[Thor (2011)] Not Your Mother's Alma Mater 3/? (Darcy/Hawkeye)
Title: Not Your Mother's Alma Mater
Author: smittywing/Smitty
Pairing: Darcy Lewis/Clint Barton (Hawkeye)
Rating: PG-13 for this part, probably R or NC-17 overall. I hope.
Wordcount: ~2600 for this part
Spoilers/Warning: For the end of the movie, I guess? Also WIP and all that carries with it.
Notes: Thank you to reccea for betaing. All remaining mistakes are mine.
Part One
Part Two
“I cannot put Tony Stark up in a place with Dogs Playing Poker on the wall,” Darcy frets, walking circuits around the walk-in closet masquerading as a hotel room.
“Why not?” Clint asks. He had been a good sport when she asked him to pull over on the way back from gym class so she could personally check out her first choice for Tony and Pepper’s lodging, but now his eyebrows are drawn together and his arms are crossed against his chest.
“Because he’s Tony Stark and he owns a house that talks to him in Malibu and another house in Abu Dhabi that doesn’t, and also a loft in New York City that might and he’s used to being rich and, I don’t know, he’ll be unhappy and then there will be yelling.” Darcy scrubs her fingers through her hair, twisting it into a messy knot on the side of her head. “Maybe if I widen the radius.”
“Tell him to bring his own art,” Clint suggests.
Darcy scowls at him. “You are not being helpful.”
“Of course I am,” Clint says, pushing off from the wall. “You’re Coulson’s assistant, not Stark’s. You’re working with a government budget at a temporary research site. You arrange the best accommodations that are practical and if Stark wants to upgrade, he can do it on his dime. If he can find somewhere to take his dime.”
He leaves the room and Darcy follows, making sure the door locks behind her. Clint jams his fingers on the elevator button for at least the second time, since the light is already on. “Where are you staying?” she asks, suddenly realizing she has no idea where Clint lives when he’s not being an adjunct professor of archery and S.H.I.E.L.D. muscle.
“On base,” he says shortly, which is also not helpful because “base” is like, a bunch of creepy plastic tunnels and a bunch of trailers. One of the elevators opens its doors.
“Where on base?” Darcy demands, because now she’s kind of worried.
“I’ve got a hooch off one of the bunkrooms,” he says matter-of-factly. He steps into the elevator and turns around. “I like sleeping outside.”
“A what?” Darcy asks, stepping into the elevator after him and punching the button for the lobby.
“Hooch,” Clint says. “Like a lean-to on the side of one of the troop trailers. It’s a sweatbox inside. I’d rather have some air.”
“Wow,” Darcy says as the elevator arrives at the ground floor with a ding and swoosh of the doors. “No wonder you’re jealous of Tony Stark’s Dogs Playing Poker hotel room.”
Clint kind of sputters and walks out to the Jeep. Darcy scrambles to leave the room key at the front desk and shouts over her shoulder that she’ll let them know about the rooms. Outside, Clint has already started up the engine.
“I’m not jealous of Tony Stark. Or his accommodations,” Clint informs her when she’s in her seat and the door is closed. He takes off as she’s still pulling on her seatbelt. “The man spent three months in a cave. You shouldn’t have to worry about a week-long visit.”
“If you say so,” Darcy mutters under her breath. And then she frowns. “So, wait. Where do you keep your stuff?”
“So how do you find hotels?” Darcy asks Jane when they’re sitting in the Science-mobile later that night.
“Uh. The internet?” Jane’s eyes are fixed on the sky but Darcy can tell by her little frown that she’s actually giving Darcy’s question some thought.
“See, that is totally what I thought, too!”
Jane drags her gaze away from the stars. “But no?”
“No! Apparently there are people who work at fancy hotels and their entire job is to arrange rich people’s rooms. They have files or something that tells them what suite those people like and what kind of champagne should be waiting for them and whether it has southern exposure...look, Pepper sent me an email with all the contact info for these places in New York and DC and LA.”
“Wow,” Jane says. “I didn’t know hotels came with that many stars. Where did you get that?” She nodded at the PDA Darcy was waving under her nose.
