Only one chapter today, but hey, I've written 10,000 words in three days. It's a personal record. I'm at work the rest of the week so chapters will be a little slower to arrive.
(unless of course you're reading this at some point in the future. Hi!)
Darcy has to make a detour to the lab before dinner to retrieve Jane. Helen's already left: the doctor has a healthy respect for regular meals and sleep which Darcy wishes would rub off on her friend.
At least this way, she doesn't enter the dining suite on her own. It's not at full capacity, since some of the team are away on reconnaissance, and Darcy's pleased to find that she knows most of the people in the room. That's good. Regardless of her friendships and acquaintances with some of the Avengers, it would still freak her out to suddenly be confronted with all of them.
Jane takes a seat next to Thor, leaving the one on his other side free. James is waiting expectantly next to the empty space. He rises to pull the chair out when she approaches and she thanks him, feeling her cheeks color as everybody swivels to watch it happen.
"You are making me ashamed of my own lack of manners, Sergeant Barnes," Thor announces loudly, and turns to Jane. "Apologies, my lady. I will endeavor to do better."
Jane rolls her eyes. "Don't you dare."
Steve leans across to James and whispers. "People don't do that anymore."
"That's one of the things the twenty-first century is wrong about," James rebuts, but he turns to Darcy anyway. "Sorry if I embarrassed you."
She waves it away like it's no big deal. At least everyone's attention has moved on, distracted by the arrival of the food, which is piled into the center of the table.
"You look nice," he continues.
"I felt like a had to make an effort." It's only a pantsuit, but Darcy usually pushes the boundaries of the smart-casual dress code to the extremities of casual.
"Not at all," Steve says. "The only rule is we aren't allowed to turn up in tac or training gear. Thanks for coming." His gaze is flicking between herself and James, and he seems to coming to some kind of conclusion. A conclusion that results in a small, content smile.
"I was promised good food," she says. Steve indicates she should help herself, and she starts heaping food her plate. The center of the table spins like a vast Lazy Susan, and everyone gets to select what and how much they want. She suppose it makes sense, given the amount some of the guys are piling onto their plates. She selects steamed veggies, pasta and grilled chicken. It's a definite step up from microwaved lasagna.
She concentrates on eating rather than partaking in the conversation. Steve leads it at first, until Sam cuts in.
"How many times do I have to tell y'all no shop talk at the table?"
"If Stark had got an advance copy of the next Game of Thrones series like he promised, we could talk about that," says Helen. "But no, he has to get into an argument with the producers."
"That's the show with the dragons, is it not?" Thor asks. "I find it rather slow-paced and the dragons underused."
He launches into a tale about the time he faced a nest of dragons on the edge of the forest—"Fire and lightning are a terrible combination. It took centuries for the trees to regain their maturity after we replanted them"—which somehow sparks a story from James about Steve in the middle of Nazi-occupied Europe, taking a Hydra cell down.
"So I take the guy out and save Steve's skin, when he turns around and goddamn salutes right at me. He might as well have sent up a flare announcing my position. I got out of there real quick, but I had a few words for him later about not giving your sniper's location away to the enemy."
Steve hangs his head while everyone laughs. "In my defense, they were making a propaganda film and the director told me to do that."
"See, he likes to pretend he hated the limelight, but he loved it really." James is relaxed in his chair, one hand still gripping his fork to spear food with, the other arm casually leaning on the back of his chair, his hand resting on the back of Darcy's. She doesn't miss Thor's questioning look at the pose.
Jane decides it's sharing-stories-about-stupid-things-they've-done time, and tells them about Darcy tossing the car keys into an inter-dimensional portal.
"I didn't know that's what it was!" she protests. "And at least I didn't throw myself into the portal."
"Neither did I!"
Which leads them to retelling the story with the aether—Jane's constantly correcting Darcy with the proper scientific terms for the phenomena and equipment they'd used to defeat Malekith. Luckily Jane's version of the story doesn't involve the kiss with Ian, since she wasn't around to witness it.
"But hey, us puny mortals saved the world," Darcy says. "With a little help from the big guy." She pokes Thor in the bicep.
"You are too kind-hearted," Thor replies with a twinkle in his eye, and proceeds to regale the group with the story of Darcy rescuing the animals from the pet store while the Destroyer ravaged Puente Antiguo. It makes Steve's smile that much more contented.
When their plates are cleared, James offers to walk her back to her quarters, but Thor swoops in. "I have a matter I wish to discuss with Darcy." Darcy says goodbye to James and Steve, then follows Thor on the route back to her rooms.
"He is quite taken with you," Thor says when they've put some distance between themselves and any eager ears.
