The Bubble (1/3)
Title: The Bubble
Rating: R/NC-17
Word count: ~25,000
Pairings/Characters: Darcy/Steve, Tony/Pepper, Jane Foster.
Summary: Most of Darcy's past relationships have involved getting high, playing video games, and arguing with each other; it's kind of freaking her out a little how functional she and Steve are. It's like being a real adult or something.
A/N: Sequel to Direction and This Sounds Like The Start of a Bad Joke.
Darcy hates getting up when it's dark. Hates. Darkness is for partying, sleeping, screwing, and occasionally letting off illegal fireworks in the abandoned lot near the 7-Eleven. It is not for waking.
It is especially not for waking when you've got a heavy arm draped around your middle, a nose pressed firmly into the back of your neck, and a body wrapped around you that doubles for a heater. Seriously, it's twenty degrees outside and she doesn't even have the heating on; she's saving so much in electricity bills.
Steve shifts in his sleep, curling into her a little more, his knees bumping into the backs of hers. He's infinitely more manipulative asleep than awake, beckoning her to stay in bed with all his warm, soft skin and the steady rise and fall of his chest against her back. She looks at the clock; it reads 5.28am, and now she's waking up before the fucking thing even goes off? What is happening to her?
She stares at the LED lit numbers through narrowed eyes, as it ticks over to twenty nine, and then thirty. She slaps the off button as soon as the radio switches on, but Steve is already awake with a puff of air against her neck.
“Ugh,” she mutters. His fingers tangle in her t-shirt for moment before he lets go of her and rolls onto his back.
Well, it's definitely morning now. She swings herself up, scoots to the end of the bed - she swears this bedroom gets smaller every goddamn day - and curses as her feet hit the frigid carpet. Gets her every fucking time. She reaches back and grabs the blanket off the bed, wrapping it round her shoulders (aside from heating costs, another good thing about having a boyfriend who's his own personal furnace is that he never complains when she steals all the blankets), and squints at Steve. With only the tiniest bit of light peeking through the drapes, and her without glasses, he's a little fuzzy, but she can still make out how the sheets are tangled around his legs, and his body is all long and lean and stretched out and calling out to her to lie back down on.
“Stop it,” she says.
“Stop what?” he mumbles.
“Just...” She makes some kind of sound, blowing air through her teeth, and Steve laughs, shifting around until he's sitting up beside her. He slings his arm around her waist and kisses her on the temple.
“Come on, you've got to be at work by seven.”
“Nooo,” she says, “Fury gave me the day off because he likes me so much. I'm just up to enjoy the first ice cold shower of the day.”
“Okay,” he says, resting his chin on her shoulder. He looks at her, and even in the dark room she can see how blue his eyes are.
“Fine,” she says, gathering the rest of the blanket up around her and standing, “fine.”
Steve doesn't have any reason to be up this early, and if the positions were reversed, she sure as hell wouldn't be getting up in solidarity with him, but she's already come to terms with the fact that while she's a solid ten, he's on a whole other numbering system altogether.
The bathroom, like every other room in her apartment, is really too small for two people, but Steve's tall enough that he can just stand behind her and use the mirror that way. Unlike her, he's super efficient at his morning routine, does his teeth, shaves, brushes his hair, and takes a piss (they have this unspoken agreement that she kinda sorta averts her eyes because he finds it awkward even though he won't admit it), all in five minutes or under, while she's still messing around putting toothpaste on her toothbrush.
At least morning showers don't slow her down, since the old boilers in this building can't handle the cold and it takes upwards of half an hour for the water to heat. If she's feeling really gross, she'll grab a shower at work, but normally a liberal application of deodorant suffices. It really depends on whether, and how hard, they went at it the night before.
On the weekends, Steve makes pancakes, or eggs, or French toast, but on weekdays it's just yoghurt and fruit, or cereal, because her stomach can't handle anything more this early, unless she's cool with hurling all over someone's newspaper in the subway. When she stumbles back out of the bathroom, with a hairbrush stuck in her hair, her breakfast is waiting for her on the counter, and Steve is half dressed, drinking one of those horrific protein shakes. She squints at the whirring coffee maker - it's a Stark prototype that turned up on her doorstep the day after those pictures got all over the news - and smiles. Her mug, her flask, and her glasses are all laid out next to the brewing coffee.
They go through the rest of their routine in near silence, because she never has anything intelligent to say before at least ten in the morning, which can be a real problem at work. She's not really a 'routine' type of person - if she can find two matching socks and eat a slice of buttered stale bread before work then she considers that a win - but Steve is all about order, and it should bore her, but it doesn't. It's kind of nice to have someone looking out for her physical well being, because she sure as shit isn't.
By five to six, she manages to tame her hair into a loose knot, gets her underwear on, and grabs her jeans and shirt from where they're laid out on the couch.
“Did you iron this?” she asks, eyeing the suspiciously crisp white shirt.
He looks up from putting things into his bag. “Yeah.”
“Hm,” she responds, putting it on. Steve is an ironing fiend. Like, seriously, she can't remember the last time she ironed something, but all his clothes have to be crisp and wrinkle free, and now he's moved onto her stuff. She had to put her foot down when he started sizing up her t-shirts, but she does have to admit that she looks a little more businessy in a clean ironed shirt than a ratty cardigan. Whether she's actually happy about this development in her life is less clear.
“Okay,” she says, once the rest of her coffee is safely in its flask, her feet are in her extra toasty boots, and she's got her dad's old coat on. She jams her knitted hat over her ears. “Let's do this.”
There are never any seats on the train into Manhattan at this time of the morning, and no gentlemen to offer theirs, which is major bugbear for Steve. Like, he'd probably say something if she didn't cringe so hard at the idea of a confrontation in a freaking sardine tin with her regular commuter buddies. The train is also totally discriminating against short people, because she can only just reach the rails along the top, and rude, selfish people monopolise the vertical ones. At least with Steve, he can hold onto the top rail with one hand, and wrap his arm around her to keep her steady.
On the other end, he walks her all the way to the unassuming S.H.I.E.L.D. offices that she's now going to sit in for the next ten hours or so and go through endless typing, spreadsheeting, and meetings.
“Lunch?” he asks, tucking his nose into his scarf as her fellow junior agents start going in, casting brief looks at them as they pass.
“You're on,” she says. “So what're you doing today?”
He shrugs. “Tony wants to test something, so... hopefully I won't lose any of my fingers.”
She closes her gloved hands over his and gives them a rub. “You better still have all these magic fingers tonight.”
He'd probably be blushing now if his cheeks weren't already pink from the cold. “I'll do my best,” he promises, and gives her a quick peck on the lips.
Life got pretty weird after her face, and in short order her name too, got bandied about all over television, magazines, and the internet. For the first week, orders came down on high from Fury, and she got time off. She and Steve did one grocery store run, and then basically stayed in for six days straight. Which, not a problem, really. She taught Steve how to do a lot of things. A lot of things.
They had a lot of sex, is what she's getting at.
Her workmates haven't been too bad about the whole thing; they probably think she gets special favours, but she was on that list already because of her connection to Thor, so she's always been treated with a fair bit of suspicion. She's a big girl, she can take whatever Mean Girls shit they'd like to dole out.
She wasn't able to go home for Thanksgiving, though, that kind of sucked. Once the media got hold of her name, they easily tracked down her family, and then there were reporters fucking up the lawn in the front yard. Her parents thought it was all quite fun, but her Great Aunt Lewis has dementia and she's got belligerent and even a little violent for less, so Darcy decided, in her infinite and newly found maturity, to not lead the entire circus to the west coast, and rather make it extremely clear, like hello, here I am kissing Captain America in the street on Thanksgiving morning in New York what the fuck are you doing in California?, that they were staying in New York.
Steve had, like, all the guilt in the world for making her miss the family get together. His capacity for guilt is basically bottomless, she's discovered, even though it's certainly not the first time she's missed shit like this and her family do not stand on any kind of honour or tradition, except for the usual drunken brawl between Uncle Peter and Auntie Carol. And honestly, taking a nice, quiet Catholic boy to a gathering of her noisy, nosy Jewish relatives? Probably not a good initial 'meet the parents' scenario.
The past three weeks have certainly been a doozy.
Lunch is at a place where they're more likely to get their cheeks pinched than have their photographs taken. It doesn't have the best coffee in the world, but little old ladies who run quaint tea rooms make the most sugary shit ever, and Darcy rivals Steve for most scones eaten in one sitting. Steve is talking about something that happened at Stark Tower this morning, something to do with Black Widow, who Darcy recalls blew back into town a couple of days ago in a cloud of bloodshed and extra paperwork. Steve's talking with hands, smiling and laughing a little, and honestly, Darcy isn't really listening to what he's saying, rather focusing on his happy face. He's chilled out a hell of a lot since they met.
She leans over and kisses him mid-sentence, tasting the sugar still on his lips.
“What was that for?” he asks, pressing his fingers to his mouth for a second. Adorable.
“Look here, if I can't kiss my dreamboat boyfriend in front of God and everyone once TMZ has made damn sure that we can't hide shit from them--” She taps her teaspoon against the chintzy saucer, then points it at him. “Well, that's just not the America that you fought for.”
Steve grins, and returns the favour.
On the walk back to work, they only get photographed three times, which is an improvement on last week. She's clocked up so much overtime because she just couldn't get into work on time for a solid five days.
