Darcy Lewis and Build-A-Date
Darcy makes a point to spend time with everybody one-on-one, doesn’t want to anyone to feel like they’re getting lost in the shuffle because they really do lead busy lives.
She hangs a giant calendar on the wall in the living room of the common floor and sets up a cup full of glittery gel pens on the coffee table.
She marks through certain days, ones that she saves for herself for self care, with a permanent marker and puts a post-it that says ‘plan-a-date’ in glittery blue ink right in the center.
It goes about as well as expected.
✨✨✨
Pepper lays claim to her Saturday morning, bustles into Darcy’s kitchen with her arms full of fresh ingredients and actual adult clothes on.
Darcy looks down at her own fuzzy pajama pants with ducks on them and shrugs before pouring Pepper a cup of coffee.
“Thank you, baby,” Pepper says with a smile when Darcy puts it on the counter for her. “Kiss?”
Darcy stands on her tiptoes and leans over the stuff in Pepper’s arms to press her lips against Pepper’s, nips at her lower lip just because she can.
“What’s for breakfast?” Darcy asks when she leans back, helps Pepper put everything on the counter so she doesn’t accidentally drop it.
“Homemade cinnamon rolls and fruit. You need something other than sugary cereal,” Pepper teases, tugs a lock of Darcy’s hair before crowding her against the counter and kissing the life out of her.
“Food,” Darcy gasps some minutes later when Pepper kisses her way down her neck. Pepper just hums and scrapes her teeth against Darcy’s pulse before sucking hard on the skin.
Darcy’s knees almost buckle and she’s pretty sure she would have been in the floor if it weren’t for the counter digging in to her back.
Pepper’s hands find their way under her shirt and spread against her ribcage, thumb grazing back and forth right underneath her breasts.
Darcy whimpers and arches in to the touch, fists one hand in Pepper’s hair when Pepper moves her hands up higher.
“Kitchen sex?” Darcy asks breathlessly and Pepper nods her head.
“Definitely kitchen sex.”
✨✨✨
They’re too impatient to wait after they’re finished for cinnamon rolls to be made.
Darcy pours Pepper a bowl of coco puffs and they eat in a comfortable silence, bare thighs sticking to the chairs.
✨✨✨
Clint scribbles his name in florescent green ink, claims her Wednesday and draws a tiny giraffe underneath it.
(It takes Darcy a solid seven minutes to figure out that it’s supposed to be a giraffe. Clint is not artist. It looks like a demented tree with antennas. She adores it.)
He takes her to the zoo, makes her wear a baseball hat and slathers her in sunscreen so she won’t burn.
“Did you know there’s a species of otter that grows four feet and eleven inches long?” Darcy asks, her fingers twined with his.
Clint shakes his head and herds her to the elephant enclosure. “No, but Darcy sized otters sound adorable.”
“I’m 5’3!”
“You’re pocket sized,” Clint mutters, but he gives Darcy that slow smirk that melts her heart and she can’t find it in herself to be mad at him.
“Yeah, well, we’re all shorter than Steve and Bucky,” Darcy sticks her tongue out at him and he pretends to bite it.
“Wanna go to the petting zoo they have set up?” Clint asks, flicks the brim of her hat before tucking the hair that had escaped behind her ear.
“Yes, what kind of question is that?”
“Okay, okay,” Clint laughs, and he guides her to the petting zoo that’s full of children and very naughty looking goats.
It doesn’t take long for Darcy to find a place to sit down, hay tickling the back of her thighs under her dress, and she bribes a baby calf in to sitting in her lap with a handful of baby carrots.
Clint has a ferret scrambling up to his shoulder, it’s tiny little nose sniffing at his neck before it makes a little yelping sound and dives under the edge of his shirt.
“Best day ever,” Clint sighs, and Darcy has to agree with him.
✨✨✨
Tony stamps his name on a Thursday, and Darcy isn’t sure if she’s impressed that he has a name stamp or irritated that he used it.
(It’s irritated. It’s boring and black and it makes her sad to look at so she takes a purple highlighter and draws flowers around it. She also steals the damn stamp and chunks it down the trash chute. JARVIS let’s her know Tony has three more and she hunts them down without mercy and they face the same fate.)
He rents out the American Museum of Natural History so they can have the whole place to themselves, knows that she likes to collect random facts like they’re precious gems.
There’s an exhibit on sharks and Darcy’s losing her shit over the skeleton that’s floating in the middle of the room.
“His teeth are huge,” Darcy breathes and Tony grins at her over his ridiculous sunglasses.
“I have a fact for you,” Tony offers, and Darcy holds her hand out like he can physically put it there. “Did you know that you can determine the health of a coral reef based off of the amount of sharks that live there? The healthier the reef, the more sharks.”
