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Santa could officially suck it.
The big jolly bearded one was officially on the shit list of one Darcy Grace Lewis. No one wanted a spot on that particular list. And to ask the previous occupants of that list, one would have to enlist a few portal sticks and the sturdy stomach that is necessary for intergalaxy travel. Or go to Siberia, which was where her last ill-fated paramor, who was actually the paramor of half of the Stark Industries human resources department, wound up AFTER Natasha got done with him.
So watch out Big Red and Jolly. You're going down.
She had TRIED to make sure the vast and plentiful R&D department of Stark Industries had been kosher throughout the year. It was her job after all, and seeing as most of Stark Industries WAS research and development, she oversaw the human resources of a lot of people. And robots. And she had just wanted to complete the perfect year. No lawsuits. No incidents of rampant sexual harassment (Stark Industries had the distinction of having just as many reported incidents of women harassing men. It was a peculiar kind of feather to have in her cap, but Darcy blamed half of those sexual harassment claims on her ridiculous friends, i.e. The Brilliant and Socially Inept Peanut Gallery that consisted of Doctor Jane Foster, Doctor Helen Cho, Doctor Betty Ross and Doctor Simmons).
And she'd nearly made it. She'd made it through Valentine's Day without Doctors Ross and Simmons threatening to 'sex pollen' the security division. She'd gotten through the warm summer months without anyone coming into her office to complain about how Doctor Cho had made an inappropriate comment about exposed forearms and the effect that crisp khaki pants had on her downstairs fun zone. She'd even managed to make it through the entire month of September, the start of the academic season, which for some reason made Doctor Foster crazy in the pants.
She loved her girls, honestly, but they were a bunch of perverts.
But then...HallowThanksistmaskahnza came. The dreaded triumvirate of cooler late year months that seemed to be exclusively designed to throw nerdy women into a never ending loop of absolutely inappropriate behavior.
Jane had invented a portal of sorts that would take everyone's Halloween costumes and make them much, much less in the fabric category than they had previously been (she called it sexier, but then Doctor Erik Selvig had gone through the portal and wound up in gold lamé boy shorts and Darcy had not wanted to see the sixty-eight year old man's thighs. Again). Darcy had apologized profusely to Pepper Potts, the CEO of Stark Industries, and Captain Steve Rogers, the head of the Avengers facility that Darcy and her gang of ridiculously inappropriate women worked at.
They'd given her another chance, and that chance had been squandered when she hadn't been able to stop Doctors Ross and Simmons from creating their own genetically altered legion of turkeys that had their tryptophan replaced with a truly ridiculous amount of phenethylamine (chemical aphrodisiacs), which wouldn't have been so bad as usually those kinds of chemicals are broken down quickly by the body, but the turkeys also had a (rather tasty) monoamine oxidase inhibitor which helped it reach the brain faster and let it stay there.
They made sex pollen turkeys is what they did. Turkeys that were the equivalent of horny bombs.
By Darcy's count, seventeen babies had been conceived over the long Thanksgiving weekend. Thankfully, they had all been committed or married couples, but that's only because as soon as Darcy found out what Doctors Simmons and Ross had managed to do, she had broken out the condom canon (Tony’s helpful invention), shooting it at anyone that had gone near the canteen Thanksgiving specials.
Pepper had forgiven this slip up, only because it had led to a lucrative patent on the 'viagra' for men AND women. Captain Rogers had been red in the face as he stared at Darcy during that meeting. He had been so angry he had refused to talk to her, instead, his hands had clenched on the end of the desk, ready to rip off chunks in his anger at her. He'd been SWEATING with his fury at her ineptitude and inability to keep her idiot perverts in line.
So she COULDN'T screw up the December holiday season. She had to keep her people (Jane, Helen, Betty and Simmons) in line.
She could do it.
She could .
On December 1st, she tackled Doctor Cho to the ground when she'd decided to synthesize mistletoe inspired lotion that would increase the blood flow to---particular regions.
