you need a rock not a rolling stone, 3/4

[topaz119]

The third time Darcy gets kidnapped by a mad scientist, it is so totally her fault Clint probably won’t ever walk into the same room with her again.

She only wishes she were kidding about that last part, but, yeah, the look on his face when she’d kissed him and said, “Don’t miss,” and crawled out from where he and Steve had stashed her does not bode well for future conversations, much less anything involving a bed and as few clothes as possible.

Still, she doesn’t see that there’s a better choice. She has eyes; she knows both Cap and Clint think Clint’s their best chance to take the moron out. Cap has his hands full coordinating with the cops who are stuck in here with them, making sure they know their guns are useless and trying to keep civilian casualties down (and not-so-incidentally making sure they know Clint is one of the good guys, so nobody tries to take him out when he goes and does his thing.) Natasha is--at best--pinned down somewhere on the other side of the skating rink where the worst damage from the initial blast had fallen. Darcy is doing mental gymnastics to not think about all the other things that might have happened. Even if she’s fine (which she is, Darcy thinks firmly—she's the Black Widow; people have been trying to kill her for years and a lame Silver Surfer/Green Goblin-wannabe is not going to succeed where Hydra and Bullseye and the Hand failed) nobody’s comms are working, and there’s no way to contact her.

That, in Darcy’s opinion, leaves Darcy. Clint probably--okay, fine, definitely--won’t agree and neither will Steve. Natasha probably will, Darcy thinks, but only because she’s stone-cold at times like this and isn’t likely to be swayed by impractical things like hero-complexes. If they both get through this, Darcy is planning on enlisting her for back-up in the inevitable explosion that will masquerade as a conversation. The utter insanity of using Natalia Romanova as the voice of reason is not lost on Darcy, but hey, like Pepper always says: whatever works.

Speaking of Pepper, Darcy can see the flashes and pops that are Iron Man’s repulsors lighting up on the other side of the weird, shimmery canopy-membrane-pod thingy Wannabe threw over the plaza when he dropped in for a visit. And seriously, Darcy has the worst fucking timing ever to decide that this was a good day to go be tourists and ice skate at Rockefeller Center. Now it’s like being on the inside of an electrified jellyfish, ick. Whatever it is, it totally fucks up radio waves and bullet trajectories, and even messes with random pieces of metal like, say, tire irons, that get thrown. (Darcy isn’t going to lie; seeing Cap sling that thing had been impressive, but it hadn’t gone nearly where he’d aimed) and it looks like the same thing is happening on the outside, which means they really are on their own.

Wannabe hasn’t actually made any demands, which Darcy knows doesn’t make either Cap or Clint happy; he’s mostly getting his rocks off by buzzing low over all the people he’s trapped inside the electro-jellyfish. He's flying so low that Darcy’s seen a couple people with nasty burns from whatever the surfboard thingie puts out, which is not only totally vile, but irritating in that it makes it hard to see him until he’s practically right on top of you. But. He’s made an exception to the low flying twice. Twice he’s grabbed people off the ground and then, then he likes to take them and show off what the boogie board from hell can do, up high, so everybody can watch. Again with the totally vile.

It’s pathetically easy to attract Wannabe’s attention: all Darcy has to do is time it so she runs from one hiding place to another just a little in front of where he’s zipping around. The first time, he sees her but doesn’t take the bait, but the second time he zooms in to grab her. Darcy plays it like she’s trying to get away, leads him on for as long as she can, but he does finally lean down and drag her up with him. This would be where her plan gets a little shaky, because Darcy is not particularly fond of heights, especially when she is standing on a souped-up piece of fiberglass with nothing but a crazy moron between her and open air. She reminds herself that she did make that climb into the helicopter not six months earlier. All she has to do now is stand here and be as still as possible. She can do this, easy. Especially since she’s supposed to be terrified. That part she’s got covered, no problem.

Wannabe has some serious issues, no doubt about that. He’s cackling and whooping and generally acting like a frat boy on football Saturday, but he’s doing the same thing he’d done before, the thing she needs him to do now: swooping them up higher, up into the clear. Darcy wishes she’d thought to tie her hair back before she laid herself out as bait; it’s flying around like it’s possessed and she hopes like hell it doesn’t mess Clint up but there’s not a lot she can do about it now.

She’s not in love with the crazy swoops, especially not the ones that go up really high at the end, but closing her eyes only makes it worse. She keeps her attitude firmly in the Of The Good camp, because it is good that he’s doing this. It’s rhythmic and repetitive and exactly what he’s done before, which means Clint’s got it cold and can anticipate where they’re going to be next, which is the whole reason Darcy’s in this stupid mess: to get the crazy moron up and in the clear where her unfortunately soon-to-be-ex- (as in probably-as-soon-as-he-sees-her-next) boyfriend can take him out.

