Not Really Supervillains

Rumlow/Gambit/Darcy

TaserRumbit

Theme song:

INXS – Devil Inside

Follows on from the previous chapter, A Score To Settle.

Brock and Remy made a brilliant team. Brock had a better head for figures than Remy, and with his firm hand, money no longer ran quite so freely through Remy's fingers. He was also a better planner, from his years of experience managing STRIKE missions before he quit HYDRA in disgust, when they abandoned him after the fall of the Triskelion. He'd been a mercenary ever since.

Being a thief, Brock was finding, actually paid a hell of a lot more for a lot less risk. Particularly since they were usually hired to steal one specific item, and their employers really didn't give a damn if they helped themselves to one or two minor valuables on their way out. Remy could find a buyer for just about anything, it seemed, and within a few months they were flush enough with cash that they could afford to be extremely picky about the jobs they accepted.

So when they were asked to steal something from Tony Stark, their first reaction was oh hell no.

"Too hard a target," Brock told Justin Hammer flatly. "Avengers Tower? You're kidding."

"You're saying that you couldn't do it?" Hammer said craftily.

"I'm saying that we ain't doing it. Not for the money you're offering."

"You told me it was a standard fee!"

"For a standard job, yeah. But this is so far from being a standard job it's laughable. You're asking us to break into one of the most secure buildings in the world, occupied by superheroes who would just love the opportunity to kick our asses, and steal the blueprints for the Stark arc reactor!"

"It would certainly be a challenge, mon cœur," Remy said thoughtfully.

"Do not start," Brock shot him a warning glance. Remy grinned in return, pulled a pack of cards from his coat pocket and began shuffling them deftly.

"Double your fee," Hammer said.

"No." Brock shrugged when Hammer looked at him. "It's too risky."

"Où est ton esprit d'aventure?" Remy murmured.

Brock shot his soulmate a fulminating glare. "NO."

"Perhaps Monsieur LeBeau would be interested in the job without you?" Hammer said slyly. "Since it seems you lack the…" he was about to say balls, but a glance into Rumlow's hard eyes made him change his mind "… desire to try your skills with such an ambitious challenge."

"Twenty million dollars," Remy said coolly when Brock just glared.

"Twenty… that's outrageous!" Hammer's jaw dropped.

"You just spent four years in prison for attempting to rip off Mr Stark's designs, Mr Hammer," Remy raised a lazy eyebrow. "My soulmate and I, we 'ave no desire to suffer the same fate. If Stark finds out we did this thing, he will come after us. We'll need the money to make sure we don't get caught."

"How much will you make from the designs you can create with those blueprints, Mr Hammer?" Brock cut in. "A billion? Two? Twenty million is small change in comparison, and you know it."

Hammer blustered for a little while, and then he caved. Remy and Brock convinced him to pay two million up front – they'd have a lot of setup costs on this one – and then intimidated him a bit to make sure he didn't even think about ripping them off. That was laughably easy. The man apparently had the spine of a jellyfish.

It wouldn't be easy, of course. It would take a lot of planning. Bribes, blackmail, working with a few talented hackers Remy and Brock dug up who were delighted to be given a chance at Stark's systems and get paid for it if they succeeded.

And then there was the question of timing. They couldn't pick a moment in advance, because the only time when they'd have a hope in hell of pulling this thing off was when the Avengers were out of the Tower. So they could plan and prepare, plan and prepare, and then they'd have to wait who knows how long for their opportunity.

After a month, Hammer started getting antsy. Brock rolled his eyes and terrified him into silence. Two weeks later he was back. Remy produced a bottle of bourbon and a pack of cards and took the idiot for everything he had on him.

Three days after that, the Avengers were called out to deal with, apparently, the Loch Ness Monster, according to news reports. Remy and Brock didn't waste time on incredulity. They just grabbed their gear and headed out.

xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxox

Darcy hummed softly to herself as she headed back to the lab to collect her iPod. She'd had her hands full with a semi-conscious Jane when she left a little while earlier to haul her over-tired scientist off to her bed, had failed to grab it. But she wanted her tunes to go to sleep, and…

… hadn't JARVIS automatically switched off the lights behind her when she left? The Tower's arc reactor meant they didn't have an energy bill issue, but Pepper had long since convinced Tony to provide any excess to the city grid and Darcy was always conscious of power usage…

… oh, there was someone sitting at Jane's computer terminal, a man with short dark hair. Too tall to be Tony. Had to be Bruce. Huh, were the team back already? Darcy hadn't heard the jet land. She walked into the lab, the hissing of the doors as they slid open making the dark-haired man spin around.

"Oh, shit," he said.

"You're not who I expected," Darcy said to the unfamiliar, handsome face, hastily scrabbling at the Taser holstered at the small of her back. She'd got used to carrying it now. Considering how often the Tower was attacked by villains, or some idiot tried to kidnap Jane…

Dark eyes widened, startled, and then Darkly Handsome Villain said; "Remy, no!"

