“I hate you.” She was staring balefully at the other person, her mouth moved into a pout. “You’re a terrible, terrible person.” Her voice was too calm for her to actually mean the words, of course, but she was still glowering.
“Last night you called me your Pocket-sized Princess of Science and told me you would write an ode to my brain.” Jane replied, ignoring her assistant’s dramatics.
“Yeah well that was after four jaeger bombs. How many times have I told you not to listen to anything I say after the second one?” Darcy demanded, her hands waving about as her voice went shrill.
“How many times have I told you anything you say regarding how wonderful I am will never be ignored?” Jane shot back. She’d been fairly toasted herself, the night before. She’d been matching Darcy drink for drink. For a tiny person she could hold a lot of alcohol.
“I made out with the Black Widow,” Darcy moaned, her eyes closing as she dropped her head to her arms.
“Are you more upset that she might kill you or that you can’t remember how awesome it was?” Jane asked, an eyebrow cocking up in amusement. How she wasn’t hung over the way Darcy was the younger woman would never figure out. It simply wasn’t fair that someone that tiny, smart, and gorgeous could drink like a sailor and not have a hang over the next day.
“I’m not sure,” Darcy responded a moment later, her voice muffled since her face was still buried in her arms. All you could see was long dark curls spilling across the desk and her shoulders. Jane found herself smiling fondly and standing up to go refill her assistant's coffee cup. On mornings like this it was good to baby the younger woman, otherwise they’d never get any work done later in the day.
“Darcy, stop reading into things that don’t exist. Last night was fun! So we all went a little crazy, who cares? We need to let our hair down sometimes.” Jane’s voice was kind as she set the full cup of coffee beside her best friend. “Besides, spin the bottle was your idea.” The last comment was pure wickedness.
“Yeah, last night was loads of fun. This morning was headaches and thigh aches and nakedness and Bruce has a lot more muscles than I thought he did.” Darcy’s voice was getting softer now and Jane turned around, deciding recalibrating her machines could wait a little bit longer.
“You had sex with Dr. Banner?” She was whispering excitedly as she pulled a stool close to Darcy and poked the girl in the arm (repeatedly) until she turned her head to give her boss a dirty look. The petite scientist was lucky she also happened to be Darcy’s bff or else she’d zap her with Mickey Roarke.
“I might have?” Darcy honestly couldn’t remember. The man she’d had a crush on since about three weeks after they moved into the tower and they’d tag teamed messing with Stark and he’d given her that wicked look before putting on his mask of confused innocence for the billionaire. His floppy hair, the insta-sarcasm, the shy smiles – how could you not find him and his super-brain completely adorable?
“You can’t remember? How can you not remember!? How can you not tell?” Jane was staring at Darcy like the other girl had lost her mind and Darcy, for her part, made a whimpering noise and put her face back into her arms. “I mean, do you have finger bruises around your hips? Love bites near your collarbone? Abdominal muscles extra sore? Ass muscles extra sore? Are your nipples extra sensitive? Do you have beard burn?”
“So much information I never needed to know about your sex life.” Darcy commented, her face blank as she tried not to visualize all the things Jane and Thor might get up to. She’d walked in on it enough times that it was a rather detailed visualization. It was part of why she’d moved out of the Tower, living in the suite with Thor and Jane meant walking in on them having sex on the remnants of what used to be a really great coffee table. There was only so much of it a girl in a dry spell could handle.
“Don’t be a prude.” The super scientist screwed up her face and stuck her tongue out at Darcy and the other girl reciprocated in kind.
“I’m not being a prude, I just don’t need my traitorous imagination giving me wet dreams about my boss.” Darcy replied, sitting up straighter in her chair and tugging her hat down further on her head.
“Darcy Marie Lewis, have you dreamed about threesomes with Thor and myself?” The look on the other woman’s face was one of wicked delight and Darcy groaned. Sometimes there was no getting around this facet of Jane’s personality. How people didn't think that she’d learned how to party hard at Culver was beyond the younger woman. The science department was the one responsible for coming up with the fun additives the frat parties liked to play with after all, and the engineering department made the bongs. Darcy had figured out by day two of her college career.
“Cunt.” Darcy threw out with a halfhearted snarl.
“You want it,” Jane replied, her lips quirked into a knowing smirk.
“You have a ridiculously foul mind, Dr. Foster.” Darcy commented, lifting her nose into the air and looking the other direction.
“A lot of my University experience was spent surrounded solely by sex starved boys whose only experiences involved hand lotion and porn.” Jane shrugged as though this explained everything. It explained things well enough to Darcy who nodded in an understanding kind of way.
“Fair enough.” The younger woman agreed before closing her eyes and rubbing circles over her temples.
“Now, time to put on your big girl panties and either give me details or get back to work. I have numbers to run.” Jane demanded imperiously. Darcy shot her a dirty look, she couldn’t remember and so apparently her crisis was going to have to wait, because there was science(!) to do.
It was hours of string theory and equations taken from napkins, white boards, the top half of a pizza box, various receipts, and one questionably stained t-shirt. The woman would write on literally anything she could get her hands on. Thankfully she had an alphanumeric system which she used at the bottom of everything she noted on so she could keep them in order otherwise Darcy wouldn’t have a single clue. Well that wasn’t exactly true, after so long she had a bit more than a clue. She picked stuff up, even if she didn’t want to admit it. It was at least fun to spring on Tony, the man didn’t expect her to be quite as good as she was. Although she was pretty sure he was starting to test her. She was gonna have to squash that right quick, otherwise the man was going to start throwing idea’s at her which would inevitably go completely over her head.