Wannabe thinks he’s in the clear; she knows he does. Whatever he’s doing is messing with everything he thinks can be used as a weapon, except she knows Clint has two obsidian-tipped arrows in his bag. (Darcy absolutely takes back the bitchy look she’d given him when she’d seen them before everything had gone to hell. At the time she’d been operating under an It’s supposed to be a *date*, why are there weapons involved? attitude. She’s totally over that now. Really.) The arrows are prototype-y and they’re never going to be his favorites, not by a long shot (that honor would go to the ones that blow up, because, well, he’s a guy and he likes shit that goes boom) but he’d test-fired one down undercover and it had flown straight and true, no interference from the electro-jellyfish. That’s when Darcy had made the executive decision that if somebody needed to get this guy into the clear, better her than some civilian.

Darcy’s hung around the firing range Clint has down on the lower levels of the Mansion enough to know he can shoot anything, anywhere. (So it maybe gets her a little hot sitting around watching his arms while he takes target practice. Like a jury of her peers would convict her of bad taste on that count.) She’s seen him hit superballs thrown by Cap as they ricochet off the walls and floor while the lights strobe on and off; hitting an actual body should be cake, even if it is flying around doing everything but actual flips.

She wishes he’d get on with it already--though she absolutely trusts his timing, she adds, on the off chance that her thinking it rushes him and makes him screw up.

That would be bad.

Of course, it would also be bad if Wannabe gets tired of her and drops her overboard like he’d done with the other two. Cap had caught one, but the first one--Darcy isn’t thinking about him. She’s also not thinking about how she’s starting to get a little airsick from the twists and turns, because she’s pretty sure puking will get her kicked to the curb pretty damn fast, but she would like to note that this suckering-the-bad-guy-in thing is not for wimps.

She’d also like to note that while she’s made some snippy comments in the past about adrenaline junkies and their lack of sanity, she maybe gets it a little better now. She might die, but, wow, the rush she’s getting is a hell of a trade-off. Wannabe starts spiraling them down, tighter and tighter circles as he goes, and Darcy can feel her brain kicking into some hyper-awareness mode where every single thing is sharp and clear and distinct, to the point that she actually sees Cap on the ground under her, sees the arrow Clint’s fired right before it buries itself in Wannabe’s throat, the obsidian so insanely sharp it’s through and out before he can blink.

The controls for the energy field tumble out of his hand as he crumples and falls, and in the crazy seconds that follow, Darcy trying desperately to keep her balance on the careening board, she wills the damn membrane to come down, because she would really like to see Iron Man in front of her rightthefucknow. She makes it through three of the crazy spirals before she staggers too far back and slips off the board, and holy Jesus, if she thought she was tripping on adrenaline before, the rush that slams through her at feeling nothing under her foot lets her know she wasn’t even close. She makes a desperate grab for the board, fingers scrabbling at the edge, breaking her fall just enough to tease her before it flips on its edge and sends her flailing back into nothing.

Oh, shit, Darcy thinks, but before she can form the hope that Cap will get her, something hits her and lifts her up in an arc. A voice she doesn’t know says, “Hellllo, gorgeous, sorry to drop in and then run, but… Hey, Cap, catch!” and she’s falling again, only this time Cap is definitely there under her and there is a happy ending to her adventure after all. Judging from the look on Cap’s face, there’s going to be some yelling in her happy ending, but hi, anything that doesn’t include Darcy as a pancake on the ice rink at Rockefeller Center is happy-happy-joy-joy by her.

Cap sets her on her feet, giving her a good shake and a quick once-over. “Are you--?” he starts, his voice concerned, before there’s a shout and he turns away to catch another something that Darcy realizes is the the sled/board/thingie all wrapped up in a web, which would make the guy who’d snatched her out of mid-air--yep, Spiderman. He does a flashy little flip and lands next to Cap with a flourish. “Did he--?” Cap turns back to Darcy.

“I’m fine,” Darcy says, and the lines around Cap’s eyes ease off, and really, Darcy thinks, that’s so Cap. She’ll be lucky if Clint doesn’t kill her where she stands, but Cap is worried about her. She looks up and sees sky, and realizes the barrier is down right about the same time that Iron Man comes screaming up, dropping down to land next to them with a thud that betrays his agitation—normally, he lands as lightly as a feather—and pushes his face plate up.

“I told you this place would be lousy with tourists,” he says to Cap, in an offhand voice that belies the intensity in his eyes.

“We’re good,” Cap says and hands over the boogie board, which, predictably enough, sets off the ooo, shiny new tech alert. Possibly literally, as Darcy wouldn’t put it past Tony to have actually programmed a little ping for moments such as this.

“Another OSCORP knock-off--why am I not surprised this guy is one of your special friends?” he says to Spiderman.

Darcy loses whatever the answer is in the craziness that’s the leading edge of the SHIELD team and what looks like half of NYPD getting to them, the usual complement of SUVs and dark suits, with the added bonus of Colonel Fury striding around. Somebody drops a blanket over her shoulders, which she kind of huddles under, not because she’s all that cold--her heart rate is still screaming along and she might not come down from the rush, like, ever--but more so she can blend in with all the other civilians. Rush or not, she’d rather not have to talk to Fury about this--well, ever would be best, but that’s not likely, so putting it off as long as possible would be nice. Totally.