She sighs. "I know." She'd be an idiot not to see the signs.
"And you with him."
This time she just sighs.
"It has occurred to me now, why destiny would be so eager to bring the pair of you together. You are a natural care-giver. It's why you remained with Jane instead of completing your studies. It's why you put your own life in danger to rescue those animals. All the universe had to do was place James Barnes in your path, and you would want to care for him."
"Thanks, buddy. I already figured that one out."
"Now I feel guilty. If it weren't for my interfering—"
"We'd have crossed paths one way or the other. You can't escape destiny, that's what the stories all say."
"You could leave."
"Except I'm needed, aren't I?" They're outside her door and she reaches up to pat Thor on the arm. "I appreciate the concern, but I've already spent many, many hours brooding over the whole thing. When I'm sure Janie's new assistants are licked into shape and can cope without me, when I have someplace worth going to, I'll be out of here. In the meantime, can you make my excuses at dinner? I'll drop by occasionally but I want to try and keep my distance. Oh, and stop Steve becoming an enabler, please? I know he's getting ideas and it has to stop before it starts."
"He just wants his friend to be happy."
"Me too, big guy. Me too."
Keeping her distance involves only going to dinner once a week, and having Thor ensure she's sat between Jane and Helen. It involves her responding to James' text queries with "Sorry, kinda busy. Maybe you could ask Nat?" It involves her thanking him when he turns up with latte but fabricating meetings she has to attend.
She tries to soften it, she really does. She doesn't want to see the kicked puppy expression. So she still responds to some texts, and talks to him during dinner even if she's not sat next to him. She thanks him for the coffee and talks to him about the political scene, because he's all caught up on the present situation and wants to discuss his thoughts with her.
Keeping her distance also involves spending a lot of her working day making plans around him. She's successfully got herself installed as his personal mission handler—Steve knows, since he signed off on it, though she doubts James does—and is observing him training in the countdown to said mission.
She doesn't know what Thor said to Steve, but the next time she sees him after dinner his attitude towards her is distinctly colder. It's only when he realizes the lengths she's going to to protect James that he warms to her again.
There are four days of intense planning, four days where she barely sees Jane because Rumlow's been spotted in Detroit. They want to move quickly, but they have to verify the sighting before moving. There's no point wasting manpower, especially since it's not the first time they think he's used a decoy to cover his real movements.
They receive confirmation from the field operative at 5pm. Hill gives the go command a half hour later. She tries to insist that Darcy sit this one out, that this could go all night and she's already been working all day. Darcy refuse and gets Steve to pull rank, which is probably not the best thing she can do if she values career progression. She grabs a nap while the team assembles and travels, arriving in mission control with a stack of energy drinks that would probably even give Jane pause.
Her role is pretty simple. She only needs to monitor what's happening and alert the team to upcoming complications: she has a bank of screens at her station to keep track of events. The central one is a map of the area overlaid with blinking dots pinpointing the location of each team member, equipment like the Quinjet, and the location of any surveillance cameras in the area. She can switch between the feeds of the cameras to watch what's going on. She's also got a headset to relay messages to them if she needs to, but it's on mute right now. She'll only need to speak up if she spots a problem.
James' tracking dot is a different color to everyone else on her system. They're all red, he's blue. At first, the dots are clustered together, still on the Quinjet which has touched down on the roof of a warehouse three blocks over from Rumlow's supposed safe house. Then they split up, most of them heading towards the safe house, looking to surround it and block the exits.
James is a sniper. He seeks the high ground, just like Barton. The two of them are going to try and cover the exits between them and have chosen vantage points to reflect that. She switches cameras to track his movements, keeping a careful eye on the streets around him too. He's alone and a potential ambush target, though help wouldn't be far if that happened.
She watches him move over grainy feeds, his black tac gear helping him blend into the dark streets, even his metal arm covered. There's power in the way he moves, despite the implicit grace as he pivots and swivels while he checks his surroundings before proceeding. From this angle, with the way he's gripping his rifle, the width of his shoulders is emphasized. She realizes that on base he makes an effort to appear smaller, especially around her, slouching so he doesn't overwhelm her with his size. There's none of that here. He's using his body the way it's been honed to be used.
Darcy is suddenly very aware of her libido flexing, unfurling and making its interest known. She always known he's a good-looking man, but before now it's been her heart which clenches at the sight of him. Now, there's a new element at play, a fresh draw as she watches his powerful thighs propel him up a fire escape to the rooftop.
She shakes her head and pushes it aside. Now is the not the time to be noticing these things.
