It lives? I think this story lives. (Pokes story repeatedly and nearly gets bit) Yep. Still some bite. Anyway, moving on. Yes, I still intend to finish this story. Yes, it should be done soon, though between my prospectus and my job, it could take some time. However, I want to finish this quickly but well. I'm going to apologize now if this chapter is choppy, I tried to make it work but there was a lot to include and I honestly wasn't sure exactly how to do this specific chapter. That being said, this takes place directly after the 'Fury tutu fiasco' of Loki Causes Trouble and Fury Dances Ballet. Anyway, I hope you guys like this and it didn't turn out too horrible. The next chapter might be a long one, don't know yet. Then the final chapter should be up just after the next one. I'm going to try to finish this story over the weekend but I'm not holding my breath on that.

Anyway, I hope you guys enjoy this.

- Illusinia

Steve let out a growl as he burst through the doors to the dojo-like gym area. The doors practically flew across the room, making the super soldier wince. He hadn't meant to do that. Frustrated, he tore the dress Loki had stuck him in over his head and threw it in a corner.

Sighing, he moved over to the window, looking out it a moment before he growled and slammed his fist into the wall. Stupid Loki. The second fist followed as the first one pulled back. Embarrassing me in front of Darcy like that. Again, the first met the wall. Of all the people...I'd rather him embarrass me in front of Danya than Darcy and I like Danya more! The second fist was pulled back when his exact thought struck him rather hard in the head. Wait, what?

Any revelations based on that thought were halted rather suddenly, however, when Darcy calmly entered the room. "Hey Steve, are you in here?" Spotting the former-soldier, her eyes slid to his fists and grew to the size of saucers. "Shit Steve! I know you heal at an ungodly fast rate but warn someone before they walk in on you with busted knuckles!"

Steve blinked down at his bleeding hands, then tried to tuck them behind his back. "Sorry Darcy, I didn't mean to disturb you."

Darcy snorted, grabbed the medical kit on the wall, and strolled towards him. "No worries Steve, I've seen worse. Loki busted his hands up so bad once beating the ever-loving crap out of a guy for stalking me that he actually broke his hand. Though," she paused to consider the memory, "in retrospect it was probably an act but whatever."

A tick started in Steve's jaw even as Darcy began to clean his knuckles. "Doesn't it bother you?"

"Hm?" asked Darcy as she glanced up from cleaning the blood off his knuckles. The skin was already starting to knit together.

"That he lied to you," elaborated Steve with a touch of frustration in his tone. "He claims to be your friend, yet he lied to you, plain as day. Both you and your friend. How can you forgive him for that?"

The only warning Steve got that he had said something wrong came with the narrowing of Darcy's eyes. Then, she promptly punched him in the jaw with a growl. "Loki never lied to us."

Steve was more than a little taken aback by the action. The last woman to actually hit Steve (discounting Danya or Natasha who seemed to use physical violence as a sign of affection) had been Peggy when he pissed her off. Well, really she'd been mad about that secretary who decided to kiss him against his will, but he had made things worse. Well, at least he figured he probably had.

"Huh?" was the most eloquent thing Steve could think to say when faced with a pissed Darcy. Seriously, the young genius-intern was scary when she was pissed. "But, you didn't know he was a god..."

Darcy snorted. "That was omission and neither Dani or I actually bothered to ask either. We suspected something was up of course, but he didn't seem keen on telling us and we gave him that. Part of trusting someone is allowing them to keep their secrets until they're ready to share."

Steve choked a little, eyes wide as he stared at Darcy in awe. "You trusted him?"

"Trust," stressed Darcy with a sigh. "I trust Loki with my life. He's earned that trust too, it wasn't just handed to him on a silver platter with closed eyes."

"You don't trust easily," commented Steve slowly, recalling the way that Darcy had a tendency to clam up about some things or babble mindlessly when she didn't want to discuss something seriously. "How did someone like Loki earn your trust?"

