Refusing Silverware

Chapter 4: Cupcakes and Pony Porn

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Author's Note : Thank you for waiting on this, everyone. I am sorry it took so long. I will be keeping up on all of my work. I tend to work a lot so it cuts into my writing a bit. I hope you enjoy and please read and review! Thanks!

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Literally speaking, Darcy was amazed she and her room-mate, Caroline Channing, daughter of Mr. Channing of New York who had run a Ponzi scheme on the rich and ripped them off, pretty much almost like the government to the poor, hadn't woken up at all during the entire morning. Partly, she had to assume was due to the fact that they had gotten off of shift at about 2 AM, then had stayed up, working on their cupcakes for their cupcake orders until about 4 AM when Darcy had locked the fridge to keep from possible invaders coming in and eating their other meal ticket -for good reason as sometimes people just seemed to wander through their rooftop door- and gone to bed in her room while Caroline jumped into her pink lady-clam.

Instead, her and Caroline were rolling their eyes skyward as they came to the second address in Manhattan that had been decimated by whatever in the hell those alien bodies were. They were like a mix between Skeletor and the aliens from Alien and Darcy had been subjectively dragged away from finding a stick and poking one of the corpses in the name of science. Of course, after finding out the money for cupcakes weren't coming, whether they delivered it to struggling police officers or the scattered remains of those who owed them now, Darcy chose at this time to sit at the nearest pizza place that was open, debris being swept by the busboy as there was no more windows to watch the news to understand just what they had slept through.

People were cheering, some were crying. Others were blaming God -Gods, she inwardly corrected them- about the destruction and deaths. Most of them though were thankful they were saved by Tony Stark, a billionaire whom Darcy Lewis wanted to one day mind-probe for his genius intellect, Captain America, straight from the comic books, The Hulk, who she was still questioning on how his pants stayed on when transformed, and lastly, Thor.

"That would just be our luck." Technically, it was her shitty luck. Where there was Thor, there was SHIELD. In fact, when she looked out to the city blocks where some amount of black SUVs and vans were pulled up, the kind that definitely either belonged to the mob or the secret parts of the government, Darcy Lewis would bet her college degree on it, not that her degree was worth anything as she couldn't use it. She was staying her calmest, knowing that they weren't coming for her exactly as so much as the holy crapping deathstar that took a shit on the city, though the fear was still deep-seated and just waiting for Coulson to appear and take her into the alley to shoot her as part of the clean up. Caroline, in her well-maintained degree of priss and wear-something that Darcy was forever getting used to because how in the hell does someone like her still pull off ratty jeans and t-shirts from the Goodwill with class?- was munching calmly and talking about the destruction like it was Sunday brunch.

"Well, it took those Italian Bees outta the way." She pointed idly towards the tv where the bakery of the Italian prima donnas who tried to make her do "pretty" cupcakes was totally destroyed. Despite it having been about a year since she came to New York with her new identity, hiding parts of herself locked away forever and having to keep from making telephone calls to her sister and parents, Darcy felt immense smug satisfaction at the view. She had never done pretty and normal well and in fact, she was the Tim Burton and Osbourne family love child of cupcake making, so seeing those two orange-tinted ballerinas get their just desserts, even with the unjustified alien invasion being the cause, made her happy and in her life, the current always precariously near-homeless status, happy about some human creamsicles' pain was a kid's meal with it's own toy inside.

"Now they can no longer buzz around." Inwardly, Darcy laughed at herself and put another notch in her mind under 'Saucy one-liners.' For the most part, other than the immense amount of rubble lying at the window and corpses strewn about the street from aliens and burning cars, a hint of burning rubber in the air, it was a nice Sunday afternoon to be having pizza in downtown Manhattan. If some guy came up and tried to rob her for her cupcakes, it would actually feel thirty times more normal than it actually was.

"Or Bee Friendly." The smirking blonde was finally finishing up her food, taking a moment to sip some of her own drink. Darcy hated to admit it but if she had to choose roommates in the world, Caroline was funnier than Jane had been during the entire few months Darcy had stayed with her in New Mexico and for one reason or another, the blonde had wriggled her way into Darcy's wall, snuggling in a worn crack and staying there. The only major problem that Darcy had with her was that Caroline wanted to be rich again. The waitress couldn't blame her. She came from a place where Darcy was going to marry the porcelin bath tub.

"No. You're not doing it right, Caroline." She commented half-handedly, focusing more on the news than her roommate. Interest in the news increased as she realized that Jane should be in New York too, but with the way Thor was reacting with everyone in the crowds, it seemed unlikely to which her mind was thinking upon the fact that they mentioned another Asgardian. His name was Loki. Darcy felt her stomach drop at the name with memories of running away from a flame-breathing molten machine man back in New Mexico and his name being conjured during the few moments Thor was speaking to the robot. Loki was dangerous and she had never seen his face but the raw footage people had been able to capture of the man, though blurry showed a regality that burned into her eyes and would not leave her.

