a river in egypt
matchmaker matchmaker
rating: pg-13
characters: Darcy Lewis, Clint Barton/Natasha Romanoff, Bruce Banner, Jane Foster, Maria Hill, Jarvis, Pepper Potts, Steve Rogers, Tony Stark, Thor, Sam Wilson
warnings: none
summary: How do you get two people who are so clearly in love with each other to realize it? Great question. If you have any suggestions, please contact Darcy Lewis at Avengers Tower, Manhattan, NY.
author's note: For alphaflyer, who prompted "Darcy … as the matchmaker From Hell (or heaven, depending on how you look at it!)" for Clint and Natasha. Many thanks to cybermathwitch for beta'ing!
"This is completely ridiculous," Darcy said with no small amount of incredulity. Beside her Hill glanced up from the manifest of Jane's possessions, a list made almost entirely of scientific equipment and a single, sad duffel stuffed with everything else.
"You're going to have to be more specific.”
"Have they always been this bad?" She asked, the gaze behind her glasses giving away which 'they' she was talking about. The SI Head of Security followed her line of sight to where Clint and Natasha were skirting around a cheerful Thor, who was carrying in the mutated child of a fax machine and a machete. After a moment Maria looked back at her with an arched eyebrow, apparently having seen nothing out of the ordinary.
"Okay, look, I can deal with the talking house, which is super horror movie material, I'm just saying, and living with superheroes can't be worse than my sophomore dorm, but really?"
"Thor suggested you might be an empath," Hill murmured thoughtfully, and stepped aside to make room for the Asgardian. She said nothing about the copious amounts of duct tape on Jane's equipment.
"Seriously?" Darcy continued, apparently not having heard Maria. "I'm pretty sure you could actually cut it with a knife."
"You might need something bigger than that," Maria told her, and checked the fax baby off on the list.
--
"So, how long have they been partners?"
"They're spies, Lewis, they're almost as bad as Fury was, and spies do one thing very well: they keep their secrets."
"So you don't know."
"Of course I do. Doesn't mean I'm going to share privileged information with a lowly college graduate. National security and all that." Tony dropped his toast onto a plate and grabbed the butter, paying no mind to Darcy's pursed lips.
"Okay, just tell me, is it long enough that they should have-"
"I know exactly what you're going to ask, and the answer is yes, it's definitely yes, and we're going to move on from discussing our dearly beloved spies and their non-existent love lives. I find talking about Natasha when she's not in sight to be incredibly unsettling."
"Why?"
"Because, young padawan, it means I don't know where she actually is."
"I'm glad I'm not you."
"Spite, that's spite I’m hearing from you, science minion. Hasn't anyone ever told you to respect your elders?"
"Do you really want me to answer that?"
--
"Has anyone tried just talking to them?" Darcy bounced the basketball back to Steve, who caught it easily before sinking a shot off the backboard. Sam snagged it on the rebound and snorted, shaking his head.
"Man, Darcy, there are some dragons you let sleep, okay?"
Steve grinned in sympathy but shrugged when she looked at him.
"It's not the kind of thing we discuss at team meetings, no."
"Maybe someone should," she muttered, a knot of tension still sitting behind her forehead.
"I like you too much to tell you to try it," Sam told her, and clapped her on the shoulder as he went by. "Hang in there."
--
"All I'm saying is, strip poker."
Pepper paused, her mouth open to respond, and clearly went through the steps of imagining it. While the resulting smile was genuine, she shook her head even as she looked ruefully at Darcy.
"First of all, you'd have to involve other people. Second, it's safe to assume nudity isn't the issue for them after the missions they've worked together. And third, do you really want to bet that Natasha won't wipe the floor with everyone involved?"
Darcy considered that for a good moment before replying.
"Okay, all good points. I guess that one's a no-go. Although," she added contemplatively, "if we're talking about doing it just for fun..."
Pepper laughed quietly and set the Tower Cafe menu down.
"Then I wish you the best of luck."
"The best part of strip poker is, you win even if you don't win, you know what I mean? And before you ask, I could totally get some pictures."