She’s not doing too badly at the staying-on-the-downlow plan, but then the minor riot in the background resolves itself into Clint and Natasha ignoring the crime-scene tape NYPD has strung up and pushing through the line of agents.

“One goddamned minute,” Clint’s snarling at the guy who’s babbling at him about debriefing as he scans the group around Cap. He zeroes right in on Darcy and veers off toward her, and it takes Darcy less than a second to forget about how much she doesn’t want to be noticed and how they’d agreed to keep them low-key and quiet and how mad she’s sure Clint’s going to be. She bolts for him at a dead run, not slowing down until she crashes into him.

“Jesus fucking Christ, Darcy,” Clint says, kissing her hard and desperate, and all the crazy energy that’s been ricocheting through Darcy’s blood shimmers and sharpens and focuses the feel of him against her. She’s digging her hands so hard into him--his arms, his shoulders, his back--that she has to be leaving bruises but he doesn’t seem to notice, much less care.

“What the hell was that stunt?” Clint sounds furious but he keeps right on kissing her, which is, no duh, the most important part, the part Darcy isn’t about to ignore to answer, not until her head is spinning and she has to break away to gasp in air. And even then she’s still got her mouth on his skin.

“I don’t,” Clint says, sounding as breathless as she feels, “I don’t know whether I’m about to fuck you into next week or put you over my knee and spank some sense into you.”

The world kind of goes away for a couple of seconds, or Darcy’s brain shorts out, or something, because about all she can do is stand there and stare at him, but then things more or less go back to normal and she thinks, Why is that an either/or proposition?

Clint’s hands tighten on her shoulders and there’s a choking sound behind her. Darcy sighs. “Fuck, I said that out loud, didn’t I?”

She really doesn’t want to look, but it’s like a trainwreck--impossible not to turn her head and metaphorically peek through her fingers. Tony smirks at her, looking her up and down with a cheerfully obscene glint in his eyes while--oh, jeez, Darcy thinks--Captain America is fifteen shades of red.

“Not one word,” Clint bites out as Tony opens his mouth, which of course is only going to egg Tony on. Darcy knows that; to judge from the resigned look Steve’s giving him, Steve knows it, too. Hell, Darcy knows Clint knows better, but if she needed any proof that he’s not thinking, she just got it. “No shit, Sta--”

“Debrief?” Coulson says from the other side, and Darcy has never been happier to see the array of drones behind him, enough that there’s a team for everyone, no waiting.

“You got it,” Clint snaps, not looking away from the stare-down he’s got going with Tony. He’s still got one hand wrapped around Darcy’s wrist; he doesn’t let go when he starts toward the row of SUVs and clearly, neither of the two agents shadowing him have the nerve to bring it up. Coulson arches an eyebrow at him, but doesn’t push it when Clint keeps moving, Darcy scrambling along and keeping up with him despite how her entire brain is focused on her wrist and his hand.

“Do the group interviews first,” Coulson says, waving Steve and Natasha along with them, and points Tony over to where Spiderman is doing his best hey-I’m-the-independent-contractor-in-this-scenario-why-do-I-have-to-talk-to-anyone act. “Find out who the hell this guy is so we can start figuring out what he did to our tech.”

“Yeah,” Tony says. “I’d like to know that, too.”

“The director gets very twitchy when we have to rely on volcanic glass to resolve the situation, no matter how tight the shot was,” Coulson says, to no one in particular.

“Thanks, Phil,” Clint mutters as they go past. “I owe you.”

“We’ll be discussing repayment extensively in the next few days, Agent Barton,” Coulson answers, his perfect deadpan marred only by how his mouth twitches toward a smile when Clint rolls his eyes. “Ms. Lewis--I'm especially looking forward to your portion of the mission report.” Darcy shrugs at him and kind of returns the almost-smile, but Clint isn’t slowing down and she sure as shit isn’t interested in stopping him, so there’s no time for anything more.

They debrief in one of the SHIELD vans, full recording in process as they go rapid-fire through every minute, from before the explosion that kicked off the “incident” all the way through the rest of the team gaining access to the area once the membrane was down. Darcy expects to be shunted aside, but the agent in charge not only doesn’t blink at having her there, but she clearly expects Darcy’s full participation. And--the thing is, if someone had told Darcy she’d be in with the drones and actually fascinated by the experience, she’d have demanded some of whatever they were on at the time. It’s true, though: watching them shepherd the other three in a runthrough of the afternoon’s events is mindblowing. Natasha knows the time, down to tens of seconds at some points (like how long it took Wannabe to make one of his swoops); Cap can lay out the entire scene, including crowd densities, without so much as taking a breath; and Clint’s level of detail about the light and air movement variations getting through the membrane is, frankly, kind of scary. It all works together, and they have some kind of shorthand, especially Natasha and Clint. Natasha’s eyebrow alone says more than any ten soliloquies, and Clint not only translates it, but expands on it without so much as a second to think.

