"Sometimes It's Just Another Day At the Office"

There's a room in the A Tower. One end is a kitchen and it morphs by casual degrees into scruffy, comfortable furniture that gives Mr Stark's interior designer fits. It started as an unofficial break room for the workmen rebuilding after the Battle of New York and, as the Avengers trickled back in, they never quite let it get remodelled.

Darcy cannot confirm or deny the reports of armed stand-offs against successive squads of wallpaper hangers. Well. She can, she just doesn't choose to. Two of her unofficial jobs when she was just a SHIELD paperwork bunny were to a) keep the kitchen stocked with five kinds of cereal and b) stick newspaper clippings of the Avengers onto the fridge with cheerful white-and-yellow daisy magnets.

These days, having been sucked into the upside down vortex of ever-increasing doom which SHIELD likes to call its promotional ladder, Darcy is almost too busy for that. Also, tonight she is on break, dammit.

"Oh, those two are so boning," says Jane.

Darcy picks up her bottle of nail polish, 'Death By Pinkness', and cocks an eyebrow.

Her former boss nods across the room to the lounging area, where Natasha and Barton are settled, watching a show on pottery. Natasha, through some strange and eternal alchemy of style, is making cut-off denim shorts and a plain black singlet look chic. She sits cross-legged on the battered couch, taking notes in a hard-bound notebook balanced on her thigh. Barton is on the floor below, leaning with his back against the couch, jeans-clad legs splayed. As Jane and Darcy watch, Natasha uncurls one leg and drops it over Barton's shoulder. Without looking away from the lecture on imari-ware he starts to rub the instep and bridge of her foot.

"I cannot confirm or deny," says Darcy.

"That's the third time you've said that this evening," Jane observes. "C'mon kiddo, you're letting me down here. It's been too long - gossip! Gossip!"

Darcy strives hard to keep her shrug to herself. Jane and Thor have the kind of relationship where one or both of them disappears into a lab or an extra-planar location, or Norway, for weeks at a time and when they get back together they coo at each other and there are flowers and Thor carries Jane around everywhere and they coo some more and disappear to quarters for days at a time. It seems to keep the pair of them happy but, Darcy feels it's not entirely her fault that she hasn't seen Jane in a while.

"But 'cannot confirm or deny' is funny," she protests instead, pouting and tugging at one of Jane's braids.

Jane tweaks her eyebrows together and says, more low, "I'm worried about how you keep disappearing and coming back with bandages. Are those government spooks... making you do things?"

"Honestly," says Darcy, "today was just another day at the office..."

The morning was just a little training and some paperwork.

"Really, Coulson? Really?" Darcy rolls her eyes upward, but she still can't see the heavy book he is balancing on her head.

"You'll thank me for it one day, Lewis," he says, carefully letting go of the book and hobbling with the help of his cane back to his desk. "Back like a string of pearls, now."

Darcy sighs, and then has to catch the book - Seven Pillars of Wisdom, apparently - and manoeuvre it gingerly back on her head. "Bet you five dollars?" she asks. Then, "TrustmeCaptainAmericathisisn 'tnearlyaskinkyasitlooks," as Steve Rogers pokes his head through the office doorway with a case of papers under one arm.

He blinks at her. "Huh."

Darcy blushes.

"I didn't know girls still did that," Steve says. "Peggy used to complain about having to do it in finishing school. Oh," he addresses Coulson, "I mean Peggy Carter - she was a dame I worked with a lot in the SSR. But then you've probably read about her in my file. So, uh -"

"I know about Peggy Carter," says Coulson, a faint, sweet smile wreathing his face. "How can I help you, Captain Rogers?"

Then I delivered some paperwork and shuffled stuff around the offices.

There's something in the ducts.

Darcy is ten floors underneath SHIELD's New York headquarters past lasers and retinal scanners and armed guards and there's something in the ducts. She draws her taser (a Stark Special #3) from its holster on her thigh and pads along the dreary gray hall with her weapon at the ready. Having lightning at her beck and call is fun, but in this situation she's going to have to wait until whatever it is moves out from cover. Darcy kinda wishes, right now, that she had a dirty inelegant slug-thrower on her, however much Coulson crinkles his eyes when the subject comes.

So. Thing. Ducts. Darcy. She tracks it by sound, up and to the left, and over. Then another pit-a-pat comes from the right. And then behind.