Going home falls into the usual routine. She's the first out of the office (sorry everyone, but not really), and meets Steve down in the lobby. It's dark by now, so it's easier to make it to the subway without being hassled. On the subway they have the same issues, seat and space wise, and once they're home, Darcy collapses onto the couch with a flumph, and Steve laughs at her as he makes dinner. When it's ready, he brings it over to the coffee table, sets her back the right way up, and puts a fork into her hand. Then he commiserates with her about how horrible it is to have to get up early and do stuff all day.
After dinner she tries to watch TV, but her attention keeps wandering and coming back at random intervals, and she misses, like, half of everything that Abed says.
Steve doesn't get the show at all.
An indeterminate amount of time later, Steve jostles her slightly. “Hey, I'm going to have a shower, do you...?”
The water in this shitty building only stays hot long enough for one shower, though Steve's only last for about two minutes, so it's not actually much of a problem. Still, they're both happy to pretend like there's no other option but to shower together.
“Yeah,” she says, levering herself off the couch. “Come on.”
She had thought, once she'd seen him naked and waiting for her to fuck him, that that was pretty much the peak of the hotness scale for him; she'd brought the mallet down on the high striker and got the puck right to the top, but wet, naked Steve? The high striker just exploded with joy.
The shower isn't really made for this kind of activity, it's much too cramped, but she's short, and he's flexible, so they work it out somehow. She shampoos her hair quickly, squealing a little when Steve turns her round to face him and kisses her, his hands threading through her hair, working up a lather. He's such a multi-tasker.
She uses about half a bottle of conditioner on her hair, attempting to tease out the many knots, which is kind of hard because Steve is distracting the shit out of her with his big hands cupping her breasts, wandering down her waist and closing around her hips, pushing her against the wall and lifting her up.
She sighs, her attention momentarily captured by the way the spray from the shower runs down from his neck, curves around one of his pecs and continues on its journey down his stomach and along one leg. “I'm way too tired to make any effort,” she tells him.
“That's okay,” he says. He slides the glass door open enough to reach the bathroom counter and grab the packet of condoms lying there with one hand, still holding her up with his other. He shakes one out and fumbles with the foil wrapper, the water turning it slippery in his fingers. He can't quite keep hold of her and deal with that too, and after a couple of confused minutes, and a lot of very grown up giggling from both of them, he lets her back down and commits to getting the condom on. She takes the opportunity to turn the shower head towards her and start to rinse the conditioner off. A minute later, Steve is successful and gently crowds her against the shower wall again.
Dude's like the freaking Energizer Bunny sometimes, she swears; he's had just as little sleep as her, but he is totally ready to screw her into this wall. He bends one knee and braces it against the tile beneath her, then settles her there and pushes into her slowly. It's surprisingly comfortable for shower sex; trust Steve to turn something that's awkward and the leading cause of bruised elbows into something safe and romantic.
He curls his hand around one of hers, pinning it above her head loosely, groping at her side with the other. His pace is almost tortuously slow, deep controlled thrusts that make her squirm and pant and try to push back into him. She's more of a hard and fast sort of girl, but this can be nice too, once in a while. Steve has picked all this sex stuff up really well.
Most guys her age that she's been with have a tendency to, well, shoot their load a little early. To be fair to some of them, they were usually totally willing to get her off in other ways, afterwards, but it was a little disappointing, nonetheless. Steve kind of has the opposite problem, depending on how riled up she gets him first; he can keep going until he's a completely incoherent mess. They've been experimenting with that. For science, of course.
“Darcy,” he groans against her ear, his fingers tightening around hers. His thrusts are getting harder, and she can feel her orgasm building fast, until she has to throw one arm around his shoulders and trust that he's not going to drop her. He hasn't so far, and they've... tried out a couple of different positions.
She clings to him as she comes and, yeah, he doesn't drop her, he presses her harder into the wall, the way she likes, her breasts flattening against his chest. This whole strength kink thing she's developed isn't going anywhere any time soon.
Rapidly cooling water drips down between them as she drops her head back against the tiles. Steve fits his face into the hollow of her collarbone and keeps on going, moaning her name softly, and probably sort of drowning, too, but he survived in the ice for seventy years; drowning by sex probably isn't going to be the thing that does him in.
One of the best things about sex with Steve is all the little sounds he makes, all strangled and muffled like it's all he can do to keep himself from turning into a babbling wreck. Sometimes she tries to convince him it's okay to be vocal, that she likes knowing how much she turns him on, but she also likes the other side of it, all the desperate squirming and pleasure-pained moaning. That's pretty hot too.
So, she could listen to him all day, but the water is going cold and she can feel the wet slide of her conditioner covered hair against her back. She pulls her hand gently from his and tips her head forward to scrub at her hair, while Steve keeps doing his thing, his hand flat against the tiles now.
“Oh,” he groans, as she picks long strands of her hair from between her fingers and drops the clumps onto the shower floor. He twitches and shudders against her, dragging his open mouth across her shoulder, and does that breathy gaspy porn star moan thing that means he's about to come.
And come he does, stomach muscles twitching and legs trembling a little; she likes to think that if he wasn't who he is, his knees would be well on their way to buckling. That makes her feel pretty proud of herself. He holds her against the wall for a minute longer, while he rides it out, then pulls out and eases her back down. He cups her face in his hands and presses light kisses all over her cheeks and forehead.
Then the water tank gives up its valiant battle and blasts them with ice cold water.
“Oh, shit!” she squeals, ducking around him and stumbling out of the shower.
“Hey!” he cries, as she slides the door shut again and gives him the thumbs up. He frowns at her through the fogged up glass for a moment, then gets under the spray to wash himself off. She's pretty sure she hears a couple of swear words issue forth from him as he quickly scrubs himself down. Thirty seconds later he's done, and she takes pity on him enough to grab the towel off the heated rail and hand it to him. She only plays keep away with it twice.
“That was a mean trick,” he mutters, securing the towel around his waist and pouting at her.
“It wasn't a trick, you just took too long,” she says. He's still pouting at her, though, so she puts her hands on his arms and gives them a vigorous rub. “I'll warm you up, baby.”
“Baby?”
She shrugs. “I'm taking it for a spin.”
They collapse into bed just after ten. Darcy drapes herself all over him, and uses his bicep for a pillow.
“Ugh,” she mutters as Steve tucks the blanket around her. “Four more days til the weekend.”
-
This is the second time she's been in Stark Tower. The first time was with a S.H.I.E.L.D. clean up crew, as part of her 'on the job' training, picking through the debris caused by the latest tantrum of one of Tony's enemies. For that she wore her S.H.I.E.L.D. uniform, all black, shit-kicker boots. It's actually pretty hot for a government drone get up.
Tonight, though, she's in a red knitted dress, one that her mom practically forced on her because 'it's so cute' when Darcy was going through her 'wear all the baggy t-shirts and gross ripped jeans' phase. Darcy hates when her mom is right.
She's still wearing her shit-kicker boots though, those things go with everything.
“Okay,” Steve says when they're in the elevator, being taken up roughly one billion floors to Tony's private residence at the top of the building. “Don't touch anything that looks... well, maybe just don't touch anything. And, uh, if Tony says anything inappropriate to you, feel free to, you know. Slap him.”
“Don't worry, I won't accept any candy from him.”
“Probably best.”
The elevator dings, and that smooth as fuck English accent announces, “Floor ninety, residence of Anthony Edward Stark and his owner, Virginia Potts.”
They step out into a large room, with a bar in the corner and some seriously awesome floor to ceiling windows lining one wall. And neither of their not-so gracious hosts.
“Did they forget they invited us?”
Steve glances up carefully. “I feel like something's going to descend on us,” he mutters.
“I wonder what kind of booze Stark's got in that bar.”
“I think he's got all of it,” Steve says, and takes another step into the room. He turns in a circle, looking around, then sighs and crosses his arms over his chest. “I knew this was a bad idea.”
“Not necessarily.” She steps up to him, puts her thumbs through his belt loops, and tucks her fingers under his waistband. “Think of what we could do unsupervised with all of Tony Stark's toys.”
Steve points up. “We aren't unsupervised.”
“I would not tell a soul, sir,” Jarvis says.
“See, GLaDOS has our backs.”
Steve looks both confused and resigned to being confused, as per usual.
Jarvis says, “That is not a very nice comparison, Agent Lewis.”
“Oh, I'm sorry, I didn't mean any harm,” she says, directed somewhere in the direction of the right hand corner of the room.
“Sadly, I have been called worse,” Jarvis replies.
God, now she feels really bad for a computer program. This hasn't happened since her Sim 'Darlene' got cheated on by her husband, lost her job, and set fire to the oven, all in the space of one Sim day.
“We should probably call them,” Steve says, shifting slightly from side to side.
“Probably. Can we have at least one illicit kiss in Tony Stark's love den?”
He twists his mouth and glances around, as if making sure that Stark isn't hiding behind a door, or something. “Okay,” he says after a moment, and leans down, putting his hands around her waist. It really does feel a little more illicit, standing in this plush living room/bar/workshop.
The elevator dings again, and she turns around in time to see Tony Stark waving his hands about as he talks, and Pepper Potts laughing at him. They get one step out of the elevator before they notice Steve and Darcy.
“Intruder alert!” Tony cries. “Jarvis, all hands!”
“Yes, sir,” Jarvis says. It's more of a mutter, really, if computers can mutter.
“You're late,” Steve says, and glances apologetically at Pepper. “Sorry, Ms. Potts.”