December 2nd rolled around and she'd shackled Doctor Foster to her desk so she couldn't transplant an entire alien brothel into the gym area of the Avenger's facility.
It was only December 3rd and she was ready for Christmas to be over.
"Doll, I just don't understand why you can't just get them LAID?"
"Are you SERIOUS right now, Barnes?" Darcy glared at Bucky as they worked at building a perfectly to scale gingerbread battlefield for the Avenger's common room. Bucky was busy taking broken and bloodied gingerbread men limbs and severed heads and placing them artfully on a landscape of graham cracker crumbs and red fruit roll up rivers of blood. Darcy was carefully decorating small gingerbread men versions of the heroes that went about protecting Earth from all things bad, namely carefully piping in Captain Americabread's poofy arms with blue royal icing.
"Well I mean, wouldn't they be less eager to force love and relations on everyone else if they were busy getting some of their own?" Bucky said thoughtfully as he snapped a hydra gingerbread man in half and then half buried him in the dessert desert landscape.
"Jane gets to boff an Asgardian God on the regular. Betty is versed in tantric sex and her tutor is Bruce fucking Banner. Simmons and Fitz are always in various states of dishevelment and REEKING of sex," Darcy listed off as she took the blue icing and began filling in a gingerbread lady's dress. And she narrowed her eyes at Bucky and accused, "And don't tell me that you, Natasha, Sam and Helen don't get up to ridiculously complicated group bed gymnastics. She invented muscle cream for aches and pains after Labor Day, Barnes."
"That was Sam, I know how to stretch a person out proper so those kinds of pulls don't happen," Bucky winked at Darcy. "Just in case you're interested."
"I'm so NOT interested," Darcy insisted, although her entire face blushed beet red.
"Could be fun," Bucky insisted. "Better than waiting around for some dumb schmuck to kiss you under the mistletoe. And I promise that when Wilson's putting his mouth to better uses, he ain't half so annoying."
"SssssshhhHHHH!" Darcy pointed the little bag she was using to squirt blue icing out, the heat coming off of her pale face nearly nuclear at that point.
"I don't get it, why would a quartet of brilliant women who were sexually satisfied in the bed chambers want to cause so much randy mischief?" Bucky pondered as he reached out for the Steve cookie with the clear intent to bite his head off, only to have his hand swatted away.
"Because they want to spread the wealth," Darcy sighed. "You know your Lady Spider is a matchmaker at heart, right?"
"Steve definitely knows," Bucky laughed.
Darcy deflated at that. If Natasha was actively trying to set Steve up with potential matches, then she might as well start putting protocol into place to keep her brilliant lady stable in line for his inevitable wedding. She put down the blue icing and picked up the red, going through the cookie heroes and adding the color to their uniforms. She was definitely morose and pouting as she filled in an Iron gingerbread-man.
"Well, my ladies are like matchmakers, but matchmakers of the varied beasts with two backs," Darcy mumbled. "And since the fall, they've been focused on getting one person laid in particular."
"Fury?" Bucky guessed.
Darcy sighed. "Me."
"Oh shit," Bucky dropped an alien limb at the foot of the cookie quinjet. He gave Darcy a sympathetic smile and asked, "Did they have a particular mark in mind?"
"Who knows with those evil geniuses," Darcy sighed. "If they do, nothing has worked yet, and I'm honestly terrified to see what they come up with next."
"Darcy," Friday cut in from overhead.
"NO," Darcy scowled up at the ceiling.
"One of your security parameters has been breached," Friday continued on, nonplussed. "Namely the one about Doctor Foster receiving alien materials from Thor. That aren't seminal fluid."
Bucky snorted and then immediately backed away from a livid Darcy armed with sticky icing.
"Is she going to poison anyone?" Darcy asked Friday.
"She's attempting to add it to the facilities water supplies as we speak."
Jane found herself in 'Darcy Jail' for her attempted crime and subsequent conviction of 'literally trying to fuck me over, Janie, you are on time-out!'. Time-out was what the scientists referred to as Darcy Jail. It meant you had no access to technology that was more advanced than Elizabethan times, and you also had to write a 1,000 word essay on why you were sorry.