If Thor was the sun, his brother was the night and Darcy had no reservations that there were a likely probability that Hello Kitty and Choco-cat comparisons could be made between the two. She tilted her head at that thought. Maybe she should say Hello Kitty and Badtz-Maru instead. Honestly, the likelihood of dealing with Thor again was practically nil and even meeting his brother was a zero chance in the hell precipitation weather forecast of her life. Loki would never drop out of the sky into her life like Thor had. Though she wouldn't mind seeing it on tv. Asses were asses and from her understanding, Asgardian asses were still godly.

"Anyway, I think is a great opportunity!" Brought out of her reverie, Darcy Lewis eyed her companion with a raised eyebrow and skeptiscism brought out by how shitty her life had ended up becoming. Wanting to be something again had been brought out by Caroline Channing and her extremely overly cheeriness and get-to-it attitude that Darcy had let wither away in herself. She cocked her head to the side, a lazy smirk playing upon her lips before deciding to answer in the usual way that she had become.

"To start our own version on how this happened?" The Bronx waitress gestures out towards the area around them. Darcy could feel the imminent eye-rolling that was sure to be induced. This was the best part of their atypical friendship. Caroline cared still and Darcy had learned not to for the most part. The eye-roll happened and Darcy felt the need to mentally tally up another point for herself. She was seeing how many eye-rolls it would take for the prissy blonde to get her eyes crossed from the habit.

"No! The Cupcake Business! We can totes get more people now that Snooki and Jwow is out of the picture!" Caroline's ten dollar manicure hit the table, cheap French tip fingernails clashing against the dusty table-top they had chosen to sit at. Technically speaking, for a place that had been in the warzone of an alien invasion, it wasn't that badly damaged. Obviously the pizza oven worked and Darcy was glad they hadn't ran out of Dr. Pepper. She badly needed the chance to have her favorite soda at a not as questionable source as she tended to get it from over at her own diner.

"Guess they went back to Jersey Shore." Shrugging, the brunette heard the loud whistle text tone from her jacket, pulling out the beat up mobile that she had found on the outside of NYU and had jailbroken to work. The screen made her smile more genuinely as she read the message that was sent to her.

"Not sure. I think New Jersey was blasted out of the map." Caroline was sighing, not a good sign in Darcy's career of being the girl's best friend, but what could the brunette do? They had wasted four batches of cupcakes on people that were likely dead in this disaster area. The subway was not working for now, not until the clean up finished and more than likely that would take days for it to get functional, weeks to go back to the right schedule.

"I know Manhattan was." This time, Caroline turned her blue eyes on her friend, eyeing the phone in her hand and the whimsical smile upon her lips. Max -to her- barely smiled and when she did, she hid it behind vinegar and a need to destroy something dear to someone, or to enjoy the stupidity of someone she knew. Considerably, out of their mixed group of hodge podge friends, if they could be called that, there was only person that would text her room mate and make her smile.

"Is Peach and the twins okay?" Peach Landis, a socialite who had helped Darcy and Caroline with Chestnut, the beautiful brown horse Caroline owned, was the mother of twins Brad and Angelina. Peach had her own way of the world and frankly, Darcy was sure that way was much like an ostrich sticking her fancy head of hair in the sand and being fed underground with a straw. Though with Peach being rich with a rich husband that she barely saw, Darcy could see the beginnings of the shallow disregard the dirty-blonde haired woman had for her children and pitied them a little for it, especially Angelina, but that was a story for a different time.

"Yeah. She thought it was a 3D movie outside her window. She wanted to twit about it but couldn't remember her password again." Getting word from Peach about the "new movie" they were shooting in New York had been a relief. It was mostly due to Peach being herself, which was with an intelligence at room temperature and her twins being safe and alive. The consolation prize of the "new movie" was that Peach wanted to know if they got her in a background shot or not.

Caroline laughed loudly as Darcy texted the woman back. For once, despite the surrounding piles of destroyed history and probable dead people, life seemed semi-normal for the waitress. When they got home, they would be broke from the lost of cupcake-tinged income and in danger of having to roll their eyes at Han until they rolled over dead or until they were able to snag another order of cupcakes to make and deliver.

Whichever happened first.

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To be frank, in Darcy Lewis's minor amount of life in the world, she could consider herself to be promptly an enigma still to most people, especially if there were questions of her past. Her current passions, all either making cupcakes, consuming the internet when they were able to snag wireless downstairs, and enjoying hot romps in her bedroom with whomever she so chose, had been elevated slightly. To say that she and Caroline had made their cupcake making scheme of a dream wouldn't be exactly right. They had an advertisement in the yellow pages, which was better than some now -most of this was due to over half of the yellow page business in Manhattan having been destroyed in an alien invasion a year ago, but tomato, tomahto.- and technically, Darcy could say business was being taken care of.