She checks her watch. “Tony said seven thirty.”
“I said seven thirty,” Tony agrees, then points at Steve. “You said seven thirty.”
“You said eleven at a club in Soho. I said seven, here.”
Tony scowls then sticks out his chin. “Jarvis! Play the call log between me and Captain Incorrect here for December 2nd 2012.”
“Is that his official designation, sir?” Jarvis asks dryly.
Steve mutters something about invasion of privacy and being recorded without his knowledge. Darcy grimaces.
“Oh man, you do not want to get into an argument with Steve about remembering stuff. He has, like, perfect recall for dates and times and shit.”
Tony makes a dismissive sound, still bickering with Jarvis, and Pepper rolls her eyes. “It's very nice to meet you, Agent Lewis. Can't say I've heard anything concrete about you, but Tony has a lot of theories. I think Captain Rogers having drawn you and then somehow brought you to life was at the top of the list.”
“Nice to meet you too,” Darcy says, turning to shake Pepper's hand. “Steve hasn't told me a lot about you either, but then he's not allowed to talk about other women in my presence, or indeed talk to them. So tonight's going to be interesting.”
Pepper laughs. “That was already a given.”
“Play the damn call!” Tony snaps.
“Yes, sir. Call log for December 2nd 2012, 15:36,” Jarvis says, and then Tony's voice takes over.
“Hey, Captain Tightpants!” There's a long pause. “Hello? Are you holding your phone the right way up? Have you fallen and can't get up? I told you to get Life Alert.”
“Tony.”
“It speaks!”
“What do you want?”
“Rude. I was just going to invite you and your girl out to dinner with me and Pepper, but now I'm not going to.”
“Okay.”
“Aw, don't be that way, Cap. All right, all right, I wouldn't want to make our glorious leader sad. You can come with us.”
Steve's response is a sigh.
“Excellent. There's this great club in Soho. Say, eleven next Saturday evening?”
“Why do I think that this is going to be a place of ill repute? How about we do something a little less... you. Maybe dinner at your place?”
“Are you inviting yourself over to my tower, Cap?”
“Yeah.”
“Cool. Okay, how about ten on Saturday?”
“How about seven? Some of us have to get up in the morning.”
“Sucks to be you. Okay, so seven thirty?”
“Seven.”
“Right. Seven thirty.”
“Tony. Say it with me: seven o'clock. Nineteen hundred hours.”
“Nineteen hundred hours, master,” Tony drones.
“Shall I continue the recording, sir?” Jarvis asks.
“No, that's okay,” Tony mumbles. He waves his hand at them. “Come on then, stop making out and come through to the kitchen.”
Tony's kitchen is a kitchen in the same way that IMAX is a television screen.
“Jesus, this place is bigger than my entire apartment,” she mutters.
“Everywhere's bigger than your apartment,” Steve replies, “but this place is pretty nice.”
Tony smirks. “You like things big, darling?”
“Do you want me to slap him now?” Darcy asks, tilting her head up towards Steve.
Steve smiles, and Tony rolls his eyes, wandering over to the fridge.
“I'm afraid Tony only mentioned that you two were coming around a couple of hours ago-” Pepper casts a look at Tony, who waves at her with the bottle of beer in his hand. “-so we're going to be ordering in.”
“Let's get shawarma,” Tony says.
“Let's not,” Steve says.
Pepper shows them to a couch. Yeah, there's a couch in the kitchen. “What do you like?”
“Everything but shawarma.”
Darcy slips her boots off and tucks her feet underneath herself. “He's not lying. Everything, and in lots of weird combinations. It's gross.”
“Then let's get everything,” Tony calls. “Hey, what does everyone want to drink?”
Darcy twists to look at Tony. “Beer's good for me. Steve'll have whatever's sweetest.”
“She always speak for you, Cap?”
Steve settles back against the cushions. “Most of the time.”
Tony grins, joining them with three bottles of beer held to his chest with one arm, a bottle of cider and a bottle opener in his other hand. He flicks off all four caps in a dizzying display of skill; she bets he can do that thing bartenders on TV do with a martini shaker. He hands them out and sits down next to her, regarding her through narrowed eyes.
“So, when do you graduate high school?” he asks.
“Negative six years.”
Tony tilts his head. “What year were you born?”
“1988.”
“And you're legal to drink?” he asks, knocking his beer bottle into hers.
“Yeah.”
“Ugh, I'm so old. I'm not supposed to feel old with Steve in the room!”
Pepper leans over from where she's sitting next to Steve (this couch is bigger than Darcy's bed) and kicks Tony in the shin. “Stop harassing her and order the food.”
“Ow,” Tony complains, leaning down to rub his leg. “I already did that, dear,” he says, and gets his cell phone tablet thingy out of his pocket as if that's proof.
When Tony said 'everything', he meant like every-fucking-thing available in the state of New York. Darcy didn't know that fancy gourmet restaurants deliver. It's like an all you can buffet, but the entry fee is a grand instead of five dollars.
They move back into the lounge and set up on one of the wrap around couches; out of the hundreds and hundreds of rooms, apparently it never occurred to Tony to include a dining room. It doesn't take long for Tony to get irritated by having to lean over all the time to get something off the coffee table, so he just sits on the floor instead. Darcy joins him a couple of minutes later, and after a while they're all sitting on the floor, picking at the array of food.
“Man, this is like university all over again, except with a much more expensive food and a lot less pot.”
“That can be corrected,” Tony says, and winks.
Steve wraps his arm around her shoulders and pulls her in a little, mock-glaring at Tony. Well, she thinks it's mock. She pats him on the chest.
“That's okay, Steve can't get high, wouldn't want him to feel left out.”
“Is that right?” Tony says, stares at Steve for a moment, then pulls his tablet out of his pocket and starts tapping quickly on it. When he doesn't rejoin the conversation after a couple of minutes, Pepper sighs and shoves him in the shoulder. He just grins.
“So, where did you go to college, Darcy?” she asks.
“Culver.”
“Isn't that where Bruce went?”
“Yep, Dr Banner, the scientist that went crazy from 'the stress'. Everyone was pretty sure that he was on PCP, though. There were some research students working in the next building over, and they said he tore up the entire place. There were mandatory first year seminars on drug use for, like, five years after that.”
Pepper smiles and turns to Tony, who's still on his tablet. “Didn't Ross's daughter go to Culver, as well?”
“Betty Ross, class of 1999,” he says, as he lays the tablet flat on the coffee and a hologram springs up from it. Steve isn't quite quick enough to hide his delight. There's a holographic file suspended in the air in front of them, with a picture of a dark-haired young woman smiling awkwardly for the camera. Darcy immediately identifies it as the god awful ID photograph that plagues every Culver student.
“Is this General Ross's daughter?” Darcy asks.
“Yeah,” Pepper says, “do you know him?”
“No, but I've heard things. He is not well liked in the office.”
“He's not well liked anywhere. She and Bruce dated, you know,” Tony cuts in, pinching the air where the corners of the picture are to expand it. One side of Steve's mouth creases in a half smile. “They met while she was doing cancer research as graduate student and he, the dog, was a post-doctoral research assistant.”
“How do you know all this?” Steve asks, fighting the valiant battle to not stare at the semi transparent file.
“Hacked his file,” Tony says breezily. “Oh, wait, you have to see this. This is the most awkward picture of two human beings that has ever been taken.”
“Tony, that's not nice-- wow,” Steve says, and they all look at the picture Tony has up of Bruce and Betty. Betty's wearing a pair of ripped jeans and a sweater that hits mid thigh, her hands twisted together in front of her, deer in the headlights expression on her face, which works for her because she has like the biggest, most doe-like eyes that Darcy's ever seen. Bruce seems to be wearing roughly a dozen layers of clothing, holding a red cup in a grip that suggests that it had just recently been forced upon him, his ridiculously curly hair framing the grimace-smile on his face. His right hand hovers somewhere near Betty's shoulder.
“Aw,” Darcy says, “look at his little face!”
“He's thirty years old in that picture,” Tony says with a sneer.
“Why don't we look at some pictures of you when you were at MIT?” Pepper says, and sits up a little straighter. “Jarvis?”
“Yes, Ms. Potts,” Jarvis says, and Bruce and Betty dissolve in favour of Tony wearing a loose AC/DC t-shirt that she's pretty sure she's seen him in recently, and... oh.
“Parachute pants,” she says, almost under her breath.
“What are parachute pants?” Steve asks.
“Those are,” she replies, reaching out to touch the image. Her hand goes right through it.
“They're horrible,” he says, looking slightly confused. She rests her head against his shoulder and laughs.
Tony pouts. “Hey, I was fifteen and it was the eighties, okay? I have an excuse.”
“You went to university at fifteen?” Steve asks. There's an undertone that quells the good humour a little.
“Yeah,” Tony says, looking at him funny, and shrugs a shoulder. He puffs his chest out a bit and grins again. “How about we see what the girls looked like, then, since they're such harsh critics.”
He spends another minute or so tapping, a minute in which Darcy reflects on what the hell kind of photos there are of her online. Like, she hasn't always been very careful with her privacy settings, and although after joining S.H.I.E.L.D. her Facebook is long gone, the internet never, actually, forgets.
A couple of pictures pop up and Tony deflates it a bit.
“You look hot,” Darcy says to Pepper. She's all fresh faced and smiling for the camera, in a white button down shirt with her hair pulled back from her face loosely, not a hint of make up. The bitch.
