The first time Darcy Lewis kissed a boy she was seven years old.

It was a television commercial for some long-forgotten microwaveable breakfast product that her mom still has saved on an old VSH tape stuck in a dusty box in the garage back home. She doesn't remember much about the actual filming of the commercial itself, only that she was lead through a giant warehouse to a curtained-off corner that made up the small set with a kitchen counter and painted backdrop of appliances. The experience was surreal for her young mind, seeing such a domestic setting smack in the middle of a bustling crowd of people shouting and running with cords and lights. It was November and San Francisco was experiencing a severe cold front, her fingers cold where she held tight to her mother's hand. She recalls that she brought her stuffed animal, Patches from 101 Dalmatians, and looked down at him while her mom spoke with the other adults as they poked and prodded at her hair and clothes, removing her warm jacket and telling her to change into a dress with little purple flowers.

She vaguely remembers the first time the commercial was shown on local television. Her mother sat on the couch, primed on the edge of the seat with the remote control in one hand, wavy brown hair still wet from a hasty shower and manicured finger primed to hit the record button at a moment's notice. She looked to her father and older sister sitting next to her mother on the other side of the couch, her sister engrossed in a book propped on her knees and her father with his head lolling forward and jerking back as he tried not to fall asleep. She was playing with Patches again, twisting his little ears around in her small hands, when her mother made an excited noise and rushed forward frantically to press the button on the remote. The commercial lasted all of twenty seconds, but in her young mind it seemed to last forever as she watched her mother's blue eyes fill with proud tears. She didn't watch the television and watched her mother instead, and when people who saw her at the local supermarket commented on it and wanted to talk, she grabbed her mother's hand and hid behind her legs.

Her mother played the VHS tape of the commercial a few times over the years, mostly on a whim whenever the extended family got together during the holidays. It was queued up along with old slideshows of family pictures, the presentations getting shorter and shorter as time went on and family couldn't make the trip out to the West Coast for the holidays. Her parents divorced two years after the commercial's filming, and her mother seemed to become less inclined to play any of the videos. When her mother met and married her new husband, the videos stopped all together. The tapes were boxed up and put in a cardboard stack in the garage next to old winter clothes. It stayed there until she was thirteen, when a conversation with a school friend prompted her to fish it out and dust it off.

"He's the first boy you've ever kissed, right?"

Darcy's friend nudged her shoulder and nodded across the cafeteria at a crowd of boys laughing in the corner. She followed her friend's gaze and caught the eye of Bruce Banner, small and skinny with a mop of dark hair too large for his head that hung into his eyes. She blushed and turned back to her friend.

"Not really," she said defensively. "I kissed a boy in a commercial when I was seven."

Her friend stopped with her French fry halfway to her mouth, before fixing her with an incredulous look.

"Come on, Darcy. That doesn't count."

That night she went home and rummaged through the garage for a half an hour until she found the box with old family movies. Luckily they still had the old VHS tape player lying next to it, and she spent an inordinate amount of time hooking it up the television in the living room late that night after everyone else had gone to bed. The quality of the video was bad, static lines crisscrossing the screen and the sound dubbed a little off. She watched the younger version of herself, big blue eyes wide and brown hair sectioned into little pig tails, looking down at a plate of pastries with only one left. The little boy on the screen, blonde hair cut in a forties-style, gave the pouting little-Darcy the last pastry, and she watched as her face lit up with joy and she reached on tiptoes to kiss him on the lips.

Thirteen year old Darcy watched the video of her seven year old self and didn't remember any of it, despite the evidence in front of her telling her that it definitely happened. She touched her fingers to her lips, recalling the day before when she and Bruce had met behind the classroom building, nervous butterflies playing tennis in her stomach when he reached out and touched her hand. She looked at him, shorter than her by about an inch, and felt her heart skip a beat or twenty when he started to lean towards her. She closed her eyes and pursed her lips, and when she felt his dry ones touch hers, her heart exploded. It was short and awkward, and after it was over Bruce pulled away and made a hasty retreat, leaving her standing with her back against the brick wall with her mind reeling and her heart soaring. Pressing her fingers against her lips, she imagined that she could still feel him there.

She looked at the video paused on the television before her, frame frozen on the image of a little girl kissing an embarrassed-looking boy.

The first time Darcy Lewis kissed a boy, she was seven years old. The first time she really kissed a boy, she was thirteen.

As Darcy got older, the difference between pretend and reality became more distinct. She took a drama class when she got to high school and became addicted, reveling in the rush that she got from standing before an audience of her peers, feeling their energy buzz electric around her. It helped her soar high above them, watching disassociated as her body acted out scenes and spoke words that weren't her own, cried and laughed with tears and joy that were written as words on faded pages and borrowed as queues from those around her. It was exciting, terrifying, and peaceful all at once, and she knew deep in her heart despite all the disapproving lectures and talk about how she 'had such potential' that this was what she wanted to do with her life.

She graduated high school and went to college, majoring in Drama and taking classes in Screenwriting on the side. By day she wrote and studied and by night she worked as a hostess, trying to save as much money as she could to help support herself when the day inevitably came that she would make the trek to Los Angeles. She landed another commercial job at eighteen, then another two at nineteen. She was working a late shift one night when a customer told her that she should audition as an extra for a movie to get some experience on genuine movie sets. She did and was chosen, a small speaking role that paid her a hundred bucks, and she did a few more before she landed a larger role in a small-budget movie. The director of that movie recommended she audition for another one, an artsy film produced by some big names looking for independent talent. She auditioned and got the part, a drunken ex-girlfriend of the lead actor played by the film's director, the famous and award-winning Phillip Coulson. The movie was called Vermillion Dreams and was filmed in a rented-out mansion during the summer in Los Angeles, sweet breezes of mountain air drifting through large bay windows and carrying the sweet smell of morning coffee and honeysuckle across the set every morning.

It was on the set of Vermillion Dreams that Darcy met the people who would become major players throughout the rest of her life, both professionally and personally, but none of them would ever affect her in such a profound way as the man cast as the son of the main protagonist. Nobody would ever make that line between pretend and reality so blurred, nobody would cause the tears and emotions her body displayed when acting to be drawn from so deep within, and nobody would be both the best thing that ever happened to her and ruin her life at the same time.

The first time Darcy Lewis kisses Loki Odinson, she's twenty two years old.

She's never really kissed him at all.


A/N:

This is an introduction, just something that's been rattling around in my brain for a while that wanted to get out. It's emotional and angsty, and will take the form of a life-journey experience with each chapter touching upon a different movie/role in which Darcy and Loki interact.

Let me know if anyone is interested and wants me to continue. Thanks for reading!