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Darcy had literally just come back in from 7-Eleven and was fighting off the clutch of some truly epic brainfreeze when Jane yelled across the lab at her.
"Darcy!"
"What!" she called back, opening her eyes against the pain to squint across the room. Jane was standing with some dude, talking.
"Come here! And bring last night's readings."
She grabbed what she hoped were the right pages off the catastrophe of Jane's desk and shuffled across the lab, nearly going for another sip of Slurpee before she remembered she was mad at it and still had a headache.
"Here." She thrust them at Jane. Then she looked the guy up and down. He was pretty hot in a scruffy kind of way, although several months in Nowhere, New Mexico had probably lowered her standards terribly. He was dressed like a normal person, button-down and beat-up jacket and jeans, but he stood up way too straight. She narrowed her eyes at him suspiciously.
"Hi, I'm Clint," he said after an awkward silence, sticking out his hand.
Darcy ignored it. "You're from SHIELD."
He blinked.
"Where's your suit, android? And speaking of reasons I don't want to shake your hand, where the hell's my iPod?"
Clint from SHIELD shot Jane a look that was crying for help.
"He hasn't got your iPod, Darce," said Jane, flicking through her data sheets. "He's just here to meet us and see the place."
"And I'm not really a suit person," Clint felt the need to add in his own defense.
"I can't believe Agent Coulson lets you get away with that," said Darcy before taking a cautious sip of her Slurpee.
"Agent Coulson's not my boss," said Clint. Then, apparently finally caving to her superior interrogation skills, he added, "I'm with the Avenger Initiative."
"Ohhhh," she said. That made sense. He had that rugged look about him. "What do you do? Do you like, leap tall buildings in a single bound? Climb up walls like a spider? Are you Batman?"
Now Clint from the Avenger Initiative looked distinctly uncomfortable. "I'm a marksman," he said to the wall behind Jane's shoulder.
Well, that was horseshit. Darcy felt insulted. And a little brainfreezy again; she put down her Slurpee on the filing cabinet behind her. "God, don't be an asshole, Clint. If your superpowers are classified then just say that, don't lie to me."
When she turned around again, he was blushing a little. Actually blushing. "Oh my god," she breathed. "You're not lying, are you? Youareactuallyamarksman," she said in a rush with her hand over her mouth to hide her smile. "That is so lame!"
"Darcy," said Jane in her unimpressed tone.
"No but seriously," said Darcy, clutching Jane's elbow, "how does SHIELD grab up the actual God of Thunder and then on the same team put a guy who's just good at shooting arrows at things?"
"I'm sure he uses guns," said Jane, turning a piece of paper upside down, frowning, and turning it right way up again.
"No," said Clint, who now looked like he wanted to dive out a window, "no, I actually tend to use a bow."
Jane looked up at him in surprise. "Oh," she said after a second.
Darcy smirked.
"So anyway," said Jane, because she had a quick mental recovery period these days, "this is what we're looking at right now." And she pushed a handful of pages at Clint as if he would understand them. Darcy barely understood them, and she'd collated the data.
Darcy grabbed her Slurpee, ignoring the wet ring it left in the dust on the filing cabinet, and wandered back to her computer. Maybe she'd get in some Facebook instead of work while Jane was distracted by showing off her nerdery.
***
They'd only gone to SHIELD headquarters to meet up with Erik again; it was just supposed to be some meetings and a ten-cent tour that Jane was sadistically making Darcy tag along for ("Hey, you only get to go because you have top-secret security clearance now," Jane had tried, and Darcy had answered, "Yeah, but top-secret clearance is supposed to be awesome because you get to see cool shit, not sit around in a windowless room, talking about particle physics and drinking bad coffee."). She didn't even have a new iPod yet because the government didn't pay much better than Jane's grant money had, so the whole thing was just supposed to be long and awful and terrible.