"Tempting, but I'm good," she assured the younger woman, and caught the waiter's eye. "Ready to order?"
--
"An apocalypse?" Darcy shouted over the sound of the whirling maelstrom currently wreaking havoc, albeit in a miniaturized form, on the Tower's living room. Thor risked a glance over the shredded couch to check on its progress before shaking his head.
"Nay, we have had three by my count since I first came to Midgard, and none have appeared to change their minds."
"Great," she groaned, and leaned her head against the couch as one of the floor lamps went flying overhead.
--
"Alien sex pollen." The stack of meticulous reports made a great surface to lean on. "What? C'mon, Doc, there are plenty of stories about this kind of thing, you can't tell me you haven't come across it yet."
"Fiction and reality can be very different from one another," Bruce informed her, his pen poised above the tablet holding his most recent notes.
"I live with seven superheroes."
"Point." He looked back down at the glowing output, lips quirking. "And here I was thinking you were in my lab because you liked my company."
"Don't get me wrong, I totally do, but the soundproofing is killer on these walls. And you're, what, fifteen floors away from the living quarters? Makes it pretty quiet in here, emotions-wise."
"You can't read the," and he gestured to his chest with a curl of his fingers, "Big Guy?"
"What, him? Nah, he's pretty chill once he figures out what's going on. And you've got the whole 'angry zen' thing going on, which is easy to handle."
"Ah." Bruce appeared to be filing that away. "Has it gotten that bad?"
"If I start camping out in here, you should probably tell Jane," was all Darcy said.
--
The bottle of ibuprofen boasted a hundred count on its label, and it rattled sadly in her hand when she shook out a small pile of red pills. Darcy studied them for a moment, sighing, before she tossed the lot back and followed it down with a long swig of water.
"An additional supply of pain medications is available upon request, Ms. Lewis," Jarvis' disembodied voice informed her politely.
"Thanks, J. I'll let you know if I need 'em. Until they invent something to block empathy, I'm stuck just trying to treat the headaches." She grimaced and put the nearly-empty bottle back on the shelf. "For all the good it does me."
"Certainly, Ms. Lewis. Please do not hesitate to let me know if I can assist you."
"Appreciate it." Darcy paused, halfway to the dishwasher with glass in hand. "Actually... could you look up flights to Virginia?"
--
"Where's Darcy?" was the first question Clint asked when he did a head count before dinner and realized who was missing. The bruise on his forearm was turning into a spectacular rainbow, emphasized by the T-shirt and jeans he had changed into from his soot-coated uniform. Natasha had likewise showered and changed, and the only remaining sign of their abrupt exit from Omaha was a cut on her forehead that had been responsible for most of the blood covering her on their return.
"She said she needed some family time," Jane assured him, but her smile didn't quite reach her eyes. "She's fine, really." Though her words were sincere, Clint frowned - then let it go until he met Natasha later in the kitchen, ferrying dirty plates in.
They exchanged looks, his partner’s eyebrow lifting minutely, and after a moment everything had been said that needed to be.
--
"Um, is everything okay?" Darcy asked, stopping on the verge of the sidewalk to stare at the two spies leaning casually against an SI car.
"Well, Stark set his lab on fire for the second time this week, Barnes sent in a postcard from Nome, and Jane nearly short-circuited the Tower on Saturday, but other than the usual, yeah." Clint shrugged, his expression deceptively relaxed. "Why?"
"I was expecting to see Happy."
"We have something we wanted to discuss with you," Natasha said smoothly. "Hop in."
Darcy obeyed, getting in the backseat as Clint held the door and Natasha grabbed her suitcase to put in the trunk. Once they were all in, he maneuvered the car across traffic, headed for the Tower; headed for home.
Natasha had chosen to sit in the backseat with Darcy, but no apparent explanation for why seemed to be forthcoming. Darcy glanced between the two Avengers and took a breath, bracing for the inevitable, waiting for the dull ache and tension to start behind her eyes...
She blinked, frowned, and looked at them with narrowing eyes.
"You sly dogs!" Her jaw actually dropped. "You were acting lovesick all of this time. I don't believe you! Actually, I totally did, we all totally did. That's... that's either really amazing, or really creepy. Or both."