So, yeah, fascinating, and Darcy is saying that even with Clint’s thumb stroking gently along the inside of her wrist and the last thing he said to her pretty much on a constant loop in the back of her brain. And yay for her, she manages decent answers and observations when they get to her own part in the whole stupid mess. She had no idea she had such multitasking capabilities.

They lose the debriefing team at SHIELD, plus Natasha and Cap: Natasha because she was apparently unconscious for a while (less than two minutes by her count, but she does grudgingly admit to losing time) and it’s SOP to get checked out for that, and Cap because Natasha doesn’t give a flying fuck about procedures, standard or otherwise, and he doesn’t trust her not to bypass the medical wing entirely. He doesn’t say that, of course, but he doesn’t bother trying to come up with a cover story either, just gets out of the van and shadows Natasha into the building. Darcy might be hallucinating, but she thinks he may have a hand on the small of her back as they disappear through the door.

It’s quiet in the van, and dark, the sun hidden behind clouds and nearly gone for the day in the first place. Clint leans forward to talk with the agent driving them, filling in the gaps of what had been happening on the outside. Darcy tucks herself into a corner and listens, letting the quiet voices wash over her, losing a little time of her own until they’re turning in at the Mansion.

Clint and the driver go through some complicated fist-bumping, hand-slapping ritual as they get out of the car, about which Darcy can only roll her eyes. The driver is apparently somewhat new and, to Darcy’s thinking, a little giddy at having had half the team in his van in his first week at being fully Avenger-qualified, even if he spent most of the drive behind the security shield. He extends that giddiness to her, too, which is nice of him considering she’s mostly nothing more than a semi-innocent bystander in all the heroics, so she gives him a little wave as he drives off.

For all his seeming to have chilled out, Clint still hasn’t let go of her yet, though he’s down to only having his fingers tangled up in hers. Darcy isn’t complaining, mind you, but now that they’re alone, she’s starting to figure out that he’s mellow less because he’s actually calmed down and more because he’s in that zone he goes when he’s shooting, where he’s all focus and Zen, no matter what hell is raining down on him. While she’s happy enough not to have had a screaming fight in front of everyone, she’d just as soon not be hanging out with a bot version of her boyfriend, so she waves off all the well-meaning inquiries from the staff and gets them up to her room as fast as possible.

“Okay,” she says, locking the door behind them and leaning up to press a kiss against his mouth, quick and mostly chaste, so she at least has that to remember. “Come back from wherever good snipers go to make the shot and have at it.”

Clint tilts his head at her, and she’s ready, she truly is, for everything she’s known would be coming from the second she decided she was the one who was going, but he doesn’t say anything, only leans in and kisses her. The first one is careful, almost hesitant; when she sighs into it, the next ones press her back against the door, each one slow and thorough, one after another after another.

“Clint,” she says when he lets her up for air, her voice gone soft. She intends to tell him it’s okay if he’s mad, to go ahead and get it over with, but it’s only his name that she sighs.

“Shh,” he murmurs against her jaw, her temple, the corner of her eye. “Shh.” He kisses her mouth again, quick and light, ending with a tiny bite on her lower lip that’s just hard enough to make her jump. “Okay?” he breathes.

“So okay.” Darcy’s a little amazed she can answer; that bite woke up everything that’s been simmering along since they’d shoved it on the back burner and played nice with the drones. She meets him head-on for the next kiss, and decides it’s possible that ‘woke up’ is not exactly right. ‘Threw gasoline onto coals hot enough that the vapor ignited and blew the actual liquid up,’ might be better, because it isn’t like Clint normally treats her like she’s made of spun glass--or at least he doesn’t treat her that way all the time--but this is way the hell the other side of that coin.

It’s hard to tell whether he’s kissing Darcy or Darcy’s kissing him, not that it matters, not that anything matters but his mouth on hers, his tongue pushing into her mouth with a fast, rough rhythm that she knows he’ll echo when he’s actually fucking her, which is going to be sooner rather than later to judge from how he’s sliding her up the wall, grinding into her and bunching her skirt up as she goes. Darcy gets her legs wrapped around his waist and takes over keeping herself in place, the wall at her back and Clint, all of him, every goddamn inch of him hard against her in front. She spares a thought for her bed, not ten steps away, but then he’s shoving her underwear out of the way and everything that’s not him pushing up into her is gone.

“Okay?” Clint grits out, holding himself still until Darcy finds the brain power to gasp, “Move,” and he takes her at her word, going in hard and deep and letting her twist until she’s got the angle she needs, so every thrust gets her just right, one after another, so good, so fucking perfect she’s coming before she even knows it. He fucks her through it, not slowing down or changing anything and she never comes down from the first time before she’s there again, biting and clawing at his shoulders, his back, grinding down on his cock until he’s coming with her, his arms hard around her and his face buried into the curve of her neck and shoulder.

