot' and 'wait, i didn't say that, delete that message'.
“Tony's enjoying himself,” he says, as the phone buzzes again. It says, 'btw pepper extends her invitation to dinner. she says, quote, it'll be nice to be around mature people for once. i think it'll be LOADS of fun, myself'.
“Oh God,” he says, giving his phone to her when she tugs at his hand. “What have you got me into?”
For those of you who don't read the comics, or at least don't read Avenging Spider-man, please enjoy Steve's glorious liberty bonds comic. Also, I am almost certainly going to write that 'Steve and Darcy dress up for Halloween' fic.