The next morning, Steve left for the Avengers Initiative. He had taken almost a week off and needed to check back in with Natasha and Fury. There were new Avengers to train, threat assessments to get caught up on, as well as liaising with Director Coulson and the new SHIELD. Even though it wasn't obvious, Nikita had begun to thaw out a bit towards the rest of the Tower residents and Steve was confident that she would be fine in his absence.
Nikita decided to take the opportunity to get caught up on some much needed maintenance of her weapons and gear. She pulled the duffel out of the closet, but hesitated before setting it down in the living room of the apartment. Steve had asked her to get to know the residents of the Tower better, so staying holed up here alone in the apartment was probably not what her Dom would want her to do. But she had no idea how to get to know the others, socializing was not something she had ever tried to do before. And her gear really did need going over. She decided to take her gear up to the Common Floor and do the maintenance there. Maybe that would count as socializing?
When Nikita stepped off the elevator onto the Common Floor, she found Darcy already curled up on a couch watching TV. She strode over to the sitting area, settling into a seat and pulling the coffee table over in front of her, setting the duffel on the ground next to it.
"What's up, Buttercup!"
Nikita looked over at the other girl meeting her eyes then exaggeratedly looked up to the ceiling then back, a small smirk lifting the corner of her mouth. Darcy promptly dissolved into a small fit of giggles.
Darcy was marathoning Project Runway. She kept up a steady stream of commentary about the contestants and their outfits while Nikita worked. Darcy's eyes widened as Nikita took the weapons out of the duffel and laid them out on the coffee table until they covered the whole surface.
Nikita covertly studied the curvy brunette while she systematically cleaned and sharpened her knives. She was lounging in a pair of sweat pants and an oversize shirt which probably belonged to her Dom, the neck of the shirt hanging loose enough to show the collar she wore. It was a chain of large silver rings with a silver heart resting at the hollow of her throat. The girl smiled and laughed and had a wicked wit. Nikita found herself enjoying Darcy's company.
Darcy was thrilled to discover Nikita's hidden sense of humor, starting with that first smirk. Every now and then she would spot a small smile on the blonde's face as her comments became more and more outrageous.
They were several episodes in when Tony came out of the elevator. He was impeccably dressed in a silvery grey bespoke suit with a red tie, his hair artfully tousled. "Really Lewis?" Tony teased, "Watching Project Runway without me, I'm wounded."
"Well look at you dolled up all fancy" remarked Darcy.
"Spent the weekend with Pepper then she made me go to a board meeting this morning," explained Tony.
"Oh the horror!" Darcy commiserated. "We were just about to have lunch. Why don't you slip into something more comfortable and join us?" The suggestion was accompanied by a lascivious wiggle of her eyebrows.
"Order up something good," Tony instructed as he took the stairs up to the penthouse.
By the time Tony returned to join them the food had arrived. He was dressed in a pair of sweats and a band tee showing off the red and gold collar he wore. By now Nikita had worked her way through most of her weapons. She was checking over her body armor and restocking the pockets. Tony looked over the array of weaponry spread out over his coffee table. His attention was caught by a black metallic cylinder which he picked up to examine, looking over at Nikita to gauge her reaction.
"What is this, a light saber?" he asked Nikita. She just calmly arched an eyebrow at him as he continued to examine it. She reached out grabbing his hand, positioning it so that he held the cylinder horizontally between them, then she pressed the catch. Immediately metal telescoped out of both ends terminating into wickedly sharp points, turning the cylinder into a four foot metal staff. Tony looked it over, "JARVIS scan."
"Scanning sir," the AI replied.
Tony twirled the staff around a little, testing the balance, then triggered the mechanism to retract and expand the staff again. When his curiosity was satisfied, he retracted the staff a final time and handed it back to Nikita. He then picked up and examined her body armor, checking all the pockets. He seemed almost personally affronted by the fact that it was generically 'off the rack'.
Nikita didn't have a problem with Tony's interest in her gear. She had never been sentimentally attached to any of her weapons, though she did really like her staff. Generally, so long as she was armed she didn't really care. It was rather amusing watching the billionaire engineer play with her staff like a kid with a new toy.
Having completed her self appointed task, Nikita packed all her gear back into the duffel then settled back in her chair to watch the show. Darcy and Tony were enthusiastically watching the contestants attempt to make outfits from unconventional materials. Tony kept coming up with ideas and shouting them at the screen. One of the contestants started to cry, complaining about how hard it was. "Try building an arc reactor and a flying metal suit out of scraps in a cave," scoffed Tony. At Nikita's questioning look he related what she figured was a rather abridged story of building the first Iron Man suit.
By the time Steve and the other residents arrived on the common floor for dinner Tony and Darcy had decided that they needed to get the show to do a super hero episode using the Avengers as models and Tony as a guest judge. Imagining each of the Avengers in turn walking down the runway had Tony and Darcy laughing uncontrollably. Nikita hid her smile behind a drink of her soda.
Tony was building some new equipment for Jane. Darcy was in the workshop helping Tony put on the finishing touches, which meant they were gossiping about the residents of the Tower and the rest of the Avengers family. Of course the talk turned to their newest resident assassin. They remarked on how quiet she is, even quieter than Bucky had been when he first arrived at the Tower. "She reminds me of James," Darcy remarked. "Quiet, but I'm sure there's some wicked humor in there."
"Well she certainly has the same fashion sense," Tony joked. "We have to do something about that. I mean she wears the same outfit every day."
"Ooh," exclaimed Darcy, "we totally need to go shopping!"
"Slow down there Speed Racer," snarked Tony, "Much as I wouldn't mind seeing her take out a few, I don't think we need to test out how she'll react to the paparazzi just yet. Why don't you take her, then we can do a fashion show in the penthouse," as he hands Darcy a black amex.
"Project Runway, Avengers Edition," enthused Darcy. "I get to be Heidi, which totally makes you Tim Gunn."
"Make it work!" declared Tony.