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There are a lot of ways to wake up, most of them grumpy and unpleasant. Darcy has woken up hungover, in a tent in the woods, in motels of questionable repute, and once, memorably, in Central Park next to Jane and a bottle of Southern Comfort (you've gotta celebrate opening your first wormhole all on your own, without the help of the Bifrost, somehow). Thor had found and carried both of them home the next day, with half of New York watching and snapping pictures, many of which had turned up on TMZ that afternoon. It was glorious.
This is decidedly the best way to wake up, however, with the scent of bacon on the air, Edith Piaf on the record player, and a very tall, very handsome national treasure sliding back into bed, leaning over and kissing her gently. "Mmmph," Darcy mumbles, light seeping in under her eyelids most uncomfortably, "Turn off the sun, maybe?" Steve's chuckle moves through her, and she finds her thoughts quickly moving southwards from the bacon.
"Outta my league, sorry Miss," He murmurs back, kissing her again, this time slowly, attentive, and with definite intentions. Apparently Cap has no issue with morning breath. Darcy grins against his mouth, hands sliding over his bare torso.
"Mmmph, thought I smelled breakfast," She notes, coyly, and Steve makes a sound of firm protest in his throat.
"It'll keep," He whispers, a hand sliding into her hair as he silences her again. The man loves playing with her hair, Darcy's noticed. She's not sure what exactly has happened between last night's brooding and now, but it looks like if anyone's going to be doing the hard ravishing, it might not be her leading. It's a very, very pleasant surprise at any rate. Though the way his hands clutch at her, almost too hard, just hard enough, Darcy's getting a hint as to where his head's at. Her mortality was driven home for him again, and quite thoroughly, last night.
His hands go to her (well, his) shorts, and Darcy wastes no time in helping him slide them off over her thighs, his fingers ghosting over the long, new scar on her left leg. It's an almost reverent touch, but Darcy finds herself suddenly nervous as his hands just barely creep under the hem of her (well, his, again) t-shirt, and distracts him from her torso momentarily by grinning, tugging at his pants.
Darcy knows she's pretty adorable, as gals go. There'd been a time when the thought of being tall and willowy in the style of Pepper Potts had been all she wanted, especially when the boobs came along when she was barely eleven, her peers calling her 'slut' for this reason alone, driving her to hide herself under her older brother's baggy cast-offs for most of middle school. But overall, she's come to embrace being short and curvy, pale and dark-haired. It hadn't hurt her odds at bagging a superhero, clearly.
But then she'd gotten chewed up and spit out by a pile of broken glass and metal.
Steve kicks off his gym pants under the covers and moves back to her t-shirt, his hands just a little nervous, even as his eyes meet hers, burning, and Darcy swallows, chewing on her bottom lip like an anxiety pro. He looks too damn good in the morning light, all golden and shirtless and nearly naked, while she looks a little like a jigsaw puzzle underneath. And of course, he misinterprets her nervousness, "...If you don't want-"
"Oh god, no, I do," She blurts out, putting a slow, shy grin back on his face and oh lordy, did she ever want to. "...S'just...not all really pretty under there, Cap." He shakes his head, leaning down to kiss her neck.
"I've seen most of it before," He reminds her, breath hot on her skin, and Darcy's eyes slide shut again.
"Not...like this," She gulps, not caring if it doesn't make sense. "I mean, first girlfriend you're seeing naked, and she's..."
"Gorgeous," Steve tells her firmly, reaching down again and tugging. Darcy gulps, before pushing herself up a bit to help him out, so that he can tug the soft white cotton up over her head and through her hair, sending the brown waves falling back down around her in a cloud. Her blue eyes go wide as his jaw goes slack, heart hammering nervously for a few long moments.