Of course, she wasn't going down Rodeo Drive with 'Pretty Women' on blast, like she had always imagined herself to be doing when she was young and thought that being a hooker was a step-up from being a possible engineer. (Somedays, Darcy contemplated the idea, particularly right after she earned an earful from Caroline about one thing or another that assaulted the woman's still strange sensibilities that denoted from a time when she had lived in a mansion.)

Looking down at the address on the notepad that Caroline had written on, Darcy fell back to the night she met Coulson barring her way to the cake and punch for the early graduates. A shaking leaf could hold more courage than she had in her at that current moment and she was sure that was after the leaf was drowning itself in vodka and gin. The address was a spiral of numbers and consequences she didn't want to try and find herself wandering into.

"I don't think I should go and take this there." The Bronx waitress tried to give her room mate and business partner the notepad, eager to take the other orders that Caroline was currently walking out the door with. Arm outstretched, Darcy shook her arm to show her urgency.

"Max, I have four other orders to take all the way out to Queens. You're only going to the only one in Manhattan." Darcy could hear her friend's blue eyes roll skyward in annoyance. They had had this fight before when it came down to whether or not Darcy would be the ones to do the Manhattan deliveries, especially since they had ended up running into Jpeg and Cash from time to time down there, but Caroline was determined to make her go and get over her fears of being recognized, even if it was being recognized for something that Caroline had no idea of.

"It's dangerous to totally go alone there." Darcy shook her arm fiercely, bright blue eyes wide in her apprehension. The blonde snorted, not taking none of her friend's fears into account before opening the door again with the cupcake boxes in one hand, turning to face the brunette.

"Max, you'll be fine. The only problem we could have is that they give us a lousy tip. I'll see you later with Chestnut." Her best reassurances said, Caroline turned and left Darcy, arm now dropping to her side as she looked down at her booted feet. The boots that she had gotten in California stared back at her and guilt trespassed all too quickly across her face.

"Yeah, see me later alright…..Damnit." Groaning, the brunette turned around to put on her leather jacket, grab her green scarf to place around her neck, and then the last cupcake boxes that were tied together and ready to go.

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With her feet aching from the walking to and from the subway station to the Stark Tower in downtown Manhatten, Darcy looked up in relief as she was at the front of the line, finally, having had to wait a full half-hour behind people who were visiting the tower, not including the busloads of kids she had ended up stuck behind.

Their inspection had taken up to an additional fifteen minutes, compared to the few minutes for all the others. With her brightest smile, and the loud call of, "Next!", Darcy Lewis put forth her confidence and tried to quiet the extremely nervous wreck she was on the inside, quivering and ready to hide in a corner shaking back and forth.

"I'm here with a cupcake delivery." The clerk's face, a generic male set of blue eyes and honey colored hair, did little to put her at ease and did little to ping her cute-dar. The clerk held out his hand, she presumed for her identification. Hope wavered back and forth as she set the cupcake box on top of the conveyer belt, letting it slide from her grasp along with her purse after slipping her identification card that Jimmy Novak had set up about a year or two ago. Sweat seemed to create its own waterway down her spine, making her far more uncomfortable in her jacket and long-sleeved shirt underneath.

The guard seemed to pay her no mind, taking little time to put her card under the scanner and looking back at her. Darcy argued in her mind that she shouldn't seem abnormal. He probably saw hundreds of people a day and would barely remember her face as soon as she left his lane to the open freedom, relatively open freedom, of the Stark Tower to roam like a tagged buffalo.

"Name?" The clerk looked at Darcy expectantly. Smiling despite her inner toil railing against her throat and lungs, settling in her stomach as a large black stone she was carrying, Darcy Lewis leaned forward, cleavage on display in an attempt to get the guard to take kindly upon her and not scrutinize.

"Max Black." The clerk looked over at the screen as her mind raced in between the seconds before he nodded in some form of affirmation that she had no idea of. Was he nodding to her being a fraud? Was he thinking to himself that she was weird and that there was no way anyone had decided they had wanted muffins?!

"Sign here." Her mind raced as the guard reached into the underside of the desk he was standing by with the scanner on top of it and pulled out a sheet of paper and a ball point pen with the Stark Industry logo upon it. He pointed the ink pen tip at a line that was underneath a large amount of text that the former college student could be certain was a font size of 4 with how much she had to squint to scan quickly over the massive quantity of legal jargoned words. Putting the pen tip to the paper, she prayed she didn't mess up on the line and signed Max Black with little flourishes.

Max Black was poor and had no need for fancy writing, not like Darcy Lewis had when she was a girl, who had taken it upon herself to create a beautiful signature for her political career she had been angling for. The chicken scratch she now used, deep down for the girl undercover, was almost disgusting compared to the once beautiful way she had signed her old name.

"Don't sell that now. I'll one day be amazing. That's what all the after-school specials said." Looking up at the man, tailored in a blue shirt, red tie, and a black blazer, she was only rewarded with the slightest hint of a quiver on one side of his lips. Maybe he came from the same mold as Coulson had. The thought was quickly dismissed as he indicated for her to step through the metal detector. When out on the other side, a woman wearing a blue button down uniform and black pants, utility belt and all, waited for her. She was holding out a lanyard with her name and picture on it along with some form of a chip inset on the card.