*

Darcy jolts herself awake from dreams of windows and the helicarrier and falling and falling--yow, her subconscious is so unsubtle, not that this is any kind of a newsflash--and lies in bed until her heart stops racing. Clint is, surprisingly enough, dead to the world on the other side of the mattress. He still doesn’t like to sleep close to her in case it turns out to be one of those nights, which she gets but remains deeply not-wild about the reasons for--but at least that means her stupid brain hasn’t screwed up a semi-normal night of sleep for him, too. They’ve progressed to the point where he’ll throw an arm out and keep a hand on her arm or shoulder or hip; Darcy is a little surprised how much she likes having that little bit of contact. Give them another couple of years and who knows, Darcy thinks. There could be middle-of-the-night cuddling.

For something she never thought she cared much about, she is a little too invested in the possibility of it happening.

“Chill, girl,” she murmurs, sliding carefully out from under the comforter and surveying the scene. Their clothes are scattered along where they’d stumbled from the door to the bed; she picks everything up and smooths it out as best she can, all except the hopeless bits (his button-down, her underwear).

Darcy’s standing there staring thoughtfully at the shirt when Clint rolls up on one elbow--because of course he can’t sleep through someone moving around, not even if he’s behind fifteen levels of security. Darcy gets that, too, but it doesn’t mean she doesn’t ache a little for him. “Hey,” he says, his voice sleep-rough and low. It does a number on Darcy’s insides, but that’s not anything new.

“Hey,” Darcy says back, which is just the height of snappy dialog, but it’s the middle of the night and it’s been a long day. Plus, she’s kinda had her brains fucked out. And not to be blowing her own horn, but so has he, so she doesn’t think he’ll give her any grief.

“Do I even want to know what that shirt did to deserve that look?”

“I’m trying to decide how tacky it’d be to save it.” Darcy slides her arms into the sleeves and gets the one remaining button closed. (For the record, it’s his fault the buttons are gone--once the whatever-the-hell-that-had-been had gotten its edge taken off by the fucking against the door and they were stumbling/staggering toward the bed, she’d been trying to get the stupid shirt off of him the socially acceptable way, but he’d gotten impatient.)

“Today rates a souvenir?”

“More like a trophy,” Darcy says, crawling back into bed. Clint shifts over and makes space for her, and she fits herself against him. “Possibly a Mine-Mine-All-Mine declaration, but I’m not admitting to anything.”

“There goes that brain again,” Clint says, his arm heavy and warm across her waist and hip.

“The part you like?”

Clint laughs, a low, soft rumble, and his fingers dig into the spot on her side that makes her squirm, which is a pain but also means there’s extra skin-to-skin contact. Aggravating, but ultimately worth it. There’s a metaphor in there, Darcy’s sure, but there are other, more important things to deal with, like getting a little of her own back (one properly timed, barely there brush of her fingertips along the inside of his arm can make him jump) and then getting them both resettled before she adds, “Unlike earlier.”

“Yeah,” Clint says, and oh, yeah, there’s everything she’s been bracing for. He doesn’t move, though, or try to shift her away from him. “Yeah, that part is not my favorite right now.”

“It was better it was me,” Darcy says. “Better than somebody who had no idea what was going on or that you were going to take him out or—“

“Darcy--”

“Or even if they did know,” Darcy says, a little bit louder and a lot faster, because she’s probably only going to get one shot at this and she didn’t expect to get this far, and she is so not letting some lame supervillain wannabe screw this thing with Clint up, not without a fight. “Even if they did see Cap and recognize him and know things might turn out okay, they probably saw him not be able to take that creep out with the tire iron. They wouldn’t know you, either of you, and I do, and okay, fine, I was scared, but... I knew you guys had it figured out.”

“Sweetheart,” Clint sighs, and hey, at least she’s still that. “We had a thought, not a plan.”

“I have clearances now,” Darcy says. “I know how many times you haven’t even had a thought, so I’m not seeing where this is all that big of a deal.”

“You hadn’t thrown yourself out there any of those times,” Clint says. “I know that’s not supposed to make a difference, but it does.” There isn’t really anything Darcy can say except that she’s really, seriously happy to be here, and she’s pretty sure if she says that, she’ll cry and that’ll make things ten times more awkward, so she just burrows closer. If neither one of them sleeps much the rest of the night, being wrapped around each other for hours and hours is not a trade-off Darcy’s going to regret.

* * *

Darcy doesn’t have anywhere to be the next morning, so when Clint leaves to go talk to the weapons guys about their funky little experimental arrowhead and how it saved the world--hey, geeks deserve strokes, too--she takes a sinfully long shower and then takes her super-special Stark e-reader off to the greenhouse to get a start on plowing through the last however many thousand pages of assigned reading. Grad school, whoo.

The sun is struggling to break through the clouds when Steve finds her, and she’s been braced for Clint’s anger and Coulson’s sarcasm and possibly even Fury’s wrath, but all of that evaporates in the face of Captain America. He never raises his voice, but he doesn’t have to; he just starts with how he’s grateful that she’s okay, but disappointed that she chose to put herself--and the rest of the team--at risk, and never looks back.

