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Sam and Darcy are formally introduced for the first time. Sam says “formally” with some flexibility. And a couch. A couch and a great deal of flexibility. Nevermind, he’s said enough. They met, is what he’s trying to say.
-
Sam’s got a weird involvement with the rest of the avenging team. There’s a big gang backstage that makes sure the camera-facing faces can kick the ass that needs it. Don’t look at Sam, though. He does what Steve does, just slower. Barnes, now that he’s on board… well, where Steve goes so goes his nation, swearing and swinging the whole damn time. Natasha does everything faster, meaner, and more efficient than all of them, and Barton won’t leave her shadow unless she tells him to. The rest of the Avengers all sort of exist apart from them, most notably Thor, who’s mostly here because he’s infatuated with someone Sam feels comfortable calling the smartest lady on this side of the Rainbow Bridge. They’re extradimensional, Sam has decided, since Thor has sworn to protect Dr. Foster individually and her world independently, something about proving something to his father. Sam’s not asking; he knows what they say about gift hammers and looking a deity in the mouth. Somebody’s got to have said that already, right?
Thor, however, has no qualms about making allies, and he’s sided with the Doc in a way that doesn’t surprise Sam at all, not once he remembered the Norse tradition of Berserkers. The Doc takes Thor’s enthusiastic friendship in good taste. Sam also recognises that Thor’s the only one who can take the Doc’s other half without fanfare. He wonders how much they make of that aspect of their relationship, but Thor’s used to physical equality if not superiority amid his peers, so maybe there’s less there than what Sam’s looking for.
Stark, Sam thinks, mostly exists in his own world, the pillars of which are the Doc and please, call me Pepper and Colonel Rhodes, a good man Sam knew of before Steve was a dick runner on the mall intent on yanking his chain. But that said, Stark houses them and funds them and feeds them, and Sam’s mother taught him to be nothing less than grateful, so he doesn’t think about being one of a collection, or being a friend placated by money. He gets that Stark doesn’t really know what he’s doing, and Sam’s not going to point fingers over that, is he?
-
They’re an exhausted and sooty bunch that troop into the tower’s lowest common lounge. Three days in the field have amounted to a quiet crew who want to eat, sleep, shower, and find their significant others, in variating orders and combinations. Sam’s not one to judge, he’s got his own list. He’s slowly working at the straps of his harness when he spots a warm-looking, violently magenta beanie and heavy-rimmed glasses peering over the back of the nearest couch. Slender fingers appear next to the face and wiggle in greeting. Sam’s got no idea who the woman is, but she looks comfortable enough to belong there. He nods. Thor’s distinct tread gives them all a little warning, but Sam’s really not expecting him to drop his hammer by the door with a shout. Sam feels his teeth rattle.
“Darcy!” he exclaims lowly. “You are both safely arrived?”
She stands up on the couch cushions and Thor embraces her hugely, lifting her over the back of the couch and spinning them both around. Sam can hear her speaking, but can’t make out the words. He’s not one to eavesdrop, either, so he just keeps working on climbing out of his gear. He puts the pieces together in his head, though. Thor was always talking about someone named Jane, and the Doc had filled him in with a succinct ‘Dr. Foster, astrophysicist’ weeks ago. Barton, however, always had more words for the woman who kept her in line, an L-something. Darcy L-something. Darcy Le-?
“Lewis!” Stark barks as he makes his way inside. His armour clunks and thunks as he moves, accompanied by soft whirrs and whines and a persistently worrying series of beeps. Sam looks up again, and realises that Thor’s put Darcy back on her feet on this side of the couch, and she’s wearing a housecoat the same colour as her beanie. In her defense, it’s three in the morning. She was probably half-asleep, waiting for all of them to come back. A local news channel reruns footage on mute on the far wall, and Sam experiences the still-surreal sight of watching himself fly with the new wings Stark made him.
Stark mechanically plunks over to the wet bar. “Nightcap?” he asks Darcy, but then gestures to the room at large. Sam feels Natasha slink into the room and looks just in time to see her pass his elbow, perching on the barstool nearest the couch.
“Nope,” she says, “Pep’s back from DC earlier than expected, so get your metal self upstairs.” Stark aborts reaching for glasses, makes a sweeping gesture that hints at ‘help yourself’ to everybody else in the room, and speedily kerplunks away. Sam can hear him interrogate his AI from down the hallway, asking, Jarvis, how come you don’t tell me these things anymore? Have I ever lied to you?
She turns to Thor with a smile, saying, “Go, go see her.” Thor holds out a fist and Darcy bumps him delicately in return before he lopes off towards the stairs. Then, shock of the ages, Natasha moves from her perch at the bar and descends on Darcy with open arms.
