Chapter 1
It starts, unsurprisingly to anyone who’s known Darcy Lewis for longer than two minutes, with cuddling.
She takes one look at Pepper, wearing one of Tony’s old shirts and soft sleep shorts with ducks on them and bags under her eyes so dark it almost looks like she’s been punched in the face, and herds her to the couch of the common floor; pulling her down until they’re pressed flush together from chest to knee.
“Sleep,” Darcy whispers, hand applying steady pressure to the back of Pepper’s skull until her nose was squished against Darcy’s neck and all she could smell was faint traces of vanilla.
She was out like a light before Darcy even got her hand under the back of her shirt.
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It becomes a tradition, of sorts, for them after that.
Darcy always seems to know when she needs to be held, has even gone as far as interrupting a meeting to shove Pepper on the closest flat surface and aggressively spoon her.
Pepper breathes in the scent of vanilla from Darcy’s neck and decides she doesn’t mind.
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Clint turns out to be her next target, to the surprise of the archer himself.
He’s seen Darcy and Pepper cuddled up on the couch, chair, whatever was available and thought it was sweet. The line of Pepper’s spine always smooths out after a few seconds and she’s usually softly snoring not long after.
He’s just thought it was their thing, is all.
But no, Darcy ambushes him when he sprawled on the couch, feeling like a sorry sack of shit because he’s fucking deaf and sometimes it makes him hate himself, and flops unceremoniously on top of him; shoves her face directly into his chest and whines until he wraps his arms around her.
“You doing okay, kid?” Clint asks hesitantly, because while he and Darcy have been known to fight over the last slice of pizza like feral raccoons, they weren’t the snuggling kind of friends.
His hearing aide and her face being smushed muffles the sound a bit, but he can hear her well enough.
“Your face is sad. And you’re gonna hold me until it’s not sad anymore.”
She rubs her face against his chest like a cat and slides her hands under the edge of his shirt, fingertips resting on his ribcage. The angle means he can hear her better when she speaks again.
“And maybe pet my hair.”
Clint smiles softly to himself, self hatred not forgotten but definitely less all consuming, before sliding his fingers through her hair.
“Ma’am, yes, ma’am.”
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Clint notices that Darcy rotates between them now, lulls Pepper to sleep like some sort of sandman and piles into his lap like an overly excited puppy.
He starts bringing a blanket with him when he sits on the couch.
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Bruce notices the pattern and fails to hide his smile when Darcy tugs him away from his lab and shoves him into the oversized chair Tony likes to catnap in.
“Twenty minutes,” Darcy promises, and Bruce lets himself be tugged until they’re positioned to her liking.
He almost arches up into the touch when she starts running her fingers through his hair. Almost. But he’s got his head pressed against her chest and he’s read enough studies to know that listening to someone’s heartbeat can act as a lullaby.
He sleeps for nine hours straight and wakes up in a puddle of his own drool. Darcy’s hair is in his mouth and she’s snoring in his ear and it’s the most comfortable he’s felt since he got introduced to the Other Guy.
He falls back asleep in seconds.
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Sometimes he goes looking for Darcy when he’s getting a little green around the edges.
Never when she’s with Pepper or Clint, he knows what’s she’s doing and they need it just as much as he does.
But sometimes, when she’s alone and he can’t get his heartbeat to match the one he plays through his headphones, he finds her and lets her guide his head to her chest and holds the back of her shirt too tightly in his fists.
He lets himself rest.
__
She plans for Natasha, knows that if she tries to pull her around like Pepper or Bruce or fall on her like Clint that Natasha will slide a blade between her ribs faster than she can breathe.
But she also knows that Natasha had stared at her purple pedicure and so she gathers up her bargaining chips and flops down on the couch beside the assassin who could kill her with her thighs.
Picks her dainty feet up and puts them in her lap.
And proceeds to clip and file her toenails until they’re soft square shapes, picks up the bottle of base coat she put between Natasha’s ankles and blows warm air on them after they’re painted.
Natasha reaches forward and hands her the bottle of teal nail polish.
Darcy’s hands only shake for a few second while she opens the bottle and then she’s right back to painting, applying thin layers so they’ll dry faster.
She holds her breath while she applies the top coat and practically melts into the couch when Natasha leaves her feet in her lap when she’s done.
Natasha doesn’t say anything when Darcy wraps her fingers around her ankle. Darcy counts it as a fucking win.
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Darcy kisses the scar on her knee the next time she paints her toenails an ugly burnt orange color.
Natasha makes a startled noise in the back of her throat but stays where she is, lets Darcy lean into her hip and slide one finger under the hem of her shirt.
Natasha doesn’t fall asleep for a long time after that, just stares at Darcy until she loses the fight against her heavy eyelids.
It’s okay, though.
