Work Text:
“-His hair was stuck inside my foot! Like- under the skin! Like a fricken splinter! I didn’t even know that kind of shit could happen!” Darcy readjusted her hold on her phone, balancing it between her cheek and shoulder, while she jammed her feet into a set of old converse. Jane made a vague sound of acknowledgement. “Look Jane, all I’m saying is that if he’s going to start weaponizing his hair then I don’t know if I’m cut out to keep a cat.” That was a lie. Darcy loved her cat.
MewMew was Darcy’s accidental child. She’d taken Thor to the animal shelter as part of efforts to familiarize him with modern humanity. The large, golden, long haired cat had been so sweet Darcy hadn’t been able to resist taking him home. Jane had vetoed calling him Thor Jr. so Darcy had opted for MewMew. She had a picture of him sitting regally beside the ornate hammer he was named after set as her phone screen.
Purse swinging precariously on her shoulder, she turned towards the door. The little bowl that was supposed to hold her keys was empty. It was only Tuesday, how could she have already misplaced them? Darcy scowled silently. What had she been wearing yesterday? She walked over to her row of hanging coats. There was a series of loud clangs from the other side of the phone that made her flinch. “Jane?”
“I’m fine! It’s- It’s fine.”
“Uh-uh.”
Another bang. “Um- sorry, Darcy, I’ve got to-”
Sometimes it really did seem like a miracle Jane was still alive. “Go take care of whatever that was, I’ve got to go anyway. I can’t find my keys. See you soon.” With a quick exchange of good-byes Darcy hung up her phone and stuffed it in her back pocket hoping Jane could survive until Darcy got there. Where the frick were her keys?
It took some scrounging around to finally find them- stuck at the bottom of her purse, of course. Always the last place you fricken look. By the time she finally got inside her old beat up car Darcy was ten minutes late to be her usual thirty minuets early to work. Traffic was consequently awful. She also hit every traffic light on the way to the tower. Just one of those mornings where one thing led to another and it felt like the world was out to get you.
Thankfully the actually work day itself was mostly smooth and Darcy was able to save Jane from being crushed under a giant microscope she was modifying.
Tuesdays are Tequila Tuesdays for Jane and Darcy. It had been that way since New Mexico and it was a weekly tradition that was well ingrained by now. Consequentially, Jane typically stayed over at Darcy’s little town house apartment on Tuesdays nights so she didn’t have to drive or try and take the subway or anything.
As Jane fetched her bag from the back seat of the car, Darcy frowned up at the darkening clouds. She pulled her phone from her pocket and checked the weather map. Sure enough, it was supposed to pour that night. 90% chance of rain. Thunder and lightning likely. Flood warning in effect.
Darcy walked down to the trunk, pulled out the thick faded blanket she kept inside her car and placed it gently in the back seat. When she closed the door gently, Jane was frowning at her. “Are you still doing that?” She asked with distinct disapproval in her voice. Darcy shrugged. She knew Jane disapproved. Still, Darcy left the car deliberately unlocked as she herded her friend and boss up to her tiny apartment.
Because, look, when it rains- a homeless person sleeps in Darcy’s car.
It’s weird, she guesses, except not really compared to all the other crap that has happened to her and Jane. Aliens, Portals to other dimensions, Dark Elves, Norse Gods, Superheroes and the like. Really a homeless person is pretty tame in comparison.
Her car is a piece of junk anyway and it wasn’t like she kept anything valuable in there either. That was just asking for trouble in a city like New York (Even if they weren’t like- in New York City proper). And it wasn’t like whoever it was ever touched anything anyway. Nope, whoever they were, they were a model temporary car tenant. Never moved any of Darcy’s things and only ever slept inside it when it was raining.
The first time it happened was an accident.
Darcy can be forgetful, especially when she was trying to multitask. On the phone with her brother when she got home, it had been starting to drizzle, and she’d had to scoop all her crap into her arms to make only one trip and she forget to lock her car.