“Coulson decided I needed an electronic leash,” Darcy tells her, glancing at the screen and noticing that she has a new email. It’s from Coulson and it says, Tell Stark I’m recalling the Widow. “Recalling the Widow?” she repeats. “Does that make any sense to you?”
Jane smiles. “Almost nothing you’ve said in the past ten minutes makes any sense to me.”
“Do I even want to know?” Darcy asks when Doctor Gupta dropped a pile of stack of notebooks and looseleaf papers onto her desk.
“It’s our research on the Asgardian metal,” she replied. “Coulson wants you to aggregate it and send it to Stark so he’ll be caught up when he gets here.”
“Oh,” Darcy says as Dr. Gupta walks away. “Great. Because I totally know how to do that.”
Her workspace is approximately the size of a postage stamp but almost no one else is hanging around in the command center room, so Darcy pushes her chair to the side and sits on the floor, making piles of related-looking data, the same way she does for Jane.
People look at her strangely the first few times they pass through, but either they get over it, or Darcy gets so into the project that she stops noticing. She’s maybe two-thirds of the way done when a pair of very shiny black shoes step up to her last three piles and stands firm.
She looks up from the shoes to sharply pressed trousers to a S.H.I.E.L.D. badge clipped to a black leather belt and a shirt and tie as crisp as the trousers and of course, the matching suit jacket. Darcy has never seen Coulson take off his suit jacket.
“Hi,” she says, pushing her hair out of her eyes.
“What’s all this?” he asks, nodding at her piles.
“The data you wanted me to aggregate on the Destroyer metal,” Darcy says, wondering how many orders he gives and just forgets about every day. “This isn’t exactly the same stuff Jane does, so I had to look up some of the stuff so I sound like I know what I’m talking about in the narratives and know if high numbers are good or bad and you know, all that.” She waved at her leftover piles. “I still have tensile strength, compressive strength, and uh...brisance. Never heard of that one before.”
Coulson makes a little frowny face. Darcy’s heart sinks and her temper rises. “What?” she asks. “Did I do it wrong?”
“Not at all,” Coulson says. “Excuse me for a moment.”
Darcy shakes her head as he walks off - he’s a sad, strange little man and she has no idea what she did wrong this time. She’s dredged together a half-decent understanding of brisance, thanks to Wikipedia, and is painstakingly entering the test data when he reappears (out of nowhere) and sets something down on the desk next to her.
It’s her iPod.
She shoves the papers away and clutches the little device to her chest. “You found it,” she breathes.
“Earlier today,” Coulson admits. “I was having someone charge it but if you’re going to put in this much work, you should have some company.”
“What do you mean this much work?” Darcy asks, unlocking the screen and scrolling through her beloved music collection.
“I expected you would make copies of all the notes and Fed-Ex the lot of it to Stark Enterprises,” Coulson says. “This is what I would classify as above and beyond.”
“Really?” Darcy takes out the earbud she had just tucked into her ear. “Does this warrant dinner, too?”
Coulson raises an eyebrow and for a second Darcy thinks he’s going to tell her not to press her luck. Then he shrugs and says, “You know somewhere that delivers?”
“Oh,” Darcy says, “I know all the places that deliver.”
It’s late by the time she finishes but Coulson sprung for Chinese that they ate together in the conference room while Darcy went over her narratives with him, so Darcy’s in a pretty good mood when she emails the data package to Pepper and Natalie and then pulls up the video chat to confirm receipt.
Natalie answers, looking glamorous in a sequined dress and her hair swept up. Darcy feels particularly grungy and like she worked on the floor for nine hours that day.
“Are you guys having a party?” Darcy asks when Natalie promises that she received Darcy’s day of hard work.
“Tony is having a party,” Natalie says and the slight roll of her eyes makes Darcy like her, just a little. “I thought I’d slip away for some work.”
“Do you want to trade?” Darcy asks. “Because we could use some more parties here.”
Natalie smiles a little. “We had to rebuild the lower level, get a structural analysis, and convince the business world that Tony was not going insane after the last party,” she says. “You want it? See if Coulson can get you reassigned.”