'Holy jinkies, Batman!' Darcy exclaimed in her mind. The card making must have been when she was putting her signature down and had been hella fast for such a first time process, then again, Max Black had no priors and did little more than drop out of school according to her fake records. She took the lanyard from the woman with as much graceful relief as she could muster from being able to pass the security check point.

"Go right down to the elevator. It will be floor 86. Just so you are informed, you did sign a non-disclosure agreement. Any videos, texts, or pictures taken will be confiscated when you leave. We will see you, shortly, Ms. Black." The woman was congenial and smiled kindly for someone who must have done this so many times a day that her face would surely be hurting from overuse. Darcy glanced over at her bag and her cupcakes before picking them up from the conveyer belt and heading towards the direction the woman who gave her the lanyard and badge pointed towards.

Darcy held in her impulse to drop her jaw in awe of the lobby after she left the entrance. The ceiling of the lobby was crystal clear, showing all the way up to what she had to guess would be 20th floor before disappearing into the floor of the 21st floor. The sun peered through the glass but instead of it being fiercely warm or moderately cool, the inside of the large circular lobby was balmy and filled with the noise of people coming and going. On the walls on the lobby there were flat screens that were scanning people who stood in front of it, either lost or in need of an answer from a question.

There were chairs, massively comfy looking black leather chairs with armrests, around the lobby and a lone rocking chair against one wall with an elderly business suited white man, seeming to doze in it. Perhaps he was waiting for someone or perhaps not. Everyone was in some state of movement, kinetic energy flowing through the busy area with nary a care in the world as she seemed to be stuck still amongst the throng.

The waitress from the Bronx felt a whistle come from her lips out of how impressed she just was. She had never seen a place this hi-tech and in fact, she was certain she was feeling tingles in her girly bits from the fancy small bits she was seeing! The elevators were glass and she could see bits of the news station, CNN, playing on the glass as one them went up.

"Gee-whiz. Way to go, Stark. Nice view from the bottom here." Entering into an elevator, Darcy eyed the button for up as there was another for down, wondering how to put in what floor she needed to go on. There was a slot above the buttons, which she supposed was for the identification card with the gold chip inset into it. Just as she was taking her black lanyard off, the doors opened to her great surprise.

"Hey, Cupcake!" Some part of her brain froze. She was fairly certain it was the part that had words develop on her tongue into complete sentences as at the moment, her only word was somewhere between a 'gah' and a 'waaaaat'. Tony Stark's impressively well trimmed beard was neither caring nor taken with her spoken noise of astonishment. Maybe this is what broken dolls felt like when they were unable to use their squeakers to make their intended noise. It took nearly a few minutes to collect herself, before glancing over at Tony Stark, the billionaire who had millions of techies by their metaphorical testicles and speaking.

However, before she could get one word out, as Tony Stark had been talking non-stop it seemed, mumbling and talking to himself -Didn't only crazy people do that?- the elevator doors opened and they were in view of a rather large hallway.

"Come with me! I got a woman with an appetite just waiting for a treat like yours." The arm he pressed against her mid-back, thankfully not lingering a finger or two near the top of her rather bodacious derriere, was warm with the smell of lingering tasteful cologne. She had read in the gossip mags that had littered the cash register from Sophie's appearences at the diner that he was with the ex-CEO of Stark Industries, who used to be his secretary but then he gave her his company instead of his heart and was now back to being his secretary, Pepper Potts, who was also jealous of an extremely tight pant wearing red-head in leather. She'd like to think there was at least a glimmer of truth in those words and most of the rest, lies, but Darcy Lewis had met and tasered a god, so she lived with a frankly open mind when she read the gossip mags.

Hey, it could be true that Captain America was secretly Tony Stark's lover and Pepper was really a beard for him or that Hulk was an alien baby instead of a quiet, nerdy scientist who was from Culver University.

Though she had doubts Loki had rampants amount of horse sex when he was trying to over take the world.

"So…." She paused at the idea of what she should call him. Did he prefer Mr. Tony, Mr. Stark, or Tony Stark without the Mister attached? She couldn't remember if there was ever a word printed out about him hating it or what he preferred to be called. Truth be told, she didn't think she was to even meet the man. She was here for a single drop and go delivery. Who knew that a multi-billionaire-playboy-philanthropist would be the one coming into the elevator with her and escorting her?

"Tony Stark, Cupcake." He smiled with a genuine grin that made Darcy take into his appearance. He wore a suit that must have been tailored for him, which the once-intern had no doubts that he could easily do and his tie was red, hidden by his buttoned blazer. The man knew he looked a million bucks, to which, from interviews Darcy had seen and heard, arrogance was his main vice, behind his interest in the many women that had been in Cosmo's monthly column of 'Hot and Not Fashion.'