“Hi!” is the returned squeak, and then both women topple backwards over the couch and onto its cushions as one of them giggles, “Oh my god!”
Steve and Barnes arrive in lockstep just in time to catch four stockinged feet still in the air.
“Of everything I never thought I’d see,” Steve mutters. Barnes just kind of nods. Sam gets it, sort of. He’s got a lot of conflicting memories about Natasha, even if he hasn’t divulged them. He’ll catch Barnes occasionally asking about Soviet political figures from decades past, and Natasha always has an answer that ranges from still alive to I killed him to you killed him and once a memorable I thought you knew that I thought you knew I killed him but made it look like you and then we both got wiped so I don’t actually remember and everyone thinks you did it, I think. I’m calling dibs; he was an asshole. It was the strangest thing Sam had ever accidentally heard, anyway. He also knows that no one has the balls to fight Natasha for dibs, even the man who’s known her since the eighties.
Sam finally manages to drop his pack and he catches it by the straps before it clatters violently on the floor. Steve disengages his shield with a magnetic swish, and leaves it propped against the wall with Thor’s hammer. He holds out a hand to Sam, and he passes over his wings to be added to the pile. The Hawk’s bow is notably absent.
“Where’s Barton at?” Barnes asks.
“Been and gone!” is Darcy’s yelled response from the couch. “There was something about a dog and pizza?”
“Pizza Dog,” Natasha clarifies.
Steve, Sam, and Barnes exchange glances. Barton’s teenage ally now lives in the building that he bought off the Russian mob, and Natasha says she’s good people, though he’s never met her. Barton’s life is too surreal for Sam, but he’s good for a beer and he’s glued to Natasha’s hip. Sam knows what they’ve said about looking gift arrows down the shaft and Pizza Dogs in the mouth. This metaphor got away from him; he’s going to bed.
He shuffles a few steps away but Natasha’s calling, “Hey!” and Barnes is cajoling, “Sit your ass down and introduce yourself to the lady, birdbrain,” and Steve’s at his side calling back, “Like you didn’t leave all your manners in Paris, jerk,” and Sam’s sleepy legs carry him to the couch and he ends up stuffed in between Darcy and Natasha.
He holds out a hand and she shakes him in a small, tidy grip. “Nice to meet you,” he says, and then promptly falls asleep on Natasha’s shoulder.
“We had a big day,” Natasha explains expansively. Darcy is skeptical.
“Three days,” Steve adds, sitting on Darcy’s other side. He wants the corner of the couch and he’s willing to pull Darcy into his lap for it. She doesn’t fight him. Barnes pulls the afghan off the back of the couch, wraps a portion of it around his metal shoulder, and then jams himself into the corner behind Natasha. She pulls the rest of the blanket over their tangled bodies as far as it’ll reach, but Darcy’s in her robe and instead tucks it over Sam’s thighs. There’s some shifting and some swearing and Steve complains about Darcy’s elbows and she complains that they all smell, but pretty soon all’s quiet and they’ve all dozed off right along with Sam.
-
Sam rouses first, sees everyone asleep around him, and puts his portion of the couch into recline. Darcy’s toes are under his thigh but the rest of her is on top of Steve, and if Sam’s not wrong she’ll have a five-pointed star imprint on her cheek when she comes to. Barnes makes a noise and beside him, Natasha looks like she’s made from marble, perfect and inpenetrateable and a little sad. He wonders for a moment about nightmares from any one of them - because really, a girl like Darcy has got to have some ghosts if she’s in this crowd - but Sam decides this isn’t the moment for worrying. His mother taught him to be nothing less than thankful, so he stretches his arms and rolls his ankles and thinks everything hurts just a little less when there’s a body to share it with.
-
Barton, of course, is the one to break the spell.
“Aw, Jarvis, no,” he whines, when he steps off the elevator and the AI turns on the lights. Darcy’s robe and Natasha’s hair stand out the brightest first, but as they start to wake and move Clint can see stiff muscles and bruises under clothes and a relief on Darcy’s face that she’s mostly trying to swallow. He stands awkwardly just inside the door. “I didn’t mean to wake you guys up.”
Steve waves a non-committal hand. “Not a problem,” he dismisses, but Darcy has wrapped herself around him and announces a stubborn “no!” when he tries to sit up. He doesn’t fight her.
Sam rouses more slowly, waiting to see which way things will run. Natasha and Barnes haven’t moved an inch since they settled, and it’s a little nerve-wracking. He wonders about muscle memory and sniper-stillness and the training of small girls in pointe shoes. Barton, however, doesn’t seem all that phased, and Sam adds another tick in the “Good Man” column. “Stark said something about breakfast?”
“That man is always eating,” Barnes complains, eyes closed and his head tilted back over the arm of the couch.