"Why do you think we were pretending?" Natasha asked, but amusement softened the edges of her face.
"I lived between two floors of boys my second year in college. Trust me, okay, I can recognize the "Holy shit, we finally did it!" vibe a mile away, and it's a whole different ballgame than two people in a relationship. This? This does not earn you a "Congrats on the sex" cake."
"Is that a thing now?" Clint's intrigued expression gave him away. "Aw, Natasha, we missed out on cake."
"You gave me headaches for five months, there is no way you're getting cake. What I don't get is why. Why would you pretend to be pining for each other for so long? Why didn't you drop the act sooner?"
"We never made it a habit to broadcast that we were in a relationship," Natasha explained, still bemused. "And once we moved into the Tower, Stark forced our hand."
"Wait, how'd he - the betting pool? You kept this up because of the betting pool? I thought you guys weren't supposed to know about that." At Natasha's raised eyebrow, Darcy amended her statement. "Yeah, okay, stupid assumption. But why did that stop you guys?"
"We have a general principle about letting Tony Stark make money off of us, and it's "Don't."," her co-conspirator answered.
"We didn't realize it was affecting you so adversely," Natasha added. "We would have stopped as soon as we had known. Empathy isn't exactly common on Earth, and you never said anything."
"I thought about it," Darcy admitted. "In fact, I was planning to talk to you guys this week." She paused, examining a new idea. "Have you told anyone else?"
"No, we thought you deserved to be the first one to know."
"...can you turn it back on?"
For an answer Clint glanced over his shoulder at Natasha, who leaned minutely forward. In that brief second the tension returning, snapping and electric and undeniable - then they relaxed, Clint turning his attention back to the road, and it was gone.
"You know what, I forgive you. You can totally make it up to me..."
--
--
“Pep, you’ll never believe it.”
“Careful, Tony, you use those words far too often for me to give them any credit.” She checked over the latest financial report from Accounting, noting the relevant numbers before adding her signature to the document.
“You wound me, really, I can’t have said that to you more than seven, eight times this month?”
“Try this week,” Pepper said wryly. “And what’s so incredible this time?
“You know our two favorite spies?” He had dropped ‘assassins’ after she pointed out that anyone whose job consisted solely of killing people would have no problems applying that skillset to Tony himself. “Our deeply in love, terribly longing S.H.I.E.L.D. converts? The ones that have been driving us up the Tower walls since day one.”
“Tony. Does this have a point?”
“I think an exchange of notes saying Check yes if you like me must have occurred, or maybe some super-secret spy mating ritual, because they finally did it.”
“Oh, they’ve finally threatened physical harm if you don’t come to the point in five seconds, Mr. Stark?”
“Pepper, you’re not listening. They’re finally doing it.”
She stopped, considering the speaker.
“As in…”
“The beast with two backs. The horizontal tango. The dirty deed, of which I’m sure they know many, but you know what I mean.”
“Any idea why it’s finally happened now?” She asked, curious despite herself. There was a pause.
“Tony.”
“If Lewis attempts to sell you any blackmail photos of me, we all saw her snapping away with that iPod last night, clearly the sneaky lessons haven’t been sinking in.”
“I’m sure I can get blackmail photos from any paparazzi in the city,” Pepper said dryly. “Why is it that Darcy has them, besides the obvious?”
“There may have been cards involved. And clothing. And, uh, the removal of said clothing.”
Pepper stared at the speaker-set; then, on a hunch, she pulled her phone and checked her recent messages.
A new text from Darcy Lewis simply said definite win-win.
She hastily turned her laugh into a cough and shook her head, smiling.
“I don’t even need to guess who won, do I.”
Tony’s insistence that Natasha had used ancient Russian secrets to cheat was interrupted by a yelp and “Romanoff, where the hell did you just come from?” Pepper carefully hung up the call, knowing she and Maria would hear more about it from Natasha during their lunch date on Friday, and turned back to her paperwork.