It ended up being awful and terrible for completely unexpected reasons. They'd just been in one of the labs so Jane and Erik could act like geeks and hook way too many oscilloscopes up to each other, and Darcy had been mentally reciting the periodic table like she did sometimes when she was bored, and then some guy across the lab had dropped an expensive piece of computer equipment, freaked out and turned green.
The last thing Darcy saw before everything went to hell was some lab monkey diving for a phone and yelling, "Dr. Banner's having a Code Green!"
Then Dr. Banner swelled up like a balloon and yelled like a silverback gorilla off of Animal Planet, knocking two people and an entire lab bench into a wall. Darcy, Jane and Erik fell over each other trying to squeeze through the nearest door with all the other scientists. Two SWAT guys raced past them in the hall and ducked into the doorway, and smoke filled the entire room.
"Did they just tear gas Dr. Banner?" Darcy asked as Jane dragged her away by the arm.
But apparently that didn't work well, because there was another scream of rage followed by a couple quieter ones of agony, and then Banner busted through a wall beside the door and came charging down the hallway where Jane and Darcy were still fleeing.
"Get down!" yelled someone in front of them, and Darcy whipped her head around to see Clint standing there with a big gun in his hands. She and Jane got down (Darcy banged an elbow off the concrete floor and tears sprang into her eyes) and Clint immediately started firing at Banner. Darcy raised her head a little to watch what happened but there was no blood, so probably rubber bullets or beanbags or whatever. But Banner flinched and staggered to a stop from his crazy, four-legged gorilla run and Clint ran over to drag Jane up off the floor.
"Move!" he said, and Darcy scrambled to her feet and ran, past Clint and down the hallway. She outran Jane, because Jane had too many degrees to be in decent shape, and before she knew it she was lost. She skidded to a stop, panting, and then held her breath to listen for the Monkey Man. She caught faint sounds of gunfire and yells, but there were alarms going off on most of the walls so it was tough to hear much over that.
Sadly, secret government facilities tended not to have, like, maps of fire exits, which was at least an advantage over movies and TV but also meant that Darcy had no fucking idea where she was, and also no 3G access to check a map or call Jane or anything. She twirled in a slow circle and then picked a direction, not entirely sure she wasn't heading back the way she came but whatever, she had good escape reflexes.
The flat-out panic run had kind of worn her out and she wasn't wearing the shoes for it, so she settled for a brisk jog that might find an exit before she starved to death in the SHIELD labyrinth. It was nice and relaxing and boring for a few minutes, until she passed an intersection and then heard a bone-rattling roar behind her that made her trip and hit the ground in a sprawl.
"Fucking ow." She tried to push herself up but her arms had gone rubbery; she was just onto her hands and knees when she heard a growl and got suddenly picked up by the back of her jacket.
"Mother of fuck!" Darcy shouted as Monkey Man hoisted her in the air. Her jacket sleeves dug into her underarms and her feet kicked in the air. Holy shit, she was going to die, a physicist was going to eat her because he broke his equipment and life was terrible and her elbow still hurt from earlier, too.
"Bruce," a familiar voice barked, and Banner the Angry Green Giant turned with her in hand to face Clint, who was creeping up the hallway at them with that gun raised again.
"Bruce, put the girl down," Clint said, sounding like he was telling a dog to drop a toy.
Banner grunted once and it kinda sounded like 'go to hell'.
"Darcy, he's holding you in front of him, I can't fire," said Clint.
Darcy felt what was left of her temper snap. "What? I thought you were good at shooting things!"
"I don't want to risk hitting you!"
She flailed, kicking at the air. "I have just lost all faith in our government's black ops programs! Put! Me! Down!" she yelled.
Banner grunted again and waved her around a little. It hurt Darcy's knees to have her legs swing like that.
"Fuck," she said, just because it felt good, and stretched her arms as much as she could (they were losing circulation) to grab at the strap of her messenger bag and pull it up her chest. She dug right to the bottom for her taser, underneath the tampons and romance novel she'd known security wouldn't look under, and felt sweet relief when her hand closed around it.
