Writer's Note: I don't even know where this came from. I wrote it in like... 45min + revision. It's total crack. But we can all thank my birthday gift for the idea: Captain America underwear.
"Darcy! Darcy I'm over here!" Jane cried out from her spot lying awkwardly on the floor of the lab, wrists and ankles ducktaped behind her back. "Get my bag. I got my papers in there with the bridge formula and you need to get it to Coulson. He'll be able to keep it safe."
Darcy stared down at her admittedly sometimes-pathetic boss without expression. Stark started yelling at her from across the room, similarly tied up except with magnets.
"Boobs! Boobs! Get over here and kick that suitcase to me. It's got my suit in it, and if I can just get a finger on it I'll get us all out of here."
'All' being all the Avengers. Hydra hadn't wasted any man- or brainpower on this attempt to foil them. They'd planned for almost a year to manage this: Steve was zip-tied five times over and gagged, lest he make any inspiring speeches and cause someone to break their bonds; Thor had been sedated with about seventeen syringes and was currently drooling facedown on the floor; Bruce was, conveniently, in China, and Tony was magnetically attached to his own desk; Natasha and Clint were locked up in the Hulk's chamber in Bruce's part of the lab, watching the proceedings sullenly. None of them were getting out of this predicament alone.
And Darcy? She worked in the lab and was the only person not currently in some kind of bondage or in China. Normally she ogled some people, talked over their heads with slang, stuffed food in their faces, and went to drinks with them sometimes. She totally was rubbing shoulders with The Avengers and winning at it, take that Lucy from high school that said she'd end up a prostitute! And she said a big chest and a bigger mouth would never get Darcy anywhere.
But now, Darcy was in the lab, staring at five Avengers and Jane all down for the count, and made a decision.
She kicked Stark's suitcase five more feet away from him.
"What the fuck, jugs?" he yelled as she walked away. She gathered up the bag Jane had been talking about and pulled out the hard drive from the computer along with any spare notebooks she knew Jane was using. Then she started gathering anything else that looked important in the room. The petite astrophysicist started to yell at her, but Darcy put her earbuds in and tuned out the now cursing and wiggling Avengers plus scientist. She had Jane's formula, Stark's latest mini-arc reactor prototype, the Ironman suit, Steve's blood sample from Bruce's station, and the latest set of fancy bullets Stark Industries had churned out in her bag. Thanks to her job, she knew where all the good stuff was. And she knew just who would want it.
Darcy walked out to the sound of Jane crying about betrayal, Tony's threats to kill her, Steve's confused gaze, and Clint and Natasha's simultaneously grim looks. She was walking away with all their research, hard work, and possibly the serum, and they hadn't even seen the traitor in their midst until that moment.
"Seriously, Darcy? Lewis? The intern who scrapped by in college and has been nothing but a glorified Pop-tart maker for the last year?" Tony sputtered, pacing furiously back and forth in front of the newly-freed Avengers.
"Enough, Tony," Steve snapped. He wasn't any happier. He'd liked Darcy and all her spice, and he'd even been thinking about taking her to coffee, so to find out she'd betrayed them was a serious blow. She had his unaltered blood sample and Bruce's notes on it, and who knows what Hydra could do with that. He had real reason to worry.
"We can set up a monitoring system to see if they try to activate the bridge—" Bruce began, fresh off a plane from China and no happier to hear that his research on the serum (strictly private, an attempt to cure him if possible) had been snatched. Darcy had been his go-to person for the best Indian in the city too, so her unexpected affiliation with Hydra was not good for his blood pressure.
"She has my latest suit, and after that whole thing with Killian and the Mandarin I'm seriously short—"
"I did not believe this was lying in Lady Darcy's heart. To feel the sting of a knife to the back from my lightening sister is my deepest regret, and that we must all feel it so," Thor said over Tony to Steve. Tony was muttering to Natasha plans of revenge, and she only looked placid if one didn't know her well. The Black Widow was not a person who appreciated the rug being ripped out under her, and she'd personally vetted everyone in close relation to the Avengers. Darcy had come up clean.
When Natasha was upset, Clint wasn't far behind. He had trust issues a mile wide, and Darcy had just started wiggling her way in when she'd blown it all to hell.
"How?" Jane moaned, reeling more than anyone else in the room. She was frantically typing what she remembered from her sixty pages of notes on the formula and cursing herself and Darcy with every breath. "How did I not notice? She's been with me for three years now!"
Thor rubbed her back while they all looked at Coulson like he had Darcy's exact coordinates and the paperwork for her execution in his hands. He had neither.
"Hydra doesn't have anything," he said.