There's no surveillance on the rooftop, so she keeps watch on the access points, making sure he's up there alone, and finds the one feed which gives her sight of him. It's blurry, and really she sees more rifle muzzle than man, but it's the best she can do. Satisfied, she turns her focus to how the rest of the mission is going.
Adrenaline (and okay, a lot of caffeine) takes over, carrying her through the next few hours. It's textbook: the safe house inhabitants had no idea they were coming. No one evades the team, the ones who try to escape being captured or taken out by James or Barton. The rest of the team sweep the building, gutting it until they've rounded every last Hydra agent up. There's no sign of Rumlow.
Darcy makes sure James makes it back to the Quinjet, monitoring the feeds until it takes off, bringing him back to the facility. Hill calls mission complete and everyone within the control room exchanges high fives. There's processing to be done when the prisoners arrive, but Hill tells her to head to bed and take the day off.
Maybe it's the caffeine, but it takes a long time to get to sleep. Maybe she's got the way he moved burned into her mind's eyes and blaming caffeine is unfair.
Keeping her distance works better if he doesn't turn up at her door the next evening looking exactly like puppy she once saw in an ASPCA commercial. She's pretty sure Sarah McLachlan should be the soundtrack to this moment, with a soft voiceover explaining how badly mistreated James has been.
His hands are in his pockets, and he's doing the slouching thing. Now that she's noticed it, she can't unsee it.
"The mission went well," he starts, and she knows that's not what he's here to talk about.
"Congrats," she replies, waving him into the living room. "But I know, I was in mission control."
He hovers near the kitchenette rather than taking a seat, and there's a smudge of black at the corner of one eye she wants to wipe away. It's probably the paint he wears to keep his face camouflaged and hidden from enemy fire. "You weren't there when we got back."
"Hill draws the line at eighteen hour shifts. Pepper gives her hell for it."
"You haven't been around much at all." His tone isn't accusatory at all. It's hurt.
Darcy has not had enough sleep to deal with this. She runs a hand through her hair, wondering if she remembered to comb it after she tossed and turned all night (morning). She's wondering how best to start giving him the verbal brush-off—how she can possibly make it sound convincing that she's not interested in him like that—when he speaks again.
"Did Steve say something?"
She blinks at him. No, Steve is exactly the wingman you deserve. "Huh?"
"Did Steve convince you not to be around me? He mentioned how you hadn't had any defensive training and I realized…" He stops, slumps further. "Do I scare you?"
The last words are a whisper. He's looking down at her floor, his hair covering his face, and though his hands are out of his pockets, the metal one is clenched in a fist, as small as he can make it go.
She's across the room before she can even think about it, covering that fist with her own hand. "No!" She pushes his hair back so can look him square in the eye. "No."
If anything, he'd probably be weirded out that her reaction to seeing him full-on soldier mode is to be hopelessly turned on, but she's not about to confess that to him.
His expression flickers in disbelief, so she carries on. "You already know that I have a terrifying lack of self-preservation, and we've talked about this. You don't see me as a threat, remember? If you don't see me as a threat, you're not a threat to me."
The fist loosens and she pulls her hand away slowly, worried he might try to hold it. "Then why?"
It takes her a moment to grab onto a decent excuse. "Hill," she says, nodding her head with conviction. "She's big on the divide between personal and professional life. Steve asked me to cover you during the mission, but Hill wouldn't allow it if she thought we were friendly. She thinks covering someone you know too well clouds judgment." She's probably right.
He swallows the excuse, possibly because there's a kernel of truth at its core. Hill's big on team-building to the point they trust each other, but there's a professional line she won't cross. "I'll get Steve to talk to her. I don't want to get you into trouble with her, but I want to spend time with you."
"Thanks." He's still slumped, leaving their faces closer together than they should be. She's got a head full of that clean scent again. She steps back and gestures at him. "Come on, old man, stand up straight. You aren't doing your spine any favors."
He raises an eyebrow at her, but pushes himself up to his full height. He's nearly a foot taller than her, but the bulk of him this close doesn't scare her. Mostly she wants to pet all that muscle and sees if it's as firm as it looks under his t-shirt. She blames his distracting body for her next bright idea.
"What if I get Thor or someone to show me some defensive maneuvers? Would that make you feel better?" She cannot believe she's volunteering herself for exercise.
He considers the idea and nods slowly. "It would. I can ask him to show you how to disable me and escape if you ever need to."
"And I'll get Tony to make a me a taser holster so I have it on me at all times." Why wasn't that her first idea? It wouldn't involve physical effort.
He pulls a face. "Should the prospect of getting tased make me happy?"
"Some men pay for that kind of thing," she quips, to his utter bewilderment, but he laughs anyway. The ice is broken.
He's a happy puppy again. Distance is no longer an option.