With a quill and ink.
By candlelight.
"Oh, oh ! Put in there about how you're very sorry about wanting to gift unto her joy and orgasms," Thor encouraged.
Darcy Jail couldn't stop Asgardian Gods from keeping prisoners company, apparently. And honestly, Thor was culpable and deserving of a little time in the big house, as well.
And after the couple had thoroughly exhausted one another physically (Thor was a God, sure, but Jane was highly caffeinated and a hellcat in the sack), they started in on Jane's required essay. Thor enjoyed the essays, generally. He took them more seriously than any of the other inmates took them.
"I still need three more words," Jane sighed.
"Write that you're very, very, very, VERY sorry about wanting to gift unto her joy and many, many, many, many orgasms," Thor grinned. "And now you have overachieved, as you usually do, my love."
Natasha entered Darcy Jail and Thor and Jane, who were both minimally covered (Thor had pants that were hanging low on his hips and Jane was swamped in the t-shirt Thor had abandoned) greeted the spy. Thor gave a wave to his teammate and crossed his arms over his bare chest while Jane simply scowled.
"Tell me, Natasha, what have you done to get thrown in the Darcy Slammer?" he asked jovially.
"I'm just visiting, I don't get thrown into Darcy Jail," Natasha promised. “Ever.”
"Well, that's just because you're not trying hard enough," Thor sassed back before leaning and placing a kiss on Jane's forehead. "My Jane is devoted in her efforts in finding our Darcy a bedmate."
"Mainly because getting her orgasms will relax her, and then she won't be so uptight, and she won't always try to stop me when I'm about to make a breakthrough," Jane nodded. She shrugged and added as an afterthought, "And also, I'm just a really good friend. So there's that."
"Jane, I know that our goals don't exactly align, but perhaps it's time to finally team up," Natasha offered, her voice low and sinfully rich and seductive, as if she were trying to seduce the petite astrophysicist.
Jane scowled again and muttered something about Cho being compromised by Russian boobs, soldier peens and biceps and spy-ginas.
"I don't understand, your goals coincide, do they not?" Thor furrowed his brow. "Jane, AND I, we wish to gift Darcy with a glorious bedmate."
"Not just one, if she wants eight, she should have them," Jane added.
"Right, a glorious bedmate, or eight. Eight bedmates," Thor nodded and then gave a little shrug and pursed his mouth, "Darcy has the skills to handle a proper harem that has not been seen on Earth since the days---"
"Don't," Natasha warned quietly as Jane regarded Thor with suspicion.
"I never had a harem," Thor gave a self-conscious chuckle. He gave Jane his most earnest look. "It was Loki's harem. And if he tries to ever say anything differently, then he's lying, and you know that to be true because”
Thor held up his hands and shook his head back and forth before finishing with
“Because...Loki."
"I want Steve to be settled," Natasha said resolutely. "Darcy is perfect for him in every way. And even you have to admit they are secretly besotted with one another.”
Thor made a cutting motion with his hand around his mouth to get Natasha to stop talking. Apparently he had already tried to approach Jane with the idea of Steve being well matched with Darcy.
"Ugh, but then marriage and babies, Thor warned me as much with his fertility voodoo," Jane groaned in annoyance. "Might as well get her a prescription for whatever all those stepford fifties wives were given then---"
"They will BOTH be very happy," Natasha assured her before glaring at Thor with an expression that demanded backup.
Thor pouted for just a moment.
"I do believe Natasha is right," Thor said gently to Jane. His lady didn't seem to budge, so he gave her a little smirk and patted her shoulder. "Jane, my love, think of how distracted and engrossed Darcy would be planning a handfasting ceremony, and tending to the brood of children she is destined to have with the Captain. Think of all you could do without someone to stop you."
"And it's never been more clear to me how your brother became a supervillain," Natasha muttered under her breath.
"I'm not an enabler, don't call me that, I didn't like it when Darcy said it and I--I'm just really supportive," Thor automatically argued.