Darcy knows Tony had to have looked the fact up on their ride over to the museum. His interests were too specific for him to just know that, and it makes Darcy love him just a little bit more.
“You delight me,” Darcy tells him honestly.
Tony blushes and waves off her comment, so used to thinking the worst of himself that he can’t see just how amazing he truly is.
He pulls more random facts out of his head the more they wonder throughout the day, and Darcy feels content deep down in her bones.
✨✨✨
Sam highlights the entire square for the Monday he chooses in neon orange highlighter and writes his name in bubble letters right underneath the spaceship he draws.
(He’s a terrible artist, just like Clint. The spaceship looks like a deformed chocolate chip cookie. She loves it and is a little disappointed when he tells her it’s a rollercoaster and not little green men coming for a visit.)
He takes her to the beach and slathers her in almost a whole bottle of sunscreen, makes sure that he pays attention to the tops of her shoulders and the little roll of fat that pudges out above the waistband of her bottoms.
“I’m gonna fry to a crisp,” Darcy laughs happily.
Sam just shakes his head at her and lets her smooth sunscreen on his back before racing him to the water and splashing in up to her knees.
“Do you think mermaids are real?” Sam asks, reaching out a hand to flick water on her face.
Darcy piles her hair up on the top of her head and half-asses her ponytail around it.
“I think that it would be stupid to assume they don’t exist when so much of the ocean hasn’t been explored yet,” Darcy says with a shrug. She bobs along with the waves and Sam steadies her with a hand on her waist. “But I also don’t think they’d look like what we think they do. They’re probably a lot scarier than pretty.”
Sam hums low in his throat and leads her out to deeper water, lets her climb up his body when it hits her neck and barely reaches his chest.
He supports her weight with an arm around her waist and she lizard basks in the warm sunlight.
“What about Nessie? Think that’s real?”
Darcy squints her eyes against the sun rays reflected on the water and shakes her head at him.
“You ever seen a whale penis?”
Sam gives her a horrified look and she struggles not to laugh at the poor thing.
“Look it up when we get home. Because all I’m sayin’ is that Nessie looks real similar to a whale penis. Like, it’s uncanny,” Darcy says cheerfully.
“I kind of regret asking you that,” Sam admits, and Darcy can’t really blame him.
She kisses him to make up for it and they stay in the water until Darcy feels her skin start to burn, a slow heat that means she’ll be lobster red in a few short hours.
It’s perfect.
✨✨✨
Natasha lays claim to her Saturday, writes her name in a glittery teal with a pretty flourish.
Darcy dresses in comfortable clothes and slips her worn-in vans on her feet when Natasha shows up in her kitchen, lets Natasha braid her hair back and out of her face.
Natasha has bleached hair this time and it’s tucked under a ratty ball cap she’s probably stolen from Clint.
She’s beautiful and Darcy feels lucky that she gets to see her like this, at the between stages of her covers that are more Natasha than the Black Widow would ever be.
She kisses the backs of Natasha’s hands and slips her oversized bag over her shoulder, lets Natasha guide her down the sidewalk until they’re in the thrift store and sorting through ugly sweaters and secondhand sundresses.
“This?” Natasha asks, holding up a dress with gaudy gems along the neckline. It’s a pale yellow and not even Natasha could make it look good.
“Maybe something in this last decade,” Darcy laughs, and Natasha grumbles at her but she puts it back.
There’s no rhyme or reason to their shopping trip, there never has been, but Darcy talks Natasha in to trying on a pale green slip dress; the silky material clinging all of the right places.
Darcy can see her wearing it on a picnic, a hard loved book in her hand while the clouds above her head float gently across the sky.
“You’re beautiful,” Darcy whispers, and Natasha blushes all the way down to her chest.
Darcy knows she only thinks she’s beautiful when she has a gun in her hand, the perfect killing doll that the Red Room made her to be, but Darcy likes to tell it to her anyway.
✨✨✨
Bruce blocks out her Friday with his name, written in practical black ink.
(Darcy finds her sheet of stickers and goes to town on it, little ducks and kittens overlapping the ends of the letters. She thinks it’s a vast improvement.)
He shows up at her door in a suit and he helps her slip in to a red evening gown, a slit on the side clean up to her hip.
He waits patiently while she piles her hair up to show off the deep plunge in the back and holds her compact steady so she can paint her lips a cherry red.
They go to a ridiculously high end restaurant that she feels a little too trashy for, the host sweeping his eyes up and down her body like he’s trying to find a reason to turn them away.
Darcy gives him a tight smile when he shows them to their table and Bruce sits right next to her instead of on the other side of the booth.