"By anything we mean us. I just redid the top floors of the Tower, now I've gotta do them again!" Tony complained, rejecting Pepper's reassuring hand until she yanked him to sit down. Coulson had come through with three quinjets and a helicopter when the Avengers had been literally tied up, but he'd blown most of the floor away to save them. Which jeopardized the balance of the ten floors above Jane's lab and was going to require serious renovation to the Avenger's Tower. Again.
"Hydra doesn't have the Einstein-Rosen bridge formula, the serum, an Ironman suit, or anything else she stole," Coulson said like he was discussing paperwork and not a moment of profound betrayal for the team.
It took a minute for the words to sink in.
"Then who's she selling it to?" Clint demanded.
"No one."
Coulson was awfully calm about this, Natasha realized, enough to kick Steve before he said something he'd regret.
"What do you know, Coulson?" she asked quietly, the edge of a threat there.
"I know that I asked Ms. Lewis to go in and act like she was stealing those things to protect them."
There was an uproar. Jane nearly burst into tears, Steve deflated like a balloon, and Thor started to laugh. Tony looked more offended at being tricked, and Clint and Natasha shared significant looks. Bruce just felt tired. And maybe a little relieved.
"Wait, you have to explain," Tony managed above the din once he'd re-hinged his jaw.
"Hydra had operatives waiting to apprehend you and had disabled your AI to access the cameras," Coulson explained. "All of the stolen research and materials were going to be compromised. Darcy was the only one with access and a basic enough background who could conceivably be swayed to another side. So she acted the part."
"Well where is she!" Jane burst out. "Because I'm gonna kill her for not winking or something!" Thor all but picked Jane up in his effort to calm her down.
"We're not exactly sure," Coulson hedged, but when Steve shot him a Captain America Disappointed Look© he caved. "For security purposes she went to ground and took everything with her. We couldn't be sure Hydra hadn't compromised us too."
"Great, so we're waiting on a call from her, are we?" Jane snapped over Thor's bicep. Steve shared a look with Bruce, part relieved and part frustrated.
The Imperial March from Star Wars started playing on Jane's phone, and she snatched it up automatically. "Hello?"
"Jane! Hey, can you bring Steve? 'Cuz I promised Gene that his ass is actually as tight as it looks in the uniform, and I'm gonna lose this bet if—"
"Darcy?!" Jane shrieked, dropping the phone and then knocking it under her chair in her haste to pick it up. By the time she did she'd missed most of what Darcy was saying though.
"—and 118th, you'll see it, got the big bowling ball sign. Gotta go—fireball!" and Darcy hung up.
Jane stared dumbfounded at her phone before she rushed into the elevator and burst into the Avengers common room six floors up.
"Darcy just called me and she's at a bowling alley on 118th."
"118th and what?" Tony yelled, appearing from the hallway still wet from a shower. Steve appeared a second later, shield in hand.
"I don't know, how long is 118th?"
"Only the whole width of Manhattan," Clint muttered sarcastically, but he went to get his bow and everyone was suited up in five. They'd been waiting almost three weeks for Darcy's call since she'd stolen all their research and vanished off the grid, and no one could be sure what prompted her to call now.
There were three bowling alleys along 118th street, but it was the one on the east side that was the right one. Tony threw open the door to a room full of 90-year old folks and a bingo game in progress.
"Looks like your kind of party Americano," he said, smacking Steve on the back.
Steve glared at him. "Have some respect, Tony."
Tony was about to say something witty when there was a yell of "FIREBALL!" from the room behind the bingo parlor. In two strides Thor threw the door open to a six-alley bowling rink cleverly hidden in the basement of the building. There were more senior citizens and a surprisingly well stocked bar with a familiar curly-haired brunette sitting at it.
"Oh you brought him!" Darcy shrieked, jumping off the stool and wobbling into a wrinkly 80-year old who definitely winked at his buddy as he steadied her. Darcy didn't seem to mind though as she jumped towards Steve and grabbed his arm. "Gene! Look! Captain America! And you can check for yourself about that ass!" She tried to whirl Steve around and failed, but by now he was surrounded by the elderly bowling players who had a lot to say about World War II and the new variation of his costume.
"I guess we found Steve's niche," Tony joked, while Jane muscled through, or rather Thor muscled through and she followed in his wake.
"What are you doing here Darcy? We checked everywhere for you!"
"First rule of going underground: go where no one expects you to go," she recited, grinning excitedly. "And who knew old people were so fun? I thought Steve was totally the exception not the rule."
Steve managed to wade out of the crowd, but he didn't seem to know how to react, especially when Darcy cheerfully thanked him for coming. "Gene is totally the one on the oxygen tank over there. You just made her decade. Thanks Steve."
"Uh, you're welcome," he responded slowly. "But we thought there was trouble."