"Max Black, not Cupcake." There was a smugness behind his smile that didn't alarm her. Darcy was damn sure if she was as accomplished as the Iron-man, she would be extremely smug too. That and more than likely, he read the lanyard that she had put back around her neck. He continued to speak after that, mentioning Stark Industries and causing a twinge of regret to pass fleetingly over her as he mentioned the amount of technology. The idea of getting her hands back in the game of opening up computer programs and tweaking them was something she kept hidden and tried to not let it be visible in just how much she exactly missed being herself. Darcy had tried hard for so many years to not let any of her past life seep through to this one.

"Now, just go in through here and surprise her." The cupcake baker blinked as he stopped talking about some of their research in being the only green energy maker with their Arc Reactor technology to directing her immediately towards the double doors in front of them. Tony Stark looked as if he was tickled pink by the idea of going ahead and pushing her through those double doors in a second if she didn't go herself.

"Surprise her?" Her voice piped up in surprise despite her hand already reaching towards the door handle, ready to turn it to appease the millionaire in her midst.

"Yes, with the cupcakes. The chocolate cupcakes you brought." Darcy could admit she had seen eyerolls that made her wince, others that caused her to stare in wonder, but Tony Stark's eyeroll could be labeled as legendary and something to behold. His eyes fluttered to the top of the whites of his eyes, staying there and shifting as if he was in some form of cardiac arrest. Once he was done, he spoke rather quickly and to the point.

"Strawberry," Darcy snorted, correcting him immediately. Caroline's handwriting on the order pad from the box of order pads they had taken from the diner, to Han's disbelief after he wouldn't help fund them, had been messy at best, but the word strawberry was clear enough for her to know they were meant to be strawberry cupcakes and had made them so.

"What?" Tony paused in his tailored pin-suit, giving her a look of confusion. Not many things should ever confound a man like Tony Stark. Not many did either, Darcy noted, from the amount of inventions Stark Industries had pushed out with Tony Stark's name on the patent.

"Strawberry cupcakes was on the order." The sound of a pin drop could be heard until Stark let out a sigh and a shrug of his shoulders.

"Looks like it can't be helped. Pepper will kill me if I gave her those. I'm putting you to task in my kitchen to make new ones for her, Cupcake. Chocolate this time. These will just go to the A-team. Wanna come meet them after you're done with the new ones?" With Iron-man quickly, especially for such a short man, walking away from the double doors he had been almost eagerly wanting to push Darcy through, the baker followed his footsteps, trying her hardest to keep up before almost dropping the cupcake batch she had in her hands at the idea of even using Tony Stark's kitchen which probably had the world's best oven and other amazing things that belonged to the highest of the high kitchen appliances.

Hell, Tony Stark probably even had an android put in there for his gourmet chef-y needs.

"Are you for serious, dude?" The idea of being around the kitchen appliances was quickly smashed at her realization that Iron-freaking-man had just invited her to meet the AVENGERS! (Inadvertently that included seeing Shield more than likely, but she wasn't going to think on that part.) Her inner-fangirl was excited, though she tried her best to keep her face neutral enough, failing with the slight bounce of the balls of her feet as she walked with an open-mouthed stare.

"Yeah. They live here, for the most part." Darcy shrugged at that bit of information. It wasn't really a secret in Manhattan or all of New York City for that matter that Avengers had chosen their base to be the Stark Tower and many people had changed the name from Stark Tower when they spoke of the large structure she was in, to Avengers Tower. It seemed strange that before the alien invasion and the issue with the Mandarin, a few months beforehand, that there were even anything other than the only few people the public knew about. The Hulk, Iron-man, and Captain America had been the only publicized figures in the media until the invasion hit, so people with powers seemed few and far between.

The thoughts upon super-powered people caused Darcy to come up short as those thoughts eventually led to SHIELD. The brunette took a moment to curse herself silently for not even thinking to check their surroundings for any of the secretive agents of SHIELD in the building. To her great relief when she took a quick look around the corridor, none of the people that were either coming or going down the hallway they were paid the two of them any mind, as if it were normal for Iron-man to wander about with potentially famous bakers in tow dressed in their current pay grade, which was best of the Bronx Goodwill.

Iron-man looked back at her, a wickedly delighted smirk on his lips as he opened the doors to kitchen that looked as if the kitchen gods used it with how extremely sleek and clean the entire area looked. Darcy felt her jaw drop, as if that hadn't happened earlier when she was in the lobby down on the main floor, but she knew it would take Thor's mighty strength to pull it back to her face.

"No worries, you only have cooking things in the kitchen to surprise you. Jarvis, set Ms. Black with a passcode to the kitchen." With a chuckle, Stark raised his chin a little higher in her reaction, smugness filling up the air as easily as George Clooney cologne. The brunette woman could only stare, taking time to readjust to the space that was blessedly what she had wet dreams about where baking was concerned.