If she texted Darcy with, Best picture of the night? and spent five minutes laughing at the reply, no one was the wiser.
rating: pg-13
characters: Darcy Lewis, Clint Barton/Natasha Romanoff, Bruce Banner, Jane Foster, Maria Hill, Jarvis, Pepper Potts, Steve Rogers, Tony Stark, Thor, Sam Wilson
warnings: none
summary: How do you get two people who are so clearly in love with each other to realize it? Great question. If you have any suggestions, please contact Darcy Lewis at Avengers Tower, Manhattan, NY.
author's note: For alphaflyer, who prompted "Darcy … as the matchmaker From Hell (or heaven, depending on how you look at it!)" for Clint and Natasha. Many thanks to cybermathwitch for beta'ing!
"This is completely ridiculous," Darcy said with no small amount of incredulity. Beside her Hill glanced up from the manifest of Jane's possessions, a list made almost entirely of scientific equipment and a single, sad duffel stuffed with everything else.
"You're going to have to be more specific.”
"Have they always been this bad?" She asked, the gaze behind her glasses giving away which 'they' she was talking about. The SI Head of Security followed her line of sight to where Clint and Natasha were skirting around a cheerful Thor, who was carrying in the mutated child of a fax machine and a machete. After a moment Maria looked back at her with an arched eyebrow, apparently having seen nothing out of the ordinary.
"Okay, look, I can deal with the talking house, which is super horror movie material, I'm just saying, and living with superheroes can't be worse than my sophomore dorm, but really?"
"Thor suggested you might be an empath," Hill murmured thoughtfully, and stepped aside to make room for the Asgardian. She said nothing about the copious amounts of duct tape on Jane's equipment.
"Seriously?" Darcy continued, apparently not having heard Maria. "I'm pretty sure you could actually cut it with a knife."
"You might need something bigger than that," Maria told her, and checked the fax baby off on the list.
--
"So, how long have they been partners?"
"They're spies, Lewis, they're almost as bad as Fury was, and spies do one thing very well: they keep their secrets."
"So you don't know."
"Of course I do. Doesn't mean I'm going to share privileged information with a lowly college graduate. National security and all that." Tony dropped his toast onto a plate and grabbed the butter, paying no mind to Darcy's pursed lips.
"Okay, just tell me, is it long enough that they should have-"
"I know exactly what you're going to ask, and the answer is yes, it's definitely yes, and we're going to move on from discussing our dearly beloved spies and their non-existent love lives. I find talking about Natasha when she's not in sight to be incredibly unsettling."
"Why?"
"Because, young padawan, it means I don't know where she actually is."
"I'm glad I'm not you."
"Spite, that's spite I’m hearing from you, science minion. Hasn't anyone ever told you to respect your elders?"
"Do you really want me to answer that?"
--
"Has anyone tried just talking to them?" Darcy bounced the basketball back to Steve, who caught it easily before sinking a shot off the backboard. Sam snagged it on the rebound and snorted, shaking his head.
"Man, Darcy, there are some dragons you let sleep, okay?"
Steve grinned in sympathy but shrugged when she looked at him.
"It's not the kind of thing we discuss at team meetings, no."
"Maybe someone should," she muttered, a knot of tension still sitting behind her forehead.
"I like you too much to tell you to try it," Sam told her, and clapped her on the shoulder as he went by. "Hang in there."
--
"All I'm saying is, strip poker."
Pepper paused, her mouth open to respond, and clearly went through the steps of imagining it. While the resulting smile was genuine, she shook her head even as she looked ruefully at Darcy.
"First of all, you'd have to involve other people. Second, it's safe to assume nudity isn't the issue for them after the missions they've worked together. And third, do you really want to bet that Natasha won't wipe the floor with everyone involved?"
Darcy considered that for a good moment before replying.
"Okay, all good points. I guess that one's a no-go. Although," she added contemplatively, "if we're talking about doing it just for fun..."
Pepper laughed quietly and set the Tower Cafe menu down.
"Then I wish you the best of luck."
"The best part of strip poker is, you win even if you don't win, you know what I mean? And before you ask, I could totally get some pictures."