There are a couple of sections in the middle where Darcy feels like she could make a point or two in her favor, but then Cap finishes up with, “The worst thing I ever have to do is send a team member into a situation where we’re not sure we can get them out. But it’s nearly as bad when I have to tell someone to take the shot no matter who’s in the line of fire. Sometimes I don’t have a choice, and that’s one thing, but it’s something very different when my hand is forced,” and she’s toast.

She manages to keep it together long enough for him to make his way back out of the greenhouse, but not even Natasha coming in as he goes out is enough to keep Darcy from putting her head down on the table in front of her.

“Oh, my God, that sucked.” Darcy keeps her head down, but when it’s apparent that Natasha isn’t taking the hint and moving on, she wills back all the tears and looks up. Natasha’s standing there, eyeing Darcy speculatively and while she isn’t exactly radiating sympathy and compassion, neither does she look like she’s about to pile on and add to the list of all the ways Darcy’s screwed up. “Why is it worse when he doesn’t yell than when Clint does?”

“It’s the sincere face,” Natasha says, with a certain edge. “He uses it very effectively.”

“Understatement of the year,” Darcy mutters. She sits up a little more and sighs. “Aren’t you supposed to be at Medical, letting them monitor you?”

“It was... tedious,” Natasha answers, and if Darcy didn’t know better she’d say that Black Widow was sulking. Just a bit. “Under ordinary circumstances...” She waves her hand and Darcy nods, as she’s read enough--and gotten Clint to confirm the really entertaining shit--to know that a bored Natasha is not someone you can really contain. “But... there was that face, and we compromised,” she says, almost spitting the word out. “He stayed with me for a few hours, but enough is enough. It’s not as though I’ve never been unconscious before.”

“But you’re here now,” Darcy says quickly, which turns out to really not be a good thing to say, because apparently, somehow Natasha had also agreed to keep close to the Mansion and--oh, god, no wonder she’s sulking--take it easy. Darcy is starting to seriously wonder about Cap, because powers of persuasion that strong could tempt even someone with his admirable moral code into less-than-honorable actions.

“Clint should be back pretty soon,” Darcy offers. “You know, unless the geeks have something new for him to try--” Too late, Darcy realizes her mistake and closes her mouth so fast her teeth click together. “Or, you could, I don’t know, hit the rock-climbing wall? Or is that too strenuous--” Darcy’s babbling, but the look on Natasha’s face at the prospect of somebody who is not her getting new toys is a little unnerving. Or possibly the stuff of nightmares; it’s getting hard to judge these days.

“I’m sure some people would object,” Natasha mutters darkly. “But since you’re here, I have a proposition for you.”

Darcy’s fairly certain she’s going to regret it, but since this is the only real, non-drunk conversation she’s ever had with Natasha, who is, as far as Darcy can tell, one of possibly three people in the world Clint will listen to, she says, “I’m listening.”

“You need to learn how to fight,” Natasha says, and, okay, that’s not at all what Darcy’s expecting, especially when Natasha adds, “I’ll teach you.”

“Did Clint put you up to this?”

“No,” Natasha says slowly. “No, he hasn’t gotten past all the things he... The things he can’t bring himself to think about yet. I can, though. That’s what partners are for.”

“So, when you say I need to learn how to fight, you mean like you?” Darcy’s not running herself down, but there is just no way that’s ever going to happen.

“No, not like me.” Natasha smiles at the thought, but not unkindly. “I mean down and dirty, with whatever you can find, never giving up, no matter what, because lasting even fifteen seconds more can be enough to let someone--” She doesn’t say Clint, but she means it and Darcy knows it-- “get to you in time. It won’t be pretty, or easy, or have a trendy name, but it will be effective.”

“Okay,” Darcy says, and it’s her turn to smile. Natasha clearly expected her to be more of a hard sell. “I don’t like giving up, not one bit. And I’m getting really tired of not being able to go anywhere without the drones.”

“Good,” Natasha says briskly. “Upper gymnasium, five minutes. Wear something you can move around in.”

Darcy starts to ask if that might violate the taking-it-easy clause in Natasha’s compromise, but then thinks about how easily Natasha can take down basically everybody except Cap and the Asgardians (and even then they have to work for it) and manages not to make an idiot of herself as she goes to change so she can get her ass righteously kicked.

* * *

Clint comes and finds her, or what’s left of her, in the whirlpool spa in the changing rooms. Darcy kind of whimpers at him, because, ohmygod, even her jaw hurts. Words are way too complicated.

“Tasha swore you were alive when she left,” Clint says, lounging against the door frame. “I might have to call bullshit on that, though.”

“Today was just learning how to fall,” Darcy moans. “I may not make it when there’s actual hitting involved.”

Clint laughs and reaches for one of the enormous, fluffy robes they keep on hooks by the spa and the sauna and steam room. Once again: excellent infrastructure. “Come on, before you drown.” He reaches down and gives her an arm up, and wraps her in the soft cotton, dropping a kiss on the top of her head. “You want me to carry you?”