Another sigh, this one more frustrated than angry, crossed her lips but she didn't stop cleaning his knuckles again. "Simple: he didn't fuck me over or outright lie to me." Steve started to say something but a look from Darcy shut him up quickly. "Yes, he left out the part about him being a god, but he never lied about it. The only stuff he lied about was unimportant and really not a lie. He's not technically from Scandinavia, but he is a Norse god, so its the closest place to Asgard that exists on Earth. He wasn't high school age, but he never said how old he was either. Not that Dani and I would have believed him then if he'd said he was over a thousand years old. He'd never been to high school before and he started attending with us, so that wasn't a lie either. He had classes and homework, just like we did, and he did it just like us. The details were omitted or half-truths, but not lies."

"He pretended to be a human man though," pointed out Steve, still attempting to make his point even if he felt like he was loosing ground rapidly. Darcy was shutting down quickly.

Darcy shrugged and switched hands. "Not really. No one ever asked if he was human or not, people just assumed he was. Plus, he got drunk off vodka one night and spilled his whole story to me, so eventually I did learn all the truths."

Steve looked surprised. "He was drunk?"

"He finished three bottles of vodka on his own," snorted Darcy. "I thought we were going to be taking him to the hospital for sure but he never showed any signs of alcohol poisoning. It was kind of a dead give-away that he wasn't human at that point. Thing was though, Dani and I got the feeling that he'd feel the need to lie if we challenged him. So we never asked, and he never had to tell."

"You made sure he never had to lie," muttered Steve, surprised.

Darcy nodded. "By the time we started to suspect that Loki's weirder tendencies were related to something other than him being from a foreign country, he'd helped us get out of trouble more times than we could count, was always on our side, had been watching our backs for close to three years, and had some idea about the root of my trust issues. That meant a lot to Dani and I, so we made sure he was never in a position where he would have to lie. We figured, if he hasn't told us by now, there's probably a reason."

Steve sighed. "That's a lot of trust to place in someone."

"And it was never miss-placed," replied Darcy with a look over her glasses that said 'drop this now'.

Wisely heeding her warning, he segued quickly to a different topic: the S.H.I.E.L.D fundraiser/party/ball. Whatever you wanted to call it. "Right, so, um, S.H.I.E.L.D's putting on a fundraiser of sorts soon. Uh, are you going by chance?"

Darcy smiled a little, finishing with Steve's other hand and standing to put away the medical kit. "Yeah, Loki asked me the other night. It should be fun, especially because Tony managed to hijack it this year. That means high quality food, high quality booze, and enough footage of drunken shenanigans to start your own youtube with." Dropping the kit back where it belonged, she glanced at Steve over her shoulder. "You gonna be there?"

"Yeah," confirmed Steve, giving her a smile that felt weak even to him. Damnit, Loki had won again. How did he keep doing that? How had he even gotten invited?

"Great," grinned Darcy as she moved to pick up Steve's dress from the corner where he'd tossed it when he came in. "Here, you might want to put that back on before heading for your rooms. Tony tends to go through the video footage for the tower daily looking for anything to amuse himself with and, no offense Steve, you've got a wicked body, but you in ladies panties definitely falls into the 'amusing' category."

Steve felt himself blush to the roots of his hair and down most of his body as he grabbed the dress and held it up to act as cover. He hadn't felt this embarrassed ever in his life. Seriously, the USO shows he used to do were less humiliating.

Darcy smiled and waved as she turned to leave the room. "The others went to IHOP for pancakes. If you want to come, I'll wait for you. Otherwise, I'm gone. Be down in the front hall in ten minutes or I'm leaving without you."

"Go head," called Steve. Darcy stuck her head back in the room, cocking it in confusion. Steve smiled, taking a moment to admire how cute the motion was. Like a confused kitten. "Go ahead and catch up with the others. I have something I need to do."

"Alright man, suit yourself." With that, she withdrew back into the hallway.

Steve listened for several minutes as her footsteps echoed down the hall, waiting until he heard the elevator ding its arrival and the doors shut before he darted into the locker room connected with the dojo to dig out his cellphone.