"If Darcy is too busy boning and marrying and being fertilized by Captain America then I could finally do the miniature Einstein Rosen bridge synapses!" Jane lit up like a Christmas tree.
"Oh good, another apocalypse," Natasha deadpanned.
"Okay, Itsy Bitsy Spider," Jane stood up from the old fashioned writing desk that Darcy had permanently installed into the room that had become her privatized prison. "Let's get Darcy laid. Specifically by Captain America."
"Romanoff, goddammit!”
"Honestly, Rogers, language," Natasha automatically sassed at the man who had barged into her private quarters with his hands held over his eyes to shield him from tomfoolery.
"You can look Stevie, I'm decent," Bucky promised. "And Hellie hid under the covers, so you can't see her unmentionables."
Steve's face screwed into annoyance and he peeked through fingers to see Natasha and Bucky in half dressed states, with Bucky having a very lumpy blanket in his lap. Lumps that were no doubt an equally or more disheveled Doctor Helen Cho. Steve rolled his eyes as the lump moved and Bucky grinned devilishly in response.
"Tell HELLIE to get dressed and get down to my office, she has questions to answer," Steve advised.
"Can't you just call Darcy to handle it?" Helen's indignant question was muffled under the blanket and something about the vibrations of her words and whatever she was doing under the blanket had Bucky's jaw going slack and his eyes rolling to the back of his head.
"Darcy is NOT the one who used my image and put up posters around the facility," Steve reached into his back pocket and pulled out a crumpled up piece of paper.
Sure enough, when uncrumpled, it revealed a very accurate image of Steve in a pair of red briefs made to approximately resemble Santa's pants. He also had a big, red, fancy gift bow on his bare chest and a cartoon bubble above his head that read 'I'll clean your chimney before Christmas, for a good time call---'
"How did you do this?" Steve demanded. "We had photoshop removed from all computers after Simmons put out that picture of Coulson at Valentine's Day..."
"Photoshop," Helen scoffed and two pairs of dark brown eyes peeked out of the blanket. "That image is my proprietary image and it was done with science."
"You took pictures of my body the last time I was hurt," Steve accused.
"The last time she regrew a portion of your lungs," Bucky corrected patting what was probably Helen's backside proudly. "When your dumbass decided to try to be a fire breathing dragon at that thing with the---oohh God."
Natasha's hands had somehow gotten under the blanket now and both Bucky and Helen had a pleasurable shiver going through them.
"STOP IT," Steve sounded more like he was whining than yelling.
"I can make robo-Steve do whatever pose I want," Helen shrugged before disappearing under the blanket again completely. “Honestly, he's so much nicer than Vision.”
"ROBO STEVE?" Steve shouted, dismayed at the new revelation that Helen and her cohorts had a robotic version of him at their disposal. His phone went off in his back pocket again and he took it out and threw it at Natasha, who refused to remove her hands from underneath the blanket. "You deal with the constant phone calls. CHO, you're on notice."
"You can't fire me!" Helen asserted and Bucky's whole body began to twitch.
"Really, Steve, who will regrow your lungs?" Natasha asked with a cat like smile curling her lips. "You know how to end this."
"It's---it's not possible," Steve muttered, before spinning around and leaving the trio to their shenanigans.
Sam hopped up from his hiding space behind the couch, with nothing but a decorative stuffed penguin that would dance and sing to 'Blue Christmas' when it's right flap was pressed, covering his nether regions.
"Jesus, I thought he'd never leave. Hellie, c'mere baby, you've suffered through enough of the old army rations, come and get a piece of the Air force's finest."
Darcy should have known it was going too well. They'd made it all the way to December 15th. Ugly sweater day at the Facility. She'd enrolled her baker's helper Bucky to assemble approximately three hundred cupcakes into a big, ugly sweater shaped confection on three tables in the cafeteria and thought she had made it halfway through what her stable of pervert geniuses referred to as the sexiest month of the year, with minimal collateral damage.