“That’s not a bad thing,” Darcy mumbles, her face still buried in Steve's chest.
Barnes touches his metal fingertips to his thumb, strands of Natasha’s hair tangling with them, eyes still closed.
“Okay,” she says, throwing the blanket back. Sam hauls his seat upright.
“We’d better be eating here,” Darcy threatens, “because all of you need to shower before going anywhere. Pronto.” Remarkably, she still hasn't moved.
If Sam knew her like he knows his sister, he would stick his armpit in her face, because that’s the sense that’s being fostered. Steve beats him to it.
“Oh my God,” she howls, trying to claw away from the couch, “you’re all the worst, get away from me!” Barton, however, just leans over the back of the couch and tickles up her ribs.
“No no no no noooo,” she shrieks, and Sam, Nastasha, and Barnes have all abandon the couch with various levels of grace. That is: Barnes stands up, Natasha rolls away, and Sam slithers to the floor. At least he’s not being kicked.
“Kids, leave my intern alone,” a feminine voice complains. Sam’s never met Dr. Foster, but she’s beautiful and slight and obviously of good humour. Thor appears over her shoulder - looms, Sam thinks - and for a moment he assesses that there’s a great deal of god next to a very small woman, but he hasn’t seen two people more obviously in love and in-sync than his grandparents and he reassesses what he’d been calling, perhaps unfairly, an infatuation.
“I’m not your intern,” Darcy hiccups, still trying to bat and kick at Barton’s hands. Steve’s just holding her against his chest, but she won’t take defeat from anyone.
“Nor are you presentable,” Dr. Foster grumbles. She roots through her bag with one hand, but Thor has already produced notebook and pencil from the inside of his long jacket. Sam watches in fascination as she takes them in a way both distracted and grateful, and then she says, “All of you, go shower, we’re hungry.”
Darcy moans, “You’re not the boss of me,” without irony, while Steve and Barton share a look. They relent, and Steve shifts her out of his lap so she’s upright.
“Friends,” Thor says into the lull, “be ready in the hour. We are going to the House of Pancakes.”
“IHOP,” Dr. Foster mumbles and scribbles, “it’s called IHOP.”
Thor looks at her like she’s the rising sun, and Sam gets to his feet.
-
Apparently someone - Pepper, Sam’s mind supplies - called ahead, because they’ve got a massive table to themselves and platters of bacon, sausage, fruit salad, and pancakes ready to go before they’ve even placed their orders. Pepper, Tony, and Darcy all turn out to be light eaters, but Sam and Barton make an honest go of putting the chain out of business, to say nothing of Thor and serummed individuals’ appetites. Chatter moves around the table more freely after the first few plates are cleared, and then the Doc wanders in, looking by all rights that it’s been a miraculous accident he even found them in the first place. He takes a seat between Barton and Barnes, and then nods at Sam.
“I didn’t know you knew each other,” he says, just at the moment that Darcy is swiping his last piece of cantaloup, because he’s distracted.
Sam gives her the side eye and she grins with her cheeks full.
“Yeah,” Sam says, because he knows her now, and it’s been a weird day for knowing people. “Yeah, we’ve met.” He wonders if he should elaborate, but he’s also pretty certain that the Doc has also met pretty girls who flirt with superheroes by falling over the backs of couches in pink housecoats. Sam knows that Steve is the happiest he’s ever seen him when Barnes and Darcy are in the same room, and he’s glad for his friend. He’s not going to look a gift housecoat in the… nevermind. He didn’t sleep enough. They met, is the answer to the Doc’s question, and he’s wearing this bemused face like he knows Sam hasn’t told him the whole story. Sam doesn’t even know if there’s a story to tell. Steve was a dick runner on the mall for first lap, and when he lapped him again and again and again Sam put the pieces together even though he couldn’t catch his breath. That’s really what it’s been this whole time; watching these people open up to him, and he’s been putting the pieces of their relationships together and talking when they want him and he’s just been puffing along with the ride, trying to remember to breathe. Sam finds himself okay with the realisation.
The Doc’s just been keeping his head down and smiling with the rest of them, and Stark’s yakking to fill the places in between all of them, like cohesion is something he can verbally construct. There’s some serious glue between some of them; Barton and Natasha, Steve and Barnes, Stark and Pepper, decades of thread stitched back and forth.
“Yeah,” Sam tells Bruce, “she’s good people.” And Bruce smiles and Darcy grins.
“You’re a good man, Sam Wilson,” she tells him, and the people that get the reference outweigh those that don’t, and even Steve just smiles and says, “Ain’t he? Can’t run for a red cent, though,” and Thor smacks a hand on his shoulder as he passes around the table, tucking Dr. Foster’s napkin equations safely into his breast pocket with his other hand.