“Holy shitballs, Genius Lady, it’s almost 2!” Darcy shouted, surprised that she’d lost track of so much time while she was working. Usually she was good at stopping and forcing the Brain Trust to eat something at least passingly healthy. Poptarts totally counted as both Fruit, dairy, and carbs. Full coarse meal in a single, flimsy, foil package. Plus it had the added bonus of making Clint twitch in disgust. A low chuckle from behind her had the brunette whipping around, her hair flying in a tangled arc to smack her on the side of the face. She wrinkled her nose and wiped dark tendrils away from her eyes.
“Uh, hi.” Dr. Banner cleared his throat as a blush rose to his cheeks and his eyes darted to the side, away from her own pinkening face. Darcy blinked twice as she stared at him. Should she think of him as Bruce? She thought of him as Bruce last week before she decided getting totaled and joining pelvic regions was the best idea in the world. Well hell, she’d seen him naked, she’d touched him naked, she really might as well not regress as though she’d done something unthinkable. It was sex and this was the new millennium, dam nit!
“Hi.” Darcy lifted her chin and sniffed, looking away from Bruce but totally in the opposite direction because she wasn’t copying him.
“So, uh.” Bruce cleared his throat again and darted a look at her face before wincing and looking down at his shoes.
“Yep.” Darcy agreed, nodding and chewing the inside of her bottom lip.
“It was just sex. You’re both single and you were drunk. Can we stop acting like high schoolers now?” Jane demanded. She was standing with her arms crossed, staring between the two with an expectant look on her face. Darcy shot her a dirty look and Jane simply raised an eyebrow, completely unimpressed with her friend at the moment.
“Yeah.” Bruce sighed, rubbing a hand on the back of his head. Darcy looked over at him again, her blue eyes narrowed a touch as she watched him turn to shuffle back to his desk, cowed by the petite scientist.
“Darcy?” Jane called, staring at her.
“What?” Darcy asked, still watching the other scientist.
“We’re out of poptarts.” Jane told her, her eyes going wide as she started wringing her hands and rocking on her feet. This was Needy Jane 4: Hungry but not wanting to leave her numbers because bad things could totally happen and if you told her she was being ridiculous she would list at least 15 things that could happen and get more hysterical with each one before deciding she wasn’t hungry at all and refusing to eat for another 8 hours.
“I’ll order Pizza.” Darcy informed her, watching Jane sigh in relief and wander back to her own area. That certainly explained her need to cut through Darcy and Bruce’s not at all awkward pseudo-conversation, though. Speaking of.
The woman turned dark blue eyes back to the other scientist, his hair deliciously rumpled, his cheeks still a tiny bit pink. The tips of his ears were pink as well, it was truly adorable and Darcy had to squelch a happy sigh before it made it out of her throat, because holy hell, she was totally all in crush with him like some kind of lovesick puppy. Meanwhile, here he was, completely embarrassed.
“So.” Attempt one at an adult conversation was a fail. One long drawn syllable did not an opening statement make.
“I’m sorry.” Bruce said, his voice soft. Her eyes shot back to him but he was doing that not looking thing again. Meaning he was not looking at her. He did that a lot.
“Excuse me?” Her voice was flat, her surprise was strangling her heart, and what the actual hell was there to be sorry about!?
“Last night, I shouldn’t have taken advantage of you like that.” He darted his gaze toward Darcy, and then he started squinting up at the ceiling instead.
“Were you not drinking?” She demanded. It had been out of the norm for him to drink, it was true, but when Natasha had a goal in mind you simply went along with it. Last night that goal had been everyone drinking together in order to relax. Since she could drink her weight in vodka and not seem drunk, this was not entirely surprising. Damned Russians.
“Uh, yes?” He was squinting at her now, trying to figure out where this was going.
“I’m pretty sure I got you trashed so I could climb you like a tree. I’m not a subtle drunk.” She informed him, crossing her arms and cocking her hip to the side. Jane made a noise that could have been a snort of amusement and could have been a frustrated groan. Darcy ignored it, preferring to pretend like her boss wasn’t listening in.
“Well,” He frowned and cleared his throat a couple of times. “I’m flattered?” He was doing that confused puppy thing, with his head tilted and his eyes guarded, but hopeful.
“Whatever dude, apology not accepted. I’ve got food to order for Jeanette. Pick me up at six thirty for dinner. Take me somewhere with awesome food and you should probably hide anything you don’t want me to see. I’m a sure thing.” She popped up on her toes to kiss him on the cheek and then shoved him toward the doors. He smiled brightly at her before pulling out his tablet. A not so sneaky glance proved he was looking at nearby restaurants.
“I don’t like being compared to a chipmunk.” Jane grumbled, her voice sulky. Darcy sat down in her chair.
“Suck it up, buttercup, you’re lucky I feed you.” Darcy told her, no real heat in her voice.
“Whatever, I want details tomorrow.” Jane informed her, a pout still in her words.
“Yeah, yeah. In the mean time, though, what do you do for beard burns?” Darcy asked, shifting in her chair slightly. Jane glanced over her shoulder and gave her friend a knowing smile. She’d totally called it.