You Can Steal Something (That's Already Yours)
When Pietro Maximoff first walked into Avengers tower, Darcy Lewis was too busy doing very important things to stare at the admittedly gorgeous Sokovian.
Pietro Maximoff, on the other hand, was not at all too busy to stare at the back of the beautiful woman dancing in the communal kitchen as she cooked. A perfect row of cupcakes decorated in red, blue, and silver icing sat invitingly on the kitchen counter. His gaze flickered furiously between her backside and the cupcakes. Wanda, like a good sister, elbowed him viciously in the ribs, casing him to let out a loud shriek.
Darcy jumped at the sound, ripping her earphones out as she spun around. Pietro was immediately by her side, steadying her with one hand, a smirk the perfect expression on his already mischievous face. Darcy found herself melting unconsciously into his chest at his warm, confident touch.
"What is a beautiful girl doing here all by herself?" he asked smoothly, in an accent that had yet to fail him when it came to the ladies.
So he was very surprised when the gorgeous woman snorted, and pushed herself off his chest.
"I'd have to be pretty damn drunk to fall for a line that bad," Darcy laughed, dusting flour covered hands off on her pants.
"Pietro Maximoff, right?" she asked, still grinning, "I'm Darcy. Clint warned me you had a thing for one liners. Though I got the impression you had a little more originality than that."
"Barton would not know originality if it shot him in the ass," Pietro snapped, crossing his arms across his broad chest.
"And neither would my brother," Wanda's quiet voice said. Both turned to see the small woman staring at them pensively, a tiny wrinkle between her brows. Pietro immediately frowned at his sister, as if silently asking her if everything was okay. She didn't say anything back, but Darcy was suddenly filled with an unsure feeling, bordering on nausea. Wanda blinked, and the feeling was gone leaving Darcy feeling slightly stunned.
"Our rooms, where are they?" he asked Darcy sharply, rushing to his sister's side.
"Uh, your apartment's down the hall. Tony said you were rooming together?" she said, surprised at his abrupt change in attitude. Where was the lighthearted flirt from a second ago? Nevertheless, she set off down the hall.
"We are not used to being separated," Pietro said, eyes still studying his sister's face as he followed Darcy down the hall, a gentle arm wrapped around Wanda's shoulders.
Darcy held the door open for them, Wanda walking inside as her frown deepened, Pietro following. He turned around, and Darcy was surprised by how closed off his face was.
"You can go now," he said, shutting the door in her face.
"Wow," Darcy muttered, frowning at the door, "I'd need a shit ton of vodka," she muttered to herself, walking back into the kitchen. Though she hoped Wanda was okay, Pietro's suddenly dismissive attitude toward her hurt, a lot more than a stranger's dislike should. What had caused him to become so closed off?
As she reached the bench, a door creaked as it opened, and a wind swept around the open communal space, sending her hair flying in front of her face, obscuring her vision.
She spat her hair out of her mouth, and haphazardly tugged it out from behind her glasses, staring at the fluttering curtains in front of her. She wasn't sure if that particular shade was Iron Man red, or royal opulence vermillion. She wouldn't put Stark past either.
But for the life of her, she couldn't figure out what had just happened. Or what the hell was wrong with Stark.
Wind whistled through the pristine halls again, and Pietro was in front of her, the same smirk decorating his face. But even in the split second, Darcy could detect another emotion lurking in his eyes, something oddly familiar to regret.
"Wh-?" she began, blinking as he bent down and kissed her briefly on the tip of her nose without saying a word. In another blink, he was gone.
Darcy found herself staring blankly at the swaying red curtains. Her hand went up to her nose. The usually cold tip was still warm.
Deciding that the tingling in her lady-parts was definitely not appropriate, especially for someone who apparently didn't know how to say sorry, she gritted her teeth and marched into the kitchen. To find half of her iced cupcakes gone, along with the bowl of cake batter she had been mixing.
"Asshole," she decided firmly, never mind that she made them for him anyway.