“Or not,” Darcy backpedals, “but speaking of reassigning, Coulson told me to let you guys know it’s ‘time to recall the Widow.’ Does that make sense to you at all?”
Natalie’s face lights up and she says, “Oh, yes. That makes complete sense to me.”
“What’s the Widow?” Darcy asks, finally deciding to air her suspicions. “Is it some kind of weapon?”
The corner of Natalie’s mouth turns up. “Yes,” she says. “That’s exactly what it is.”
“What do you think, Erik?” Darcy prods as Jane fiddles with equipment in the Science-mobile.
“Think of what?” Erik asks and he really does look completely clueless, like Darcy and Jane haven’t been discussing this all night.
“Tony Stark’s new weapon,” Jane cuts in. “It’s got to be a missile.”
“I think it’s an Iron Woman suit,” Darcy tells him.
“I thought Stark Industries was out of the weapons trade,” Erik says.
“But they said it was a weapon,” Darcy insists.
“Unless it’s a S.H.I.E.L.D. weapon and Tony Stark is just testing it,” Jane points out.
“I think it’s another suit,” Darcy declares. “And I think it’s for Pepper Potts.”
Jane rolls her eyes.
“Why would you assume it’s for Pepper Potts?” Erik asks.
“Because she’s awesome,” Darcy sings.
“Pepper Potts complimented her data compilation,” Jane said, crawling over the seat. “Which I taught her. Also it’s totally a missile.”
“It sounds more like a targeting system,” Erik muses.
“Or maybe it’s an unmanned suit,” Darcy says. “Or unwomaned. Maybe that’s why it’s a widow.”
Erik smiles. “Whatever it turns out to be,” he says, “I hope it does not disappoint you.”
The Widow is a lethal weapon - one in leather dominatrix gear and an artful tumble of red curls. And her name is Natalie. Except when it’s Natalya. Or Natasha. Depending on who is speaking to her. She arrives three days before Pepper and Tony to draft some report for S.H.I.E.L.D. HQ and Clint can’t take his eyes off her. Darcy is absolutely not jealous but she feels pretty fucking stupid and maybe that makes her a little bit hostile.
“Didn’t anyone tell her not to wear leather before Labor Day?” she asks Clint as she lays out materials for some debriefing Coulson wants to hold before Tony Stark arrives.
Darcy can’t help but notice Clint’s eyes track Black Widow as she walks into the room.
“Ex?” she asks, because seriously, it’s obvious.
Clint’s mouth twitches and ouch, it must have been a shitty breakup. “Something like that,” he says.
Tony Stark comes in his own plane. Coulson and Darcy and some guy named Jasons, whom Coulson referred to as a “professional driver” take two SUVs to pick him up.
“Wouldn’t I be a professional driver?” Darcy asks well into the second hour - she totally has self-control. “I mean, I drove Jane and then Jane and Erik to like, extra-terrestrial storm sites. And the Einstein-Rosen Bridge place.”
“Have you been certified by the JSOC Emergency Defensive Transportation course?”Jasons asks.
“That would be kind of like a Masters in professional driving, right?”
“More like a PhD,” Jasons says. He won’t let Darcy turn the radio on. She’s really starting to wish she’d ridden with Coulson. Or that Clint had come along. She wonders of he and Black Widow are doing some training exercise or if they’re trying to passive-aggressively kill each other with their minds.
Tony Stark’s plane is late. Coulson waits patiently, getting status reports and forwarding orders on his PDA. Darcy plays Angry Birds and texts Jane, her mother, and Clint. She’s totally going to get a farmer’s tan from sitting out in the sun with short sleeves.
Finally, the plane lands and Tony Stark walks down the rolling staircase, a glass of whiskey in one hand. Darcy is so-so on the goatee - Thor’s scruffy beard, or Clint’s two-day shadow when he doesn’t shave before their twice-weekly classes are far more to her liking - but Tony’s suit is pretty swanky and he’s not hard on the eyes either. It’s like Darcy’s developing a thing for older guys. Because that’s just exactly what she needs.