"Right away, sir. I have recorded Ms. Black's voice for recognition." A British sounding voice reverberated in the space around in the kitchen. Darcy's blue eyes widened in appreciation as she was sure that if the idea of all the technology, most of it hard to find and expensive and mostly innovative, hadn't gotten her stomach in knots then she was damn sure Jarvis's voice was creating a moistness in her Hanes panties that she bought on clearance a few weeks ago.

"Is there an app for him?" There was no answer from Tony Stark other than another one of his swarthy smirks. 'He should get it trademarked,' Darcy pondered upon as the billionaire playboy philanthropist made his way out the door they came. With the sound of the door closing, leaving Darcy Lewis by herself in the middle of a grandiose kitchen, luxury surrounding the broke woman. It was Macy's to the max and for her, standing there looking at all the bells and whistles, Darcy could only feel the seeping tendrils of sadness and a smidge of jealousy on her part. She wished she had this home, this place to be hers. Whispers from the other choices in her meager life, spoke rampantly. She was a woman who could have had a somewhat decent place to live. She could have been a government employee and had knowledge about the inner workings of the political shadow-world. She could have been so much more than what she was now but she had chosen, in a moment where she was far too scared and far too uncertain about her life, to run.

She had chosen to be under the radar, to never get her actual picture taken again, other than for an identification card when it was demanded. She was a number now, a cog that on some days felt worn down and withered. The brunette heaved a sigh, stilling those thoughts to put aside for another day when she would have a moment for self-pity. Getting back into what she had last `"There should be with a reads naughty literature out loud option…."

LLLL

An hour or so later, after having asked Jarvis just where exactly an apron resided, and putting on a simple black cook's apron, Darcy Lewis was in heaven. Jarvis was playing classic rock from the 80s from Tony Stark's online radio from his itunes as he -She could only think of the British electronic virtual intelligence as a male- did not have a port for her to stick her iphone into as it was about three or four models ago.

Wild Thing on blast and one batch of cupcakes already in the oven, Darcy Lewis was singing along with the music and dancing with the secondary batch of batter being mixed in the bowl in her arms. Her eyes were closed as she moved around in the kitchen, dirty dishes piling up in the sink from her baking and mixing. She had to make do with the topping cream that Stark had in his fridge, only making chocolate shavings and chips from the chocolate bits wrapped in foil that had been stocked in one of the cupboards. Jarvis had pointed it out for her when she had loudly mused to herself that she didn't know what to do about the cupcake topping.

When she baked, Darcy felt free, without the pressure of hiding the person she was, keeping the terrible secret of the probably-dead man who had nearly tried to kill her. Cupcakes didn't judge her and the mixing, ingredient making, created a peace of mind that she rarely had. She had no ambitions, living under the grid for over a year, with the threat of SHIELD grabbing her and mind-wiping her or swiping her under the rug, ashes and all had seen to cutting any of that out of her head.

When she made her confectionary, Darcy wasn't Max Black. She could be in a world different from the one she was currently living in. She could be Advisor Lewis, put under a local politician within her home state. She would be attending her sister's wedding and her mother's book club nights. She would be dating an impossibly sweet guy, one who would enjoy her snark and wit and keep her warm and comforted when she needed it, especially at night during the winter at her ideal little two-bedroom apartment. She would be able to have an animal and be tied to something, something more than just a generic name and her fear of being found.

With the music blaring, Darcy didn't hear the sound of anyone stepping on the tile behind her. When the feel of a hand, long and thin fingers gripping into her shoulder, using force to turn her around to face the owner of that hand, the brunette let out a loud yelp. She was scared out of her wits, almost, but not dropping the rather 'probably' expensive mixing bowl she was using. Narrowed green eyes, eyes the color of the morning grass after it rained, moss on the northern area of the bark of a tree, studied her. He was tall, standing at a height of an assuredly six-foot sexy, staring down at her. Those emerald eyes, a bewitching flicker of mischief behind them, along with the quiet power of a threat, flowed down into a sharp nose, one that led to well-defined lips, lips that Darcy Lewis had no doubt were heavily kissable.

The sharp drop of anticipation and anxiety welled up within her stomach all the way to her throat as her mind kept cataloguing each of the man's features, if he could be called a man. Darcy was sure there was no way a man could have lips like that and not be considered completely sinful to all of mankind. Her heart stopped with each second that they took to study the other. His fingers burned, but burned in the sense of a warming pad where each finger was branding her.

"Who might you be?" His mouth moved with well-defined high cheekbones that could cut with the efficiency of the Hope Diamond. His British, though one she could detect more at the ends of his words than within the full phrase he directed towards, accent was doing a number on her. Inwardly, Darcy was a deer caught in the headlights. It just had to be someone with an accent. His words were measured, insinuating with his pronounciation on what he was accusing her of without saying it. A gentleman that felt put out by her simple presence of cooking in the kitchen and she was the perpetrator.