There is a brief, exciting tussle, and then Darcy lands hard on the floor without ever seeing what the thing was. Dammit.

The floor is cold against her back, and pressure on her chest makes it hard to breathe. There's no pain, though, so Darcy risks blinking her eyes open. The weight on her chest is a large catlike thing, its rangy body covered with coarse grey fur striped with red. There's a metal spider caught in its mouth, metal limbs twitching feebly. The Cat Thing stares at her with curious yellow eyes and works its jaws around the spider. Metal parts sprinkle down and bounce off her chest.

"Uh, hey, Cat Thing, I, uh come in peace?" Is that smoke drifting out its nose? There is a metal collar around its neck, and a tag which reads "TECH 10.101." Oh great, an escaped experiment. "Nice Cat Thing," she says, and eases herself awkwardly out from under and rescues her document folder. Near death experiences or no, the paperwork must get through!

... and I made a new friend!

The guy in Tech is short, and keeps his hair in an assertive side parting. There's a badge cheerfully proclaiming "Hi! My name is CLIVE" clipped to his checked shirt. His dark liquid eyes don't blink as he, in unison with the Cat Thing, stares silently at Darcy.

"Oh, you're Clive," says Darcy. "Agent Hill said to say 'Hi' if I ever saw you."

Clive closes his eyes slowly, and then opens them. "Hill," he says. He shuts his eyes and opens them again. "I have something for Hill."

"Riiight," says Darcy. "Welp, here are your blueprints and I'll just head off and let you and your pet get some quality time..."

"Richard isn't a pet," Clive says, his voice filled with gloom. "Vermin control is very serious business down here. There was trouble with miniaturised Von Neumann bots just yesterday." He strokes Richard the Cat Thing's forehead and coos, "And you crunched those nasty metal things all up, champ." Richard swells a little at his touch, and makes a little creaky noise in its throat.

Oh, I stopped to get a haircut on my lunchbreak.

Darcy ducks around the corner, her taser out for the second time that day. "I'm all for freedom of expression in the privacy of one's home," she says to the suit-and-sunglasses guy next to her, "but isn't there a rule about flamethrowers in the hallways?"

"No, but it would probably be covered by the General Horseplay and Rowdy Behaviour clause in the employees' handbook, Section 36, paragraph (c)," he replies, lifting his gun. "On three?"

"I don't count," says Darcy. Then she calls around the corner, "Hey, Extra Planar Inferno Guy! I liked my hair! There was special shampoo and everything! Do you know how much work it is to get hair that attractively tousled? And now it's up in smoke! What do you have to say to that, huh?"

From around the corner, over the crackling of the flames, she hears a mournful "Soooorrryyyy..."

"So we're gonna talk this out and you're going to pay to have my coiffure neatened up and then we'll send you back to Pyro Dimension. Okay?"

"... kayyyyyyy..."

Darcy corks the polish bottle, and inspects her nails. The blindingly pink polish is still shining and wet, so she puts her hands flat on the table, fingers spread wide. "You next?" she inquires.

Jane, who is not a polish kind of a girl, pulls her hands back defensively and fists them in the sleeves of her shirt. It's way too big for Jane, woven of linen and embroidered at the cuff and throat with fine red wool. Darcy has a brief flash of estimating the thread count of the linen, and what that might imply for Asgardian weaving techniques, but blinks it away.

"So that was my morning," she says. "Very lackadaisacal. What do you think of the new 'do?"

"It's very cute," says Ms Potts, pulling out a chair and sitting down with her ankles elegantly crossed. "I like the curly bits at the bottom."

Then there was the weekly cultural briefing with Captain America, which is terribly important...

Darcy thumps the battered cardboard box on the table in the SHIELD canteen and pulls out paperbacks. "Now everyone keeps telling me I have to get you reading Harry Potter," she says, "but I thought some Tom Clancy might be good for decompressing. And, Steve, I am so sorry for making you read two le Carre books in a row. That was inconsiderate, badly calculated, and a 'dick move'. Only one le Carre a year now, I promise."

Instead, Steve Rogers snags a slim volume with a missing spine and a picture of a highwayman on the cover. "Hey, The Black Moth," he says. "They still publish that?"

"Oh, that was, uh mine, for private reading." Darcy snatches it back. "Hang on. You've read Georgette Heyer?"