The next morning the streets were misty but the downpour from the night before had thankfully abated. And Darcy wouldn’t have even known except she never uses the backseats. Jane is the only one she occasionally gives a ride to and she sits up front obviously. So Darcy notices the back seat looks just a tad - off. Like the familiar lines and wrinkles in the fabric were changed. She wrote it off as her mind playing tricks on her and forgot it.
And then it happened again.
It wasn’t the next time it rains but it is the next time she forgot to lock her car coinciding with rain.
When she opened the car door the next morning, avoiding a large puddle she was parked over, the receipt she threw in the backseat has been carefully smoothed and left on her front seat. Her heart pounded a little and she checked the crevice of the backseat just to be sure no one was hiding down between the seats to spring up and kill her. But her car was empty. A thorough inspection proved what little Darcy kept in her car was still where she’d left it, with the exception of the Dunkin Donuts receipt.
Darcy’s not a scientist but she’s picked somethings up after all the time she’s spent with Jane. So she experiments. She leaves her car door unlocked with anther useless piece of paper laying on the backseat but after a week it was still undisturbed. She has almost written the whole thing off again as just her mind playing tricks on her when the rain came again.
The blank piece of paper is left delicately on the driver’s seat. Nothing else is disturbed. When she sniffs the back row of seats, nose to the fabric like a weirdo, she catches the faintest hint of an unfamiliar smell. An unfamiliar person.
Someone had definitely been in her car.
So Darcy checked the weather more consistently then she used to. When the app finally showed rain on the horizon Darcy gathered the blanket her dad had given her to keep in her car for emergencies and left it in the back. A silent acknowledgement that she knew they was coming but that it was ok for them to stay. When Darcy carefully opened her car door in the morning the blanket she left was neatly folded and a few random coins had been left dead center like an offering. The coins were old and dented but shiny like someone had rubbed them meticulously clean.
It makes her eyes water when she finds them.
Darcy had counted the coins carefully as if their cleaning had stripped the metal of its integrity and they were now as delicate as glass. All together it had totaled 2 dollars twenty seven cents in assorted coins.
When the skies darkened again with warning clouds Darcy pulled the blanket out of the trunk and placed it back on the seat. She put the coins back as well with an extra crinkled 5 dollar bill she found at the bottom of her purse. It was very kind of them to try and offer payment but doing this cost Darcy absolutely nothing and if they was having to sleep in unlocked cars then they clearly needed the money more than she did.
The coins are gone in the morning but the dollar bill remains.
And so the status que remained for the next few months- two or three times a month Darcy let an unknown visitor sleep in her car. They don’t try to leave her money again but sometimes there will be little gifts place carefully on top of the perfectly folded blanket. It was never anything valuable obviously- little shinny stones, scraps of paper folded into very clumsy attempts at origami. That kind of thing. Darcy always left the blanket and, if she could find anything in her purse, whatever scraps of change she could find. They never touched the money Darcy left. She kept doing it anyway. Just in case.
It wasn’t long until one morning she opened her door, shivered, and breathed out a puff of visible air.
It was getting colder now as the year drew closer to a close. There was frost on her windshield in the mornings now. Would they sleep inside when it snowed? What if they got snowed in and then starved to death? Or froze? Hypothermia was a thing.
Darcy catches a glimpse of who she thinks must be her mysterious car tenant on a rainy November night. Jane had kept her late (well not really, but Darcy had learned her lesson not to leave the lab until she had managed to force Jane out of it. Otherwise the mad woman would still be there in the morning when Darcy came back, working right through the night). It was well past dark now, the sun setting so early. Through her wiper-blades she spots a dark figure standing at the end of her driveway, staring at the empty spot her car was usually parked.
Their tall, large shoulders, and covered in a dark jacket with a hood pulled over their head. The light from Darcy’s headlights caught tendrils of surprisingly long hair peeking out as the figure startled at the cars approach. They turned and left in a hurry, disappearing into the dark before she managed to pull in.