She had, unfortunately, finally learned of the existence of Robo-Steve, and had to have him decommissioned, even though what she had really wanted to do was curl up with him as he had suggested to her and let him 'cure what ailed her with kisses and cuddles'. Helen had promised the underwear clad, incredibly realistic robot was completely proportional and anatomically correct. And then there was the matter of thwarting Doctors Ross and Simmons regarding their repetitive plans of 'sex-pollening' the Christmas hams that had been delivered to the facility freezers.
All in all, she was calling it a win. She had not been called to Steve's office in over a week. Her job was feeling secure. And as she looked at the staff enjoying the cupcakes, she was feeling accomplished.
"Darcy..."
She cringed as Friday's voice echoed from her phone.
"NO." she pouted. "Fuck off, just once, Friday."
"There's a problem in the private elevator to the Avenger's quarters," Friday blithely announced, completely unaffected by Darcy's pain.
"Son of a bitch," she groaned and stomped her way from the cafeteria through the facility the short distance to the private elevator. She hit the button, and the indicator showed that the elevator was on the first floor, but the doors were not opening to allow her admittance. "Hey, Friday, open the damned door so I can solve the problem."
"I'm trying, but some stubborn Irish arse is holding the doors closed with super muscles," Friday sassed. "Subverting power from a squadron of the Iron Legion to get the door open."
The doors did open after five minutes of struggle between the AI and whatever was on the other side of that door. The groaning of metal was echoing in her ears as the bright 'ding' of the elevator echoed and Steve Rogers was standing in front of her in just his underwear, sweaty and panting with the exertion he had utilized in keeping the doors closed.
"Robo-Steve?" Darcy asked hopefully. "We sent you to help Coulson out."
"Not---not Robo-Steve," the real Steve sighed, putting his hands on his hips and taking a heavy sigh. "I ate a dozen cupcakes and then my clothes disintegrated."
"Mother fucking geniuses are doing combo moves on me now," Darcy sighed. She shrieked when she felt a hard push to her back, making her tumble forward into the elevator as Steve's arms shot up to catch her.
Steve and Darcy both looked up just in time to see a flash of red hair as a body turned a corner.
"NAT!" Darcy shrieked in concert with Steve's roared,
"ROMANOFF!"
They were ignored as the elevator doors slid closed smoothly and Steve gently placed Darcy to the side before reaching out and trying to grip the doors with less than an inch to go.
"Subverting power from seven Iron Legion squadrons, Cap," Friday announced with her characteristic calmness. "Agent Romanoff has gotten permission to subvert all of them, but she is concerned what would happen to the general public if they are needed."
"Steve, it's---it's fine," Darcy tentatively reached out a hand to a naked and sweaty back as Steve actively tried to fight the power of possibly hundreds of arc reactors at once in order to get away from her.
"It's only fine if you didn't eat any of the cupcakes," Steve muttered through clenched teeth.
Darcy winced as her clothing began to disintegrate off of her body. It wasn't painful, but rather a ticklish sensation.
"Just the one," she whispered as the ugly holiday sweater that she had very much liked went poof and her favorite pair of tights disappeared. She was left standing in a pair of ballet flats and mismatched underwear. At least the bottoms were new (and Christmas themed), the bra was unfortunately older and gray and very, very comfortable, but also very very not attractive.
"Shit, motherfucking, god dammit all to hell and back again!" Steve roared as he battled the door.
"Just---they can't keep us in here forever. We'll not look at each other, I'll face out the window and you stay standing that way and no harm done," Darcy insisted.
"Like hell you'll stand out facing the window," Steve finally gave up on keeping the doors open in order to escape. They slammed shut so hard once his hands were off the edges, that they dented in on themselves, causing the steel to lock together more irreversibly. The elevator began moving again too, but very, very slowly. Steve didn't care because he spun around, looking like a wildman, his chest heaving and immediately spotting with red, blushing patches as he looked at Darcy.