"Hey!" she said, "Dr. Banner! Turn me around, I want to talk to you!"
The room spun dizzily and she was suddenly facing his giant head.
"Thanks," she said, and pulled out her taser to shoot him in the chest.
Banner flinched and she had barely enough time to brace herself before he dropped her on the floor. She landed on her feet and the shock went up her legs. "Oh god," she said, and Banner pulled out the taser darts just as Clint shot him with three feather-tipped tranquilizers. Darcy watched Banner tip over backwards and hit the ground hard; he instantly shrank back into a weedy physicist wearing not much in the way of pants, and she averted her eyes quickly.
"Are you okay?" Clint demanded, rushing up to grab her shoulder, and Darcy twitched violently and tasered him, too.
"Hawkeye?" she read off his uniform as he spasmed on the floor, and then thought, whatever, and grabbed at his radio to call for help.
***
The Stark Industries gala was totally off the hook, and Darcy was excited for a chance to wear her little black dress she'd gotten for her sister's wedding last year. Tony Stark himself was pretty cool, too, for an Avenger.
"So tell me," he said, swirling his martini like James Bond, "is your boss seeing anyone?"
She looked across the room at Jane, who was wearing a blue dress and talking to some clear lab nerds with excited gestures. "Yeah," she said with a little smile, because Jane was totally talking about rainbow bridges, "I don't think she'd be interested. Sorry."
Tony nodded, and then said, "How old are you again?"
"Twenty-two," she said, and he smiled at her in a way that was a little attractive but mostly funny just as someone came up behind her.
"Hey, Barton," said Tony with a grin that looked a lot more fake. "Having a good time?"
"Sure," said Clint, moving past Darcy to stand between them like the third point of a triangle. "How about you guys?"
Tony shrugged expansively. "This is like the second time I've even shown up to this thing. I'm having a good time talking to Dana here."
"Darcy," said Darcy.
"Yeah, that's what I said." He sipped his drink and Darcy bit her lip to suppress an unladylike snort.
Clint was giving Tony a fixed look. "Thought you were here to talk to Dr. Foster," he said lightly.
Tony gave him the side-eye. "I did. I might again. She's very smart. Who cares?"
"Maybe you should go mingle some more," said Clint.
Darcy was totally wigged out and stepped back a fraction to look Clint up and down for his damage. He'd just shifted so that his shoulder was in front of her, his hands were open at his sides and he was still staring at Tony. Tony was still holding his drink but he looked just as tense, and Darcy put two and two together and rolled her eyes and said, "Maybe you should take it down a notch."
Clint did a double-take at her.
"Yeah," she said, wide-eyed and nodding, "yeah, I said that. You're at a ten and I need you at a four." She indicated with her hand.
"Yeah, Barton," said Tony over the rim of his drink. "By the way, how are those trick arrows that I designed and made to your specifications?"
Clint opened his mouth again and Darcy cut him off with, "You know what, I have my taser. I will use it on both of you, even if they kick me out right after." She held up her handbag, which sadly didn't really have her taser in it but it was big enough and no one needed to know that.
Clint looked between her face and the bag for a second, probably remembering the thing at SHIELD.
"You know what, Stark?" he said suddenly, clapping Tony on the shoulder pretty hard. "You're on your own."
Darcy watched Clint walk away until he disappeared into the crowd, and then she took a deep breath, snatched a champagne flute off a passing tray, took a sip and said, "So, is Agent Coulson a total dick or what? He totally stole my iPod and now he's denying it ever existed. I think he just secretly wanted all my Lady Gaga songs."
Tony grinned, and what the hell, she wasn't actually going to sleep with him (because ew, old, and she'd bet he still didn't remember her name) but she could look after herself and he was the most fun person she'd talked to all night.
***
So then like a month later, there was a thing with some explosions out in the desert that brought out a lot of guys in black vans, and the next thing Darcy knew, she was coming back from a Staples run in Santa Fe to see Clint standing out in front of the lab, wearing combat boots and soldier pants.