Steve was grinning when Danya opened the door to her lab almost an hour later. The smile was so wide, she thought for sure the former-soldier had succeeded in his mission. She gave him a smile in return, though hers was far dimmer.

"Should I start planning a wedding?" asked Danya as she stepped back, normal snark present though with significantly reduced force.

"No," replied Steve, grin still in place. "She's already going with her roommate."

Danya's smile disappeared completely, replaced with a sad face and worried eyes. "Oh Steve, I'm so sorry-"

"Don't be," cut in Steve quickly, though he blushed as he did. The idea of cutting someone else off as they spoke was still unappealing to him but Danya tended to ramble sometimes, so it was a necessary evil. "I can't do anything about that."

Her eyes narrowed at him as she dropped in front of her computer. "If you failed, why are you smiling."

Steve's grin returned full-force. "Because, it means you have to get out of this lab and come with me."

Danya groaned as she remembered that little part of their deal. "Steve..."

"No," insisted Steve firmly. "I'm holding you to this Danya. Natasha agrees that you need a break just as much as I do. I've already spoken to Fury and he was more than happy to give you the night off. You're going even if I have to carry you there."

Sighing, her shoulders slumping as a sign of her defeat, Danya turned towards the computer to hide her grin. "Promise you'll carry me the whole way? A girl could definitely get behind that kind of treatment. Cavemen are such turn-on's you know."

Of course, as she intended, Steve blushed nearly to the roots of his hair. The sight cheered her up tremendously. Sitting down, she opened her e-mail and quickly typed out a message, sending it just as Steve started talking again.

"Hey Danya, how do you tell when a girl has a crush on you?" asked Steve suddenly, head tilting to the side a little as he stared at her.

Danya spun in her chair to look at Steve with a raised eyebrow. "Depends on the girl. Why do you ask?"

Steve shrugged and stood to start the hot water heater. "Natasha said there was a girl who was interested in me, and actually encouraged me to pursue her but didn't tell me who she was. I wanted to see if I could figure it out, to let her down if necessary or anything like that, but I don't know how to figure out who it is."

Behind Steve's back, Danya had to bite her lip to suppress the moan of humiliation and frustration that tried to escape. She opted to silently bang he head on the desk in front of her instead. When Steve turned back, she was leaning back in her chair calmly while mentally chewing out her cousin. Natasha was dead.

Clint scooped up his phone as he toweled his hair dry, scanning his e-mail calmly. One from the research division caught his eye and caused his brow to furrow. He didn't know anyone in any of the science departments, and especially not the Bioengineering department.

Worried it might have been sent to him by accident, Clint opened the e-mail and blinked twice at what came up. Yeah, he wasn't expecting that.

The address was a generic one that gave no nave to the sender, meaning it came from one of the labs. The lab itself didn't have a number or notation, just said 'bioengineeringlab'. That really bothered Clint, more because it meant that the lab itself dealt with top-secret research. The numbered labs were all in the main shield building. The unnumbered ones were located in a research block under Gravesend bay off Coney Island, which was more secure than Fort Knox and inhabited by people who made Jane Foster look lazy in her quest for science.

He'd been out there exactly once to give a blood sample and swore never to do it again.

The body of the e-mail was even stranger than he'd expected. Something work related, a reminder of an appointment for another agent or something like that. Certainly, he hadn't been expecting to see his name at the top.

Skimming the e-mail, he blinked harder, then reread the message to make sure he hadn't misunderstood:

Clint Barton,

You don't know who I am, don't bother trying to figure it out. It's in your best interest to ask Miss Romanov to the up-coming S.H.I.E.L.D fundraiser/ball/whatever the hell Stark is calling it now. Failure to do so (and I will know if you don't) will result in trouble for you. The kind that has you coming to the S&R Top Secret division everyday for a year type trouble. Seriously, stop acting like a middle school-er, grow some balls, and ask her to the function. Or else.