Over the next two weeks, Darcy rarely spotted the Maximoff twins, and one was never without the other. When she did sit down in the communal game room to watch Galavant (there is something to be said for darkly humorous musicals) two sets of eyes drilled into her head from a shadowy corner. She couldn't help but wonder exactly what it was that had caused Wanda to seem so unnerved when they first met. Had she looked into the darkest corners of Darcy's mind, and seen something lurking?
Deciding that she really needed to let go of her fear of being mind-read (she fetched poptarts for a living for Thor's sake, what exactly was her dastardly plan?) Darcy looked over to the twins, and sent them her best 'I-am-an-adorable-poptart-fetcher-and-you-will-adore-me' smile.
She almost didn't notice the tentative smile Wanda sent her back when Pietro's eyes bore suspiciously into her skull. His gaze flickered downward, then slowly travelled back up her body. A smirk ticked the corner of his mouth.
"So, how'd you like the cupcakes?" Darcy said, determined not to let the very attractive man smirking at her attractively distract her.
"They were perfect," Wanda said sincerely, though Darcy had the impression the girl was still wary of her.
"I've heard stolen food tastes sweeter," Darcy teased gently, trying to set Wanda at ease with gentle ribbing. Wanda smiled, as if she knew exactly what Darcy was trying to do (she's a mind reader. She probably did), but her brother was the one to answer.
By disappearing of the couch with a woosh!
Awkwardly, Darcy turned to Wanda, who was still studying her intently.
"Some people just can't hold their humorously rhymed lyrics," Darcy joked, trying not to grit her teeth at Pietro's teen angst.
"My brother is an idiot," Wanda said, titling her head as she watched expressions flit across Darcy's face.
A very muscly idiot, Darcy thought gloomily, with his swooshy hair, and his stupid accent, and his pathetic pick up lines.
Wanda's smile widened, and she settled back into the comfortable couch.
The next time Darcy saw the twins, she was supposed to be picking up some of Jane's equipment that Stark had 'fixed'. He was snapping at Wanda, claiming her weird magic/science abilities were messing with his equipment.
"Stop sending out your freaky mind-waves, Sabrina, you're screwing with data that can't just be fixed with a wiggle of a nose!"
Before either Maximoff twin could even think of responding, Darcy had stepped in front of Wanda, hands on her hips.
"First off, pointing is rude, Stark. Second, do you even know if it is Wanda, or if your machines are just screwy?" Darcy asked the question rhetorically, but Tony was already opening his mouth to protest her disbelief in the brilliance of his machines.
"If Jane's machines are less than perfectly calibrated, not only will I break every coffee machine on this floor, I will call Pepper," she talked over his protests, "And for Thor's sake, stop mixing your pop culture witches". She could feel two sets of eyes burning into the back of her skull, but she ignored him. Them.
"We're done here," she stated firmly. Scowling, Stark jerked his head to the huge machine in the corner of the lab. It looked less like an early nineties plastic monstrosity than before, at least twice as heavy, and suspiciously like a certain droid from everyone's favourite space franchise.
Glaring at it, Darcy tried not to sigh. Or kick the R2-D2 lookalike to a pulp.
"Jarvis, can you call someone with really big muscles, preferably with arms the size of my head. Is Steve free? Cause his ass would really bring some sunshine into my depressingly maudlin day," she said, and she surprised herself with how not-sad she sounded.
But before Jarvis could reply, or Captain Tight-Pants could bless Darcy with his glorious behind, red lights floated around Jane's newly modified machine, lifting it daintily into the air, and out the automatic doors.
Eyes wide, Darcy turned to see Wanda making small, delicate movements with her hand, like a ballet dance. The smaller woman didn't smile, but her eyes twinkled as she followed the mind-propelled machine out the corridor. Darcy's mouth shut with a click.
"Uh, so I guess you can tell Captain Rogers his muscles and beautiful behind will not be needed, Jarvis," Darcy said, clamping down on her disbelief as she followed Wanda out the door, Pietro uncomfortably close on her heels.
"I'll be sure to relay your exact sentiments to the Captain," Jarvis said dryly.
"Jarvis, you always know how to brighten my day," Tony beamed, and the automatic doors slid shut behind them. Darcy groaned. Now Captain America is gong to frown awkwardly at her and shuffle out of the room. Or tease her mercilessly. She wasn't entirely sure which.
