"Hot blooded, all American girl
I was raised by a television
Every day is a competition..."
"American Girl" by Bonnie McKee
Part Three: Poaching
The next two weeks flew by. It was Code Club one afternoon and then suddenly Darcy was reading Tony's speech for the eighth time and wondered how big of a shitstorm was brewing on the horizon.
She might be humiliated tomorrow. She spoke with Jane about it, wondering if it was actually possible to juggle it all. They agreed it wasn't, and it hurt Darcy more than she thought it would.
"Take the money," Jane said, two nights before while they drank beers in Darcy's office.
Charlotte went home an hour before and they ordered Chinese food.
Darcy made some non-committal sound at the back of her throat but Jane stared her down, scrutinizing her.
"Do it. Three million? We'd be afloat for years," Jane said, and Darcy had to agree. "I know you think it's icky but if you sign a contract it won't be a waste of your time."
Jane took a swig of her beer and Darcy nodded, passing a hand over her face.
"He's not gonna win."
"I'd vote for him," Jane said, and Darcy tilted her head at her.
"Really?"
"Yeah, why not?" her friend said with a shrug. "If what you said about his plan for clean energy is true."
"I would have thought you'd vote for Gunn," Darcy said.
"She forgets my name every time I see her," Jane replied. "And we're not a forgettable organization. She chooses who she cares about, and it's not us. I'm not voting for her just because she's a woman."
"I'm gonna get shit for this. We might," Darcy said, and Jane shrugged again.
"Who gives a shit? We'll have three million dollars to comfort us."
Sitting alone with the speech, she crossed out a section with pencil and frowned. Her phone rang and she unlocked it, not even checking the number.
"You need to sleep."
"Could say the same for you," Tony replied. "You home?"
"Yeah," Darcy said. "I don't know about the final statement still."
"I'm not declaring my party tomorrow."
Darcy looked toward the ceiling of her bedroom and sighed. They'd had this conversation a least three times already. Tony was not Republican material anymore, but he'd be less alienating if he aligned himself with the left.
"I think you should."
"Why don't I be an independent?" Tony asked, and Darcy covered her phone to growl softly on her end without being heard.
"The last independent President was the only independent to ever exist, and that was George Washington."
"Uh-huh."
"Tony, I need you to say you're not George Washington," Darcy said, tossing aside the speech and rubbing her eyes.
"Okay."
"No, I really need you to say it out loud. I'm not George Washington."
"I'm not George Washington," Tony repeated flatly.
Darcy's skirt was too tight. Not because it didn't fit, but because Darcy usually dressed for comfort and forgot how pencil skirts made her legs and ass trapped.
She refused the Louboutins, opting for simple patent leather heels instead but allowed the makeup artist to put whatever they wanted on her face so she looked less tired.
She hardly slept. It turned out the idea of dozens of cameras trained on her was enough to keep her up and obsessively reading Tony's speech.
The press conference was held outside the Stark mansion in Manhattan. They had little notice while Darcy and the growing team were scrambling around for the last fortnight.
Tony pushed for a surprise, but some rumors already leaked and Darcy was sent emails from concerned former colleagues.
Was it some kind of elaborate joke and she was in on it? Darcy deleted each email.
Tony stood at a nondescript black podium with the punishing chill of the January wind in his face. Darcy, Pepper and Colonel Rhodes stood behind him with the view of the house blocking the sun.
"I have asked the press to be here so I can announce my candidacy for the upcoming 2020 election."
Cameras were constantly clicking, and Tony's smile never faltered.
"You know my name. I'm running for President."
Darcy stared at the back of his head, stunned. He skipped most of his speech. He said nothing about the outlines of his policies, nothing about his concern about the direction of the country.
"Questions?" Tony asked, and every seated journalist was up, firing questions.
"Tony, Tony!" an African American man yelled, and Tony pointed at him. "Is this a joke?"
"No. I'm not joking," Tony replied, "And no-one else ask that."
"Which party's nomination will you be seeking?"
Tony shrugged. "Haven't decided that yet."
"You think you can just wait and the offers will come?" someone else yelled, and Tony shrugged again.
"Sure."
"Jesus," Darcy whispered, looking down. He was about to be eaten alive.
To her surprise, a few laughs rang out among the crowd and Colonel Rhodes even chuckled softly beside her.
"How long have you considered running?"
"Many years, but I was busy," Tony drawled. "You covered that a few times, right, Ken?"