“You too,” Pepper says, nodding to her picture. Darcy looks drunk, is what she looks, but it's the sultry, 'I don't give a crap' drunk, not the sweaty, 'I'm about to vomit' drunk.
Tony sprawls out against the front of the couch. “Foiled again.” He stays like that for a few moments before lifting his head and pointing at Steve. “What about you? I hacked everything, but there's nothing pre-rebirth about you anywhere.”
Steve shrugs, jostling Darcy a little. “I didn't go to college. Barely scraped by at high school. I'm not... book smart,” he mutters, and grabs a handful of chips to shove in his mouth.
“That's a lie,” she says, and pokes him in the stomach. “Steve reads, like, half a dozen books a week.”
“Yeah, but I'm not... I don't test well. I could never get the hang of geometry or any of that stuff.”
“So, basically you'd be an Arts student,” Tony says. “There's not... too much shame in that.”
“Hey, fuck you, I was an Arts student,” she says, and Steve drapes his arm across her chest protectively. She grabs his hand and anchors him there, smiling smugly.
“Why are you hacking everyone's files?” Steve asks.
“Well, yours were for fun,” Tony says. “Clint and Natasha's was in case I ever need any blackmail material, and Thor was a history lesson.” He gets rid of the pictures of Darcy and Pepper, and starts tapping away again, humming to himself. Pepper elbows him. “What?” he says, glancing at her, then looking at her more solidly before rolling his eyes. “God, fine. And I'm trying to find Bruce, okay?” he says, directing it vaguely at Steve.
“Didn't Bruce want to leave?”
“Maybe he did, maybe he didn't.” Tony's mouth flattens to a straight line. “Maybe he felt like he had to leave because that's how it's always been for him. I don't know, but I'd like to know where he is, at least.” He bends back over the tablet, as if there's no one else in the room with him. Darcy tilts her head up to look at Steve, and then they both of them look at Pepper, who shrugs.
“I think that's a really good idea, Tony,” Steve says after a minute. “Let me know if you need any help. I can't do any of this stuff...” he says, waving at the unfathomable code Tony's currently got up. “But I have a little influence, at least. May as well use it for good.”
Tony grins. “Been watching Star Wars?”
“He loves Han,” she says. They spent two straight days marathoning all six movies, and various days after that watching the cartoon. Steve likes cartoons, which she'd be more judgy about if she didn't watch The Flintstones whenever she has a Saturday morning off and sing along with the theme tune. Dating Captain America is surprisingly like dating Logan, her boyfriend all through tenth grade, popular media wise, at least. Of course, Logan had never seen the inside of a gym - his uncle was a doctor and he had a coverall doctor's note that got him out of all physical activity. He preferred to sit under the bleachers, smoking pot and insulting the track team under his breath. Which, coincidentally, was what brought them together in the first place.
“I should be surprised, but I'm not. There's a bit of 'fuck the system' in you, Rogers,” Tony says.
Darcy thinks of about five different replies to that, starting with 'that's what she said', but Steve says, “Maybe there is,” in his most innocent voice, and that's even better.
Pepper sends them home with, like, five boxes of leftovers, and Darcy puts up token resistance to it, but not only is it free food, it's free gourmet food.
“I'm sorry Tony's such a terrible host,” Pepper says at the elevator doors.
“I am not,” Tony mutters, nose in his cellphone.
“I only came to snoop, it's all good,” Darcy replies.
“Well, you're free to snoop any time,” Pepper says, then hugs both of them in turn.
Tony peers at them over his phone. He narrows his eyes, then abruptly crosses the room, grabs something from a shelf, and comes back. “This is for you,” he says, and shoves it at Steve.
“What--” Steve turns it over in his hands. “This is one of your tablets.”
“Think of it as an early Christmas present, or a really late birthday present, or a really early birthday present, whatever. It's got art apps on it and stuff.”
“These must be incredibly expensive.” He says it with a faint note of reproach, but she knows when he wants something, and he really wants to accept this.
“It's priceless.”
Steve sighs and tries to hand it back, but Tony steps out of reach. “I can't accept this, it's too much.”
“No, I mean it's literally without price. It's not on the market yet.”
“But it'd be expensive, if it could be purchased,” he argues, but his arm is dropping a little.
Tony throws his hands up. “Take the fucking thing, Steve! God, you try to do a nice thing for someone!”
“Okay, don't freak out,” Steve says, and holds it to his chest. “I'll take it. Thank you, Tony.”
“Oh my God, whatever, get out,” Tony says, making shooing gestures at them. The elevator doors open behind them as if by magic.
“He means it was very nice having you,” Pepper says as they step into the elevator. “Next time he'll be wearing shoes.”
The doors close and Steve looks down at the tablet, smiling to himself.
“How long are you going to be playing with that, then?” Darcy asks. “And when can I?”
He hugs it back to his chest and turns his upper body away for second. “You can't,” he says, then grins.
And that's how they made out in Tony Stark's elevator for two minutes.
-
Steve does let her use the tablet, but only occasionally, and his eyes say, 'oh God, don't break it', when she's only broken one cellphone in the last six months, so shut up, Steve, Jesus.
It's pretty fucking cool, and it's mysteriously loaded up with a bunch of historical information, videos of key events and speeches; Tony actually put some thought into this thing, and it's freaking Steve out a bit, she can tell. The art application is his favourite though. It's like MS Paint on crack, and it doesn't take him long to learn how to 'draw' 3D shapes. It's a completely alien concept, and it challenges him in a way that things rarely do these days.
He's fiddling with it on the couch, her feet in his lap while she's working on her laptop collating data from the various news sources and eye witness accounts on a guy who's calling himself 'Deadpool'. It's actually kind of fun, for once, because this guy is getting up to some serious Scooby Doo villain hijinks. When the phone rings, she grabs it without looking at the call display, and says, “Darcy Lewis's phone. Who may I say is calling?” She doesn't do it just to annoy people, though obviously that's fun; in the first week after the papers went nuts over them, some plucky reporter managed to get hold of her phone number and it threw them off a little. Of course, S.H.I.E.L.D. have put her on some kind of extreme blacklist, so now she's just being a bitch.
“Her mother,” Darcy's mother says.
“Let me see if she's in,” Darcy says, “please hold.”
Steve laughs a little, immersed in his 3D image of... whatever the hell that is.
She lifts the phone back to her mouth. “This is Darcy.”
“Mmhm,” her mother hums. “Christmas is in ten days, you know.”
“Really? So that's why there's a tree in my living room. I thought Steve was trying to plant a garden.”
“Which brings me neatly into my next question: when are we going to meet your boy?”
“My boy,” she repeats, and Steve looks up at her, frowning. “Will Lorraine be there?”
“Strictly immediate family this year,” her mother says.
“Okay, because she will terrify him.” Steve's looking faintly alarmed now, so she covers the phone with her hand and says, “Mom wants us to come for Christmas.”
“Oh,” he says, stricken. There's something about meeting her parents that just throws him for a loop. Maybe he's worried that they won't accept him as a suitor without the requisite goat to pay her father with. Because that's a thing. “Okay,” he mumbles.
She uncovers the phone, and says, “Steve is incredibly excited about the prospect eating Chinese takeout while watching A Charlie Brown Christmas.”
“Oh, I think Dad's going to kill and cook a bird, or something else that's old-fashioned, for our honoured guest.”
“Well, great, we'll be there on the 23rd, then.”
“I'll get the gym equipment out of your room.”
When she hangs up, Steve is still looking at her like he wants to say something, but doesn't think he should. His 3D image has collapsed in on itself sadly.
“My parents are going to love you.”
“Okay.”
“My father's not going to threaten you with a shotgun because we're living in sin.”
“I know that.”
“So, what's up?”
He shrugs. “I don't know. I've never met a girl's parents before.”
“You've never had a girlfriend before,” she points out, and he tips his head in agreement. “So, Loki's not a problem, but Sam Lewis, that's just too much?”
“I just want them to approve of me,” he says.
“Who the hell wouldn't approve of you? Steve, my only concern is that they're going to prefer you over me.”
He laughs softly. “Plenty of people don't approve of me, of... us. Don't you read gossip magazines?”
“You know I don't.” And it's a fucking tragedy, because she loves those awful things, but she's discovered that she loves them less when the awful things are about her and her boyfriend.
“Neither do I, but someone at S.H.I.E.L.D. does, and people have been saying things about... appropriateness and age differences.” He sets the tablet on the coffee table and turns to her. “I don't want them to worry about you.”
Sometimes she wonders how Steve functions, being so fucking earnest and kind hearted all day long. She scoots over, shifts into his lap, and his hands come up immediately to cradle her, just above her ass. “Look, you're lovely and brave and irritatingly kind, but you aren't much more mature than any other twenty seven year old guy I know.”
“Really?” he asks, perking up a little. Only Steve would find that comforting.
“Yeah, you're a total child.” She grinds down against him and he groans, pressing his open mouth to her collarbone. “See,” she says, digging her hand into his hair. His hands tighten around her hips and he starts rocking against her. “A mature man wouldn't get all hot and bothered from a little heavy petting.”
“I'm not-- ahhh,” he moans, dropping his head back against the couch when she slides her hand into his boxers. “I'm not sure that I'm-- ah, mm convinced yet,” he grinds out, and rolls his hips. That shit shouldn't even be legal.
“Oh,” she says, and pauses for a moment to listen to his stuttered breathing, “I'm gonna convince you thoroughly.”
