A/N And here we are again, a couple days later than I intended but better late than never right?
It's three in the morning and I literally just finished this, and just gave it a quick read through myself, so let me know if there are any glaring typos and I'll get that taken care of.
Steve woke with the sun.
It was a simple fact of life, whether he liked it or not. And there were many mornings that very firmly landed in the not category, but whether it was the serum or simply habit, it seemed like no matter what he did, he just did not posses the ability to sleep in. He inclined to believe that it was a bit of both, as Bucky had no problem functioning on as little sleep as he did when they were on a mission, easily staying awake and alert for days at a time, but he also had a tendency to sleep until noon if there was no pressing reason for him to awake at a certain time.
Of course, Steve thought, rolling over to glance at the clock on the wall, confirming that it was only a little after seven. Rising with the sun usually meant a bit more, well, sun.
Sliding out from beneath the covers, careful not to disturb anyone, he padded over to the window and pulled back the gauzy curtain. His jaw dropped at what he saw, or more accurately, at what he didn't see, which was anything. The woods had been replaced by a curtain of white, which seemed to be blowing sideways.
It only took him all of 3.2 seconds to realize that they would not be going home today.
Leaving the bedroom he padded barefoot into the kitchen, where he had recalled spotting an old radio on the top shelf of one of the cupboards, where they had left it, wholly ignored since their arrival. He started a pot of coffee to brew before sitting down at the table to fiddle with the dials in hope of finding a signal.
When he finally managed to get a news station that came through as only mostly static, instead of entirely static, none of the news that he was able to make out was good. It seemed that a storm cell that was supposed to move out to the ocean had unexpectedly decided to veer west, and another weather system that was predicted to travel through the Midwest and then up into Canada instead took a detour south and the two merged into a huge super storm the likes of which the north east had never seen in recent memory.
A pot and a half of coffee and several unhelpful news reports later, a bleary eyed Darcy shuffled into the kitchen. She wandered over to where Steve was sitting and wrapped her hands around his shoulders, tucking her face into the crook of his neck, clearly not quite yet prepared to face the day.
"I thought you were going to wake us up so we could get an early start," she mumbled against his skin.
"Didn't see the point," Steve replied, reaching over his shoulder to rake his fingers through her sleep tousled hair. "I thought I'd let you both sleep in."
Darcy hummed low in her throat, a sound Bucky often likened to the purring of a cat, as Steve's fingernails scratched against her scalp. "What are you talking about?" she asked almost back to sleep, even standing up. "I wanted to get back into the city before evening rush hour."
"Sweetheart, have you actually opened your eyes yet this morning?" Steve asked, an amused smile playing at the corners of his lips.
"Opening your eyes is over rated," she grumbled moodily.
"Well you might want to give it a shot and look out the window," he said with voice curiously void of emotion.
Steve's tone got her attention and Darcy forced herself to wake up enough to look up and out through the large bay window over the kitchen sink.
"Well, fuck."
"That was basically my first thought too," Steve agreed, pouring Darcy a cup of coffee without being asked, doctoring it the way she liked it.
"I thought the news said that it wasn't going to snow up here until the end of the week," she said as she crossed over to sink to get a better look at what was happening outside. Not that there was anything to see.
"Yeah well that was four days ago," Steve said watching her lean toward the window until her nose was almost touching the glass. "I'm getting the impression that maybe we shouldn't have stayed quite as unplugged as we did."
"You get anything useful from that thing?" Darcy asked, nodding at the radio on the table. She couldn't pick up anything comprehensible from the garbled static, but Steve had been listening pretty intently when she'd come into the kitchen.
"Just that we should have left yesterday, and that it doesn't look like this is going to blow over any time soon."
"Fan-frickin-tastic," Darcy signed as she rejoined Steve at the table and picked up the mug of coffee he had prepared for her.
"All right, which one of you assholes spent last night dreaming of a White Christmas?!"
"Bucky's awake," Steve announced needlessly.
"And he looked out the window," Darcy added.
Bucky came striding into the kitchen, pulling a t-shirt over his head as he walked. "I'm looking at you sweet cheeks."
