F is for Feathers (Clint/Darcy)
Now:
Darcy Lewis had never felt more like she was being examined under a microscope that she had at this very moment.
Ironic really, since she spent most of her days surrounded by scientists.
She was perched dead center on a microfiber monstrosity of a couch in one of the Stark "Don't Call if Avengers, yes, I know the A was the last letter standing on the building but it wasn't a damn metaphor, I swear" Tower living rooms, an oversized t-shirt hanging off her shoulders.
The Avengers—and they were The Avengers, still clad in uniform and shaking off the dust from the afternoon's incident at what was supposed to be a party in honor of the team at Rockefeller Center—were all sitting around her, waiting for her to start.
She just didn't know where the beginning was.
Was it her birth? When she was young? When she took Jane's internship in New Mexico? When Thor crash landed after getting the boot from Asgard?
With their eyes practically boring holes into her and the room unbearably silent, finally, blessedly, Steve broke first and rubbed a gloved hand through his sweaty hair before he sighed, "Are you a mutant?"
Fingers picking at the frayed hem of her borrowed shirt—she wasn't sure who it actually belonged to, but had an inkling it was one of Clint's—she sighed and glanced out the window where the sun had long since set, but New York was still alive with light.
She took another deep breath, "No," she saw disbelief on all their faces and hurried to add. "It's kind of really complicated."
On the far side of the room, perched at the bar, Tony let out a snort, "When isn't it?"
Finally, she forced herself to look at Clint—no, Hawkeye—who was standing in the far corner of the room, arms crossed tight over his chest as the Black Widow sat a few feet in front of him as if she was guarding her partner.
And she probably was.
Hawkeye was looking at her through narrowed eyes, like he was trying to pick the answers straight out of the thoughts raging through her mind.
She knew, she knew, he was trying to figure out how, after years of hooking up and casual dating, he could have missed the way a fucking massive pair of wings sprouted from her narrow back after they fell off the roof not long after their party had been attacked by Doombots.
Darcy reached forward and picked the leather cuff off the coffee table in front of her, holding it in both hands.
Then:
"You ever going to tell me why you never take this off?"
Curled up against Clint's side with one leg thrown over his on her tiny bed in her closet of a bedroom at the dealership, Darcy spared a glance to the arm draped across his bare chest.
A leather cuff wrapped around her wrist while his nimble fingers toyed with the strings that weaved in and out of the seam to secure it.
"Maybe one day," she looked up at him through her lashes. "If you're good."
Clint chuckled low in his chest as he rolled them over, his bare legs tangling with hers as he pressed a line of kisses down the slope of her neck, "I thought I just was," he murmured. "Twice."
Her breath caught as he brushed his teeth against that spot where her neck met her shoulder, and her legs shifted so he could rest his lower body between them, "Maybe," she gasped again and poked his side in retaliation. "Maybe third time's a charm."
His hands pressed to the mattress on either side of her head as he loomed over her before he pressed a lingering kiss to her mouth that really did leave her gasping, "I'm going to hold you to that," he whispered as he dragged her lower lip between his teeth.
Darcy curled an arm around his neck and used the leverage to lift her shoulders off the mattress and press her lips back to his, sliding her tongue past his teeth to wrest with his.
They kissed until an irritating series of chirps from the plastic shelving unit she used as a dresser broke through the gasps, moans, and quiet pleas to stop being such a damn tease, Barton, and Darcy let her head flop back against her pillow as Clint rolled off her and padded across the room.
"If that's your iPod stealing boss, please tell him where to shove it and come back to bed," she muttered, rolling onto her side and propping her head on one hand as she took in the line of his naked backside, half illuminated by the light streaming in from her tiny window.
He glanced at her over one scar-dusted shoulder before answering his phone, and Darcy flopped back onto her back as he murmured quietly with, yep, definitely the iPod stealing butt-head.
Eventually, Clint let out a curt yes sir, followed by an even more laconic, right away sir, before he tossed the phone back onto the dresser and wordlessly grabbed his pants, which were hanging off the edge of the bed.
"So," Darcy drawled. "Duty calls?"
He froze, staring at her as if he'd forgotten she was even there, and Darcy's brows furrowed as she sat up, bringing the sheet with her and tucking it over her chest, "Clint?"
Shaking out of whatever that was,Clint finished buttoning his pants and padded back over, perching at the edge of the bed and tucking one hand in the fall of her hair, "My team's been reassigned," he murmured, his thumb stroking back and forth behind her ear.
And damn if it wasn't distracting.
Darcy blinked out from the haze she knew he was sending her to on purpose, "Now? Seriously? It's like, like," she glanced around before she realized that her only clock was her phone, which was, somewhere, hopefully in her bag. "It's late."