Part 2
Rating: R/NC-17
Word count: ~25,000
Pairings/Characters: Darcy/Steve, Tony/Pepper, Jane Foster.
Summary: Most of Darcy's past relationships have involved getting high, playing video games, and arguing with each other; it's kind of freaking her out a little how functional she and Steve are. It's like being a real adult or something.
A/N: Sequel to Direction and This Sounds Like The Start of a Bad Joke.
Darcy hates getting up when it's dark. Hates. Darkness is for partying, sleeping, screwing, and occasionally letting off illegal fireworks in the abandoned lot near the 7-Eleven. It is not for waking.
It is especially not for waking when you've got a heavy arm draped around your middle, a nose pressed firmly into the back of your neck, and a body wrapped around you that doubles for a heater. Seriously, it's twenty degrees outside and she doesn't even have the heating on; she's saving so much in electricity bills.
Steve shifts in his sleep, curling into her a little more, his knees bumping into the backs of hers. He's infinitely more manipulative asleep than awake, beckoning her to stay in bed with all his warm, soft skin and the steady rise and fall of his chest against her back. She looks at the clock; it reads 5.28am, and now she's waking up before the fucking thing even goes off? What is happening to her?
She stares at the LED lit numbers through narrowed eyes, as it ticks over to twenty nine, and then thirty. She slaps the off button as soon as the radio switches on, but Steve is already awake with a puff of air against her neck.
“Ugh,” she mutters. His fingers tangle in her t-shirt for moment before he lets go of her and rolls onto his back.
Well, it's definitely morning now. She swings herself up, scoots to the end of the bed - she swears this bedroom gets smaller every goddamn day - and curses as her feet hit the frigid carpet. Gets her every fucking time. She reaches back and grabs the blanket off the bed, wrapping it round her shoulders (aside from heating costs, another good thing about having a boyfriend who's his own personal furnace is that he never complains when she steals all the blankets), and squints at Steve. With only the tiniest bit of light peeking through the drapes, and her without glasses, he's a little fuzzy, but she can still make out how the sheets are tangled around his legs, and his body is all long and lean and stretched out and calling out to her to lie back down on.
“Stop it,” she says.
“Stop what?” he mumbles.
“Just...” She makes some kind of sound, blowing air through her teeth, and Steve laughs, shifting around until he's sitting up beside her. He slings his arm around her waist and kisses her on the temple.
“Come on, you've got to be at work by seven.”
“Nooo,” she says, “Fury gave me the day off because he likes me so much. I'm just up to enjoy the first ice cold shower of the day.”
“Okay,” he says, resting his chin on her shoulder. He looks at her, and even in the dark room she can see how blue his eyes are.
“Fine,” she says, gathering the rest of the blanket up around her and standing, “fine.”
Steve doesn't have any reason to be up this early, and if the positions were reversed, she sure as hell wouldn't be getting up in solidarity with him, but she's already come to terms with the fact that while she's a solid ten, he's on a whole other numbering system altogether.
The bathroom, like every other room in her apartment, is really too small for two people, but Steve's tall enough that he can just stand behind her and use the mirror that way. Unlike her, he's super efficient at his morning routine, does his teeth, shaves, brushes his hair, and takes a piss (they have this unspoken agreement that she kinda sorta averts her eyes because he finds it awkward even though he won't admit it), all in five minutes or under, while she's still messing around putting toothpaste on her toothbrush.
At least morning showers don't slow her down, since the old boilers in this building can't handle the cold and it takes upwards of half an hour for the water to heat. If she's feeling really gross, she'll grab a shower at work, but normally a liberal application of deodorant suffices. It really depends on whether, and how hard, they went at it the night before.
On the weekends, Steve makes pancakes, or eggs, or French toast, but on weekdays it's just yoghurt and fruit, or cereal, because her stomach can't handle anything more this early, unless she's cool with hurling all over someone's newspaper in the subway. When she stumbles back out of the bathroom, with a hairbrush stuck in her hair, her breakfast is waiting for her on the counter, and Steve is half dressed, drinking one of those horrific protein shakes. She squints at the whirring coffee maker - it's a Stark prototype that turned up on her doorstep the day after those pictures got all over the news - and smiles. Her mug, her flask, and her glasses are all laid out next to the brewing coffee.
They go through the rest of their routine in near silence, because she never has anything intelligent to say before at least ten in the morning, which can be a real problem at work. She's not really a 'routine' type of person - if she can find two matching socks and eat a slice of buttered stale bread before work then she considers that a win - but Steve is all about order, and it should bore her, but it doesn't. It's kind of nice to have someone looking out for her physical well being, because she sure as shit isn't.
By five to six, she manages to tame her hair into a loose knot, gets her underwear on, and grabs her jeans and shirt from where they're laid out on the couch.
“Did you iron this?” she asks, eyeing the suspiciously crisp white shirt.
He looks up from putting things into his bag. “Yeah.”
“Hm,” she responds, putting it on. Steve is an ironing fiend. Like, seriously, she can't remember the last time she ironed something, but all his clothes have to be crisp and wrinkle free, and now he's moved onto her stuff. She had to put her foot down when he started sizing up her t-shirts, but she does have to admit that she looks a little more businessy in a clean ironed shirt than a ratty cardigan. Whether she's actually happy about this development in her life is less clear.
“Okay,” she says, once the rest of her coffee is safely in its flask, her feet are in her extra toasty boots, and she's got her dad's old coat on. She jams her knitted hat over her ears. “Let's do this.”
There are never any seats on the train into Manhattan at this time of the morning, and no gentlemen to offer theirs, which is major bugbear for Steve. Like, he'd probably say something if she didn't cringe so hard at the idea of a confrontation in a freaking sardine tin with her regular commuter buddies. The train is also totally discriminating against short people, because she can only just reach the rails along the top, and rude, selfish people monopolise the vertical ones. At least with Steve, he can hold onto the top rail with one hand, and wrap his arm around her to keep her steady.
On the other end, he walks her all the way to the unassuming S.H.I.E.L.D. offices that she's now going to sit in for the next ten hours or so and go through endless typing, spreadsheeting, and meetings.
“Lunch?” he asks, tucking his nose into his scarf as her fellow junior agents start going in, casting brief looks at them as they pass.
“You're on,” she says. “So what're you doing today?”
He shrugs. “Tony wants to test something, so... hopefully I won't lose any of my fingers.”
She closes her gloved hands over his and gives them a rub. “You better still have all these magic fingers tonight.”
He'd probably be blushing now if his cheeks weren't already pink from the cold. “I'll do my best,” he promises, and gives her a quick peck on the lips.
Life got pretty weird after her face, and in short order her name too, got bandied about all over television, magazines, and the internet. For the first week, orders came down on high from Fury, and she got time off. She and Steve did one grocery store run, and then basically stayed in for six days straight. Which, not a problem, really. She taught Steve how to do a lot of things. A lot of things.
They had a lot of sex, is what she's getting at.
Her workmates haven't been too bad about the whole thing; they probably think she gets special favours, but she was on that list already because of her connection to Thor, so she's always been treated with a fair bit of suspicion. She's a big girl, she can take whatever Mean Girls shit they'd like to dole out.
She wasn't able to go home for Thanksgiving, though, that kind of sucked. Once the media got hold of her name, they easily tracked down her family, and then there were reporters fucking up the lawn in the front yard. Her parents thought it was all quite fun, but her Great Aunt Lewis has dementia and she's got belligerent and even a little violent for less, so Darcy decided, in her infinite and newly found maturity, to not lead the entire circus to the west coast, and rather make it extremely clear, like hello, here I am kissing Captain America in the street on Thanksgiving morning in New York what the fuck are you doing in California?, that they were staying in New York.
Steve had, like, all the guilt in the world for making her miss the family get together. His capacity for guilt is basically bottomless, she's discovered, even though it's certainly not the first time she's missed shit like this and her family do not stand on any kind of honour or tradition, except for the usual drunken brawl between Uncle Peter and Auntie Carol. And honestly, taking a nice, quiet Catholic boy to a gathering of her noisy, nosy Jewish relatives? Probably not a good initial 'meet the parents' scenario.
The past three weeks have certainly been a doozy.
Lunch is at a place where they're more likely to get their cheeks pinched than have their photographs taken. It doesn't have the best coffee in the world, but little old ladies who run quaint tea rooms make the most sugary shit ever, and Darcy rivals Steve for most scones eaten in one sitting. Steve is talking about something that happened at Stark Tower this morning, something to do with Black Widow, who Darcy recalls blew back into town a couple of days ago in a cloud of bloodshed and extra paperwork. Steve's talking with hands, smiling and laughing a little, and honestly, Darcy isn't really listening to what he's saying, rather focusing on his happy face. He's chilled out a hell of a lot since they met.
She leans over and kisses him mid-sentence, tasting the sugar still on his lips.
“What was that for?” he asks, pressing his fingers to his mouth for a second. Adorable.
“Look here, if I can't kiss my dreamboat boyfriend in front of God and everyone once TMZ has made damn sure that we can't hide shit from them--” She taps her teaspoon against the chintzy saucer, then points it at him. “Well, that's just not the America that you fought for.”
Steve grins, and returns the favour.
On the walk back to work, they only get photographed three times, which is an improvement on last week. She's clocked up so much overtime because she just couldn't get into work on time for a solid five days.