There was no name on the bottom and no name in the e-mail address. There wasn't even a way to track down which lab the message had come from. Well, at least not for him. Maybe Stark could do it, but there was no way the man would bother. Clint sighed and read the message for a third time.

Then, he grabbed his jacket and walked out of the locker room.

"Tasha!"

The familiar nickname (only two individuals were brave/stupid enough to call her that and one of them was currently holed up in Stark Tower doing God-knows-what) told her immediately that Clint was attempting to catch her attention, even if she hadn't been capable of recognizing his voice from a mile away. Her cousin's words about middle-school behavior and denial echoed like a dull throb through her mind.

Damn Danya and her sharp observation skills.

Without a though, Natasha had paused in the hall so Clint could catch up. It was so normal to walk with him (at least as normal as things got when you were a super-hero) that she didn't consider why he wanted to talk with her when they had just finished sparring. They talked plenty during training sessions.

"Hey Tasha, I gotta ask you something," stated Clint firmly as he came to a stop beside Natasha. He'd been jogging apparently, because well his breathing wasn't harsh it was a bit faster than normal.

One of Natasha's eyebrows rose casually as she examined the man before her. It would be stupid of her not to admit that he was attractive. Then again, so were the majority of her teammates assuming they didn't do something such as open their mouth (Tony), talk extremely loudly about nothing (Thor), or smash her (Bruce). She didn't even think such things about Steve, given her cousin had a mad crush on the man and he was too much of a puppy for her tastes.

Clearing such thoughts from her mind, Natasha focused on Clint who was shifting nervously from foot to foot. Not a normal tick for the sniper. The action put Natasha on alert. If Clint was nervous, she should be to. "What happened?"

Clint blinked at her, seemed to realize how his words had come out, and shook his head quickly. "Nothing's happened. I just, I need to ask you something." Taking a deep breath, Clint's next words came out in a rush. "DoyouknowsomeoneinR&Dtopsecretdivision?"

It was Natasha's turn to blink cluelessly. "Could you repeat that? It was impossible to read between the syllables."

"Sorry," muttered Clint. "I said: 'do you know someone in R&D's top secret division?'"

Natasha felt her back stiffen. "Why?"

The archer shrugged. "Well, I just got a rather nice threatening e-mail from someone over there telling me to ask you to S.H.I.E.L.D's fundraiser."

A growl started in Natasha's throat as she thought about throttling her cousin. Of course, she wouldn't do that. Largely because the woman would find a way to haunt her. "I apologize for that. It will be taken care of." Turning away from the archer with a scowl, Natasha started down the hallway and attempted to hide how pissed she was at the moment.

"Hey Tasha?" called Clint again.

Once again, the Russian woman stopped with a sigh and glanced at her teammate. "Yes, Clint?"

Clint shot her one of his goofy but somehow charming smiles. "Do you want to go to S.H.I.E.L.D's thing with me?"

The question actual caused Natasha's mind to grind to a halt for several seconds. "Are you asking me because you were threatened?"

"Nah," dismissed Clint. "I doubt anyone over there could do anything to me to begin with. Though, being told I'm acting like a middle-school boy might have damaged my ego a little."

"At least one good thing came out of it then," commented Natasha without thought.

Clint frowned, eyes going sad as he looked at her. "That's a 'no' then?"

"Hm?" asked Natasha as she refocused on their conversation, replaying the last few sentences before realizing the issue. Sighing, but allowing a small smile to crawl onto her face, she turned fully to face him. "I was thinking 'yes' would be a better response."

The way his whole demeanor perked up immediately did something strange to Natasha's heart rate. She brushed it off as sexual attraction. There was nothing else that it could be. Nope, nothing at all.

Grin back in place, though this was a happy grin and not a cocky one, Clint nodded. "I like that answer better. Pick you up at 5 on Saturday?"

"If you wish," confirmed Natasha with her own faint smile before she turned back towards the elevator banks and pulled a cellphone from her pocket. Apparently, she was going to need a new dress after all.