Darcy pulled in with a frown, grabbed her purse and readied her umbrella. The rain was now more like frozen mush. Sleet. Icey cold as it splashed down from the sky. She could see her breath when she stepped out of her warm car with a shiver. She tossed the blanket in the back seat as quickly, and dryly, as she could and made quickly for the front door.
The backseat and blanket go undisturbed that night.
It made Darcy nash her teeth and clench her jaw in worry. She hoped he’d found somewhere else dry and hadn’t spent the night sitting out in the freezing rain because she’d spooked him.
Early December found Darcy spinning in circles on her rolling office chair. Jane was cursing up a storm about something or other, trying to force two pieces of metal together. “You know we actually have a budget now right? Like, we’ve got funding?” Darcy asks just to be sure the last half a year hadn’t fallen out of Jane's head.
Her boss ignores her. Typical.
Darcy hit save on an Excel file she just finished for the fifth time, just to be really sure it had saved, then closed it out. Outlook gave a little ‘ding’ and a reminder window popped up- “Uh- Jane?” Darcy turned around. Jane was juggling two pieces of metal, the roll of ducktape, and a whole bunch of wires now. Darcy hopped they were unplugged.
“Wah?” She mumbled trying to rip a piece of tape off with her mouth.
Darcy pointed a finger at the computer screen even though Jane wasn’t looking at her. “Something about bringing ‘the satellite file’ to the conference room?”
“Shit” Jane swore softly. She jammed a wire through some hole then jerked her head towards her desk. “It’s – It should be on the left. Can you? Could you?”
Taking her que, Darcy stood and wandered over to the desk curiously. “Sure thing Boss Lady.” Jane’s desk was a mess but it was always like that. Still, on top of the large pile of lose piles on the left was a thin vanilla envelope with ‘Satellite Availability’ written messily on the tab. Wow- Darcy didn’t remember doing this one which meant Jane must have actually made a file on her own. They grow up so fast. Darcy grabbed the folder then headed for the lab doors. “Don’t die till I get back!”
Conference room B.
She was pretty sure that was several floors up.
As the elevator ascended Darcy watched the numbers tick higher with each floor. Despite having worked here for a while now, Darcy hadn’t gotten around to see everything. The place was fricken huge. When the doors opened she took a cautious step out and looked around. She could never shake the feeling she was about to be told off for being somewhere she shouldn’t be. She ran a hand over her ID badge clipped to her pants.
Thankfully conference room B was pretty easy to locate and close to the elevator.
She opened the door, took a step, and froze.
The room was full.
She- for some reason she hadn’t thought anyone would be in the room.
A sleek wooden table took up most of the space. At the head of the room, dressed in an impeccable looking suit, stood Tony Stark. "The acronim might need some work, I'll admit but-" he was trailing off saying. There was a projection next to him of some kind of presentation. A large, grainy photo of a very angry looking man with excessive eyeliner took up most of the screen. The large font at the bottom read ‘Project FUBAR: Find USA’s Boyfriend Assassin Rapidly‘.
All the chairs around the table were filled with very beautiful people. Athletically fit, deadly, beautiful people. Avengers.
They all stared at her.
Of fricken course Thor wasn’t there to save her either. The red headed Black Window was giving her an unimpressed, deadpan stare. A smoking hot black dude next to her was smiling in apparent amusement with a raided eyebrow. She didn’t recognize him but he was in some kind of fancy battle suit so he was probably an Avenger. An exhausted looking Captain America was on Black Widows other side, close to the front and Tony Stark. His face was pinched in irritation.
“Uhh- Hi.” Darcy said awkwardly into the silence.
Right. The folder. She was supposed to give the folder to, well, presumably someone in conference room B. Had she somehow opened the wrong door? She had been pretty sure the name plate on the outside said ‘Conference Room B’. Maybe Jane had written it down wrong in her notification? Or- was she supposed to give these guys the folder? She should have probably asked who she was supposed to give it to before she left the lab.