"Oh! God!" Then she saw the hair and dropped everything in her arms. Her words came out in a near-breathless whisper as recognition dawned upon her. Her fingers fumbled in her surprise, slipping the bowl from them to gravity's domain, damning the expensive mixing tool to the wasteland of the kitchen floor. Her stomach dropped in dread and fear tingled in her spine. All those good feelings his hand and attractiveness had originally brought was now a minor distraction as her mind blanked on what to do or say. This man, this god-like creature holding her at arm's length with a penetrating gaze was the man who had wrecked New York City a year ago. It was Loki, Loki the God of Mischief, Prince of Lies, and self-proclaimed King of Chaos, Thor's brother and an Asgardian. This man had lain waste to New Mexico years beforehand and could have killed her during the rather shoddy evacuation procedure that her, Erik, Jane, and the Warriors Three had conducted. In fact, she had even given a man some cute dog she found in that fight.

"You called?" His hand never left her shoulder, but his agility was not something to guess at as the god reached below the falling bowl in milliseconds after it's drop from her numb fingers, to keep it from falling to a cracked and splintered glass-ware death. His movements were slow and deliberate now, as if to keep her from running away, which would be next to impossible as she was actually in a corner against the stove and the sink. She would have to go through him and she knew, in the few reports that had even made it to the media that apparently the only thing that had even dented the god was his own brother and the Hulk.

Then again, she had to concede that almost anything fighting the Hulk would likely get its ass kicked, though she would have to debate on Thor's survivability. There was still rumors about Apples of Idunn actually existing, but it was only an idea from Jane when she had asked about Norse mythology one night in a desperate attempt to connect to the mysterious warrior who wielded a molten star in his hands.

The bowl was brought up towards her hands and a decision for Darcy Lewis had to be made. She had heard through the grapevine that there was a man who seemed to be riding with the new team of Super-awesome costumed Capers, but Loki, of all of the potential people, hadn't been named. The brunette took an easy guess that he had likely used his fancy shmancy non-human abilities to do something about that.

Though the decision still stood. She could run away from the job, which may end up paying a shit ton more now that she knew of their newest villain-turned-good recruit, a secret of some sort, which was no wonder, especially with the general public still slowly getting over their fear of aliens attacking, or she could react on her gut instinct whenever she was scared shitless.

The brunette opened her mouth for a second before a snort escaped her shaky lips and she reached over and grabbed the bowl from him. Her hand clutched the bowl tightly to her bottoming stomach, feeling only as strong as a paper ready to be blown by the wind. Her other hand reached in and grabbed the batter-covered spatula and a rise of color rose in her cheek as she felt all her strength fight to keep her upright and her voice playful.

"Hey! First off, rude! Secondly, thanks, dude. I'm betting Stark gets the pretty penny things and I ain't got the ability to cover unless you wanna help me pay for it." Her manner was anything but indignant, though she was trying to play off her fear, raising her nose, without much achievement there as the Asgardian was a foot taller than her. Trying to look intimidating to someone that was already intimidating was a lesson in futility for Darcy. The god standing there at her couldn't help the slight quirk at the edge of his lips in his strange sense of amusement. Her fingers were clutching the spatula with white knuckles, wielding a rapier as she spoke, flickering fire in her voice, barely covering the fright.

"Hay is for horse's or are we in a stable?" He decided to indulge her to her great relief. The brunette almost released a sigh, but she kept it in her body. At any second, she had no doubt that a man with a camera would come out of the cabinet and yell, "PUNKED" at her. It didn't happen, but Darcy could never be sure. This was Stark Tower after all and she was starting a trade of barb-wire wit with the single person who had ended up almost destroying New York City with an entire alien squad army of ugly jerkfaces.

"Why? Does it look like the beginning of a porno to you, Mr. Deity-who-fucked-a-horse?" She backed away, slowly so as to not look as if she was frightened, eyeing Loki with an intensity, the underlying want from his first initial contact with her body still thrumming throughout her veins. Of course, she had to say something like that. Her inner self burning over the thought of those words being the last ones she chose to speak before she was brutally murdered for her sass. Her mother and father would have been right that her mouth had gotten her into too much trouble for her to handle and how she ended up in an early grave, that is if she hadn't technically already died to them.

Her back hit the counter, causing her to take a look over her shoulder before turning fully to face the counter, the warmth of the stove against her side-shin and hip. She was trying to make him think that she was of no account, that she wasn't afraid of him because she was a no one. She was Max Black. She was a nothing. The words replayed over and over in her head. Her hands placed the bowl, replacing the spatula back in it, trying her best to seem as if she wasn't about to piss her own jeans. She really liked these jeans too and could do not getting on the subway smelling like stale urine and cupcakes.

"I'm not the one thinking such naughty things in the kitchen," Her mind blanked as the barest feel of his scarf, tickled along her back. She glanced down at her hands around the bowl, back towards his chest, before seeing his arms only an inch on each side of her own. Darcy Lewis felt a sick anticipation of desire crawl up from thighs to her groin. His presence, a panther waiting to pounce on its prey, was somehow warming, thickening the air with his pheromones. He wasn't touching her, leaving the smallest amount of space between their bodies as he leaned behind her, trapping her effectively within his mass.