Steve doesn't even have the grace to blush, and with his fair skin that would have been awe-inspiring. "My mom liked them. And I spent a lot of time in bed with nothing to do but read or draw. That book about the Battle of Waterloo she did in the thirties - that was swell."

"Huh."

"Gotta say, Darcy, I could do with a few more conflicts where the bad guy says, "OK you win, I'm off to bed, dinner's on the table..."

And I manned the phones for the rest of the day.

Bing. "Hi, Dispatch, Agent Smith here, ID 451, I need a where-at on Beetle Squad."

taptaptap "Agent Smith, as of last communique Beetle Squad was over the Antarctic, verbal report 'breaking out the Hawaiian shirts'. Co-ordinates to follow..."

Bing. "Dispatch, this is Agent Smythe, ID 314, preliminary report on Operation: Dumbo. The elephant has dropped the feather. Repeat, the elephant has dropped the feather.

"Understood, Agent Smythe, and godspeed."

Bing. "Agent Smitty calling, ID 1618 in Zone Purple. I need a trace on the Destroyer of Worlds, Name Him Not Yet He Shall Come."

taptaptap "New Jersey Destroyer of Worlds, Name Him Not Yet He Shall Come or San Francisco Destroyer of Worlds, Name Him Not Yet He Shall Come?"

"Last seen near Boston?"

taptaptap "Perhaps you mean Nameless Destiny of Worlds? We resettled that guy in Massachusetts last year."

"Yeah, my bad, slip of the tongue there..."

Bing. "Ma'am, your son set himself on fire? Ohhh, he's enjoying it. Yes, this was the right number to call. Get him to stand on tile or concrete if you can, we're sending a response team. In the meantime, can we talk to you again about that boarding school in Westchester? There's a new one-semester enrollment package so you wouldn't have to lose him for long..."

Bing. "Delivery from Argyle's Pizza waiting in reception, for an Agent Smith."

"Sending a pickup now."

Bing. "Hey there beautiful I'm sure you're beautiful calling from a payphone here lost our comms, they're bombing us from the air, and I'm down to my last dime."

taptaptap "Tracing your location from the phone now." taptaptap "Exfil is on its way. What's your name, sweetheart?"

"ID 111, Agent Papadoupo-"

"So yeah," says Darcy, flicking her eyes down to her hands, "just another day at the office."

Jane is stirring a silver spoon in another mug of tea, the steam from it veiling her face. Pepper works at her nails with an emory stick that, Darcy's pretty sure, cost a week of Darcy's salary.

"Well," says Jane, "so long as it's okay. But if you ever need busting out, I know a guy. And, hey, the Power of Science. Thingy. I'm here if you need help."

Darcy forces a grin. "Got it Jane-boss. But me, I'm like an ant - lift ten times my weight and work well with others. It's all cool."

Over at the couch part of the break room, Barton sits with Natasha's legs draped over his shoulders, his head tipped back, eyes closed. Natasha rubs one finger gently between his eyebrows.

Darcy observes his bare toes, so naked and... vulnerable. She picks up the little bottle of nail polish and tosses it in her hand. "Jane, Pepper, are you thinking what I'm thinking...?"

"Hey," reproves Natasha.

Darcy pouts. "Sorry."

"There's sparkly polish in my bag."

"Should I be worried?" says Barton, eyes still closed.

"Pish, Agent of SHIELD here. You should always worry."

(Agent Papadoupolis is fine - the payphone ran out of money and Darcy called him back and they talked until the evac came. Just so you know.)

Notes: imari-ware - once upon a time, there was a town in Japan which didn't make a particular kind of porcelain (that was Arita), but it did export the stuff in bulk to the Western World, and gave that porcelain its name. It gets complicated after that, not least because western pottery makers started imitating the style. Anyway, think lots of blue and red and gold. It's v. pretty. von Neumann bots - von Neumann theorised that space probes programmed to build copies of themselves might be an effective way to explore space. I'm using the term simply for self-replicating robots. And the thought of them gives me the willies. "On three?" "I don't count." - Lifted in slightly altered form from the episode "Boorland Day" of The Unusuals The Black Moth was published in 1921, An Infamous Army in 1937, '38 in the States, well within Steve's pre-freeze timeframe. For people who aren't familiar with Heyer, she made her name in Regency romances, painstakingly researched and generally quite sweet, and also wrote a handful of whodunnits and army books. An Infamous Army is both a romance and a painfully thoroughly researched account of the Battle of Waterloo.