Going home falls into the usual routine. She's the first out of the office (sorry everyone, but not really), and meets Steve down in the lobby. It's dark by now, so it's easier to make it to the subway without being hassled. On the subway they have the same issues, seat and space wise, and once they're home, Darcy collapses onto the couch with a flumph, and Steve laughs at her as he makes dinner. When it's ready, he brings it over to the coffee table, sets her back the right way up, and puts a fork into her hand. Then he commiserates with her about how horrible it is to have to get up early and do stuff all day.
After dinner she tries to watch TV, but her attention keeps wandering and coming back at random intervals, and she misses, like, half of everything that Abed says.
Steve doesn't get the show at all.
An indeterminate amount of time later, Steve jostles her slightly. “Hey, I'm going to have a shower, do you...?”
The water in this shitty building only stays hot long enough for one shower, though Steve's only last for about two minutes, so it's not actually much of a problem. Still, they're both happy to pretend like there's no other option but to shower together.
“Yeah,” she says, levering herself off the couch. “Come on.”
She had thought, once she'd seen him naked and waiting for her to fuck him, that that was pretty much the peak of the hotness scale for him; she'd brought the mallet down on the high striker and got the puck right to the top, but wet, naked Steve? The high striker just exploded with joy.
The shower isn't really made for this kind of activity, it's much too cramped, but she's short, and he's flexible, so they work it out somehow. She shampoos her hair quickly, squealing a little when Steve turns her round to face him and kisses her, his hands threading through her hair, working up a lather. He's such a multi-tasker.
She uses about half a bottle of conditioner on her hair, attempting to tease out the many knots, which is kind of hard because Steve is distracting the shit out of her with his big hands cupping her breasts, wandering down her waist and closing around her hips, pushing her against the wall and lifting her up.
She sighs, her attention momentarily captured by the way the spray from the shower runs down from his neck, curves around one of his pecs and continues on its journey down his stomach and along one leg. “I'm way too tired to make any effort,” she tells him.
“That's okay,” he says. He slides the glass door open enough to reach the bathroom counter and grab the packet of condoms lying there with one hand, still holding her up with his other. He shakes one out and fumbles with the foil wrapper, the water turning it slippery in his fingers. He can't quite keep hold of her and deal with that too, and after a couple of confused minutes, and a lot of very grown up giggling from both of them, he lets her back down and commits to getting the condom on. She takes the opportunity to turn the shower head towards her and start to rinse the conditioner off. A minute later, Steve is successful and gently crowds her against the shower wall again.
Dude's like the freaking Energizer Bunny sometimes, she swears; he's had just as little sleep as her, but he is totally ready to screw her into this wall. He bends one knee and braces it against the tile beneath her, then settles her there and pushes into her slowly. It's surprisingly comfortable for shower sex; trust Steve to turn something that's awkward and the leading cause of bruised elbows into something safe and romantic.
He curls his hand around one of hers, pinning it above her head loosely, groping at her side with the other. His pace is almost tortuously slow, deep controlled thrusts that make her squirm and pant and try to push back into him. She's more of a hard and fast sort of girl, but this can be nice too, once in a while. Steve has picked all this sex stuff up really well.
Most guys her age that she's been with have a tendency to, well, shoot their load a little early. To be fair to some of them, they were usually totally willing to get her off in other ways, afterwards, but it was a little disappointing, nonetheless. Steve kind of has the opposite problem, depending on how riled up she gets him first; he can keep going until he's a completely incoherent mess. They've been experimenting with that. For science, of course.
“Darcy,” he groans against her ear, his fingers tightening around hers. His thrusts are getting harder, and she can feel her orgasm building fast, until she has to throw one arm around his shoulders and trust that he's not going to drop her. He hasn't so far, and they've... tried out a couple of different positions.
She clings to him as she comes and, yeah, he doesn't drop her, he presses her harder into the wall, the way she likes, her breasts flattening against his chest. This whole strength kink thing she's developed isn't going anywhere any time soon.
Rapidly cooling water drips down between them as she drops her head back against the tiles. Steve fits his face into the hollow of her collarbone and keeps on going, moaning her name softly, and probably sort of drowning, too, but he survived in the ice for seventy years; drowning by sex probably isn't going to be the thing that does him in.
One of the best things about sex with Steve is all the little sounds he makes, all strangled and muffled like it's all he can do to keep himself from turning into a babbling wreck. Sometimes she tries to convince him it's okay to be vocal, that she likes knowing how much she turns him on, but she also likes the other side of it, all the desperate squirming and pleasure-pained moaning. That's pretty hot too.
So, she could listen to him all day, but the water is going cold and she can feel the wet slide of her conditioner covered hair against her back. She pulls her hand gently from his and tips her head forward to scrub at her hair, while Steve keeps doing his thing, his hand flat against the tiles now.
“Oh,” he groans, as she picks long strands of her hair from between her fingers and drops the clumps onto the shower floor. He twitches and shudders against her, dragging his open mouth across her shoulder, and does that breathy gaspy porn star moan thing that means he's about to come.
And come he does, stomach muscles twitching and legs trembling a little; she likes to think that if he wasn't who he is, his knees would be well on their way to buckling. That makes her feel pretty proud of herself. He holds her against the wall for a minute longer, while he rides it out, then pulls out and eases her back down. He cups her face in his hands and presses light kisses all over her cheeks and forehead.
Then the water tank gives up its valiant battle and blasts them with ice cold water.
“Oh, shit!” she squeals, ducking around him and stumbling out of the shower.
“Hey!” he cries, as she slides the door shut again and gives him the thumbs up. He frowns at her through the fogged up glass for a moment, then gets under the spray to wash himself off. She's pretty sure she hears a couple of swear words issue forth from him as he quickly scrubs himself down. Thirty seconds later he's done, and she takes pity on him enough to grab the towel off the heated rail and hand it to him. She only plays keep away with it twice.
“That was a mean trick,” he mutters, securing the towel around his waist and pouting at her.
“It wasn't a trick, you just took too long,” she says. He's still pouting at her, though, so she puts her hands on his arms and gives them a vigorous rub. “I'll warm you up, baby.”
“Baby?”
She shrugs. “I'm taking it for a spin.”
They collapse into bed just after ten. Darcy drapes herself all over him, and uses his bicep for a pillow.
“Ugh,” she mutters as Steve tucks the blanket around her. “Four more days til the weekend.”
-
This is the second time she's been in Stark Tower. The first time was with a S.H.I.E.L.D. clean up crew, as part of her 'on the job' training, picking through the debris caused by the latest tantrum of one of Tony's enemies. For that she wore her S.H.I.E.L.D. uniform, all black, shit-kicker boots. It's actually pretty hot for a government drone get up.
Tonight, though, she's in a red knitted dress, one that her mom practically forced on her because 'it's so cute' when Darcy was going through her 'wear all the baggy t-shirts and gross ripped jeans' phase. Darcy hates when her mom is right.
She's still wearing her shit-kicker boots though, those things go with everything.
“Okay,” Steve says when they're in the elevator, being taken up roughly one billion floors to Tony's private residence at the top of the building. “Don't touch anything that looks... well, maybe just don't touch anything. And, uh, if Tony says anything inappropriate to you, feel free to, you know. Slap him.”
“Don't worry, I won't accept any candy from him.”
“Probably best.”
The elevator dings, and that smooth as fuck English accent announces, “Floor ninety, residence of Anthony Edward Stark and his owner, Virginia Potts.”
They step out into a large room, with a bar in the corner and some seriously awesome floor to ceiling windows lining one wall. And neither of their not-so gracious hosts.
“Did they forget they invited us?”
Steve glances up carefully. “I feel like something's going to descend on us,” he mutters.
“I wonder what kind of booze Stark's got in that bar.”
“I think he's got all of it,” Steve says, and takes another step into the room. He turns in a circle, looking around, then sighs and crosses his arms over his chest. “I knew this was a bad idea.”
“Not necessarily.” She steps up to him, puts her thumbs through his belt loops, and tucks her fingers under his waistband. “Think of what we could do unsupervised with all of Tony Stark's toys.”
Steve points up. “We aren't unsupervised.”
“I would not tell a soul, sir,” Jarvis says.
“See, GLaDOS has our backs.”
Steve looks both confused and resigned to being confused, as per usual.
Jarvis says, “That is not a very nice comparison, Agent Lewis.”
“Oh, I'm sorry, I didn't mean any harm,” she says, directed somewhere in the direction of the right hand corner of the room.
“Sadly, I have been called worse,” Jarvis replies.
God, now she feels really bad for a computer program. This hasn't happened since her Sim 'Darlene' got cheated on by her husband, lost her job, and set fire to the oven, all in the space of one Sim day.
“We should probably call them,” Steve says, shifting slightly from side to side.
“Probably. Can we have at least one illicit kiss in Tony Stark's love den?”
He twists his mouth and glances around, as if making sure that Stark isn't hiding behind a door, or something. “Okay,” he says after a moment, and leans down, putting his hands around her waist. It really does feel a little more illicit, standing in this plush living room/bar/workshop.
The elevator dings again, and she turns around in time to see Tony Stark waving his hands about as he talks, and Pepper Potts laughing at him. They get one step out of the elevator before they notice Steve and Darcy.
“Intruder alert!” Tony cries. “Jarvis, all hands!”
“Yes, sir,” Jarvis says. It's more of a mutter, really, if computers can mutter.
“You're late,” Steve says, and glances apologetically at Pepper. “Sorry, Ms. Potts.”
