The next morning, Darcy could only think of Jane and how badly she wanted to scream at her for making her guilty about her vacation.

Hadn't she earned this? She never went anywhere for fun, not even the store.

When she bought that palm tree, that was when she got Bruce a specific brand of granola he liked.

She didn't do much for herself, and maybe she was sick of making excuses for Jane.

She nearly called her twice, on the verge of apologizing to her even though Darcy knew she wasn't in the wrong.

She wanted to go to Hawaii. She wanted to stay in America.

If Bruce decided to fire her, maybe she would crawl back to Jane and concede they were better together than apart, but right now she wanted to swim in the ocean and read a book.

With her bags slung over each shoulder, she locked her room and walked off toward fields where the quinjets were kept.

There were a couple dozen people milling around, and Darcy quickly found Bruce and joined him.

He looked like a wreck.

"You okay, boss?"

Bruce didn't correct her for once. Instead, he looked grim as he replied, "I went through every bad scenario last night. I didn't get much sleep."

"What's the possibility of you actually having a good time?" Darcy asked, eyebrows hiked up.

"About ten to one."

"I like those odds," Darcy countered, giving him a nudge with her elbow.

It wasn't skin on skin contact like the last time Darcy overstepped her boundaries, so Bruce just frowned at her and readjusted his bag strap on his shoulder.

"You brought a lot of stuff," Bruce noted.

Darcy had packed two bags for seven days. She knew it was a lot but wasn't about to apologize for it since the quinjets had more than enough space for her crap.

"This is nothing. My great-aunt used to have an entire suitcase just for shoes."

"Huh."

There was a hint of a smirk on Bruce's face.

"She was married five times," Darcy added, fuelling him further.

"Your great-aunt sounds like Elizabeth Taylor."

"Elizabeth Taylor was married eight times, boss."

"I knew that," Bruce retorted.

The crowd began shuffling toward the idle quinjets and it still took a little while longer to properly board and store away luggage.

Once she and Bruce got to the front of the line, they were the last two to board, and Steve Rogers was the one to greet them.

"Darcy, right?"

He took her bags like he was lifting pieces of paper, and Darcy saw the smooth movements of his taut biceps as he placed them inside.

"Captain America, right?" Darcy threw back, and Bruce gave her a sidewards glance before moving past them.

"Steve."

The correction wasn't impatient, which was usually Bruce's style. He said it immediately, like it was normal for him.

Darcy expected he met a lot of people all the time, and she was nothing new.

"Right."

He pointed to a compartment above her head. "Your bags are in there."

"Cool."

Darcy promptly walked away, feeling weird.

She wanted the first time she spoke to Steve Rogers to be epic, and probably something involving her flipping her hair and him catching her scent on the wind and chasing after her.

That was outlandish, and she knew it. She read too many vampire novels as a teenager.

She thought she'd at least have him asking for her number. Instead, she'd sort of just cut him off and walked away.

Being by herself now, she'd have to tell people why she had kept to the labs with Jane all the time, making excuses.

Jane was always so protective of her work, thinking people were out to get her. And she wasn't entirely wrong, since what happened when Thor first showed up and all her stuff was taken away.

Jane was also a woman in an almost entirely male-run field, and she hated it, and Darcy did, too.

Not that working for Bruce was ever that bad.

As soon as Darcy sat down opposite Bruce, she took out her earbuds and stuck them in, turning her iPod up until she felt at ease.

She looked over to her left, where Steve was standing and checking something in another compartment.

His back was turned toward her and her eyes swivelled to his ass without a second thought.

Darcy pushed her glasses up her nose and bit her lip.

She took a second too long to look away because the second she looked out her window, she saw Bruce staring at her.

Once they landed roughly ten hours later, Darcy felt stranger than ever.

They'd flown since 8AM but arrived in Honolulu around lunch time.

Darcy already had a sandwich with Bruce but knew she'd never waste the opportunity to head out to a buffet, or hit the bar.

She did a combination of the two after she dropped off her bags in her room, changing into a yellow halter sundress with brand new flip-flops and her new straw hat.

There was a constant commotion around the hotel. They were all staying in one of the more popular hotels that nudged itself up against the shoreline, and Darcy liked the constant bustle in the lobby.

She'd kept her lei on, and walked across the echoing lobby to the open eating area.

She grabbed a plate and started piling on a lot of fruit, and then backtracked to find a mimosa, and bumped into someone.

"You again."

Steve Rogers looked her up and down.

He was wearing his lei, too, but he'd changed into a pair of shorts.

He wore the same tight shirt as earlier, which made Darcy swallow and then avoid his friendly gaze.

"Yeah," she murmured.

That seemed to be the best she could do for now.

She looked at the plate Steve carried, which was covered in a pile of bacon rashers and scrambled eggs.

"Whoa. Hungry?"

"Always," Steve said. "I can put it all away pretty fast, too."

"I don't doubt it," Darcy said under her breath, and then spied the attendant pouring drinks.

She looked over her shoulder back at Steve.

"You drinking?"

"Sure."

Her kind of fella, and Darcy almost said it aloud, but decided not to.

