AN: Just in case, I should mention that right at the end of the chapter there's a very brief and non-graphic reference to a friend of Darcy's who committed suicide. If you think this might be triggering for you, just skip the last few paragraphs.


"Oh? Try me," says Darcy.

A fighter at heart, she should have known Bucky would have a plan of attack. He flashes her one of his trademark playboy smiles, just like the one that won her over the first day they met. It's not as blatant as Tony Stark's, or as cheesy as Howard's, from what she'd seen in photos. There's a warmth, an honesty, in it, and it baffles her how Steve has resisted him this long.

"I thought the three of us could, you know..." He trails off, cocking a 'how 'bout it?' eyebrow.

Darcy's disbelief erupts in a little snort. "Fondue?"

Ever since Steve had shared the anecdote about how he'd misunderstood Howard Stark's invitation to Peggy to join him for some 'late night fondue,' the euphemism had been cemented into the vocabulary of the household. Not that the three of them needed any more in-jokes.

"I said you wouldn't like it," he says, smiling easily, like he never really meant it anyway. He picks up the bottle of water Steve abandoned on the small table at the end of the couch and takes a sip.

"Is there any logic at all behind the idea, or are you just trying to get your hands on this breathtaking rack before checking yourself into a breast-free zone?" she says, waving a hand in the direction of her chest.

"There is that," he smiles, granting her the compliment of a brief but appreciative leer. They'd already established in previous conversations that Bucky, like Steve, still had a thing for girls. She could have figured that out for herself, though, the way she's always catching them checking her out. Not in a creeper kind of way, just in a 'those boobs are so awesome I can't help myself' kind of way. It's a total ego boost, so Darcy doesn't mind. It's not like she doesn't do her fair share of gawking at butts and biceps in return, she's just better at not getting caught in the act.

Bucky leans forward, elbows on his knees, and for a moment he's not quite so cocky. "I just thought if there was a girl there the first time he might feel more comfortable, like it was less... gay, or something." Bucky fiddles with the water bottle, avoiding Darcy's eyes. "I just thought it might ease the transition." He takes another sip.

He lives in a quiet agony of waiting, and it kills her to see it, but her desire to give sympathy is stronger than his need to receive it, so she holds back for now.

"Have you ever done anything like that before?" she asks, because they discovered many beers ago that there are very few topics either of them aren't prepared to discuss, at least with each other.

"Couple of times." The quirk of his lips may be small, but it's smug.

"You little slut," says Darcy, appreciatively.

"What choice did I have?" he says, as if butter wouldn't melt in his mouth. "I was always lining up double dates for me and Steve. Half the time Steve would bail, so I'd be left with two girls who were looking for a fun night out. Every now and then they were..." he swirls the water around in the half-empty bottle, "happy to share."

Darcy shakes her head, smirking. "Do you think Steve would even go for it?" she asks.

"I don't know. Probably not," he says, with a small hitch of one shoulder.

Her initial get-out-of-town reaction is already beginning to fade, making way for her imagination to start conjuring up the possibilities. The obscenely hot possibilities.

There aren't many things on Darcy's bucket list yet, but a threesome is one of them, and one involving two buff guys is the jackpot of jackpots. It's the sort of offer that doesn't come up every day. In fact, it's probably much closer to the 'once in a lifetime' end of the scale.

She doesn't usually fantasise about people she knows, at least not since that time she came perilously close to calling one of her college professors 'darling'. She'd managed to turn it into 'dude' at the last second, but even that had earned her a weird look. When it comes to her roommates, though, she's broken her own rule on more than one occasion. The prospect of it happening in real life is already playing havoc with her pulse.

One corner of her brain is calmly informing her that if she thinks this through, she'll no doubt come up with some really good reasons why she shouldn't do it. But there's another, louder, voice in her head that's quoting her personal motto like there was no other sensible answer. Carpe diem! Are you really going to pass up an offer like this?

The idea sounds like the plot to a bad porno, but she's actually on board with Bucky's reasoning. She can't even imagine what a struggle it is for Steve to reprogram his views after being raised in such a bigoted time. He's come a long way on his own, but she understands his hesitation in taking the final step into making it something physical. When the day needs saving, Steve is always the one leading the charge, but maybe in this case he needs someone else to show him the way.

It's entirely likely he wouldn't go along with it anyway, but the possibility of seeing her two best friends finally happy together is enough to close the deal for her. She does one last check to make sure the chardonnay is just cheering her on, not putting words in her mouth, before she says, "Worth a shot though, right?"

Bucky's head snaps up. "You're serious?" He's too cool to let his eyes bug out of his head, but only just.

She puts her empty wine glass down. "Why not? It's been way too long since I got laid, and if my sexy lady parts can facilitate your future together, how can I say no?" she says, like it's no big deal, though a few butterflies take flight in her stomach the moment she actually agrees to it out loud.

He shakes his head in disbelief. "You're the best, Darce."

"Can I have that in writing? On your forehead?" she asks sweetly.

"Don't push your luck," he says, but his eyes are full of warmth.

"So, when are we doing this, then?" she asks, stealing the water from him and taking a sip in an effort to distract herself from picturing... everything.

"How 'bout tomorrow night, before we lose our nerve?" He rubs the thumb of one hand into the palm of the other, and it strikes Darcy as oddly amusing that this is the thing that makes his steady sniper's hands twitch. "You know there's no way Steve will let himself say yes if we ask him outright, so how do you reckon we get this thing started?"

"I have a few thoughts on that, so don't worry your pretty little head about it," she says, patting his hair, because being a smartass seems like the only way to keep this conversation from becoming totally awkward. "Just play it cool and, you know, make sure you wash yourself before I have to touch you," she says, crinkling her nose at him as she stands up.