Pepper sighed as she got off the phone with Natasha, having established a time to go shopping the following day. She liked the Russian ex-assassin, she really did, but sometimes it felt like the woman was a little clueless. Apparently, a third girl was going to join them as well. Someone Natasha knew. Pepper had asked Jane and Darcy both if they wanted to go look for dresses but Darcy said she had something and Jane was out of town at a conference. She wouldn't be back until the day of the event.

It didn't really matter what Pepper wore either, which was part of her frustration. If she had a date or needed something to wow people with, that would be one thing. But at this point, she was attending to act as a glorified babysitter for Tony. She didn't really need a new dress.

Shaking her head, Pepper walked into her office and promptly dropped the papers in her hand.

The room itself was covered in flowers, orchids from the looks of it, and bathed in the light of many candles. The drapes had been drawn and none of the over-head lights were turned on. This practically screamed Tony.

"Jarvis?" called Pepper.

"Yes Miss. Potts?" the soothing digitized British voice replied.

Pepper cleared her throat. "Where's Tony?"

"Right behind you," whispered Tony, leaning close and attempting to hide his smile when Pepper jumped.

"Damnit Tony!" swore Pepper angrily as she spun to face her once-boss. "What are you up to?"

Tony shrugged and slipped into the room to lean on the front of Pepper's desk. "Nothing, why do you ask?"

Pepper cocked an eyebrow and gestured around the room. "My office is filled with flowers and...are those floating candles?"

"Loki's really good a that spell," offered Tony as he leaned back to watch Pepper.

"Right," sighed Pepper in defeat, circling the desk and dropping into her chair. "What do you want Tony?"

Tony turned with her, leaning forward on her desk so he could look her in the eye. "Come to S.H.I.E.L.D's party with me."

Pepper actually choked. "Excuse me?"

"Pepper," sighed Tony, shifting so he could half-sit on her desk, "I want you to come with me to S.H.I.E.L.D's party as my date, not my work associate, babysitter, or boss."

"Tony..." murmured Pepper uncertainly. "What brought this on?"

Grinning, he shifted to one of the chairs before her desk. "A certain God of Mischief might have given me a wake-up call. So, what do you say?"

Sighing, the CEO sat back and examined the man before her. Tony was, well, Tony. He could be a pain, rude, drunk, and frustrating beyond belief. He was also kind, protective, and caring when put in a situation where it could shine through. There was no doubt that she was attracted to the man, it was hard not to be. But did she really want to go down this path? Did she really want to take a step towards this thing that she and Tony had been dancing around for the past year?

Staring at his face, so hopeful, Pepper sighed and nodded. "Yes Tony, I'll go with you."

The grin that broke across his face was manic. "Really Pep?"

"Really," confirmed the red-head. "Now, can we please do away with all this so I can get some work done?"

"Totally," agreed Tony as he pulled out his cell. It rang twice before it was picked up. "Hey Loki, can you nix that candle spell of yours? Yeah, she said yes." The alien God said something or another, then the candles disappeared. "Thanks Loki."

Snapping his cellphone shut, Tony gave Pepper a grin and called out for Jarvis to open the curtains and bring the lights back up. Within seconds her office was returned to normal, short of the flowers.

Pepper just shook her head. "Thank you Tony."

Tony grinned and stood. "No problem. Do you need anything from me before I go?"

Pepper squeaked as she nearly fell out of her chair. Really? Had Tony hit his head? He never offered to do work. "Uh, no, Tony. I can't think of anything. Er, thank you though?"

"Yep," replied Tony as he stood and started out the door. "I'll pick you up on Saturday, 5:30 okay?"

"Sure," murmured Pepper, still a bit in shock. Tony returned her grin and waved as he stepped into the hall. "Goodbye Tony."

"Later!" shouted the billionaire from the hallway.

Several minutes ticked by before Pepper allowed her head to drop onto the desk. She was going to a S.H.I.E.L.D fundraiser with Tony Stark. This couldn't end well.