"Oh no trouble here except Simone's winning streak. But I'm pretty sure Arthur's gonna best her next round." Darcy high-fived someone who could easily be her great-grandmother before turning back to all the Avengers.
"So where's the research?" Clint blurted out. While everyone had been gawping over Darcy's new friends and Steve's reunion with people from his era, Clint and Natasha had scoped out the bowling alley and any possible places to stuff a suitcase and bag full of not-stolen research. They'd come up empty-handed.
"Oh that? I don't remember where I put it. I got super drunk and texted Jane a clue before I got black-out drunk to forget it," Darcy said casually, like this was a perfectly logical thing for her to do. Clint dearly wished Coulson were there so he could pin the man with a stare that said: "this is why we don't let interns do what trained agents do."
Jane scrolled through her messages, but she wasn't looking enlightened. "I don't see anything, Darcy."
"Gimme that! You can't even change a ringtone." Darcy took the phone and thumbed at it a few moments before declaring, "Aha! This is it."
It was a picture of Cap's butt in uniform with the message underneath: "he has one fine ass." It was the last text she'd sent Jane before faking her membership in Hydra.
Steve was blushing and Natasha was looking slightly appreciative of the photo, so clearly Tony was the only one with any sense.
"What the fuck?" he said.
"…Okay, lemme think for a second." Everyone waited impatiently as Darcy thought while eyeing up Steve like he was a life-size cardboard cut-out and not a flesh-and-blood, highly embarrassed superhero. "Yeah I got nothing."
"Darcy! That's important stuff! Like, like… like your iPod!" Jane sputtered. Nothing appealed to Darcy more than music.
"I know! It's just, my birthday was a few weeks ago so I had a lot to drink and then Coulson and I don't really remember anything… omg, my birthday. My gift!" And then Darcy did something very unexpected: she unbuttoned her jeans and yanked them down.
"Look! Look!" she yelled, shaking her ass in the direction of a very red Steve. On the back of her underwear was Captain America's shield and written next to it in sharpie was: #1607 47-13-24.
"It's a combination," Natasha said, leaning forward to memorize the words. Steve was trying to look anywhere but at his shield emblazoned on her ample asset (her second best one that is) and yet sneaking peeks.
"It's a locker," he said uncomfortably, barely relaxing when she pulled up her pants and looked at them expectantly.
"Yup! Am I a genius or what? And it's lucky I was wearing this pair today otherwise we'd have to go to the laundromat down the street with that weird guy who washes his bear suit every three days…"
Natasha picked the lock on the bowling alley's locker #1607 when the combination didn't work, but it was empty. "Where's the locker?"
"Well duh, Captain America," Darcy said like the answer was written on Steve's underwear too. When Steve continued to look startled she sighed gustily. "I always thought YMCA stood for Young Men's Community of America, but it turns out it's from some British guy and the 'C' stood for Christian, did you know that?" She looked at the gathering of scientists, superheroes, and random senior citizens, but was clearly disappointed with how little they cared. "Well it's true, but the YMCA always has weight rooms and stuff, and you know, Steve's kinda ripped, so it makes sense, right?"
"That's it. We're using your drunk logic for every mission from now on, because it's completely unpredictable," Clint intoned flatly. It wasn't necessarily a bad idea though.
"Yeah maybe that's a bit of a leap," Darcy admitted, as Thor questioned Jarvis for these famed YMCA venues and came up with one in the area: the Harlem YMCA.
Natasha went in alone while Darcy regaled the rest of them with stories in the car about bowling tricks she'd learned and bunking at an apartment someone had been living in for the last forty-seven years with six cats. When Natasha came out she was holding a familiar suitcase and bag. "Locker #1607," she said.
"See, I told you," Darcy smirked.
The research was returned safe and sound, and the blood sample now all congealed and useless to everyone anyway since it hadn't been kept cooled. Tony may have hugged his suitcase inappropriately long once he was alone in his lab, but nobody but Jarvis knew that. And Steve, despite being embarrassed by his role in Darcy's logic, had a burning question for her.
"Why me?"
"Because you're safe," she said, shrugging over her coffee in the communal kitchen. It was just the two of them right now, two days after the whole mess. "When I think of you I think of safety and peace and good in the world." She looked embarrassed now, like she hadn't meant to say so much. Steve was looking at her wide-eyed. "Uh, lab's calling. Jane, you know."
"Darcy, wait!" he called as she scurried out of the room. "Do you… do you want to get coffee some time?"
She turned back and a smile broke on to her face. "That'd be fun, Steve."
"Uh, good," he said a bit nervously, and some of her sauciness came back, because she winked at him despite her pink cheeks before disappearing into the elevator.