She checks her watch. “Tony said seven thirty.”
“I said seven thirty,” Tony agrees, then points at Steve. “You said seven thirty.”
“You said eleven at a club in Soho. I said seven, here.”
Tony scowls then sticks out his chin. “Jarvis! Play the call log between me and Captain Incorrect here for December 2nd 2012.”
“Is that his official designation, sir?” Jarvis asks dryly.
Steve mutters something about invasion of privacy and being recorded without his knowledge. Darcy grimaces.
“Oh man, you do not want to get into an argument with Steve about remembering stuff. He has, like, perfect recall for dates and times and shit.”
Tony makes a dismissive sound, still bickering with Jarvis, and Pepper rolls her eyes. “It's very nice to meet you, Agent Lewis. Can't say I've heard anything concrete about you, but Tony has a lot of theories. I think Captain Rogers having drawn you and then somehow brought you to life was at the top of the list.”
“Nice to meet you too,” Darcy says, turning to shake Pepper's hand. “Steve hasn't told me a lot about you either, but then he's not allowed to talk about other women in my presence, or indeed talk to them. So tonight's going to be interesting.”
Pepper laughs. “That was already a given.”
“Play the damn call!” Tony snaps.
“Yes, sir. Call log for December 2nd 2012, 15:36,” Jarvis says, and then Tony's voice takes over.
“Hey, Captain Tightpants!” There's a long pause. “Hello? Are you holding your phone the right way up? Have you fallen and can't get up? I told you to get Life Alert.”
“Tony.”
“It speaks!”
“What do you want?”
“Rude. I was just going to invite you and your girl out to dinner with me and Pepper, but now I'm not going to.”
“Okay.”
“Aw, don't be that way, Cap. All right, all right, I wouldn't want to make our glorious leader sad. You can come with us.”
Steve's response is a sigh.
“Excellent. There's this great club in Soho. Say, eleven next Saturday evening?”
“Why do I think that this is going to be a place of ill repute? How about we do something a little less... you. Maybe dinner at your place?”
“Are you inviting yourself over to my tower, Cap?”
“Yeah.”
“Cool. Okay, how about ten on Saturday?”
“How about seven? Some of us have to get up in the morning.”
“Sucks to be you. Okay, so seven thirty?”
“Seven.”
“Right. Seven thirty.”
“Tony. Say it with me: seven o'clock. Nineteen hundred hours.”
“Nineteen hundred hours, master,” Tony drones.
“Shall I continue the recording, sir?” Jarvis asks.
“No, that's okay,” Tony mumbles. He waves his hand at them. “Come on then, stop making out and come through to the kitchen.”
Tony's kitchen is a kitchen in the same way that IMAX is a television screen.
“Jesus, this place is bigger than my entire apartment,” she mutters.
“Everywhere's bigger than your apartment,” Steve replies, “but this place is pretty nice.”
Tony smirks. “You like things big, darling?”
“Do you want me to slap him now?” Darcy asks, tilting her head up towards Steve.
Steve smiles, and Tony rolls his eyes, wandering over to the fridge.
“I'm afraid Tony only mentioned that you two were coming around a couple of hours ago-” Pepper casts a look at Tony, who waves at her with the bottle of beer in his hand. “-so we're going to be ordering in.”
“Let's get shawarma,” Tony says.
“Let's not,” Steve says.
Pepper shows them to a couch. Yeah, there's a couch in the kitchen. “What do you like?”
“Everything but shawarma.”
Darcy slips her boots off and tucks her feet underneath herself. “He's not lying. Everything, and in lots of weird combinations. It's gross.”
“Then let's get everything,” Tony calls. “Hey, what does everyone want to drink?”
Darcy twists to look at Tony. “Beer's good for me. Steve'll have whatever's sweetest.”
“She always speak for you, Cap?”
Steve settles back against the cushions. “Most of the time.”
Tony grins, joining them with three bottles of beer held to his chest with one arm, a bottle of cider and a bottle opener in his other hand. He flicks off all four caps in a dizzying display of skill; she bets he can do that thing bartenders on TV do with a martini shaker. He hands them out and sits down next to her, regarding her through narrowed eyes.
“So, when do you graduate high school?” he asks.
“Negative six years.”
Tony tilts his head. “What year were you born?”
“1988.”
“And you're legal to drink?” he asks, knocking his beer bottle into hers.
“Yeah.”
“Ugh, I'm so old. I'm not supposed to feel old with Steve in the room!”
Pepper leans over from where she's sitting next to Steve (this couch is bigger than Darcy's bed) and kicks Tony in the shin. “Stop harassing her and order the food.”
“Ow,” Tony complains, leaning down to rub his leg. “I already did that, dear,” he says, and gets his cell phone tablet thingy out of his pocket as if that's proof.
When Tony said 'everything', he meant like every-fucking-thing available in the state of New York. Darcy didn't know that fancy gourmet restaurants deliver. It's like an all you can buffet, but the entry fee is a grand instead of five dollars.
They move back into the lounge and set up on one of the wrap around couches; out of the hundreds and hundreds of rooms, apparently it never occurred to Tony to include a dining room. It doesn't take long for Tony to get irritated by having to lean over all the time to get something off the coffee table, so he just sits on the floor instead. Darcy joins him a couple of minutes later, and after a while they're all sitting on the floor, picking at the array of food.
“Man, this is like university all over again, except with a much more expensive food and a lot less pot.”
“That can be corrected,” Tony says, and winks.
Steve wraps his arm around her shoulders and pulls her in a little, mock-glaring at Tony. Well, she thinks it's mock. She pats him on the chest.
“That's okay, Steve can't get high, wouldn't want him to feel left out.”
“Is that right?” Tony says, stares at Steve for a moment, then pulls his tablet out of his pocket and starts tapping quickly on it. When he doesn't rejoin the conversation after a couple of minutes, Pepper sighs and shoves him in the shoulder. He just grins.
“So, where did you go to college, Darcy?” she asks.
“Culver.”
“Isn't that where Bruce went?”
“Yep, Dr Banner, the scientist that went crazy from 'the stress'. Everyone was pretty sure that he was on PCP, though. There were some research students working in the next building over, and they said he tore up the entire place. There were mandatory first year seminars on drug use for, like, five years after that.”
Pepper smiles and turns to Tony, who's still on his tablet. “Didn't Ross's daughter go to Culver, as well?”
“Betty Ross, class of 1999,” he says, as he lays the tablet flat on the coffee and a hologram springs up from it. Steve isn't quite quick enough to hide his delight. There's a holographic file suspended in the air in front of them, with a picture of a dark-haired young woman smiling awkwardly for the camera. Darcy immediately identifies it as the god awful ID photograph that plagues every Culver student.
“Is this General Ross's daughter?” Darcy asks.
“Yeah,” Pepper says, “do you know him?”
“No, but I've heard things. He is not well liked in the office.”
“He's not well liked anywhere. She and Bruce dated, you know,” Tony cuts in, pinching the air where the corners of the picture are to expand it. One side of Steve's mouth creases in a half smile. “They met while she was doing cancer research as graduate student and he, the dog, was a post-doctoral research assistant.”
“How do you know all this?” Steve asks, fighting the valiant battle to not stare at the semi transparent file.
“Hacked his file,” Tony says breezily. “Oh, wait, you have to see this. This is the most awkward picture of two human beings that has ever been taken.”
“Tony, that's not nice-- wow,” Steve says, and they all look at the picture Tony has up of Bruce and Betty. Betty's wearing a pair of ripped jeans and a sweater that hits mid thigh, her hands twisted together in front of her, deer in the headlights expression on her face, which works for her because she has like the biggest, most doe-like eyes that Darcy's ever seen. Bruce seems to be wearing roughly a dozen layers of clothing, holding a red cup in a grip that suggests that it had just recently been forced upon him, his ridiculously curly hair framing the grimace-smile on his face. His right hand hovers somewhere near Betty's shoulder.
“Aw,” Darcy says, “look at his little face!”
“He's thirty years old in that picture,” Tony says with a sneer.
“Why don't we look at some pictures of you when you were at MIT?” Pepper says, and sits up a little straighter. “Jarvis?”
“Yes, Ms. Potts,” Jarvis says, and Bruce and Betty dissolve in favour of Tony wearing a loose AC/DC t-shirt that she's pretty sure she's seen him in recently, and... oh.
“Parachute pants,” she says, almost under her breath.
“What are parachute pants?” Steve asks.
“Those are,” she replies, reaching out to touch the image. Her hand goes right through it.
“They're horrible,” he says, looking slightly confused. She rests her head against his shoulder and laughs.
Tony pouts. “Hey, I was fifteen and it was the eighties, okay? I have an excuse.”
“You went to university at fifteen?” Steve asks. There's an undertone that quells the good humour a little.
“Yeah,” Tony says, looking at him funny, and shrugs a shoulder. He puffs his chest out a bit and grins again. “How about we see what the girls looked like, then, since they're such harsh critics.”
He spends another minute or so tapping, a minute in which Darcy reflects on what the hell kind of photos there are of her online. Like, she hasn't always been very careful with her privacy settings, and although after joining S.H.I.E.L.D. her Facebook is long gone, the internet never, actually, forgets.
A couple of pictures pop up and Tony deflates it a bit.
“You look hot,” Darcy says to Pepper. She's all fresh faced and smiling for the camera, in a white button down shirt with her hair pulled back from her face loosely, not a hint of make up. The bitch.