"Me?! How is this my fault?" Darcy asked appalled.
"Steve and I have seen enough snow and ice to last several lifetimes," he said as he swiped the mug from her hand on his trek across the room before coming to a stop, leaning against the counter. "You're the one who get's excited when it starts to flurry."
"I grew up in New Mexico," she reminded him with a vengeful glare as she watched him sip from her abducted coffee. "Snow is still a novelty. That does not mean I want to be a member of Donnor Party of three!"
"I hardly think there will be any need to resort to cannibalism," Steve interjected dryly while he slid a fresh cup in front of Darcy, having anticipated Bucky's move. "This is a safe house and as such is very well provisioned, if not technologically cut off."
"There is that," Darcy agreed, with a sigh, thinking of the stockpile of non perishables in the pantry. "And I suppose I can think of worse places to be and with worse company to have to wait out a blizzard," she added smiling wealy at her boys, trying to look on the bright side. Because truly, even though she knew Bucky was only joking about her wishing a blizzard down on top them, she couldn't help but feel somewhat responsible what with this whole weekend getaway being her idea. "I mean really how long can this last, and then we can all get home."
Bucky sucked air past his teeth and looked over at Steve, the two sharing a silent conversation.
"What?" she asked, glancing back and forth between the two of them. "What am I missing?"
After a bit more silent conversing, Bucky was the one elected to explain to Darcy. "Our problems won't end with the storm kitten. It's only been coming down for a couple hours and there's probably already a foot and a half of snow on the ground and that's only going to get much much worse. We're miles from the main road, and no one is going to be coming back here to plow it out so we can drive out of here, and none of us have the proper gear to hike out."
Bucky and Steve shared another glance, the rest of that story was that one of them might stand half of chance to making it to civilization, but unless the situation was absolutely dire, Darcy would never let one of them go off on their own, and they would certainly never leave her behind alone either.
"Well, fuck."
"You said that before."
"Still seems relevant," Darcy replied shooting Steve a look. "So you're telling me that we're stuck here until we get rescued." She paused for one long beat. "But we will get rescued. You're Avengers. S.H.I.E.L.D. is going to come looking for you. And I'm Tony's assistant, he's going to come looking for me as soon as someone tries to hand him something."
The men shared another loaded look, which made Darcy roll her eyes at being left out of the loop. "Just tell me," she sighed.
"Well barring a call to Assemble, we're on leave from S.H.I.E.L.D. until after new years," Bucky reminded her.
"And didn't Tony mention something about taking Pepper to Anguilla for the holidays? Steve added. "And I don't think we actually told anyoneexactly where we would be, since we didn't know exactly where we would be."
"Grant knows where we are," Darcy sighed heavily again. "But he's off on Coulson's super team doing god knows what, god knows where."
"Yep."
"Our cells-"
"Get no service up here, even your suped up Stark phone," Steve said, following her train of thought since he'd already traveled that same path before she'd woken up. "They won't be able to track the GPS if it's not connecting to anything."
All three of them fell silent, meditating over their respective cups of coffee.
"Ya know," Darcy exclaimed, bringing both men's attention back to her. "I have an excuse. I'm a college drop out who fell into the crazy world by chance. You two are highly trained soldiers who have way more survival training than I do. How did you let me get us into this mess so unprepared?!"
Bucky opened his mouth to speak, and then shut it again before turning to look at Steve, who was already looking back at him with a matching expression. She was right, they really should have been more prepared for any kind of emergency scenario but they had gotten complacent, thinking nothing could go wrong on a little weekend getaway.
Steve didn't have a good answer for her, so he didn't even try. "You were right about what you said before Darce," he said reassuringly. "We'll definitely be missed when we don't come back home, so all we can do for now is sit tight and wait."
"Riiiight," Darcy drawled. "So when we end up resorting to cannibalism. Don't eat my face. That would be creepy and crossing the line."
A/N So this one is a bit more transitory, but I hope it was entertaining nonetheless. I will see you all again in another couple of days with the next one, so in the mean time... Let me know what you think!