"Always the wise-ass," he mutters, as she heads for the kitchen, grinning.

There's still the matter of the embarrassed super soldier hiding in his bedroom, which Darcy would have dealt with even if there wasn't an extra incentive now to clear the air between them all. She makes a huge batch of popcorn the traditional way—in the frypan, not the microwave—because that's how Steve prefers it, then goes and bangs loudly on his door.

"I'm about to put on the next episode of Firefly, and you know how uptight I am about you guys watching them in the correct order," she shouts through the door. "You've got two minutes to get your butt out here, no excuses!"

She continues on to the living room without waiting for a reply. She gets there to find that Bucky has returned the coffee table to its usual location in front of the couch and rolled the mat away. She hands him the massive bowl of popcorn and sits down on one side of him, leaving space on the other side for Steve.

Bucky digs a hand into the bowl. "Which episode are we watching now?" he asks, like their previous conversation never happened. Darcy's got to admit that sort of attitude is probably the best way to get through the next twenty-four hours, so she decides to put the whole thing out of her head for the rest of the evening.

"It's called 'Jaynestown', it's hilarious," she says, as she clicks through to the right spot on the DVD menu. Steve appears in the doorway then, and Darcy's gaze snags on him in a way it hasn't in a long time. Her eyes trail the line of his jaw, the shape of his shoulders, the rise of his abs under that tight goddamn shirt, seeing him with fresh eyes in light of the possibility of having him in her bed. Then she remembers two seconds ago, when she decided she wasn't going to think about all that right now.

The poor guy still looks a tad uncomfortable in his own skin, so Darcy hits play on the remote and says, "Hurry up and sit down—can you get the lights?—and no talking," giving him all the excuses he needs to take his spot on the couch without having to say anything or make eye contact with anyone.


By the end of the episode, Darcy's feet are in Steve's lap—and her knees, therefore, in Bucky's—because she discovered a few months back that Steve gives truly spectacular foot massages. She'd come home from a particularly hectic day involving an inordinate amount of traipsing back and forth between Stark Tower and SHIELD headquarters, whinging about her sore feet. Steve had offered to give them a rub for her, saying something about how he used to do that for his mother after her long shifts as a nurse.

It turns out a massage from Steve's big, strong hands is even better than peanut butter M&Ms, and he's always happy to oblige whenever she wiggles her toes at him and gives him the 'pwetty pweese' eyes. By the time the episode is finished, Steve's palm is resting idly on top of her ankle and Darcy is feeling utterly boneless.

The vibe is pretty chilled out all the way around, from what she can tell. Steve and Bucky are both slouched back on the couch, looking as relaxed in each others' company as they would on any other day. The bowl of popcorn lies abandoned on the coffee table, nothing left in it except a few unpopped kernels, because the boys consume popcorn like they do all other foodstuffs—in vast quantities.

Bucky yawns, one hand over his mouth, the other stretching over his head. "I'm going to have a shower."

He looks at Darcy, waiting for her to move her legs, but she just blinks lazily at him like she has no idea what he's waiting for. Their little standoff lasts about five seconds before Bucky scoops his hands under her knees and dumped her legs unceremoniously out of his way. He saunters off towards the bathroom, dragging his shirt over his head as he goes. Darcy doesn't have to look at Steve to know they're both watching him leave.

Sometimes she forgets the level of familiarity between the three of them isn't exactly normal. She doesn't even behave like this with her brothers, usually only boyfriends or guys she's totally hitting on. It's just something that evolved with the friendship, probably perpetuated by the fact that Darcy tends to get a bit handsy with the people she's close to, and the way she and Bucky were playing it fast and loose with comfort zones back in the beginning, before she'd known about his feelings for a certain American hero.

Perhaps what's even stranger is the way they all tone it right back in the presence of other people. It's like the apartment is their cosy little sanctuary, where normal rules don't apply. She wonders if Bucky would have even come up with his little plan if the three of them weren't already so comfortable with each other physically.

Once Bucky's out of sight, she turns to Steve. "What do you reckon? There's a TiVo'd episode of M*A*S*H there, should we watch that?"

"Sure," he replies, lifting one arm to rest in on the back of the couch. She suspects the movement is entirely unconscious, but that just makes it all the sweeter. She gets the episode playing, then scoots over and curls up against the side that's now free. He wraps his arm around her and she puts her hand over the top of his, tucking it in close around her side. It's a habit they got into over the winter, because Steve is like a massive hot water bottle, and she can never get warm enough in January. It's April now, but whatever.

The M*A*S*H theme tune is just music, no singing, but she knows the lyrics to the song and a sweet sadness wells up in her chest as she recalls them.

Suicide is painless;
It brings on many changes.

Even though it's been a couple of years since it happened, the word 'suicide' is still synonymous in her mind with her friend Wendy. Wendy had been gay, with right-wing Christian parents, and while losing her has been far from painless, it's taught Darcy to make sure that the special people in her life know how much they mean to her.

She only hesitates for a moment before she looks up at Steve and says, "You know you're perfect just the way you are, right? You're the most perfect man I've ever met." A shadow flickers across his eyes, which Darcy takes to mean that he knows exactly what part of him she's referring to. She's passionate about LGBT rights, especially since what happened to Wendy, and she'd talk Steve's ear off about it if she thought it would do any good, but she picked up pretty early on that it only makes him uncomfortable. She's had to settle for being supportive but vague in her comments—and occasionally cranking 'Born This Way' by Lady Gaga and pretending she didn't realise anyone else could hear it through her bedroom door.

She gives him a peck on the cheek that has absolutely nothing to do with her hopes for the following evening, and puts her head on his shoulder.

"Love you, big guy," she says, because she really does.

After a moment, she feels the gentle pressure of a kiss on her hair.

"Love you, too, Darce," he says, his voice rough.