She was standing with her fists balled up, her chin held high, but with her face turning tomato red. Steve's eyes flicked up and down the rest of her as respectfully as he could, and it was a mistake unlike any he had ever made before, because he automatically memorized it, and he saw where the elastic in her underwear bit into a creamy, full thigh and he wanted to lick a line up and down it with his tongue.
Semi-rational thought took over, and Steve realized that outside of the glass elevator, the entire facility could see Darcy in her underwear. He took two steps, grabbed her by her forearms and lifted before turning and walking her into the corner of the elevator and then covering her entire body from view.
With his own body.
He leaned in on her, looking down, his breathing still a little ragged from his herculean effort with the elevator doors.
"I'm sorry," he whispered.
"No--no this is fine," Darcy shook her head, feeling a little lightheaded at the closeness of all the bare Steve that was pressing in on her.
"I just---this is so many levels of inappropriate, but I'll be damned if those slimeballs in the recruit class go on their afternoon run and see you---see you like this," Steve looked conflicted.
"I agree, they are little dirtballs in the recruit class," Darcy nodded.
"This is so far from being appropriate, Darcy, I can't apologize enough," Steve said sincerely.
"No, I mean, totally given the circumstances it feels---right?" Darcy offered. "Better than that little shit Mertzwood getting a picture of my ass again."
"He did what?" Steve's voice was a low, deadly thing.
"It's nothing, it's fine, it was dealt with," Darcy assured him.
"Not by me," Steve grumbled.
"I think Bucky may have stapled his balls together and I'm pretty sure Natasha is slowly poisoning him," Darcy added quickly. "And my girls---well, I mean, the Doctors Foster, Ross, Cho and Simmons, they---they handled it."
Steve only grunted in response.
It was a manly sort of sound that did things to Darcy's candy cane striped panties.
"I'm sorry," Steve sounded pained.
"It's okay, I mean it," Darcy assured him. "Everything is just---well I mean, swell."
"Swell," Steve repeated, his eyes taking a very quick glance down and then refocusing back on her eyes.
"Yeah, given the circumstance," Darcy whispered.
"I'm not sorry about that, I'm sorry about what I am about to do," Steve shook his head barely before bending fully at the knee to place his mouth against hers.
Darcy would have likely fainted, but Steve wrapped an arm around her back and lifted as he straightened, and Darcy's rear end found the railing of the elevator. She couldn't help but wrap both arms around his impressive, sweat slicked, bare shoulders and kiss him back just as eagerly as he was currently kissing her. It was very eager if she had to guess, and his mouth tasted sweet like buttercream frosting and chocolate cake and he was so warm and solid as he pressed his body against hers so that she could barely wiggle between the wall behind her and the wall of Steve in front of her.
Her hand drifted from his shoulder to the back of his neck, fingers ruffling through slightly overgrown blonde locks. He was in need of a haircut and Darcy loved it. His entire body shuddered at the first scrape of her nails against his scalp and she wanted to keep doing that, because every time he moved one muscle, she felt it and it felt fantastic.
She couldn't help the moan building, and it was muffled and low and deep in her throat and it seemed to alert Steve fully to what he was doing and he stepped back.
"Oh shit!" she yelped as her arms began windmilling. It was an elevator specifically designed for the Hulk, so the arm railing was high up enough to put her at eye level with Steve, so when his warmth vanished, so did the stability and she began falling forward about five feet.
Steve caught her and cursed a silent 'Fuck' as his one hand landed on her right ass cheek and the other was cupping her left breast fully. He gave one, small, reflexive squeeze and his eyelids fluttered closed for a brief moment before he did some sort of magic Darcy juggling and she was being dipped backwards as he kissed her even more enthusiastically than a moment before. Darcy brought up one leg to bracket his hips and this time Steve moaned into the kiss.
"I think that the cupcakes had sex pollen," Darcy whispered. "Those crazy brilliant bitches went for the fourway collabo---probably modelling their behavior after Hellie's really successful super hero collection of playmates."
"Not---it's not sex pollen," Steve's words were wet against her lips. He pulled her upright, her entire body so that she was a half a head above his and had to bend in order to kiss him again. His arms were steel bands around her and his nose and lips tickled her collarbone before looking up at her with a healthy mixture of guilt and desire.