The worst of the lines are definitely over her abdomen, a cross-roads that has left her forever-pale flesh somewhat uneven. But there are a few that slice down toward her thighs, and one that peeks over the top of her left breast, over a collar-bone. And yet, her eyes frantically darting all over his face, Steve doesn't seem to be on the verge of an episode of self-loathing and guilt, and certainly doesn't look disgusted. In fact, Darcy's pretty sure he's having a hard time seeing anything other than a set of dynamite curves.
"Your skin," He swallows, wetting his lips as a tentative hand slides over her stomach, and Darcy's breath catches in her throat, "Your skin is so pale..." It's said with an almost reverence, an artist's appreciation. Darcy can't help the relieved little smile flitting over her full lips as Steve dips down, his mouth replacing his hands on her scars, kissing along the road-map over her torso. She wonders if he knows how absolutely amazing he's being.
"Mmm, sunscreen," She murmurs, hands going into his hair as he moves upwards, kisses pressed against her ribs, "Barely ever going out in the sun helps too..." Her voice trails off as he chances a glance up at her over her sizable chest, his face flushed and a question in his eyes. Darcy just nods, grinning, which puts a smile on his lips as well, before they're continuing their trek over her breasts and Darcy decides that coherent thought is way overrated.
He spends a lot of time at her chest, she could tell when his eyes wandered that he'd been thinking about it for a long, long time, and given unlimited access, the man goes to town. It's when she moans out his name that the possessive, determined Steve from earlier returns, moving back up to her lips and pushing her back into the pillows, kissing her hard, a hand behind her neck, the other gripping her hip. Darcy wraps her arms around his neck, her legs around his waist, and yup, someone is definitely ready to go, and Thor-Almighty, he feels so -good- pressed against her, skin to skin.
"Y-you're sure you're...?" She asks in gasp, when he pauses and rests his forehead against hers. Steve nods, squeezing her thigh as he does.
"Just...hope I don't disappoint," He whispers back, catching her little grin. Darcy shakes her head, lifting her hips as she feels his fingers hooking under the band of her boring ol' bikini-cuts, sliding them off. Built like a god (no, better), and he's nervous in bed. It just makes her heart pound harder in her ears.
"Nothin' to it, handsome," She licks her lips before kissing him again, hard and fast as he kicks off his boxers, and she's officially getting naked with Captain America. Instead of letting anxiety get to her, though, Darcy channels it all into kissing, grasping at him, winding her legs around him and letting him have the full force of her emotions. Steve seems to be of like mind, biting her bottom lip, sliding a hand down between her legs and oh.
"M'ready..." She pants against his lips. Hell she's usually half-way there just looking at him, and even without him really knowing what to do yet, a touch is enough to have her wet. Darcy's no virgin, but this, this is a whole other ball park. There have been guys she couldn't keep her hands off of, and then guys she thought she was in love with. The two together yet far, far more intense on both fronts, has her head reeling and her blood up. Even Steve seems surprised in a flushed, bewildered way, and it's got her grinning, breathing heavily, "...Have at me, Cap."
"...You try so hard to kill a moment," He feigns exasperation, which has her giggling under him right before he pushes inside of her, slowly, her laugh dissolving into a moan. Once again, his forehead drops down to rest against hers, steadying himself while she relaxes under him, her legs tight around his waist. He looks at her, those bright blue eyes of his so unguarded, so unabashedly crazy about her, the real deal, and Darcy feels as if she could burst, or die of happiness right there, but then, that might be kinda traumatic for the poor guy.
Instead, she starts rolling her hips up into his, guiding him into a rhythm, and yes, Steve Rogers is a -very- fast learner. It isn't long before he's holding her down again, thrusting into her, and Darcy might've marveled at his stamina, as a virgin and all, if she weren't too busy gasping his name, holding on to his shoulders and sinking her teeth into his throat after a hard, fast orgasm sneaks up on her.
That's what does him in, calling out in almost awed surprise as he comes inside of her, rolling the two of them over and clutching her close, both riding out the waves, lips finding their way back to each other. Steve's hands go from frantic to gentle against her back, and she finds that she's whimpering a little, nuzzling into his neck.