His words were taunting, telling her of all her lies. Loki had seen her eyes dilate and her breath come in heedless quickened breaths. Her bright blue eyes had darkened with lust from the moment he had turned her around and spoken to the waitress. She was being foolish, attempting to pretend she had better things to do than to be scared and that was what he could admire despite her warbling voice as she spoke, despite the playfulness she was trying her hardest to intone.

"Too bad. I wasn't thinking anything like that," She stared at the reflective surface of the counter, cheeks blazing at the embaressing position she was in. She knew Loki could probably kill her, hurt her in some fashion, or even do other things to her, some enjoyable, others quite likely not as much. The knowledge was troubling, though she quickly secreted it down to some part of her brain that wasn't at the forefront. Survivability by pretending to be a sarcastic bad ass was what had saved her for the last two years as Max Black on the streets of the Bronx.

"What were you thinking of?" Loki's voice was honey and oil, smoothing over her bones like a heated balm, drawing her into each nuance. He spoke as if he knew just how to keep her under the spell of his voice alone. His words kindled something dangerous in between her legs that she knew she didn't want to name. Naming would be even more dangerous and would give her an idea of what to mull over later when she was alone in her shared apartment. She could feel the puff of his breath, lightly pressing against the breadth of her neck.

All Darcy knew was that she was in trouble and needed to get out of this close-range with Loki, the apparent God of Sexy Voice or else she might turn around and take her first thoughts about the man in the suit behind her before she recognized him and do something incredibly stupid, like kissing him and kissing him hard.

It must be a god thing, she decided, after all, she had wanted to do the same thing to the other gods she met, like Fandral.

Then again, that might have been just Fandral.

"Cupcakes.. Now, butt out, Fancypants." She backed up into him, using her hip to surprisely move him away from her. Her hands free from the mixing bowl she left on the counter, she reached for the oven mitts, placing them on her hands and opening the oven. The rush of heated air was a welcome relief from Loki's heated breath upon her sensitive expanse of skin. The sorcerer god chuckled lightly with a bemused expression upon his lips, leaning back against the other side of the counter. In truth, he had only come to find out what in all of Midgard smelled so sweet and delicious.

"The question still stands. Who are you?" Grabbing a toothpick, sticking it in, and drawing it out to see no bits of cupcake upon the splinter of wood, Darcy was satisfied with the batched. It was ready to be pulled out. Her arms, encased in the hot oven, quickly grabbed her cupcakes and set them to the top of the beautiful sleek black stove. In the background, 'Sunshine of Your Love' was playing in their silence as she set the cupcakes out from the pan to cool on the rack. When she finished, Darcy Lewis with enough reason for trepidation behind each of her movements, closed the hot oven door, keeping it from slamming, unlike how she treated her Rockstar Oven that Caroline had gotten them for the cupcake business.

"Max Black." She steadied her breath, raising her chin to look defiantly at the raised eyebrow and smug grin upon Loki's pale face and the only thing that Darcy knew other than the fact that she very much would like to have raunchy no strings-attached sex with the God of Mischief, was that he was able to see through her lie, to the very root of why she lied. His eyes pierced through her soul into the very depths where she had closed herself up, keen on not repeating her past mistakes. Her insides quaked, sweat dripping down her palm as the thought of Loki telling Thor and Thor, not able to keep a secret by much, would tell everyone and their mothers if he could.

With her chosen name stated, Darcy waited for the ever-nefarious ex-villain to say something, anything about her lie. He still said nothing, only smirking in a way that made dirty things he could say to her come to mind. He stepped away from the counter he was using as a levelled rest, approaching the waitress. Darcy's body tightened up, readying the flee instinct, unsure if she had somehow caused some sort of landmine to explode by keeping the lie up even to his face, despite his indifference to it. His hand reached over her shoulder, brushing against the side of her arm before pulling back and holding an extremely fresh cupcake, with no cream topping on the baked confection.

"Make one with little extra cream on top. I love frosting, don't you?" He smiled wickedly, causing another drop in Darcy's stomach. He brought the cupcake up to his lips, a laugh in his verdant eyes as he took a bite, slowly, delicately before teleporting out of the room and away from Darcy Lewis who was currently hoping to finish her cupcakes and then be off. It was as if he was letting her off the hook with her lie by the request for one just for him.

"Got...it…" Slowly talking to herself as the sorcerer had disappeared, Darcy Lewis breathed a heavy sigh to herself, wondering just what in the hell she had just ended up getting herself into. "….Oh, boy."

LLLL

Author's Note: I am debating on doing shorter chapters and more updates or should I keep it longer chapters and try to put up a different pace? I have been writing up my own book and I have been bouncing around the many fandoms and picking up fics and putting in a few paragraphs at a time. My attention span jumps a lot as well so, any input would help.