The billionaire whipped off a pair of shiny sunglasses to look at her. “You’re not Foster,” He accused like she had been trying to trick him.
“Uh- No.” She agreed.
Suddenly remembering she had arms, Darcy waved the folder in her hand carefully. “I have a folder. For you. Or someone. From Her. Dr. Foster.”
Tony Stark tilted his head a little and narrowed his eyes. “I don’t like to be handed things.” He said instead of, like, ‘Ah yes, we were expecting that. Thank you for bringing it. You can give it to me’.
Darcy blinked and put the folder on the edge of the table awkwardly. “Ok then.”
Trying to ignore the eyes of everyone in the room Darcy turned to go, figuring her job was done.
“Darcy Lewis.” A cool feminine voice called. Darcy nearly tripped turning back around. The Black Widow stared at her with an unreadable face. If she wasn’t blinking Darcy could have mistaken her face for a painting.
Darcy swallowed nervously. Because the Black Widow knew her name. Black Widow knew who she was. “Yes?” she squeaked.
“What happens in this room is classified.” She said blandly. Darcy had a feeling she meant ‘forget everything you saw, or suspect you saw, or think about what you suspect you saw in this room.’ Those green eyes bore into her and Darcy tried to process words before the Black Widow felt the need to add something like ‘or else’ to the end of that.
Unfortunately Darcy’s brain misfired under the pressure and she found herself nodding in agreement to the veiled warning while simultaneously blurting, “You’re very pretty.”
The dark skinned man next to Black Widow tried to stifle a surprised laugh.
Captain America raised his eyebrows, smiling a little at Black Widow, the tiredness in him somewhat alleviated by his apparent amusement. Black Widow herself didn’t move but something about her eyes was perhaps – satisfied? Pleased? Ready to jump across the room and eviscerate Darcy?
Darcy didn’t stick around to find out. She made a tactical retreat- meaning she slammed the conference room door closed, hauled ass back to the elevator, and repeatedly pressed the down button until the doors opened. Jane owed her big time, she thought, slumping against the elevator wall as it descended back towards the safety of the labs.
Darcy does her best to blot the embarrassing moment from her memory in the coming days.
It helps that Jane seems to have forgotten Darcy even left by the time she got back. And also that Darcy never regularly ran into any member of the superhero team anyway.
Life goes on.
She works. She lets a homeless man sleep in her car sometimes. Gets to hang out with Thor for a little bit when he beams back down from space (They have finally convinced him to try spending a ‘yule’ on Earth. Midguard. Whatever.) The weather grows ever colder in New York and Darcy puts her large collection of sweaters and beanies to good use.
On the Saturday before Christmas Darcy wakes to a mountain of snow out her window. At least she doesn't have to drive in it. She gets up and bakes some sugar cookies in her pajamas and lounges about watching movies and eating junk food. She puts on Christmas music and calls her mom. Eventually, with a sigh, Darcy put on her big coat to go clear the drive way and deck. Its long work and its really cold out. The snow still coming down. Darcy stomped back in from shoveling her tiny back porch and peeled off her hat and scarf. Little clumps of snow slid off and splatter on the mat beneath her feet. She undoes her clunky boots and breathes a sigh of relief. Her arms were aching just a bit.
Outside it was growing dark.
About time for kitty dinner. Except when Darcy takes the scoop out of the dry food bag and dumps it in the little bowl, no kitty comes running. She calls his name, shakes the treat bag. He still doesn’t come. Her cat is gone. Darcy’s heart is pounding. She searches everywhere. Under the bed, his favorite windowsill, the back of her closet in her bucket of shoes. “Mewmew!” she called a little desperately. Like he might come to her. Like he had ever fricken come when Darcy called his name.
She shook the little bag of treats fruitlessly.