But - wow. Pepper Potts is tall and willowy and she’s wearing the most gorgeously cut suit that skims every curve like it was tailor-made for her. And hey, maybe it was. Darcy doesn’t know how much that kind of thing costs but Tony’s like the third richest guy in the world and Pepper was his interim CEO and his number one employee. Also, holy crap, those are the most amazing shoes Darcy has seen on an actual person and not on the Nordstrom’s website and suddenly she wants to be Pepper Potts so hard it hurt.
“Mr. Stark,” Coulson says. He shakes Tony Stark’s hand perfunctorily as Tony sips his drink and squints out across the tarmac and then smiles at Pepper Potts. “Ms. Potts,” he says - almost warmly. “It’s good to see you again.”
“You, too, Agent Coulson,” she replies and Darcy would eavesdrop on that conversation all day long but Tony Stark is inspecting her.
“You must be Doctor Foster,” he says, peering at her face. “I wasn’t expecting you to be so young but I used to hate it when people said that to me. I wasn’t expecting you to be so pretty either, no offense. Coulson’s terrible at giving me the heads-up on these things.”
“This is Darcy Lewis,” Pepper cuts in, circling around Tony and offering her hand to Darcy. “I’m so glad to finally meet you in person,” she says to Darcy, squeezing her hand and then adds quietly to Tony, “she’s Doctor Foster’s assistant.”
“She’s also interning at S.H.I.E.L.D.,” Coulson adds with an actual smile in Darcy’s direction. Darcy’s sure he’s showing off for Pepper Potts. “So if there’s anything you need, just let her know.”
“Right, well, let’s not all stand around staring at the desert,” Tony says, clearly no longer interested in Darcy. “Did I hear there was alien metal to analyze?”
Tony and Pepper go with Jasons and Darcy relocates to Coulson’s SUV. Clint’s sent her a text asking how she likes Tony.
“He’s OK,” Darcy texts back. “But I’d switch teams for Pepper.”
Twenty minutes later, Clint says, “Don’t give up on us all just yet.”
Part 4
Author: smittywing/Smitty
Pairing: Darcy Lewis/Clint Barton (Hawkeye)
Rating: PG-13 for this part, probably R or NC-17 overall. I hope.
Wordcount: ~2600 for this part
Spoilers/Warning: For the end of the movie, I guess? Also WIP and all that carries with it.
Notes: Thank you to reccea for betaing. All remaining mistakes are mine.
Part One
Part Two
“I cannot put Tony Stark up in a place with Dogs Playing Poker on the wall,” Darcy frets, walking circuits around the walk-in closet masquerading as a hotel room.
“Why not?” Clint asks. He had been a good sport when she asked him to pull over on the way back from gym class so she could personally check out her first choice for Tony and Pepper’s lodging, but now his eyebrows are drawn together and his arms are crossed against his chest.
“Because he’s Tony Stark and he owns a house that talks to him in Malibu and another house in Abu Dhabi that doesn’t, and also a loft in New York City that might and he’s used to being rich and, I don’t know, he’ll be unhappy and then there will be yelling.” Darcy scrubs her fingers through her hair, twisting it into a messy knot on the side of her head. “Maybe if I widen the radius.”
“Tell him to bring his own art,” Clint suggests.
Darcy scowls at him. “You are not being helpful.”
“Of course I am,” Clint says, pushing off from the wall. “You’re Coulson’s assistant, not Stark’s. You’re working with a government budget at a temporary research site. You arrange the best accommodations that are practical and if Stark wants to upgrade, he can do it on his dime. If he can find somewhere to take his dime.”
He leaves the room and Darcy follows, making sure the door locks behind her. Clint jams his fingers on the elevator button for at least the second time, since the light is already on. “Where are you staying?” she asks, suddenly realizing she has no idea where Clint lives when he’s not being an adjunct professor of archery and S.H.I.E.L.D. muscle.
“On base,” he says shortly, which is also not helpful because “base” is like, a bunch of creepy plastic tunnels and a bunch of trailers. One of the elevators opens its doors.