The journalist who had to be Ken looked sheepish. "Of course. But you suppose Iron Man translates to a candidacy?"
"I am a natural citizen," Tony retorted. He gestured behind them at the house. "I've lived in this house on and off for more than fourteen years."
Darcy found herself nodding.
"And believe it or not, I am over thirty-five, Ken," Tony concluded. "I'm eligible."
More laughter, and Ken even smiled.
"Good to know, Tony."
There was a pause and Tony turned his head looking at Darcy, and she felt her face flush from the acknowledgement.
"I don't have a lot of time today for questions. My schedule is pretty full today," Tony said, and Darcy held her breath. "My campaign manager Miss Lewis and her team will be setting up the headquarters this week and you can reach her there for my whereabouts for interviews."
Ken raised his hand again and Tony paused.
"Ken."
"Is this the same Darcy Lewis who wrote on Twitter in September 2008 a disparaging comment on John Adams?"
Darcy felt like her stomach was about to fall out of her onto the icy ground. She swallowed while everyone except Tony stared at her.
"What did she write?"
Tony didn't seem bothered at all by this. He even looked a little amused by Darcy's horror.
Ken looked at his phone and read aloud:
"John Adams is a whiny little bitch."
Darcy's eyes widened, and she remembered writing that tweet. She was only eighteen at the time, still very much in her phase of deliberately trolling the academics around her.
Several people laughed while cameras flashed, and Tony gave an elaborate shrug.
"I suppose she was exercising her free speech, something John Adams wasn't always a fan of," he said, but Ken kept looking at Darcy, and all she could do was stare back.
"Would you say you still believe that, Miss Lewis?"
Tony turned his head toward her. "Do you?"
Darcy felt what had to be nervous sweat under her arms beneath her wool coat and swallowed, the cameras still flashing while the press waited, eager for her response.
She looked up at Tony. "Yes."
She said yes because they wanted to hear her say something. She said yes because they most likely already had a bad opinion of her. She said yes because yes – John Adams was a whiny little bitch.
And maybe she could spin this in some way if she didn't back down.
Five minutes later as Tony was whisked back into the mansion and the press began to disperse, Pepper placed her hand on Darcy's shoulder and gave her a kind smile.
They stood in the foyer, voices echoing.
"John Adams is a bitch? Really?" Rhodey said.
Darcy could feel a tension headache coming on and went to her handbag for some Advil, avoiding looking at anyone.
"Good thing we didn't have you sign some morality clause," Rhodey added, and Darcy let out a breath.
"I want to die," she whispered, swallowing the capsules dry and squeezing her eyes shut.
"I get that a lot," Tony said, unperturbed.
"Great way to start, Tony," Rhodey said, dripping with sarcasm. "Now the Pentagon will call me asking about whether we vouched Darcy properly."
"I wasn't being unpatriotic, it was a joke," Darcy found herself saying. "I was a kid. I even wrote it all in lower case. It was an aesthetic thing."
"Okay," Rhodes conceded. "But you need to fix this fast."
Darcy grimaced. "Think I don't know that?"
Rhodes sighed, shrugging a little. They began walking down the hall toward the living room with obscenely large television and speaker system, pulling off their coats.
"Did I look good?" Tony asked.
"You know you did," Darcy replied, and they exchanged a glance.
Pepper turned on the TV and changed it to CNN, footage of Tony speaking at the podium being replayed. Wolf Blitzer was speaking to a Washington correspondent. The general tone was of amusement and surprise.
"We got it," Tony said, and he smiled at her.
Darcy checked Twitter.
"You're trending."
"People are mostly just confused," Rhodey said, scrolling through his own phone. "I'm getting calls. Uh, about three hundred emails, too. Thanks, Darcy."
"Bite me," she threw back. "Wolf Blitzer just said my name."
"Darcy Lewis, like Tony Stark, is new to politics. This morning's press conference took a bizarre turn when a reporter asked about a certain tweet Miss Lewis composed a decade ago."
They cut to the footage of Darcy's affirmation and she sucked in a breath.
Her phone vibrated in her hand and she looked down, seeing a wave of notifications.
"Gangsta," Darcy read. "Iron Man 4 Pres. The hashtags are insane."
"Don't read everything, Darcy," Pepper warned, scrolling on her phone. "They're taking you down a peg. Oh. Oh, no. I don't like that."