“I think that if we order off the kids menu and pretend we don’t speak English we might have fun here,” Bruce whispers, and Darcy can’t help the snort that escapes her.
“Chicken strips and sprite?”
Bruce grins at her and politely declines a waitress that comes over with a bottle of wine. It’s probably horridly expensive and outrageously delicious, but they’re gonna cause a fuss now and they can’t do that if they’re actually enjoying the place.
They order chicken strips and mac and cheese and sprite, and the waitress winks at them before putting their order in.
The food comes out in record time and Darcy can see the host whispering furiously at their waitress, waiving his hand in their direction.
“Ready to fake some Polish?” Darcy murmurs, and Bruce does just that when the host marches over to their table and tells them that there’s been a mixup and that their table has actually been reserved.
Darcy would feel bad for him, but he’s kind of a dick.
“Ten minutes to finish your food and then you’re out,” the host sniffs. “Or I’ll have to call the police for the disturbance you’re causing.”
It takes them twenty-five minutes to finish their food, and Bruce signs a few napkins when the police show up.
Darcy leaves their waitress a hefty tip and they cackle the entire walk back to the Tower, their hands linked together.
It’s probably the most fun she’s had that week.
✨✨✨
Steve decorates her Saturday square and doesn’t even write his name on it.
(Absolutely nobody should be able to make such beautiful art with fucking gel pens but he’s made an entire mountain scene and it’s breathtaking.)
He takes her hiking and she wears one of his shirts, knots the excess at the top of her biker shorts and has on her ratty sneakers.
“How much longer until the top?” Darcy pants.
She loves hiking, but god she always forgets how much she actually sucks at it.
“We’re halfway there,” Steve promises, and Darcy would settle in and honestly complain but it’s gorgeous out and she’s in too good of a mood.
Until a snake slithers out from underneath a log, black scales rippling in the light, and then she’s screaming and running away for dear life; leaving Steve to fend for himself.
“You left me to die!” Steve yells after her, and she can hear him running. It doesn’t take long for his longer legs to catch up. “I can’t believe you left me to die!”
“Only one of us is damn near indestructible, and it ain’t me,” Darcy reminds him, out of breath and leaning against a tree far away from the snake. She shudders and she knows she’ll be hearing about it for the rest of her life, but snakes freak her the fuck out.
“I thought you loved me,” Steve accused, his eyes teasing.
“I do! Which is why I used you as a meat shield, it’s not true love if I don’t try to end your life by accident at least once,” Darcy reasons.
Steve kisses the rest of her argument out of her and Darcy lets him, snakes be damned.
✨✨✨
Bucky writes his name on her Thursday, draws adorable stick figures holding hands right underneath it; complete with one having a robot arm.
(Darcy can tell it’s a robot arm because he’s convinced Steve to draw it. It looks out of place next to the crooked shape of stick Darcy, but it’s adorable and she loves it.)
He takes her to the park and they sit on a bench to people watch, eyes hidden behind sunglasses.
“How many of them do you think didn’t wash their hands after using the bathroom?” Darcy asks, nodding her head at a group of tourists looking at a map in confusion.
Bucky glares at her over his sunglasses and takes a bite out of his hot dog instead of answering her.
“All I’m saying is people are gross,” Darcy shrugs.
She takes a bite of her own hot dog and points to a small group of teenage girls sitting in the grass under a tree. They’re passing around a single water bottle with the label torn off and she’s absolutely certain they’re getting day drunk.
“Skipping class to avoid failing a test,” Bucky says around a bite of his food. “Or pregaming for a party later tonight.”
“I dunno about it.” Darcy squints at them. “I think one’s crying. Gotta be getting over a breakup.”
Bucky shakes his head and accepts the rest of the hot dog she hands him, finishing it in two bites. “Now why would a group of dames be doin’ that in a park when they could be doin’ it in the privacy of their own homes?”
“They look about fifteen, so they’re probably tryin’ not to get caught,” Darcy explains. “Plus, sunshine. It’s been proven that sunlight improves your mood.”
They settle in to a comfortable silence and watch the world pass by them.
“I think he’s a serial killer,” Darcy whispers, motions towards a man in a trench coat and seriously greasy hair. “Or a flasher.”
Bucky wraps his arm around her shoulder and she settles against his body, presses a kiss to his stubble covered jaw.
“You know, somethin’ ain’t right in that head of yours,” Bucky teases.
He turns out to be a flasher and Bucky chases him down the sidewalk, sits on his back until the police arrive.
“I think we might need a new place to people watch,” Bucky admits after he walks back towards the bench he left her on.
Darcy kind of has to agree.