“Where on base?” Darcy demands, because now she’s kind of worried.
“I’ve got a hooch off one of the bunkrooms,” he says matter-of-factly. He steps into the elevator and turns around. “I like sleeping outside.”
“A what?” Darcy asks, stepping into the elevator after him and punching the button for the lobby.
“Hooch,” Clint says. “Like a lean-to on the side of one of the troop trailers. It’s a sweatbox inside. I’d rather have some air.”
“Wow,” Darcy says as the elevator arrives at the ground floor with a ding and swoosh of the doors. “No wonder you’re jealous of Tony Stark’s Dogs Playing Poker hotel room.”
Clint kind of sputters and walks out to the Jeep. Darcy scrambles to leave the room key at the front desk and shouts over her shoulder that she’ll let them know about the rooms. Outside, Clint has already started up the engine.
“I’m not jealous of Tony Stark. Or his accommodations,” Clint informs her when she’s in her seat and the door is closed. He takes off as she’s still pulling on her seatbelt. “The man spent three months in a cave. You shouldn’t have to worry about a week-long visit.”
“If you say so,” Darcy mutters under her breath. And then she frowns. “So, wait. Where do you keep your stuff?”
“So how do you find hotels?” Darcy asks Jane when they’re sitting in the Science-mobile later that night.
“Uh. The internet?” Jane’s eyes are fixed on the sky but Darcy can tell by her little frown that she’s actually giving Darcy’s question some thought.
“See, that is totally what I thought, too!”
Jane drags her gaze away from the stars. “But no?”
“No! Apparently there are people who work at fancy hotels and their entire job is to arrange rich people’s rooms. They have files or something that tells them what suite those people like and what kind of champagne should be waiting for them and whether it has southern exposure...look, Pepper sent me an email with all the contact info for these places in New York and DC and LA.”
“Wow,” Jane says. “I didn’t know hotels came with that many stars. Where did you get that?” She nodded at the PDA Darcy was waving under her nose.
“Coulson decided I needed an electronic leash,” Darcy tells her, glancing at the screen and noticing that she has a new email. It’s from Coulson and it says, Tell Stark I’m recalling the Widow. “Recalling the Widow?” she repeats. “Does that make any sense to you?”
Jane smiles. “Almost nothing you’ve said in the past ten minutes makes any sense to me.”
“Do I even want to know?” Darcy asks when Doctor Gupta dropped a pile of stack of notebooks and looseleaf papers onto her desk.
“It’s our research on the Asgardian metal,” she replied. “Coulson wants you to aggregate it and send it to Stark so he’ll be caught up when he gets here.”
“Oh,” Darcy says as Dr. Gupta walks away. “Great. Because I totally know how to do that.”
Her workspace is approximately the size of a postage stamp but almost no one else is hanging around in the command center room, so Darcy pushes her chair to the side and sits on the floor, making piles of related-looking data, the same way she does for Jane.
People look at her strangely the first few times they pass through, but either they get over it, or Darcy gets so into the project that she stops noticing. She’s maybe two-thirds of the way done when a pair of very shiny black shoes step up to her last three piles and stands firm.
She looks up from the shoes to sharply pressed trousers to a S.H.I.E.L.D. badge clipped to a black leather belt and a shirt and tie as crisp as the trousers and of course, the matching suit jacket. Darcy has never seen Coulson take off his suit jacket.
“Hi,” she says, pushing her hair out of her eyes.
“What’s all this?” he asks, nodding at her piles.
“The data you wanted me to aggregate on the Destroyer metal,” Darcy says, wondering how many orders he gives and just forgets about every day. “This isn’t exactly the same stuff Jane does, so I had to look up some of the stuff so I sound like I know what I’m talking about in the narratives and know if high numbers are good or bad and you know, all that.” She waved at her leftover piles. “I still have tensile strength, compressive strength, and uh...brisance. Never heard of that one before.”
Coulson makes a little frowny face. Darcy’s heart sinks and her temper rises. “What?” she asks. “Did I do it wrong?”