She hands Darcy a knife the next time and falls asleep in seconds. Darcy counts that as a serious fucking win.
___
She attaches herself to Steve’s back while he cooks, rests her cheek between his shoulder blades and shuffles around with him through the communal kitchen.
He cries the first three times she does it, but never shakes her off.
“I used to do this to Bucky,” Steve whispers brokenly, and Darcy presses a kiss to his spine. “Back when I was smaller and he was mad at me for runnin’ my damned mouth. Never got the chance to see if it worked just the same after since-“
Darcy knew what he meant. After Steve got big. After Bucky died during the war.
Steve’s almost too big for Darcy to fully wrap her arms around but she tries anyway. Tries to squeeze him so tightly that it feels like she’s trying to fuse their bodies together.
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Sometimes when Steve refuses to leave his floor, Darcy will slip in and find him curled in on himself in bed.
He lifts the blankets and she crawls in behind him, wraps her arms around his shaking form until he falls asleep.
She knows that he wishes it were someone else, a bigger body that had held him like this for most of his life.
It’s enough, for now.
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She finds Tony in his lab, oil and grease streaked across his temple and jaw.
He doesn’t notice when she starts turning the lights off, making her way towards the workbench he’s stationed at.
He barely notices when she plucks the screwdriver out of his hand and steers him towards the pullout couch he keeps in the corner.
He sways on his feet while she puts on fresh sheets and piles every fuzzy blanket she can find in the small linen closet in the middle of the bed.
“What day is it?” Tony asks, squinting his eyes at her. Darcy shoves him onto the bed and crawls over him, plants herself on his chest so he won’t try to get up.
“It’s Saturday. You’ve been down here for three days. Sleep.”
He’s snoring before she even gets the blankets pulled over their bodies.
Pepper finds them like that, hours later and fresh off a plane from her meeting in Chicago. Her smile was probably too big for her face, but she didn’t care.
Tony had managed to reverse their position and he’s starfished half on top of Darcy, face shoved into a pillow and his hand settled on her stomach under her shirt.
She has thoughts about leaving them like this, going back up to her own floor and collapsing into her own bed out of sheer exhaustion.
But then Darcy’s cracking an eye open at her and makes grabby hands, pulls Pepper into the bed when she lets her fingers get caught.
“Glad you’re home,” Darcy mutters, pressing a sleepy kiss to Pepper’s shoulder before turning just enough that she didn’t disturb Tony but Pepper could spoon her from behind.
Tony doesn’t wake up, but he slips his hand from Darcy to Pepper all the same.
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Darcy takes her afternoon naps in Tony’s lab now.
Most of the time she can convince him to lay down next to her, but sometimes he needs Pepper to curl up on the other side of his body; one hand tangled in Darcy’s hair and the other cradled between Pepper’s.
She doesn’t think she’d call it sleeping better, but he doesn’t look so worn down now.
She takes it over the alternative.
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When Bucky first shows up, they won’t let her see him.
They say all sorts of things about him, how he’s dangerous and doesn’t know what he’s doing and they don’t want her to get hurt.
Darcy thinks they’re all full of shit, but she doesn’t kick up a fuss when she sees the relief on Steve’s face.
She does, however, take a page from Clint’s book and shuffles her way through the air ducts until she’s positioned above the living room on the floor Bucky’s using.
She’s not a saint.
She’s also not very coordinated and she drops like a sack of potatoes when she decides to stop being a creep and introduce herself to Bucky.
The sound of her body hitting the coffee table has Bucky backing into a corner like a scared animal and she’s too out of breath to even be a threat.
She glares at the ceiling and wheezes when she tries to sit up. Her back feels like one giant bruise and she’s starting to regret the fact that she didn’t just walk in like a normal person.
“Hi,” Darcy gasps, hunching her back once she’s fully sitting up. It kind of hurts to breathe but Bucky’s looking at her from under his lashes and doesn’t look nearly as scared as he had ten seconds ago.
She tentatively stands up and stumbles to his couch, flops down face first because, yeah, her back was definitely bruised.
Bucky makes a curious sound in the back of his throat when all she does is lay there, seventy years of brainwashing probably making him think that the worst has yet to come.
Darcy’s heart hurts almost as badly as her back at the thought.
They dance around each other like that for a few days, JARVIS letting Darcy in the front door so she wouldn’t hurt herself even more.
Darcy lays as still as she possibly can on the couch and Bucky makes his way closer to her during every visit, never speaking but communicating all the same.
She reads the Winter Soldier file on her own floor and puts her fist through the wall, and immediately throws up.
JARVIS talks her through how to bandage her knuckles and get the vomit smell out of the carpet.
She keeps herself contained to just sniffling when Bucky works up the courage to sit on the couch by her feet. She openly weeps when he starts whispering to her in Russian, his voice rusty and broken from disuse.