Wanda had already disappeared down the hall, presumably to Jane's lab, but the real shocker was that Pietro didn't immediately follow. Instead, he walked next to Darcy silently, and after a minute, she realised he was trying to synchronize his steps with hers.
Darcy decreased her pace, and he stumbled. A gleeful sense of victory held Darcy's head high as she marched past him.
A smooth "I think the perfection of the cupcakes had more to do with their maker," was whispered in her ear, in reference to how she'd teased Wanda earlier. Pietro's accent still as sexy as the day they met. And just like that day, he knew it.
Her hair was flung forward as a blur of silver and blue raced through the corridor in front of her. Darcy spat her hair out of her mouth with vicious force. What was this guy's problem?
When she marched back into the lab, Jane's machine sat quietly in the far corner, Wanda nowhere in sight. Belatedly realising she forgot to thank her, Darcy slumped in her chair, shame and anger bubbling inside her. On her desk, meticulous piles had been shifted and knocked over in the short time she had been gone. On top, a takeaway coffee cup perched carefully, steam still rising.
Her name was written in spiky, masculine letters across the cardboard, and the relaxing scents of chocolate and coffee floated into her nose. Smiling, Darcy sipped, surprised to taste whipped cream, and an overload of sugar. Jane always hated sugary drinks, claiming they did awful things to the body. Darcy was pretty sure women who scarf down poptarts like they were being discontinued had no room to stand in this particular argument.
So when Jane started shrieking at R2D2 modifications Tony had made to her equipment, Darcy quietly nodded along, clutching the warm cup to her chest. Despite being science-brained, Jane was her best friend, knowing some days the only things that worked for Darcy were chocolate and coffee. Having noticed Darcy was having a bad day, and bought her favourite drink. Or, more likely, asked someone else to, and promptly forgotten about it.
Either way, Jane was a good friend, so Darcy cheered on as Jane smashed the uselessly blinking red light, and sat with her plotting revenge.
Darcy found Pietro's presence to be irritating. Sometimes like an itch, but mostly like a vicious wasp sting. He skulked around the labs, causing small cyclones at least once a day, making papers fly and Jane yell. Darcy was pretty sure the astrophysicist was plotting some form of revenge against the speedster, because when she'd gone to type Jane's notes up after a long night of scienceing, a highly detailed diagram of water bombs and how to position them were written in the columns of a report.
And when Darcy made Sunday dinner for the team, he hung around the kitchen like a fly on crack. She wasn't sure what the light was in this metaphor- the food or herself- but either way he was getting on her nerves.
Because the hanging around, Darcy could handle. Heck, she might even find it adorable in the right mood. But he didn't say anything, except for the occasional 'hello'. He just hovered, smirking at her, getting in the way, and generally being annoying.
When she eventually tired of whatever he thought he was doing, which usually took her fifteen to twenty minutes, she would turn and glare at him. Perhaps it wasn't Black Widow worthy, but each time the smirk would drop off his face, and he'd disappear. Darcy would only feel a little guilty. After all, he still hadn't apologized for being a jerk and stealing her cupcakes.
When his gush of wind made her drop a massive dish of lasagna on the floor, she let out a snarl. She took a deep breath, setting about making the floor even cleaner then it had been earlier.
"Jarvis? Can you order dinner from the Chinese restaurant everyone likes, enough for the whole team?" she asked, and if Jarvis noted how her voice was peculiarly calm, he didn't mention it.
"Of course Miss Darcy. Is there anything else?" he asked politely.
"Yeah, is Clint back from visiting the fam?" she asked.
"Yes. Would you like me to ask Agent Barton to the kitchen?"
"Can you ask him to meet me and Jane in the labs? We've got some planning to do."
The combined brains of Jane and Clint were a horrifying force when it came to planning revenge. When Clint had vetoed most of Jane's ideas (too cruel) and Darcy's (too passive-aggressive), Jane eventually broke into an evil grin.
"I know. One problem," her smile dropped slightly, "what if Wanda finds out?"
Remembering the sigh Wanda had given as she told Darcy about her idiotic brother, Darcy grinned.
"I don't think that's going to be a problem."
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