The front door was closed. There should be no way he could have gotten out. Except -had she closed it immediately when she came in from shoveling the driveway? She had, hadn’t she? Why wouldn’t she have? Now she’s not sure. God.
Darcy glanced out the window. It was dark and snowing heavier now than it had been when she’d finished shoveling. A coating of snow covered the ground in crisp white. The back door of her car was cracked open. Oh Jesus- had she somehow left that open too? Not closed it all the way when she put the blanket in the back? It was a Saturday but when Darcy had read the projected weather for the day and tonight she’d dragged herself out of bed, put on snow boots, unlocked her car and set it up before getting to shoveling.
Darcy ran to the backdoor where she’d left her boots and stuffed them back on without redoing the laces. She had just enough presence of mind to grab her keys before she hurried outside.
Maybe Mewmew took shelter in the car?
God she hoped her seats weren’t soaked.
She shivered in the snow. She hadn’t put on a coat. Cautious of the slippery snow and potential ice, Darcy hurried carefully to her car. She pulled the door further open hoping to see her smarmy cat glaring at her for locking him out in the cold.
She blinked.
It wasn’t empty. But that wasn’t her cat either.
It was him.
Darcy blinked again.
She wasn’t the one who forgot to shut the door all the way. It had been him. He stared at her, seemingly frozen by the sight of her sudden appearance.
Darcy took her chance to examine the man who had been camping out in her car on and off for almost a year now.
He was...big. Not fat, just- big. Wide and tall. Dark worn pants and an overly large jacket that served to make him look smaller than he was. The hood was pushed back. Long, slightly greasy, dark hair fell lose around his shoulders. Deep, almost panicked blue eyes. Wild scruff around his chin. Something about him was almost familiar. “Uh- sorry.” She said like this wasn’t her car, “I was looking for my cat.”
He continued to stare at her.
“So, uh, no cat in here then?”
He shook his head stiffly. Homeless man had her blanket unfolded and stretched around him. She could see him shivering anyway. Darcy sighed and worried her bottom lip. The air she expelled forming a visible mist in the bitter cold.
“You want to come in?” Darcy nodded at the front door barely visible through the frosted car window.
“You want to invite me in?” He asked in a raspy voice. Not like he was questioning what she was saying. It sounded more like he was questioning her sanity.
Darcy shrugged a little and rubbed her arms. Snow was sticking to her hair. “I mean. You’ve been sleeping in my car for a year dude. I think were there. I think were at that point.” He had never taken anything from her car. Refused money she offered. Had tried, in fact, to pay her. If he really wanted to hurt her it would have been easier to just hide in the car after Darcy stopped cautiously checking the backseat before getting in and then jump her.
Darcy steps back and the man maneuvers his way out of the backseat with startling grace. It was too cold to stand there gaping at him though so Darcy wrapped her arms back around herself and blinked snow out of her eyes. She trudged back up the driveway to the front door while her guest followed cautiously behind.
When she opens the front door Mewmew is sitting on the carpet staring up at her innocently.
“Where the hell were you hiding?!” She demanded in outrage. There was a soft sound behind her, like a half laugh. Darcy scowled and hoped she wasn’t blushing. Plenty of people talked to their pets.
“Make yourself at home.” She grumbled waving him in and closing the door. Darcy pushed off her boots again and headed for the kitchen.
The Christmas music she’d put on earlier in the day was still crooning softly from her little blue tooth speaker.
For want of another good idea Darcy set about making two large mugs of hot chocolate. She was stirring in the powered chocolate before she thought to ask if he was diabetic or allergic to anything. When she turned to ask she realized he hadn’t followed her into the kitchen but was still lingering in the entrance hallway, staring at her framed photos.