"Tempting, but I'm good," she assured the younger woman, and caught the waiter's eye. "Ready to order?"
--
"An apocalypse?" Darcy shouted over the sound of the whirling maelstrom currently wreaking havoc, albeit in a miniaturized form, on the Tower's living room. Thor risked a glance over the shredded couch to check on its progress before shaking his head.
"Nay, we have had three by my count since I first came to Midgard, and none have appeared to change their minds."
"Great," she groaned, and leaned her head against the couch as one of the floor lamps went flying overhead.
--
"Alien sex pollen." The stack of meticulous reports made a great surface to lean on. "What? C'mon, Doc, there are plenty of stories about this kind of thing, you can't tell me you haven't come across it yet."
"Fiction and reality can be very different from one another," Bruce informed her, his pen poised above the tablet holding his most recent notes.
"I live with seven superheroes."
"Point." He looked back down at the glowing output, lips quirking. "And here I was thinking you were in my lab because you liked my company."
"Don't get me wrong, I totally do, but the soundproofing is killer on these walls. And you're, what, fifteen floors away from the living quarters? Makes it pretty quiet in here, emotions-wise."
"You can't read the," and he gestured to his chest with a curl of his fingers, "Big Guy?"
"What, him? Nah, he's pretty chill once he figures out what's going on. And you've got the whole 'angry zen' thing going on, which is easy to handle."
"Ah." Bruce appeared to be filing that away. "Has it gotten that bad?"
"If I start camping out in here, you should probably tell Jane," was all Darcy said.
--
The bottle of ibuprofen boasted a hundred count on its label, and it rattled sadly in her hand when she shook out a small pile of red pills. Darcy studied them for a moment, sighing, before she tossed the lot back and followed it down with a long swig of water.
"An additional supply of pain medications is available upon request, Ms. Lewis," Jarvis' disembodied voice informed her politely.
"Thanks, J. I'll let you know if I need 'em. Until they invent something to block empathy, I'm stuck just trying to treat the headaches." She grimaced and put the nearly-empty bottle back on the shelf. "For all the good it does me."
"Certainly, Ms. Lewis. Please do not hesitate to let me know if I can assist you."
"Appreciate it." Darcy paused, halfway to the dishwasher with glass in hand. "Actually... could you look up flights to Virginia?"
--
"Where's Darcy?" was the first question Clint asked when he did a head count before dinner and realized who was missing. The bruise on his forearm was turning into a spectacular rainbow, emphasized by the T-shirt and jeans he had changed into from his soot-coated uniform. Natasha had likewise showered and changed, and the only remaining sign of their abrupt exit from Omaha was a cut on her forehead that had been responsible for most of the blood covering her on their return.
"She said she needed some family time," Jane assured him, but her smile didn't quite reach her eyes. "She's fine, really." Though her words were sincere, Clint frowned - then let it go until he met Natasha later in the kitchen, ferrying dirty plates in.
They exchanged looks, his partner’s eyebrow lifting minutely, and after a moment everything had been said that needed to be.
--
"Um, is everything okay?" Darcy asked, stopping on the verge of the sidewalk to stare at the two spies leaning casually against an SI car.
"Well, Stark set his lab on fire for the second time this week, Barnes sent in a postcard from Nome, and Jane nearly short-circuited the Tower on Saturday, but other than the usual, yeah." Clint shrugged, his expression deceptively relaxed. "Why?"
"I was expecting to see Happy."
"We have something we wanted to discuss with you," Natasha said smoothly. "Hop in."
Darcy obeyed, getting in the backseat as Clint held the door and Natasha grabbed her suitcase to put in the trunk. Once they were all in, he maneuvered the car across traffic, headed for the Tower; headed for home.
Natasha had chosen to sit in the backseat with Darcy, but no apparent explanation for why seemed to be forthcoming. Darcy glanced between the two Avengers and took a breath, bracing for the inevitable, waiting for the dull ache and tension to start behind her eyes...
She blinked, frowned, and looked at them with narrowing eyes.
"You sly dogs!" Her jaw actually dropped. "You were acting lovesick all of this time. I don't believe you! Actually, I totally did, we all totally did. That's... that's either really amazing, or really creepy. Or both."
