Written for: hotpinklizard (femmmefatalist). March 25th, 2019 Clint/Darcy "You've been pouting ever since I went on that date. What's up?"

It was around the time her date started eating spaghetti with his hands that Darcy suddenly needed a bathroom break. He just kind of nodded while licking sauce off his fingers. Darcy paid for her meal at the hostess stand and hailed a cab. On her way home, she deleted her Tinder profile.

Never again.

Never. Again.

Two days later, she found Jane in one of the training rooms with Clint and Bucky.

"Twelve perfect shots out of twelve," she said. There were two targets fifty feet away. The bullseyes were riddled with bullet holes and arrowheads. "Your math is on point."

"Are you sure?" Bucky squinted at his target. "I think the sixth hole is a little off. The diameter is-"

"The fact that you know it was the sixth one at all should answer your question," Jane said.

If Clint had any reservations about his ability (which he shouldn't) he didn't voice them. As soon as Darcy entered the room, he embarked on a careful study of that one crack in the wall shaped like a horse head. He didn't say a word even after Jane and Bucky left the room, the former saying something about getting lunch and winking at Darcy before disappearing. Like she knew exactly why Darcy had come down here.

'I just wanted to know where she hid the remote,' Darcy thought as she found herself alone with her longtime superhero crush. 'Some friend she is…'

Clint still wouldn't look at her.

"So…" Darcy clicked her tongue. "Fight any bad guys lately?"

"A few." He traced the crack with rough fingers. "How was your date?"

After a moment of confusion, Darcy found herself in the midst of a flashback. That guys whose name she'd scrubbed from her memory was licking butter off the wrapper like an animal scavenging through the garbage. Then he asked if she was going to finish her dinner roll.

"It was… a date… like encounter… of sorts." She rubbed her hands like they were dirty.

She thought she saw him smile. "Sorry to hear that."

"It's fine. I can always try again. Plenty of fish in the sea and all that."

"Hmm…" He went back to the crack.

"Why do you ask?"

He shrugged. "Just making conversation."

She was about to take a risk and she knew it, but no one ever got anywhere playing it safe. "Kind of sounds like you're mad I went on a date."

"I'm not," he said.

Spoken with the conviction of a kid covered in chocolate claiming he didn't steal a cookie.

"Are you sure? You were kind of pouting."

"I don't pout."

"Okay, brooding." She was gaining courage and with it came looser lips. "Or pondering or whatever it is badass heroes do these days."

"I'm not doing anything."

"Don't say that. That's the kind of shit your haters say online and then I have to stay up an extra hour every night to run them into the ground with facts."

He snorted. "Seriously?"

Darcy swallowed. Now she was oversharing. "I mean… you're just really cool and people need to know that."

"Well, thanks. Not that I care what those idiots say, but it's nice to be appreciated." He stored his bow and arrows away and washed up in the locker room. Five minutes later, he emerged fresh, clean, and wearing a shirt that didn't hide his massive biceps at all. "I'm free this afternoon if you want to get some lunch."

Darcy blinked. Then she pinched her wrist until her eyes watered. "Did you just ask me out to lunch?"

"Yes."

So it was real. "I'd love to. But first, how do you eat your spaghetti?"

He raised an eyebrow. "Uh… with a fork?"

She was going to marry him someday.