Movement in the corner of her eye alerted Darcy, and she flung out her hand and activated the Taser in it, watched as the two pins struck the other man, who'd been creeping silently up to grab her, in the throat. Ooh, that was gonna hurt…

… why wasn't he going down? The cartridge had worked, she could actually see the sparks of electricity racing up the wires…

"Why didn't that work? That always works normally! It worked on a freaking god, so what are you?" Unreasonably annoyed, she threw the useless Taser at him.

Cheaty Superhuman grinned at her, fending the makeshift weapon off so it clattered harmlessly to the floor. "Sorry, chère. You picked the wrong target."

"What?" Darcy froze. He was making no move towards her, just plucking the pins from his throat and tossing them casually aside. She stared at him. At his ridiculously handsome face, wavy brown hair, tall muscular build. Turned her head to look at Darkly Handsome Villain, who'd stood up and was walking slowly towards her.

"Oh, shit."

"That's what I said. Sorry for the swear word."

"I… think I need to sit down," Darcy said a bit weakly, and Cheaty Superhuman moved – waaay too fast, okay, questions needed to be asked once she didn't feel like her brain was about to explode with the enormity of what had just happened – and suddenly she was sitting down in Jane's office chair with both of them towering over her.

"Okay," she blinked up at them, looking from one stupidly handsome face to the other. "So in looks terms clearly I just won the soulmate lottery, but please God tell me you're not really supervillains."

"We're not really supervillains," they both chorused.

"Yes but are you just saying that? Mind you, all the supervillains I've met would probably be offended about having to lie about it, they seem to take pride in being all MWAHAHAH. Right, so you're just regular run-of-the-mill bad guys, then? I could probably work with that."

"Not even that," Darkly Handsome went to one knee by her chair. "We're mercenaries – mercenary thieves, to be exact. I'm Brock, Brock Rumlow, and he's Remy LeBeau."

"Enchanté," Remy murmured, reaching for her hand and lifting it to his lips as he too went to one knee.

"And now I think I'm going to make like a Regency heroine and have a bit of a swoon because YOU TWO."

They were both laughing at her silently, she could see it in the dimple flashing in Brock's stubbled cheek (a fucking dimple, WHAT EVEN) and the way Remy's full lips were twitching at the corners. Darcy took several deep breaths – oohh, that was a bad idea, at least one of them was wearing really nice cologne.

"Well, I'm Darcy Lewis, since we're doing introductions. So. Mercenaries. You going to tell me why you're here in Avengers Tower, which seriously has to be one of the world's toughest targets? I really don't think you're here just for kicks."

"Justin Hammer hired us to steal the blueprints for the Stark arc reactor," Remy said. Brock shot him an incredulous glance and Remy shrugged. "Mon cœur, all plans flew out the window when she spoke our words, and you know it. I'm not going to start off our relationship with our soulmate by lying to her."

She could have listened to Remy talk all day. Brock was similarly affected, she could tell. At last he shrugged. "Yeah. What he said. Hammer's a prick but he pays fucking well."

"Hmm," Darcy glanced from one to the other of them, her eyes gleaming as she suddenly came up with an utterly wonderful idea. "Agreed on Hammer. He groped me once."

"He what." Brock's eyes darkened, and she saw Remy's jaw clench.

"Grabbed my boob. Right in the middle of a swanky party Stark dragged me to as his plus-one when Pepper was out of the country somewhere."

"Which hand?"

"Er, right, I think?" she blinked at Brock's odd question. "Why?"

"Just checking which hand I need to cut off."

She was… fairly sure he was serious. "Ah, I see, you're the vicious one."

"Non, chère," Remy drawled. "I plan to chop off something Hammer will miss a lot more than his hand."

"Okay, okay, whoah," Darcy waved her hands. "I told you about that to incentivise you into going along with my evil plan. Because I plan to hit him where it really hurts. His wallet."

"I like her," Remy said to Brock.

"I should bloody well hope so too," Brock responded, his eyes locked on Darcy's. "Go on, sweetheart."

"Tony will totally be up for it too. We'll fake up the arc reactor plans. You take them to Hammer, pocket the money, and then Tony sues him for industrial espionage and we make it look like you were working for Tony all along. Voilà, lots of lovely money with which the three of us could have a very nice holiday somewhere with lots of sun, sand, sea and sex." Dammit, there were only supposed to be 3 S's. But that last one had totally slipped out. They were so hot she couldn't help but think about it, think about sweaty muscular bodies sliding against hers…

They both stared at her silently for so long that Darcy started to feel a bit worried. "What?" she demanded.

"I fucking adore you," Brock said reverently.

"Moi, aussi," Remy agreed.

French translations:

mon cœur – my heart

Où est ton esprit d'aventure? – where's your spirit of adventure?

Enchanté – (I am) enchanted

Moi, aussi – me, too

OK, to head off yet more screaming of ADD THIS TO THE SEXYTIMES RIGHT THE FUCK NOW, OZ, I'm laying down the following laws ;)

Yes, I have already added it to the list. BUT you can only vote, IN the Sexytimes fic itself. One vote per chapter. And you cannot vote for ANY pairing/grouping more than once. I have a spreadsheet. I will know.

And yes, you can ask me what you voted for already, if you didn't keep a record.

You can also tell me how much you love this totally cracky triad and want to see them go on mad Ocean's 11 style adventures too, of course…