“You know S-Steve?” His gloved finger was running down one the framed pictures on the wall. Darcy knew which one that was- it was taken last year when everyone moved into the new Avengers complex. There had been a big charity, celebration, opening things. Lots of reporters and business people and politicians. As everything had drawn to a close a photographer had put everyone ‘important’ together and taken a photo for the press release. She and Jane had been cropped out of the published photo but the raw copy she had framed had the two of them right on the end alongside the superhero team.
She wondered if he was a fan, most people typically called him Captain America. Or at least she did. ‘Steve’ felt too personal. But maybe she was the weird one? Now she wasn’t sure…”Steve Rogers?” She asked like she wasn’t sure who he was talking about. “I mean. Sort of? I work in the same building. But I’ve only ever seen him a few times.”
She offered one of the mugs of hot chocolate which he gently took. He stared at the contents.
“You’re not diabetic are you?” She asked.
He glanced at her beneath a curtain of hair and shook his head.
“Oh. Good.” She said awkwardly. The man kept staring into the mug. Darcy wondered when the last time anyone had done something nice for him was. She blew softly on her own mug and took a little sip. It warmed her throat pleasantly. She cast her mind around for something more to say. “Not sure I believe all the hype about him. Steve Rogers, I mean. I walked in on one of his meetings recently and he looked kind of grumpy.”
The man glanced over at her, smiling just a little in the corners of his mouth. “Yeah?”
“Mhm,” She confirmed taking another sip of coco. Handsome homeless man took a drink of his own. Darcy couldn’t hold back her own stupid grin. “Black Widow on the other hand total does live up to her hype. She’s gorgeous and I may or may not have accidentally told her that to her face.”
He blinked at her like he wasn’t sure what to say to that.
Darcy was pretty used to that though.
“I’m Darcy by the way.” She told him, reaching out slowly and gently tugged his arm towards the kitchen. Jesus he was freezing. She couldn’t feel any warmth from his arm at all. Still cautious but maybe a little more bemused, the man let Darcy pull him into the kitchen and usher him into a seat.
“James.” He spoke softly.
The Christmas music groaned on softly. He jumps a little when Mewmew hops up on the table and rubs against his hand. He pets him very gently. Darcy grinned at him. He was cute under all that dirt and uncertainty. Yep, she thinks watching him, this one she was going to keep.
END
Extended
And so Darcy some how goes from letting a homeless man occasionally sleep in her car into having a new roommate. James proves to be just as excellent a roommate as he makes a car tenant- Does the dishes, cleans the bathrooms, dusts. And eventually they find themselves cuddled on the couches together watching movies. James even lets her braid his hair. It’s nice. Really nice.
It takes approximately two months for James to try and tell Darcy who he is.
Darcy looks over at him from where she sat wrestling laundry into the washer. It was her turn this week. “I know.” She told him.
His eyes snapped to hers. His brow was furrowed in confusion.
James wasn’t much of a casual chit-chatter the way Darcy was but she’d gotten pretty good a reading his expressions by now. Darcy shrugs casually at his surprise and slams the washer shut. “I mean. I didn’t know right away. But I mean, I figured it out. Your picture is all over meeting rooms at the compound.” Darcy shrugged again as the washer began to rumble to life. “I friends with a million year old Norse god dude. I’m used to the weird.”
“You didn’t tell Steve?” His blue eyes were dark. Fear and uncertainty in him like she hadn’t seen since she first invited him inside.
“Nope.” She popped the ‘p’. That was his business. And although Darcy didn’t know everything she had picked up enough to recognize people working through their trauma. She’d let him sleep in her car, let him into her house, because she wanted to help him. That was what she intended to do.
She walked over and took his arm, led him towards the living room.
“We need to plan what we’re doing to Valentine’s Day because it’s only like 4 days away and I don’t know about you but this will be the first one in a while I’m not spending solo.” She paused and looked back at his face. “We are dating right?”
He snaked an arm gently around her waist, she can tell from the unyielding nature it’s the metal one. He pushes his face into the back of her head, buried in her hair. “Yeah.” He murmured softly. “Thank you, doll.”