"M'sorry," He mumbles, somewhat hazy in the morning light, but he's grinning like an idiot, "Wasn't...wasn't very long..."
"Mmmph, shut up," She swats at his chest. It hadn't lasted long, but by golly, Darcy's addled brain thinks, it was certainly good. -Really- good. In fact, "It was perfect." She runs her tongue along the faint bite-marks on his neck, making him shiver under her, "You get a girl off good, Cap." It was hard to tell if he went red, what with the way they were both so flushed and warm.
"I tried, anyway," He brings her down for another kiss, this one slow and soft, and she's going limp against him, "You're so beautiful," He whispers, and she knows he means it.
"Careful there, gonna make a gal fall in love with you," She whispers back, but her expression is just as unguarded, her lips turning upwards in a slow, wide smile. Rolling off of him, Darcy sits up on her knees, determined to get a good long look at him like this, the sun coming in through the windows behind her. Yup, he's all a girl could imagine or want, naked and sculpted and perfect. And looking at her as if she were something glorious, back-lit and tousled. His grin wasn't going anywhere.
"Can we just...stay in bed all day?" Steve licked his lips as his eyes started taking her in all over again, breasts and hips and yep, Darcy was pretty sure he was ready to go again. God Bless America.
"I am all for this plan, Rogers...right after the bacon."
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Much, much later, lying tangled up in sheets after a shower and a nap, Darcy muses on her own mortality, perhaps a little later than everyone around her would've preferred, and it took sex with the man she loved to get her there, but still. Sex, she's had. Love, she's kinda thought she felt before. But it -wasn't- just sex she'd had for oh, the past three hours. She glances over at Steve, who's still napping, Volstagg's head on his chest. Nope, that had been a straight-up hardcore love-making session.
Which, well, she'd known she was in love with him before, sure. Mutually over-attached, attracted, all that, but there was something about them both being completely vulnerable to each other that had gotten through Darcy's last wall of self-defense. And she started seeing things the way Steve saw them, at least a little bit.
And damnit, she WAS squishy. And unprepared for bad guys, and violence, and fuck, she didn't want this to end, she didn't want to die. Her life was amazing, damnit. She didn't want to leave him alone, this man she was absolutely, completely in love with, and who looked at her as if she were -his- life line in a confusing, alien landscape.
Which got her thinking, watching Steve's chest move up and down in an untroubled sleep. Darcy wasn't a super hero, and judging by what had led to half the Avengers becoming such, she really didn't want to offer herself up to become one. With her luck, gamma radiation would just result in a tumor. Thor was an alien. But Clint and Natasha were, basically, just people. Really, really talented people. So were most of the SHIELD agents, really, if not quite on their level. Phil Coulson had lived through a hell of a lot before Loki and his shenanigans.
So, training is what she needed. It had been offered before, but Darcy'd hardly had the motivation for what it entailed, til now. She still wasn't sure she wanted to be loomed over alongside much more fit, and experienced agents-in-training. Darcy decided she'd have to find someone to kick her ass one on one.
Steve was right out, Darcy was pretty sure he'd go too easy on her, between being his girl and still recovering a bit. Tony, Bruce and Agent Hill were incredibly busy, Thor, well, he might accidentally crush her, and Clint was more of a shoot-from-a-distance guy. Which left one option for Darcy, who wanted to learn some hand-to-hand fighting, and how to get her hourglass self into shape.
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The very next evening, she caught Natasha outside of the labs, and without preamble, made her request.
"I want you to kick my ass until I can suitably kick the asses of others."
Nat gave her a once over, expression unchanging, and then shrugged. "Meet me in the gym tomorrow. Stop mainlining soda, it is now a sometimes-food, and steal yourself a bullet-proof vest that fits from the shooting range." The assassin finally smirked. "This'll be fun."
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