"Need a hand with that?" he asked, nodding at her box of office supplies.
She thought about saying no, but she was tired and had to graph some data that she was supposed to have done already. "There's a whiteboard still in the back of the van," she said, marching past him with dignity and flailing the door of the lab open by herself as he trudged off.
She checked the time on her phone as Clint banged in the door with the whiteboard; Jane was probably off getting lunch. Hopefully she was bringing it back and there were french fries. "So what are you doing here?" she asked.
Clint looked up from propping the whiteboard up against a desk. "SHIELD sent me."
"Well, I didn't think you'd suddenly found a love of science and decided to help us find Thor," she said, rolling her eyes and dropping into her desk chair. It creaked so loudly she held her breath in case it broke, but no problem. She wiggled her mouse and opened up her latest batch of spreadsheets.
"I'm working a protection detail."
She looked up at him, her stomach dropping. "We need one of those?"
He scratched at his eyebrow. "You know those, uh, events in the desert?" he asked, gesturing out at it though the window.
"That was a thing?"
"Yeah, it was a thing. We think it's the Hood's gang--that doesn't matter. Anyway, you have a detail, I'm on it."
"Because you are like the only non-scientist Avenger who's currently on Earth or in this dimension or whatever," she finished.
"Uh," he said.
"Fine. Go detail our protection," she waved him off. "I'm busy."
"War Machine's doing aerial sweeps. I'm just the emergency ground team for the next two hours."
"How nice for you," she said, as she screwed up the axes for her plot and had to go through like five steps again.
"So what are you doing?"
"I'm turning a bunch of star data into something Jane can slap into a paper."
"Isn't all your work classified now?"
"She bullied SHIELD into letting her publish minor stuff, rather than totally disappearing from her field."
"That was nice of SHIELD."
Darcy laughed. "She totally put Coulson's nuts in a vise. SHIELD's got nothing on grant committees."
Clint choked out a laugh. "So how long have you been a physicist?"
"I'm not one. I have three-quarters of a poli sci degree." She frowned at the screen, said a mental prayer, and clicked. The plot didn't look like shit, hurray. She saved it before it could spontaneously fuck up. "I dunno if I'll finish it or not."
"Why not?"
"Well, my mom says I should stick with this and leverage another government job."
"You told your mom you work for SHIELD?"
Darcy turned slowly to stare at him. "No. I didn't," she said, giving him her patented you-are-a-crazy-person look. "I just told her we scored a grant from the defense department."
"So how did you get this job if you don't know anything about physics?"
"I know stuff about physics," she snapped. "They have science electives, you know. I took intro physics and an entire course about light. But mostly I like chem."
"So political science was the obvious choice."
"I watched too much West Wing when I was seventeen, shut up," she muttered. "Look, can't you go be the emergency ground team outside for a while?"
"Uh huh," said Clint, uncrossing his arms and sauntering to the door; Jane was walking back with an unfortunate lack of fast food bag. Darcy spent a moment contemplating Clint's ass in the soldier pants before calling herself a traitor and going back to work.
***
He was standing at the edge of the roof when she climbed up to escape from Jane, looking at the horizon through binoculars.
"You shouldn't be up here," he said without turning around.
"I dragged those lawn chairs up here, I'll come up whenever I want," she said.
"If something happens you'll be in danger."
"I've got my taser, it's cool," said Darcy, going for a lawn chair and stretching out her legs. She fanned at her neck as she sagged into the chair; it was pretty warm in the sun today.
"You really love that thing, huh?"
"It's the great equalizer, dude. Someone acts creepy or threatening and it's 'say hello to my little friend'. Zap." She fired a finger gun, not that he was watching anyway. Jesus, he was built. And sweating.
"You're insane."
"I get that a lot. Kinda hot out for black, isn't it?" she ventured.
"I hate the desert." He walked around the roof a few feet and raised the binoculars again.