"Why do you think we were pretending?" Natasha asked, but amusement softened the edges of her face.
"I lived between two floors of boys my second year in college. Trust me, okay, I can recognize the "Holy shit, we finally did it!" vibe a mile away, and it's a whole different ballgame than two people in a relationship. This? This does not earn you a "Congrats on the sex" cake."
"Is that a thing now?" Clint's intrigued expression gave him away. "Aw, Natasha, we missed out on cake."
"You gave me headaches for five months, there is no way you're getting cake. What I don't get is why. Why would you pretend to be pining for each other for so long? Why didn't you drop the act sooner?"
"We never made it a habit to broadcast that we were in a relationship," Natasha explained, still bemused. "And once we moved into the Tower, Stark forced our hand."
"Wait, how'd he - the betting pool? You kept this up because of the betting pool? I thought you guys weren't supposed to know about that." At Natasha's raised eyebrow, Darcy amended her statement. "Yeah, okay, stupid assumption. But why did that stop you guys?"
"We have a general principle about letting Tony Stark make money off of us, and it's "Don't."," her co-conspirator answered.
"We didn't realize it was affecting you so adversely," Natasha added. "We would have stopped as soon as we had known. Empathy isn't exactly common on Earth, and you never said anything."
"I thought about it," Darcy admitted. "In fact, I was planning to talk to you guys this week." She paused, examining a new idea. "Have you told anyone else?"
"No, we thought you deserved to be the first one to know."
"...can you turn it back on?"
For an answer Clint glanced over his shoulder at Natasha, who leaned minutely forward. In that brief second the tension returning, snapping and electric and undeniable - then they relaxed, Clint turning his attention back to the road, and it was gone.
"You know what, I forgive you. You can totally make it up to me..."
--
--
“Pep, you’ll never believe it.”
“Careful, Tony, you use those words far too often for me to give them any credit.” She checked over the latest financial report from Accounting, noting the relevant numbers before adding her signature to the document.
“You wound me, really, I can’t have said that to you more than seven, eight times this month?”
“Try this week,” Pepper said wryly. “And what’s so incredible this time?
“You know our two favorite spies?” He had dropped ‘assassins’ after she pointed out that anyone whose job consisted solely of killing people would have no problems applying that skillset to Tony himself. “Our deeply in love, terribly longing S.H.I.E.L.D. converts? The ones that have been driving us up the Tower walls since day one.”
“Tony. Does this have a point?”
“I think an exchange of notes saying Check yes if you like me must have occurred, or maybe some super-secret spy mating ritual, because they finally did it.”
“Oh, they’ve finally threatened physical harm if you don’t come to the point in five seconds, Mr. Stark?”
“Pepper, you’re not listening. They’re finally doing it.”
She stopped, considering the speaker.
“As in…”
“The beast with two backs. The horizontal tango. The dirty deed, of which I’m sure they know many, but you know what I mean.”
“Any idea why it’s finally happened now?” She asked, curious despite herself. There was a pause.
“Tony.”
“If Lewis attempts to sell you any blackmail photos of me, we all saw her snapping away with that iPod last night, clearly the sneaky lessons haven’t been sinking in.”
“I’m sure I can get blackmail photos from any paparazzi in the city,” Pepper said dryly. “Why is it that Darcy has them, besides the obvious?”
“There may have been cards involved. And clothing. And, uh, the removal of said clothing.”
Pepper stared at the speaker-set; then, on a hunch, she pulled her phone and checked her recent messages.
A new text from Darcy Lewis simply said definite win-win.
She hastily turned her laugh into a cough and shook her head, smiling.
“I don’t even need to guess who won, do I.”
Tony’s insistence that Natasha had used ancient Russian secrets to cheat was interrupted by a yelp and “Romanoff, where the hell did you just come from?” Pepper carefully hung up the call, knowing she and Maria would hear more about it from Natasha during their lunch date on Friday, and turned back to her paperwork.
If she texted Darcy with, Best picture of the night? and spent five minutes laughing at the reply, no one was the wiser.