“Not at all,” Coulson says. “Excuse me for a moment.”
Darcy shakes her head as he walks off - he’s a sad, strange little man and she has no idea what she did wrong this time. She’s dredged together a half-decent understanding of brisance, thanks to Wikipedia, and is painstakingly entering the test data when he reappears (out of nowhere) and sets something down on the desk next to her.
It’s her iPod.
She shoves the papers away and clutches the little device to her chest. “You found it,” she breathes.
“Earlier today,” Coulson admits. “I was having someone charge it but if you’re going to put in this much work, you should have some company.”
“What do you mean this much work?” Darcy asks, unlocking the screen and scrolling through her beloved music collection.
“I expected you would make copies of all the notes and Fed-Ex the lot of it to Stark Enterprises,” Coulson says. “This is what I would classify as above and beyond.”
“Really?” Darcy takes out the earbud she had just tucked into her ear. “Does this warrant dinner, too?”
Coulson raises an eyebrow and for a second Darcy thinks he’s going to tell her not to press her luck. Then he shrugs and says, “You know somewhere that delivers?”
“Oh,” Darcy says, “I know all the places that deliver.”
It’s late by the time she finishes but Coulson sprung for Chinese that they ate together in the conference room while Darcy went over her narratives with him, so Darcy’s in a pretty good mood when she emails the data package to Pepper and Natalie and then pulls up the video chat to confirm receipt.
Natalie answers, looking glamorous in a sequined dress and her hair swept up. Darcy feels particularly grungy and like she worked on the floor for nine hours that day.
“Are you guys having a party?” Darcy asks when Natalie promises that she received Darcy’s day of hard work.
“Tony is having a party,” Natalie says and the slight roll of her eyes makes Darcy like her, just a little. “I thought I’d slip away for some work.”
“Do you want to trade?” Darcy asks. “Because we could use some more parties here.”
Natalie smiles a little. “We had to rebuild the lower level, get a structural analysis, and convince the business world that Tony was not going insane after the last party,” she says. “You want it? See if Coulson can get you reassigned.”
“Or not,” Darcy backpedals, “but speaking of reassigning, Coulson told me to let you guys know it’s ‘time to recall the Widow.’ Does that make sense to you at all?”
Natalie’s face lights up and she says, “Oh, yes. That makes complete sense to me.”
“What’s the Widow?” Darcy asks, finally deciding to air her suspicions. “Is it some kind of weapon?”
The corner of Natalie’s mouth turns up. “Yes,” she says. “That’s exactly what it is.”
“What do you think, Erik?” Darcy prods as Jane fiddles with equipment in the Science-mobile.
“Think of what?” Erik asks and he really does look completely clueless, like Darcy and Jane haven’t been discussing this all night.
“Tony Stark’s new weapon,” Jane cuts in. “It’s got to be a missile.”
“I think it’s an Iron Woman suit,” Darcy tells him.
“I thought Stark Industries was out of the weapons trade,” Erik says.
“But they said it was a weapon,” Darcy insists.
“Unless it’s a S.H.I.E.L.D. weapon and Tony Stark is just testing it,” Jane points out.
“I think it’s another suit,” Darcy declares. “And I think it’s for Pepper Potts.”
Jane rolls her eyes.
“Why would you assume it’s for Pepper Potts?” Erik asks.
“Because she’s awesome,” Darcy sings.
“Pepper Potts complimented her data compilation,” Jane said, crawling over the seat. “Which I taught her. Also it’s totally a missile.”
“It sounds more like a targeting system,” Erik muses.
“Or maybe it’s an unmanned suit,” Darcy says. “Or unwomaned. Maybe that’s why it’s a widow.”
Erik smiles. “Whatever it turns out to be,” he says, “I hope it does not disappoint you.”
The Widow is a lethal weapon - one in leather dominatrix gear and an artful tumble of red curls. And her name is Natalie. Except when it’s Natalya. Or Natasha. Depending on who is speaking to her. She arrives three days before Pepper and Tony to draft some report for S.H.I.E.L.D. HQ and Clint can’t take his eyes off her. Darcy is absolutely not jealous but she feels pretty fucking stupid and maybe that makes her a little bit hostile.