"Sorry. I live in Texas, you get used to it. Anyway, it's only May, it'll get hotter."
"I did two tours in Iraq and one in Afghanistan, and I hoped when Fury picked me up that it'd mean no more blazing heat and no more sand that wasn't on a beach. But no."
She grinned at the bitching. "I bet you were a Marine."
"I was Delta Force," he said.
Oh. She looked around and finally spotted his bow. It was a massive black thing with a lot of pulleys and strings. She'd been picturing, like, Robin Hood.
"You were a sniper?"
"That's classified."
Darcy stretched. "Okay. And that's your favourite bow that you lugged through the Middle East to not-snipe Al Qaeda, right?"
He lowered the binoculars finally. "My 'favourite'?" he said, scrunching up his face.
"Totally your favourite," she grinned. "And I can see you must be compensating for something but that's okay, at least it's not a giant truck like most guys around here."
"Get off the roof," he said flatly.
"Jane said apparently you're like, the world's greatest marksman," Darcy went on, not moving.
"People say that," said Clint, raising the binoculars again and walking around the roof a little more. The sun glinted on his white earpiece.
"How do they know you're the best? Is there a contest?"
"Yes, there is a contest every year and I win it."
"Yeah, you're definitely not the world's greatest. You couldn't even shoot the Hulk around me from like ten feet."
"Well, next time I'll try, and if he moves you as a shield and you get hit with a tranq meant for him, I'll just say I told you so if you ever come out of the coma."
Goddammit, Darcy kinda liked this asshole. Besides the hot body. "Why do you like bows better than guns? Most GI Joes like their guns."
"You know a lot of them?" he asked, and then said, "Because arrows are silent."
She had to stare at him for a while as she took that in, and then she thought, Delta Force, huh? and her skin itched a little, all over.
When she didn't say anything, he turned his head and looked at her.
"Get off the roof," he said again, more gently, and this time she went.
***
"Any idiots in capes sighted today?" Darcy asked the next afternoon, when Clint sauntered in with his hands jammed in his pockets.
"Nope. But that doesn't mean they're not there, either."
"Amazing," she said, and shut down her computer. "I keep my taser fully charged at all times, now."
"I'm going to take that away from you," he said.
"Why?" She made protective moves toward where it sat in a drawer.
"I'm scared you'll shoot me with it again."
"Well, don't treat me like some damsel in distress and maybe you'll save yourself from that fate."
He cocked his head and huffed out a laugh at her. "Damsel in distress? Okay."
"I mean it. I can look after myself." And she didn't appreciate him looking all aw-shucks cute when she was trying to be indignant.
"I have no doubt of that. You fended off Tony Stark on like half a bottle of gin and olives."
"No thanks to you," said Darcy.
"Yeah," he drawled, glancing out the window with an asshole little grin on his face.
Darcy heard a noise and looked around his shoulder, and of course there was Jane, who'd definitely been in here the whole time. She was leaning against her own desk, arms crossed, eyebrow arched. Staring. At Darcy. Pointedly. Fuck.
"Uh," said Darcy intelligently. "I'm going for lunch."
Clint gave her a questioning, hopeful look.
She sighed. "The diner in town has really good pancakes."
"Pancakes? It's lunchtime," he said, waiting patiently for her to get her shit together to leave. She looked at the drawer where she kept the taser and then decided to leave it, this time. You never knew, Jane might need it.
"Pancakes are an anytime food, how do you not know this?" Darcy complained, dropping her bag over her head and adjusting the strap a little.
Clint fell into step with her as they walked to the door. "I guess I've been deprived, not living in New Mexico," he said, holding the door open for her.
She ignored the smug look on Jane's face as they walked out into the sun. "Well," she said, "I suppose I can teach you a thing or two."
"I can't wait," he said.
"Also, you're buying. SHIELD doesn't pay me shit."
"What makes you think they pay me shit, either?"
"I always figured codenames meant a higher pay bracket."
"I think I need a costume for that."
"I can sew!"
"No."
THE END