She frowned and Darcy felt the urge to move closer to her and take a peek.
"This looks like a joke," Rhodey said. "People aren't taking this seriously."
"The word's out. That was today's agenda," Tony said, his hands going behind his head as he leaned back in his seat. "Then we deal with the spot fires tomorrow."
"I can spin this," Darcy said, and everyone paused their scrolling and look at her. "We can make the centrists agree that I had a right to what I said."
"The Right won't –" Rhodey began, but Darcy held up her hand.
"They'll come around. We're anti-establishment. See?" Darcy pointed at the list of hashtags, scrolling through tweets. "Anyone else would have apologized. But we don't."
Tony smirked. "Right."
"We're going to be laughed out of a seat at the table," Rhodey said. "You don't know these guys like I do, Darcy."
She didn't appreciate his attempt at mansplaining politics. She put her phone face down in her lap and licked her lips. The Pentagon didn't scare her.
"Obama, then Greene. Democrat, Republican. On and on and on," she said, leaning forward in her seat, turning her body toward her left where Rhodey sat.
"Yeah?" he prompted, and Darcy smiled.
"Tony's not a politician," she replied, and then she took her phone in her hand and stood up, rolling her shoulders. "So we don't need the table. We've got our own."
She gave Rhodey another long stare while CNN kept playing in the background.
"Don't interrupt me when I speak ever again," she said.
She walked out of the living room, taking her first call of the day.
Late night talk shows knew Darcy's name. Jimmy Fallon asked The Roots about John Adams.
There was a strange disconnect, like reality hadn't quite set in. She managed to avoid being outdoors or anywhere people would recognize her since she spent every moment at the new headquarters a couple blocks over from the Stark mansion.
Volunteers were coming every day to ask if they could help, and soon a chugging machine of young people from all over was working through the first hurdles.
Tony came by often enough, but Darcy knew he was spread thin already.
Darcy deleted Tinder. It got ugly fast when people found her profile, the ones who were already messaging her turned hostile.
"Cherie," she yelled one morning a week after the press conference, her eyes scanning the cubicles for the blonde intern who was meant to be on a coffee run.
The girl emerged, her hands covering her phone. She mouthed, "For you."
Why was she being so dramatic?
"Who is it?"
"Steve Rogers," she called, and Darcy scanned her mental list, the name not ringing any bells.
"He's one of Congresswoman Gunn's guys."
Darcy stalked over, taking the phone from Cherie and putting it to her ear.
"Hi."
"Is this Darcy Lewis I'm speaking to?"
"Yeah," she said, hearing his voice was of a younger man, probably her age. Not some intern like Cherie who was hovering until Darcy waved her off, motioning for coffee.
"You still peddling Stark's wares?" he asked, and she frowned.
What an odd way to put it.
"You make him sound like a snake oil salesman," she retorted, and she began walking back to her little cubicle.
She settled in her chair as the guy kept talking. She Googled his name, quickly scanning the results and seeing a tall, handsome blonde man walking alongside Gunn, wearing a plaid shirt tucked in his khaki pants.
He reminded her a lot of Clark Kent without the glasses, just before he ripped off his clothes to reveal the Superman insignia on his costume.
"We weren't sure how serious that press conference was," he said, and Darcy frowned, pausing at a photo of him shaking hands with an elderly man, the pair of them each holding a part of a giant check.
He was into fundraising, just like her. His non-profit helped fight homelessness, their main demographic US veterans. He was a veteran, and Darcy clicked through to find an official portrait of Rogers wearing his Army uniform.
"Why are you calling, Steve?" Darcy asked, staring at the photograph and frowning.
"Think we could grab a coffee?"
"No," Darcy said shortly, and promptly hung up. She leaned back in her chair, listening to the constant hum of the office, staring at the Army portrait with her brow still furrowed.
Cherie came over a minute later, coffee mug aloft and Darcy took it, sipping.
"Is that him?" the intern asked, and Darcy nodded vaguely. "Very handsome."
Half an hour later, Darcy was walking towards another office block after her Uber driver dropped her off, tightening the cord of her coat before stuffing her hands into the pockets.
Congresswoman Gunn's face was plastered on the walls outside the office building and along down the street with red, blue and white streamers everywhere.
She pushed the glass door open and looked around, seeing a receptionist desk. She approached it, the intern's eyes widening as she recognized Darcy.
"Do you have -?"