JARVIS plays translator, voice soft in the background while Bucky tells her all of the things he remembers doing.
She cries extra hard for Tony when Bucky tells her about Howard and Maria Stark. She knows Tony wouldn’t blame Bucky, but Bucky blames himself anyway.
He waves it away when she tells him he was a weapon at the time, not a person. Seems like being a martyr is something he shares with Steve.
He shows her how to handle the gun he asks her to bring the next time she visits. Not because he wants it, but because he wants to know she has a fighting chance if he slips back into the Winter Soldier.
Darcy bites her tongue to keep her complaints firmly lodged in her throat and learns that she should never put her finger on the trigger unless she’s sure she wants to shoot.
Bucky falls asleep with his hand trapped between her ankles after that.
Darcy lets herself fall apart at the injustice of it all, for the lost soul desperately trying to figure out how to be a person again.
___
JARVIS finally lets the Avengers know that she’s been snuggling Bucky on his couch for the last month. She didn’t expect the to storm his living room immediately after.
She levels the big ‘Fuck Off’ gun she’s never bothered to learn the name for at them the second the door opens and Bucky starts to stir against her leg.
“There’s this invention called knocking,” Darcy hisses, lowering the gun and her free hand scratches its nails against Bucky’s scalp.
He lets out a sleepy murmur and goes back to drooling on her kneecap.
Steve looks like he’s in pain. Darcy waves her hand towards the open space by Bucky’s feet after she settles the gun back under the blanket.
He scrambles onto the cushions and puts Bucky’s feet in his lap like they’re a bomb about to go off.
“A month,” Natasha snarls softly, but Darcy knows better now.
She would have been hauled off the couch in the blink of an eye if they thought Bucky was a threat to her.
“He had to learn how to be a real boy again,” Darcy says with a shrug, and it really shouldn’t have made them all blanche but it did.
She knows she’s not the only one who read the Winter Soldier files and lost a part of themselves to it.
___
Sam delights her because he asks to be little spoon the first time they officially meet.
“I’ve heard a lot about you,” Sam teases, adorable gap tooth smile spreading across his face. “Seems like nobody can shut up about you.”
Darcy raises an eyebrow at him and pretends like she has no idea what he’s talking about.
“Just- whenever you decide that it’s my time, you get to be jet pack.”
Darcy channels her inner Natasha and blinks at him slowly.
Sam takes it as agreement.
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The time comes a short two weeks later.
Sam’s trying to be engaged in the conversation going on around him, tries to smile when Steve tells him about the time Bucky fished him out a dumpster when he was eleven and too angry for his own good.
His eyes are haunted and Darcy makes her move, slides right up to him and hooks her fingers through his belt loops.
He doesn’t even excuse himself, just stumbles behind her when she tugs him to the couch and sits down heavily when she points.
She tucks a fuzzy blanket around his shoulders and situates her legs on either side of his body, tugs him sideways until his shoulder is jammed into her stomach.
Sam breaks when Bucky sits on the floor in front of them and slides his metal fingers under the edge of Sam’s jeans to hold his ankle.
Darcy holds him through his shuddering breaths and jerks her chin towards the couch when Steve looks at them.
He brings tissues and holds onto the jut of Sam’s hipbone when he sits beside him.
“He would have been twenty-seven,” Sam sobs, and ,oh, Darcy knows the kind of heartbreak in his voice.
She’s let it consume her more than once since she lost Jane. Time doesn’t make it any easier.
“Riley,” Sam whispers hoarsely when he’s done crying. “His name was Riley.”
Darcy carves out a little shelf in her heart to keep him safe, the man who owned the other half of Sam’s soul but never got to make it home in anything other than a flag covered casket.
Sam looks at her like he knows what she’s doing.
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“Miss Lewis?”
Darcy looks up from her bowl of fruity pebbles when JARVIS asks the question.
“May I ask why you’re doing this?”
“I don’t have superpowers,” Darcy answers around the food her mouth. She swallows before continuing. “I can’t save the world like them. But I can do this. They all deserve a place to come home to and rest.”
JARVIS doesn’t reply immediately.
Darcy goes back to eating her cereal, spoon clanking on the side of the bowl.
“You love them.”
It wasn’t a question, but Darcy nods her head anyway.
“You’re pretty well versed in human emotion for artificial intelligence,” Darcy teases, and she grins when JARVIS dims her lights in retaliation.
“Sir gave me the full range of human emotion in hopes I would be able to defuse stressful situations before the need for intervention rises.”
Darcy hums low in her throat and goes back to eating her cereal.
“They love you, Miss Lewis. Did you know that the sentiment is returned?”
“We can only hope, J. We can only hope.”