“Didn’t anyone tell her not to wear leather before Labor Day?” she asks Clint as she lays out materials for some debriefing Coulson wants to hold before Tony Stark arrives.
Darcy can’t help but notice Clint’s eyes track Black Widow as she walks into the room.
“Ex?” she asks, because seriously, it’s obvious.
Clint’s mouth twitches and ouch, it must have been a shitty breakup. “Something like that,” he says.
Tony Stark comes in his own plane. Coulson and Darcy and some guy named Jasons, whom Coulson referred to as a “professional driver” take two SUVs to pick him up.
“Wouldn’t I be a professional driver?” Darcy asks well into the second hour - she totally has self-control. “I mean, I drove Jane and then Jane and Erik to like, extra-terrestrial storm sites. And the Einstein-Rosen Bridge place.”
“Have you been certified by the JSOC Emergency Defensive Transportation course?”Jasons asks.
“That would be kind of like a Masters in professional driving, right?”
“More like a PhD,” Jasons says. He won’t let Darcy turn the radio on. She’s really starting to wish she’d ridden with Coulson. Or that Clint had come along. She wonders of he and Black Widow are doing some training exercise or if they’re trying to passive-aggressively kill each other with their minds.
Tony Stark’s plane is late. Coulson waits patiently, getting status reports and forwarding orders on his PDA. Darcy plays Angry Birds and texts Jane, her mother, and Clint. She’s totally going to get a farmer’s tan from sitting out in the sun with short sleeves.
Finally, the plane lands and Tony Stark walks down the rolling staircase, a glass of whiskey in one hand. Darcy is so-so on the goatee - Thor’s scruffy beard, or Clint’s two-day shadow when he doesn’t shave before their twice-weekly classes are far more to her liking - but Tony’s suit is pretty swanky and he’s not hard on the eyes either. It’s like Darcy’s developing a thing for older guys. Because that’s just exactly what she needs.
But - wow. Pepper Potts is tall and willowy and she’s wearing the most gorgeously cut suit that skims every curve like it was tailor-made for her. And hey, maybe it was. Darcy doesn’t know how much that kind of thing costs but Tony’s like the third richest guy in the world and Pepper was his interim CEO and his number one employee. Also, holy crap, those are the most amazing shoes Darcy has seen on an actual person and not on the Nordstrom’s website and suddenly she wants to be Pepper Potts so hard it hurt.
“Mr. Stark,” Coulson says. He shakes Tony Stark’s hand perfunctorily as Tony sips his drink and squints out across the tarmac and then smiles at Pepper Potts. “Ms. Potts,” he says - almost warmly. “It’s good to see you again.”
“You, too, Agent Coulson,” she replies and Darcy would eavesdrop on that conversation all day long but Tony Stark is inspecting her.
“You must be Doctor Foster,” he says, peering at her face. “I wasn’t expecting you to be so young but I used to hate it when people said that to me. I wasn’t expecting you to be so pretty either, no offense. Coulson’s terrible at giving me the heads-up on these things.”
“This is Darcy Lewis,” Pepper cuts in, circling around Tony and offering her hand to Darcy. “I’m so glad to finally meet you in person,” she says to Darcy, squeezing her hand and then adds quietly to Tony, “she’s Doctor Foster’s assistant.”
“She’s also interning at S.H.I.E.L.D.,” Coulson adds with an actual smile in Darcy’s direction. Darcy’s sure he’s showing off for Pepper Potts. “So if there’s anything you need, just let her know.”
“Right, well, let’s not all stand around staring at the desert,” Tony says, clearly no longer interested in Darcy. “Did I hear there was alien metal to analyze?”
Tony and Pepper go with Jasons and Darcy relocates to Coulson’s SUV. Clint’s sent her a text asking how she likes Tony.
“He’s OK,” Darcy texts back. “But I’d switch teams for Pepper.”
Twenty minutes later, Clint says, “Don’t give up on us all just yet.”
Part 4