“No,” Darcy sighs. “Let’s save that for, y’know, when I’ve actually done something more than fall down for a couple of hours.” She leans up and kisses him. “Thank you, though.” She doesn’t add that he’s her knight in shining armor, because he’d never let her live it down (seriously, she must be half-delirious; she might never let herself live it down) but she totally thinks it.

It takes forever to get back to her room, but that’s what happens when your top speed could be beaten by a slug. Clint makes her drink a bottle of water on the way because (he says) it’ll flush the lactic acid out of her muscles and make her less sore in the morning. Darcy suspects he does it more to make her have to pee and thus motivate her to get to her suite faster.

“Jesus, you’re actually serious about that,” Clint says as she limps into the bathroom. “How does your brain come up with this stuff?”

“It’s a gift,” Darcy informs him.

“It’s something, all right.” There’s a little bit of an edge still under the easy teasing, but it’s more resigned than unforgiving, and it’s not like Darcy hasn’t given him a variation on the same attitude herself after one or another of the more insane mission reports she’s read.

On her way back out of the bathroom, she snags his shirt from the night before off the counter next to the sink. It was a good decision to keep it, she decides. The declaration of mine-mine-all-mine clearly trumps the lack of style, even if they’re the only two who see it. He holds it for her while she tries to make her arm muscles work so she can get them into the sleeves. Definitely a good decision, she thinks as he smooths the cotton down over her hips, his hand sliding easily inside where there aren’t any buttons left.

“I would totally be dragging you off to have my wicked way with you right now,” Darcy says. “Except I’m probably going to be unconscious before we can get going with anything really fun. I had no idea falling down took so much energy.”

“Tasha is... thorough,” Clint says with a grin.

“I think the word you’re looking for is ‘ruthless,’” Darcy says, crawling into her bed with a sigh. It can’t be all that late, but Clint settles in next to her.

“That means she likes you,” Clint says. Darcy thinks it means she doesn’t think Darcy’s out to fuck Clint over and is tolerating her for him, but she’ll leave that topic for another day. Instead, she eases herself over until she can curl around Clint, because in the middle of all the up and down in the gym, Natasha had said more than a few interesting things, the most important of which (in Darcy’s mind) was that Clint was bracing for Darcy to not be able to deal with the realities of him being Hawkeye.

Darcy’s already figured out that words don’t mean a lot to Clint: he’ll listen, but he won’t hear, much less believe, not until actions back everything up. Since Darcy has always been a fan of putting her money where her mouth is, this is not a huge problem. It’s like an extra-special bonus offering: the more she drapes herself over him, the more she makes it so she can do it again. Total win-win scenario.

*

Life goes on, complete with the usual superhero emergencies and the mundane issues of life at the Mansion. Tony has a small setback with... something, who really knows what, except that it kind of blows up the lab, and sends him storming off to California to see if he can blow up the lab there, too. Steve goes with him, and Darcy both misses knowing he’s around and is relieved that they don’t have to make awkward conversation until they get past how “disappointed” he is with her. Right in the middle of stressing about finals--yes, Darcy kicked ass as an undergrad, but that wasn’t Columbia, where everything and everyone is amped to the max--Coulson finally manages to render her speechless (with horror, Darcy would like to note) when he tells her that not only does SHIELD have a holiday party, she’s required to be there.

Well, okay, he doesn’t say ‘required,’ he just gives her hastily assembled ‘but, but--finals!’ excuse a deeply unimpressed shrug and says, “We’ve found that it’s excellent for morale, so long as there isn’t a situation in progress. Bring a date.”

Darcy goes home and throws herself on a random couch and broods. It’s hardly a secret that she and Clint are--together. Dating. Whatever. But there’s a difference between that being sort of random gossip (even gossip fueled by shaky phone video of the two of them after the ‘situation’ at Rockefeller Center) and it being officially official like showing up at an office party together (seriously, what is Fury thinking? An office party? With the drones? What was she thinking, to be working there?).

Clint arrives before she can talk herself into a massive flounce and going back to be Jane’s Pop-Tart assistant, but when she says, “Office party. You. Me. Shit, I forgot to ask if it’s black tie,” he sighs like it’s this giant imposition and she maybe kind of loses it. There is some shrillness involved on her part and increasingly monosyllabic responses on his, and it’s like aliens have taken over her brain (which, given all the other weird shit that’s happened, might not be all that unlikely) when she hears herself snap, “I realize I’m not really your type, but if being seen in public with me is going to be that difficult, say the word and I’ll get someone who won’t find it such a burden.”

“You know what, let’s play this one by ear,” Clint says through gritted teeth. He turns and stalks off and Darcy knows, absolutely knows his deal has nothing to do with her. It’s the same damn issue she has herself, the whole trying to put together something that feels increasingly real in the middle of this fucking Avenger/SHIELD circus. She has no idea where all that crap that came flying out of her mouth came from. Worse, she has no time to go fix it, not with her first final in the morning and a paper due the day after that. She tries, but when she goes by his suite later that night, Jarvis tells her he’s off-site.