He shrugged, "Perks of the job," he kissed her, mouth lingering against hers before he kissed her nose, then her forehead, then got up in search of his shirt. "They're sending me to cover Selvig. I don't know where."
"So you're going to disappear into the night and I'm pretty much never going to see you again."
Two months of nights of shitty beer at the one semi-decent bar in town, arguments over who had the better tastes in music, making out on the roof of the dealership and days spent not so secretly watching him as Jane ordered Clint and his team around whenever they got new equipment, sneaking him food when he was supposed to be on duty, flashed through her mind.
And Darcy was not going to get upset because she knew this was going to happen.
Tugging his shirt on and stepping into his boots, Clint went back to her, hands cradling either side of her head as he kissed her, his thumbs stroking her cheeks, "I'll track you down," he dropped a final kiss on her lips before he ran a finger down her nose.
Then he left.
Later:
Clint did track her down, eventually.
It just took four years, two alien invasions on two separate continents, one very large mental breakdown, one even bigger secret organization that both literally and figuratively burned to the ground, and one modern-day Nazi masquerading as an unassuming boyfriend slash intern, but they finally were getting back to what had been brewing during that time SHIELD spent covering Jane and Darcy in New Mexico.
Except now, Darcy was pretty sure Clint wasn't going to want anything to do with her anymore.
Being well, what she was, was a huge deal, and he had enough—far too much, really—on his own plate.
After sending Jane and her well-meaning hovering back to the apartment she shared with Thor, she grabbed a pint of Ben & Jerry's from her fridge and curled up on the couch, Netflix already cued on the flat screen courtesy of the best AI ever.
Halfway through the pint and twenty minutes into an old episode of What Not To Wear, there was a knock on the door.
Hitting pause, she left her ice cream on the coffee table and padded over, her fleece blanket still hanging on her shoulders and trailing after her like a cape, "Clint?" Her brows furrowed in surprise. "Hi."
Because she did not expect to see him so soon.
If at all.
"Can I come in?"
Wordlessly, she stepped aside, curling her blanket tighter around her upper body as she followed him into the den of her loft-like apartment, and waited for him to speak his piece.
Whatever it was going to be.
Clint still looked at her like he wanted to rip her open and see how it all worked, "Can I," he broke off, biting his lip and rocking back on his heels when he noticed that the leather cuff was between the ice cream and her Starkpad. "Can I see them again?"
All she could do was gape.
"You," she swallowed and finally managed. "You want to?"
He nodded, and Darcy saw he was breathing just a little easier as he waited for her to make her decision.
And that's what made it for her.
She let the blanket fall off her shoulders, and she dragged it by one corner back to the couch before meeting Clint by the coffee table, clad in leggings and the same t-shirt from earlier that evening.
"Are you sure?" She looked him straight in the eye, waiting for the same fear and disease she saw when she demoed exactly where the ten-foot wings actually went when she wasn't busy scaring the crap out of everyone.
He swallowed hard, "Yes."
Darcy was tempted to blame the shaking in her hands from the cold of the ice cream as she slowly lifted the shirt away with one hand, the other fisting around her hair as she dragged the mass over one shoulder.
She finally tore her eyes away from his when she turned around, revealing the clusters of raised skin that formed the pattern of her wings as they rested on her shoulders, the backs of her arms, the whole of her back, while the ends of some of the feathers disappeared under her leggings to dust over her butt and the back of her legs.
Clint was quiet, and a glance out of the corner of her eye told her he was staring, gaping really, "You can touch them, if you want," she swallowed as she tried to fight back against the quiver in her voice.
Minutes passed before he did, shaking fingers trailing over one of the larger feathers tucked against her left side, one a faded black with the spine of it raised against her skin, and then his hand drifted over the cluster of silver feathers along the small of her back before they moved to the russet-colored feathers the same shade as her hair that covered her spine.
"Does it hurt? When they come out?"
"No," she gasped when she felt his mouth press against a rounded spot over her scapula where feathers weren't, courtesy of an accident from years and years and years ago. "I don't really know how it works."
Very lightly, he trailed the palms of both hands over her back before settling them on her shoulders and tugging her back against him, "They're beautiful," he murmured in her ear as she gasped, one of her hands curling around his as she pinched the bridge of her nose with the other. "This is amazing."
"More like overwhelming," she sniffed, brushing tears from her eyes as she turned in his arms and tucked her head against his chin. "I'm sorry I hid them. I almost got burned at the stake the last time I showed them off."
Clint stilled at that, and she felt him shake his head as his arms tightened, "Don't think that's likely to happen these days."
She snorted as she slid one hand over his heart, "You never know."
"It's not," he growled. "I won't let it. We won't let it."
"I believe you," she whispered, her hands curling around the hem of his shirt, content to just stand there in his arms.
And she did.