"I feel out of control and I can't stop, and if you stop I'll probably die," Darcy said as she peppered sweet kisses all over his face, her hands finding their way to his hair again.
"Not sex pollen," Steve insisted. "I've been dosed with the stuff before."
"When?" Darcy furrowed her brow.
"Thanksgiving, I ate about fifteen pounds of that turkey plus two drumsticks," Steve admitted. "I nearly died with you in that office. Wanted to tear your clothes off and lick every square inch of you."
"Well shit," Darcy breathed.
"I'm sorry," Steve apologized again, placing tender, lingering kisses on the swells of her breasts.
"For what?"
"This isn't fair to you, I'm in a position of power, and you don't have a fair say," Steve seemed to struggle internally with the idea of it. "I'm your boss, Darcy. We shouldn't be doing this."
"Oh," Darcy looked heartbroken.
Steve put her back down in her corner of the elevator. He turned away from her and looked for a way out. Walking towards the windows of the elevator, he realized they were only about six stories up. He didn't have his shield. And he was practically naked, but he could do it if he could get the railing off the wall. He got his hand on the railing and was about to yank it forward when the elevator started moving quickly to the residential floors.
It hit the top floor, Tony's floor and Steve went to the doors to open them when they began to glow red. Steve panicked and picked Darcy up again, moving her like a doll to stand behind him.
The doors melted and Pepper Potts was standing there with her arms crossed, her eyes still glowing a bit, looking very unimpressed.
"Your geniuses have misbehaved," Pepper said to Darcy with no heat.
"I'm SO sorry, did a lot of people lose their clothing?" Darcy looked around Steve's bicep at the CEO of Stark Industries, and thereby, the CEO of the privatized Avengers.
"Don't worry, Tony's back and is taking great joy in shooting condoms at people," Pepper waved it off. "He's also about to be accosted by your geniuses, and I fear that they are going to convince him to join forces along with Nat."
"Fuck," Steve hissed out. He wouldn't stand a chance and he knew it.
"I was not eavesdropping, but Steve, you seem to be under the impression that you are Darcy's boss," Pepper said, sounding like the no nonsense CEO of a billion dollar corporation.
"I---uhm, I'm in charge of the facility?" Steve furrowed his brow.
"I am Darcy's boss. I am your boss. I am everyone's boss," Pepper clarified for him. "If anything, you head the superhero human resources department, and Darcy heads the research and development human resources department. You are equals. Therefore, as your boss, I heartily condone and approve a physical and emotional relationship between the two of you."
Her professional demeanor drifted a bit and a pursed smile snuck through.
"I would recommend putting the near nudity to good use," she continued. "In your quarters."
Steve's eyes were wide with sudden possibility. Months of longing for Darcy, specifically. Only Darcy for months and months and being teased with every dastardly trick that those devious Doctors could come up with to test his convictions about being fair and respectful to Darcy.
He turned to the woman in question, his unspoken hope on his face was a beam of light.
"I'd get a move on, you do NOT want Tony taking this project on," Pepper advised.
"Permission to take you to my room, co-worker?" Steve whispered.
"Permission granted," Darcy couldn't help the grin spreading across her face
Steve bent at the knee and hauled the woman he'd been dreaming about for forever over his shoulder, then turned to the elevator doors and jumped the small gap between the elevator floor and the top floor.
Pepper watched them run for the stairwell that would lead to Steve's quarters one floor down with a smile on her face. She then looked to the ruined elevator and sighed.
"At least he didn't get a chance to get through the windows. Friday, tell Natasha that team common sense has once again prevailed. Team chaotic science can hit the showers."
"Doctor Cho is already in the shower with Agent Romanoff, Sergeant Barnes and Airman Wilson," Friday answered back cheekily. "And the boss is on his way back upstairs to shoot condoms and lube at Cap's head."
"Cancel that and reroute him. Send him to the showers instead. They need it more I think."