"An appointment? Yeah," Darcy said, and she looked out along the sea of cubicles, not unlike her own headquarters and spied Rogers speaking with a volunteer while they pored over a poster.
Rogers looked up and froze, and Darcy rose a hand, wiggling her fingers at him.
Rogers rolled up the poster and handed it off to someone and walked over, and in the time he took walking to stand in front of her, Darcy could see he was nearly a full foot taller than her. The photos didn't do the man justice.
"Hi," he said, glancing at the receptionist and then Darcy. "This is a surprise."
"You tried to poach me," Darcy said, and his blue eyes widened.
He took her by the elbow and steered her back the way he came, his voice low.
"I was hoping to have an open conversation."
"About you poaching me?" Darcy asked, his hand freeing her while they walked.
Everyone was staring. There were mostly young women there, which didn't surprise Darcy at all. They all wore variations of the same uniform – a white t-shirt with Gunn 2020 across the front with blue bubble writing. It was tacky. Whoever designed the shirt should be fired.
"That photo out front of Miranda is not her best," Darcy said, watching the onlookers for any reaction.
Rogers cleared his throat. "Congresswoman Gunn approved it. It polled well."
"Someone should tell her makeup artist to blend her smokey eye better."
"Why is this relevant?" Rogers asked, and Darcy sensed his irritation.
Good. He deserved to feel uncomfortable.
Darcy only answered him when they reached his office and he shut the door, going to his chair and sitting down.
She glanced around his office and saw no photos, just a map of the US with arrows everywhere. There could be sensitive information here.
"It's not. I'm just giving you some pointers," she said. She cleared her throat. "You tried to poach me."
Rogers put his elbows on the desk and splayed his large hands open.
"Alright. You're good. From the digging I did and when I asked around," he said, and Darcy crossed her arms, throwing herself in the chair opposite him.
"Who'd you ask?"
"Some Harvard guys," he said, shrugging. "And we work a lot in the same circles."
"We deal with women who are homeless, mostly," Darcy replied.
She made a show of looking around again. She felt his eyes on her, and she smiled briefly.
"You think I should be here."
"You're wasted on Stark."
Her eyes met his, narrowing. "I don't think so."
"Okay," he said, unconvinced. "But we both know that this is a brief impasse –"
"Impasse?" Darcy repeated. "Who talks like that?"
Rogers closed his mouth abruptly and cleared his throat, giving her an annoyed stare. He looked away at his closed door, then back at her.
"Anyway," he continued. "You –"
He cut himself off, as if understanding something for the first time.
"You think Stark's gonna win," he said, his accent showing, and he gave a short laugh. "Otherwise he must be paying you a –"
"What if it's both?" Darcy interrupted. She glanced at the map, making it obvious that she was taking it in. "What if he's gonna win and I get paid a shitload or a fuckload or whatever amount it is?"
There was a flash of surprise on Steve's face at her challenging tone, her vulgarity. He had to know she wasn't there to make friends.
"You were so insulted that I wanted to offer you a job? At the headquarters of the person who's going to be the first female President?"
"Oh, pfft," Darcy said. "She will not. She will not be the first female President."
Darcy never believed such a thing would happen with such a white bread woman. She bored the pants off of men and women. It didn't matter that she had experience. It didn't matter that she was a good person. She would not win.
She thought of the comment Jane made about Gunn never remembering her name and she nodded.
"Yeah. It's a no for me."
Rogers just studied her while Darcy looked at her nails. They needed buffing.
"I came here to tell you that I won't sling mud unless you do," she said, looking up.
Rogers frowned, and Darcy glanced at his mouth, his lips ideal for sullenness. She imagined him brooding over this exchange, since he probably got everything he asked for especially when it came to women in this job.
"You're so cynical," he said, and Darcy smiled.
"I'm realistic. And you have a plethora of shit to work with. Just don't aim too low."
He looked away, understanding.
"His kid."
"Yes. And Pepper," Darcy said, glad he was on the same page as her.
He didn't seem stupid, just a little idealistic. He probably thought she'd bend over backwards to work under him.
Darcy rarely did anything under a man.
"Okay." That was all he said.
Darcy pushed back her chair and stood up, walking over to the door before he could offer to walk her out.
She gave him a glance over her shoulder, and he stared up at her from his desk, his fingers steepled.
"Good luck," she murmured. "You'll need it."
One day she might buy a cordless microphone just to drop it after conversations like that one.