She asked for a mimosa, and then Steve was at her side, asking for a beer.

"Beers and bacon in Hawaii?"

"I'll eat more. I'll probably eat some fruit off your plate."

Darcy wasn't sure about his tone. He was teasing, but she didn't know why. There was the echo of an innuendo somewhere amongst his words, but she looked away again, wondering why her mind always had to be so dirty.

Vacations were meant to be about meeting people and making friends, not necessarily acting thirsty and banging whoever she could get her legs around.

Darcy thought of the box of condoms she stowed away in her suitcase, and then pushed the idea away again.

"If you ask nicely," Darcy said, though her tone was flatter than intended.

To her surprise, he followed her to a spare table.

"Can I sit here?"

"I don't know, can you?"

It slipped out, and then Darcy cringe inwardly, wondering if she sounded as standoffish as she thought she did.

It was the kind of lame joke she'd make with Bruce, or Jane.

"May I sit with you?" Steve clarified.

"Sure," Darcy said, but she had no idea why he wanted to.

She had so little in common with him.

He was a hundred years old, literally. And physical perfection.

She was not yet thirty, growing up in a post-Cold War world with television and a whole other bunch of stuff besides being invented after he went into the ice in the 40's.

She didn't like being as mean about her own body size, but there was a lot she could work on.

She was a little chubby at times. She lost weight over the years working with Jane, but she wasn't anything like the other women Steve worked with.

This was definitely wishful thinking territory, and very silly.

He sat down beside her instead of opposite, to look straight ahead at the view.

Or his plate.

"You work with Bruce?"

"Yeah," Darcy said.

She cleared her throat, and then popped a grape in her mouth.

"I worked with Jane before."

"She was a great asset. She'll be missed."

Steve was eating and not looking her way, so Darcy narrowed her eyes for a second, instinctively rushing to Jane's defence.

"You never know. She could come back."

Steve looked straight at her, and Darcy saw his eyes were blue.

"Last thing I heard, she took a job in London."

Darcy didn't look away.

"What else did you hear?"

Steve finished his mouthful.

He had already put away a fair bit in just a couple minutes.

"Are you gonna say that's not your place to say?" Darcy added. "You being from more polite times?"

He chuckled softly at that, sounding somewhat surprised by her sass.

"Of course, ma'am. Gossip was invented after my time. Like the Internet."

"Oh, that damn internet. Can't wait for that fad to be over. Kim K trying to break it all the time, and all."

Steve laughed again, seeming to understand her reference.

She saw he was looking at her bunch of grapes, so she pushed her plate toward him.

"So what did you hear?"

"Doctor Foster wanted to be away from anything to do with Thor."

Steve took a grape and put it in his mouth, not before Darcy saw another flash of his pink tongue and perfect white teeth.

Darcy let out a breath. "Yeah. She had enough."

"What about you?"

"What about me?" Darcy fired back. "I wasn't dating Thor."

"Why didn't you follow her to London?"

She looked at him for a long time.

She could hear everyone around them filling their silence, and then she said the first thing that came into her head.

"I can't explain it, but I'm drawn to it."

Steve just softened, nodding.

"This is your calling."

"I guess you can call it that."

Darcy sipped her mimosa as Steve ate more grapes. His bacon and eggs were long gone.

"I heard about your taser. And Thor."

Darcy felt a burst of pride, though Jane had always chided her over the years for rendering Thor unconscious like that.

She only smiled.

"What else have you heard about me?"

"Not much," Steve admitted. "Nothing good."

Darcy didn't take it to heart, instead she rolled with it, recognising finally that Steve was half flirting with her.

Steve Rogers was flirting with her. The idea boggled her mind, but she didn't want to get ahead of herself.

She felt the heat in her gut, and let it sit there as he smiled back at her.

"That's what I like to hear."

After a moment, Steve was the one to look away, his smile still there in his eyes as he looked down at their empty plates.

"What are you plans this afternoon?"

Darcy kind of blurted out the question, and she saw Steve draw back, folding his arms like she saw him doing all the time at a distance.

There was embarrassment mingled with disappointment creeping up inside Darcy, threatening to show on her face.

She made it sound like she was propositioning him, which she wasn't.

"I'm going with Sam Wilson to look at memorials."

He was so serious that Darcy felt out of place, like she was intruding.

"Oh, great."

Great? Why didn't she know how to speak around anyone remotely attractive?

"I mean, that sounds like a great idea."

"It's important to him. Sam. And me, too."

Steve picked up his plate and made to leave.

Darcy swallowed, feeling stupid.

She was on vacation with Captain America talking to her and she still felt stupid.

There was an awkward pause. Everything had gone from feeling great to feeling overwhelmingly terrible in the space of a few seconds.

"I'm gonna get more to eat," Steve said.

"Sure."

Darcy consciously put the pieces back together, making her face open and bright again, less disappointed.

He looked at her again, and then lightly touched her glass with his beer bottle.

"Enjoy. Good meeting you, finally."

He left, not looking back.

Darcy stared at her glass for a full minute before she decided to leave, too.