“You too,” Pepper says, nodding to her picture. Darcy looks drunk, is what she looks, but it's the sultry, 'I don't give a crap' drunk, not the sweaty, 'I'm about to vomit' drunk.
Tony sprawls out against the front of the couch. “Foiled again.” He stays like that for a few moments before lifting his head and pointing at Steve. “What about you? I hacked everything, but there's nothing pre-rebirth about you anywhere.”
Steve shrugs, jostling Darcy a little. “I didn't go to college. Barely scraped by at high school. I'm not... book smart,” he mutters, and grabs a handful of chips to shove in his mouth.
“That's a lie,” she says, and pokes him in the stomach. “Steve reads, like, half a dozen books a week.”
“Yeah, but I'm not... I don't test well. I could never get the hang of geometry or any of that stuff.”
“So, basically you'd be an Arts student,” Tony says. “There's not... too much shame in that.”
“Hey, fuck you, I was an Arts student,” she says, and Steve drapes his arm across her chest protectively. She grabs his hand and anchors him there, smiling smugly.
“Why are you hacking everyone's files?” Steve asks.
“Well, yours were for fun,” Tony says. “Clint and Natasha's was in case I ever need any blackmail material, and Thor was a history lesson.” He gets rid of the pictures of Darcy and Pepper, and starts tapping away again, humming to himself. Pepper elbows him. “What?” he says, glancing at her, then looking at her more solidly before rolling his eyes. “God, fine. And I'm trying to find Bruce, okay?” he says, directing it vaguely at Steve.
“Didn't Bruce want to leave?”
“Maybe he did, maybe he didn't.” Tony's mouth flattens to a straight line. “Maybe he felt like he had to leave because that's how it's always been for him. I don't know, but I'd like to know where he is, at least.” He bends back over the tablet, as if there's no one else in the room with him. Darcy tilts her head up to look at Steve, and then they both of them look at Pepper, who shrugs.
“I think that's a really good idea, Tony,” Steve says after a minute. “Let me know if you need any help. I can't do any of this stuff...” he says, waving at the unfathomable code Tony's currently got up. “But I have a little influence, at least. May as well use it for good.”
Tony grins. “Been watching Star Wars?”
“He loves Han,” she says. They spent two straight days marathoning all six movies, and various days after that watching the cartoon. Steve likes cartoons, which she'd be more judgy about if she didn't watch The Flintstones whenever she has a Saturday morning off and sing along with the theme tune. Dating Captain America is surprisingly like dating Logan, her boyfriend all through tenth grade, popular media wise, at least. Of course, Logan had never seen the inside of a gym - his uncle was a doctor and he had a coverall doctor's note that got him out of all physical activity. He preferred to sit under the bleachers, smoking pot and insulting the track team under his breath. Which, coincidentally, was what brought them together in the first place.
“I should be surprised, but I'm not. There's a bit of 'fuck the system' in you, Rogers,” Tony says.
Darcy thinks of about five different replies to that, starting with 'that's what she said', but Steve says, “Maybe there is,” in his most innocent voice, and that's even better.
Pepper sends them home with, like, five boxes of leftovers, and Darcy puts up token resistance to it, but not only is it free food, it's free gourmet food.
“I'm sorry Tony's such a terrible host,” Pepper says at the elevator doors.
“I am not,” Tony mutters, nose in his cellphone.
“I only came to snoop, it's all good,” Darcy replies.
“Well, you're free to snoop any time,” Pepper says, then hugs both of them in turn.
Tony peers at them over his phone. He narrows his eyes, then abruptly crosses the room, grabs something from a shelf, and comes back. “This is for you,” he says, and shoves it at Steve.
“What--” Steve turns it over in his hands. “This is one of your tablets.”
“Think of it as an early Christmas present, or a really late birthday present, or a really early birthday present, whatever. It's got art apps on it and stuff.”
“These must be incredibly expensive.” He says it with a faint note of reproach, but she knows when he wants something, and he really wants to accept this.
“It's priceless.”
Steve sighs and tries to hand it back, but Tony steps out of reach. “I can't accept this, it's too much.”
“No, I mean it's literally without price. It's not on the market yet.”
“But it'd be expensive, if it could be purchased,” he argues, but his arm is dropping a little.
Tony throws his hands up. “Take the fucking thing, Steve! God, you try to do a nice thing for someone!”
“Okay, don't freak out,” Steve says, and holds it to his chest. “I'll take it. Thank you, Tony.”
“Oh my God, whatever, get out,” Tony says, making shooing gestures at them. The elevator doors open behind them as if by magic.
“He means it was very nice having you,” Pepper says as they step into the elevator. “Next time he'll be wearing shoes.”
The doors close and Steve looks down at the tablet, smiling to himself.
“How long are you going to be playing with that, then?” Darcy asks. “And when can I?”
He hugs it back to his chest and turns his upper body away for second. “You can't,” he says, then grins.
And that's how they made out in Tony Stark's elevator for two minutes.
-
Steve does let her use the tablet, but only occasionally, and his eyes say, 'oh God, don't break it', when she's only broken one cellphone in the last six months, so shut up, Steve, Jesus.
It's pretty fucking cool, and it's mysteriously loaded up with a bunch of historical information, videos of key events and speeches; Tony actually put some thought into this thing, and it's freaking Steve out a bit, she can tell. The art application is his favourite though. It's like MS Paint on crack, and it doesn't take him long to learn how to 'draw' 3D shapes. It's a completely alien concept, and it challenges him in a way that things rarely do these days.
He's fiddling with it on the couch, her feet in his lap while she's working on her laptop collating data from the various news sources and eye witness accounts on a guy who's calling himself 'Deadpool'. It's actually kind of fun, for once, because this guy is getting up to some serious Scooby Doo villain hijinks. When the phone rings, she grabs it without looking at the call display, and says, “Darcy Lewis's phone. Who may I say is calling?” She doesn't do it just to annoy people, though obviously that's fun; in the first week after the papers went nuts over them, some plucky reporter managed to get hold of her phone number and it threw them off a little. Of course, S.H.I.E.L.D. have put her on some kind of extreme blacklist, so now she's just being a bitch.
“Her mother,” Darcy's mother says.
“Let me see if she's in,” Darcy says, “please hold.”
Steve laughs a little, immersed in his 3D image of... whatever the hell that is.
She lifts the phone back to her mouth. “This is Darcy.”
“Mmhm,” her mother hums. “Christmas is in ten days, you know.”
“Really? So that's why there's a tree in my living room. I thought Steve was trying to plant a garden.”
“Which brings me neatly into my next question: when are we going to meet your boy?”
“My boy,” she repeats, and Steve looks up at her, frowning. “Will Lorraine be there?”
“Strictly immediate family this year,” her mother says.
“Okay, because she will terrify him.” Steve's looking faintly alarmed now, so she covers the phone with her hand and says, “Mom wants us to come for Christmas.”
“Oh,” he says, stricken. There's something about meeting her parents that just throws him for a loop. Maybe he's worried that they won't accept him as a suitor without the requisite goat to pay her father with. Because that's a thing. “Okay,” he mumbles.
She uncovers the phone, and says, “Steve is incredibly excited about the prospect eating Chinese takeout while watching A Charlie Brown Christmas.”
“Oh, I think Dad's going to kill and cook a bird, or something else that's old-fashioned, for our honoured guest.”
“Well, great, we'll be there on the 23rd, then.”
“I'll get the gym equipment out of your room.”
When she hangs up, Steve is still looking at her like he wants to say something, but doesn't think he should. His 3D image has collapsed in on itself sadly.
“My parents are going to love you.”
“Okay.”
“My father's not going to threaten you with a shotgun because we're living in sin.”
“I know that.”
“So, what's up?”
He shrugs. “I don't know. I've never met a girl's parents before.”
“You've never had a girlfriend before,” she points out, and he tips his head in agreement. “So, Loki's not a problem, but Sam Lewis, that's just too much?”
“I just want them to approve of me,” he says.
“Who the hell wouldn't approve of you? Steve, my only concern is that they're going to prefer you over me.”
He laughs softly. “Plenty of people don't approve of me, of... us. Don't you read gossip magazines?”
“You know I don't.” And it's a fucking tragedy, because she loves those awful things, but she's discovered that she loves them less when the awful things are about her and her boyfriend.
“Neither do I, but someone at S.H.I.E.L.D. does, and people have been saying things about... appropriateness and age differences.” He sets the tablet on the coffee table and turns to her. “I don't want them to worry about you.”
Sometimes she wonders how Steve functions, being so fucking earnest and kind hearted all day long. She scoots over, shifts into his lap, and his hands come up immediately to cradle her, just above her ass. “Look, you're lovely and brave and irritatingly kind, but you aren't much more mature than any other twenty seven year old guy I know.”
“Really?” he asks, perking up a little. Only Steve would find that comforting.
“Yeah, you're a total child.” She grinds down against him and he groans, pressing his open mouth to her collarbone. “See,” she says, digging her hand into his hair. His hands tighten around her hips and he starts rocking against her. “A mature man wouldn't get all hot and bothered from a little heavy petting.”
“I'm not-- ahhh,” he moans, dropping his head back against the couch when she slides her hand into his boxers. “I'm not sure that I'm-- ah, mm convinced yet,” he grinds out, and rolls his hips. That shit shouldn't even be legal.
“Oh,” she says, and pauses for a moment to listen to his stuttered breathing, “I'm gonna convince you thoroughly.”
Part 2