“Is there a--you know?” She’s fairly certain nothing official’s come up, but she has to ask.

“Nothing of which I have been made aware,” Jarvis answers promptly. “I believe it is a personal trip.”

They’ve already talked about sleeping separately during her finals--Clint’s idea, because she doesn’t need (he says) to be dealing with extra sleep challenges--and how it’s probably not a bad time for him to go run carrier quals. Darcy doesn’t think she actually agreed to the stupid plan, but apparently it’s in process.

“Son of a bitch,” Darcy mutters, because her timing seriously is for shit these days. There’s a second or two of frozen silence, so she adds, “Not you, of course, J.”

“Of course,” Jarvis echoes, and Darcy throws up her hands (literally as well as figuratively) and goes back to her room alone. She slides into Clint’s shirt and thinks about texting him a picture of it, kind of a preliminary peace offering or maybe just keeping the lines of communication open, but the potential for Stark-related account hacking is high and Darcy so does not need anything like that floating around cyberspace.

The final happens, and the paper, too, though by the time she gets to the final polish there’s a dull pounding at the base of her skull and she’s ready to gouge her own eyes out. The drone that gets her back to campus is the guy who’d driven them home after the Rockefeller Center fiasco. He’s a lot less giddy to be on what’s basically a babysitting run, for which Darcy doesn’t blame him in the least, but he’s still nice and this time Darcy gets a name (Joe, after his dad and granddad, who’d actually seen Captain America and the Howling Commandos during the war. It’s killing Darcy’s Joe not to be able to share any of the details of his job but he still says he knows his granddad is proud. Darcy may have to re-think the less-giddy assessment.)

Joe walks her up to the classroom and does the required recon before he lets her in and says he’ll wait for her right outside. Darcy means to be in and out; she’s already annoyed as fuck that this professor insists on paper copies, hand-delivered rather than taking an email, but it doesn’t end there. No, the good doctor wants to chat with her about her ‘unique position with respect to one of the more fascinating federal shadow agencies.’

Darcy manages not to roll her eyes; it doesn’t take a Stark-level IQ to recognize the smoothly-worded BS for what it is: unbridled fanboy cover. Briefly, she wonders what he’d think if she told him that in the last month alone, she’s gotten yelled at by Captain America, leered at by Iron Man (it’s Tony’s default, not something Darcy takes personally--though he’d really liked the spanking slip-up), smacked around by Black Widow, and been a bitch to Hawkeye. All she needs is a Hulk-Smash and she’ll have a matched set.

Instead, Darcy can’t help but think about Joe, who’s not only doing his job with a kick-ass attitude, boring parts and all, but who also isn’t telling the one person in the world who’d be most excited to hear Avenger-related details, because security really is that damn important. She looks at her prof steadily, and with as much of a Bitch, please attitude as she can find, until he flushes and mutters something about how he knows she can’t say anything. The more she thinks about it, the more it pisses her off that he assumes she’ll just chatter away, so she gets herself out of the room before she says anything that’ll mess up her grade. With the mood she’s in, she’s not going to be remotely tactful. She makes a mental note to tell Coulson that this guy is an idiot; she hopes they don’t rely on his “expert” assessments for anything too important. All of which is to say, she’s in one mother of a mood when she comes into the hall and finds Clint waiting for her, shoulders propped against the wall like he’s there for the duration.

“Where’s Joe?”

“With the car.” Clint’s voice is as quiet as Darcy’s. “Didn’t figure we’d need an audience for this.”

“No, and speaking of, walk, because my professor would stroke out if he saw you here. He’s definitely the type who could ID you even without the uniform.”

Clint rolls off the wall without comment and follows her down the side staircase and out the door. It’s cold and the wind is sharp, but it smells like snow and that inexplicably cheers Darcy. Either that, or it’s Clint, but she’s going to pretend she has some self-control and let it be the weather change.

“I don’t know what you think my type is, but I’m pretty much right where I want to be,” Clint says with one quick glance at her before he goes back on threat-assessment detail.

“Yeah,” Darcy sighs. “It’s--I kind of lost it there for a while, sorry. I’m blaming Coulson and his ‘Bring a date’ edict.”

“I’m always up for blaming Phil,” Clint says, and if he’s not quite giving her his usual smirk, it’s close enough that Darcy doesn’t hesitate to reach over and link her arm around his for the rest of the walk over to where Joe’s waiting with the car.

“I’m pretty much right where I want to be, too,” Darcy says, because it doesn’t matter if he doesn’t put a lot of faith into words; she’s never going to think it’s a bad idea to use them as often as possible. As he opens the door for her, he gives her a little half-smile, one of the ones that he usually saves for when he’s made sure everybody is clear and safe and coming home, one of the ones Darcy isn’t even sure he knows he’s smiling. She smiles back regardless, because there aren’t words for how much she likes being that deep into his world.

***


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