Title: Always Wanting What I Can't Have (Never Knew You Could Want Me Too)
Category: Thor/Avengers
Genre: Angst/Romance
Ship: Darcy/Steve
Rating: Pg-13
Prompt: "She knew she'd been hurt enough, but she stepped aside and let him pass anyways." by clankerskank
Word Count: 527
Summary: "I'm not sure I follow… Are you saying love never has a happy ending?"

Always Wanting What I Can't Have (Never Knew You Could Want Me Too)
-1/1-

"Have you ever been in love, Steve-O?"

He looked up from his sketchbook, his brows hiked. "I… Yes. Or, I think I was."

Darcy hugged her arms around her knees. "You're not sure?"

His head tipped. "She was the first woman who gave me a chance to fall in love… And she was amazing." His face fell. "I'm sure she still is." He cleared his throat and dropped his gaze back to his book.

She hummed, resting her chin on top of her knees. "You know what sucks about love?"

"There's something worse than losing it because you crash-landed and was frozen for seventy years?"

Her lips twitched. "Way to put things into perspective."

He offered her a faint smile and shrugged a broad shoulder. "What sucks about love, Miss Lewis?"

Her humor faded quick. "It always hurts."

He rested his pencil down on top of his pad and laid it in his lap. "I'm not sure I follow… Are you saying love never has a happy ending?"

"No…" She shook her head. "I'm saying even the happy ones come with a little pain…" She leaned back into the couch and tipped her head back, staring at the ceiling. "You meet a good guy or girl, you think, 'hey, this one could be it…', and maybe they are, but it's like life was designed to be an uphill battle, on a mountain filled with landmines, and you constantly step the wrong way. So you keep trying and climbing, but all this shit gets in the way… And the person you love either waits or changes or is never within reach…"

Steve peered at her thoughtfully. "You've been hurt a lot?"

She laughed bitterly, dropping her eyes. "I've cornered the market on hurt, Steve-O." She hopped off the couch, sighing. "Especially of the love variety." She moved to leave. "Thanks for that chat," she said, ruffling his hair as she passed. "I'm heading to bed… I'll see you tomorrow."

"Yeah, sure. Goodnight, Miss Lewis."

"It's Darcy," she called back to him.

He smiled lopsidedly. "Darcy," he said.

She winked at him before she left his sight.

Steve turned back around in his seat and stared down at his drawing pad. There sat a girl, sketched in pencil, twirling a chunk of her hair around her finger, her square glasses slipping down the slope of her nose. He drew in a dialogue square above her head and wrote, "She knew she'd been hurt enough, but she stepped aside and let him pass anyways." And in the shadows of the room, he drew a faceless man, who possessed the heart of a woman who didn't know how to get it back.

In her room, Darcy turned onto her side, and tried not to think about how soft Steve's hair had been as she brushed her fingers through it. How reverent he'd looked when he talked of brave and perfect Peggy. But she fell asleep thinking of him anyway; thinking of the intense concentration on his face, the stern, furrowed brow, and the way he bit his lip as he sketched what she was sure was the love of his life.

[End.]