Steve (Dances)
Darcy learned about the dance Steve was supposed to have with Peggy one night when Steve and Darcy were both suffering from insomnia and bumped into each other in the common area. Jarvis was playing music from Darcy's "Happy Feel Better" playlist. Darcy had an eclectic taste in music, so the playlist jumped all over as far as genre went. There was pop, rap, swing, folk, a little country, rock, and a few other things. The common thread was that all the songs made Darcy feel happy, comforted, generally better. Some she liked to sing along to. Some she liked to dance to. Some she liked to do both.
This particular night, Darcy was jamming out and making banana muffins. Her hair was frizzing out of a messy bun and she had on a unicorn onesie and her purple beanie from Nat. Banana muffins were a thing of beauty in her opinion. She was making a few batches of plain, some with cherries, some with chocolate chips, some with both, and she was contemplating making a drizzle as an optional topping for some of the plain batches. She was just about shouting along to one of her favorite Mumford and Sons songs when she realized she had company.
Steve had seated himself at one of the counter stools. He was wearing a navy thermal shirt and plaid pajama bottoms and his hair was damp from a shower. If she had to guess, she would bet he'd been trying to outrun his insomnia and had just gotten back only to find it waiting for him in his bed. He was watching her wistfully. She continued singing and working on her current batch. However, once she got it in the oven, she started a pot of milk on the stove to fix them both some cocoa. She asked Jarvis to lower the volume on her tunes and plopped a mug in front of Steve while she sipped from her own.
They both sipped their cocoa and Steve told her in a quiet, sad tone about his days with the Howling Commandos. He talked the most about Bucky and Peggy. She put him on cherry chopping duty when he finished his cocoa and just listened. Steve might chronologically be in his nineties, but she didn't really count the time he had been frozen. To him, it had only been a short time since he was in the midst of his fellow soldiers in World War II. He had lost some to war, the rest of everyone he had ever known he had lost in the blink of an eye for him but to a lifetime's worth of time for them.
Steve had been just starting to try to move on without Bucky, his best friend and better half, when he crashed the plane. Bucky was outgoing and good with "the dames." Steve had always admired his confidence. He had been trying to picture what his life looked like without Bucky. He had wanted to embody the best parts of Bucky so that Bucky could live on in him. Steve didn't know how to dance or charm people to put a smile on their faces, but he wanted to learn to honor his friend's memory. He didn't know what that looked like in this day and age, but he was thinking it probably looked a lot like what Darcy was doing in the kitchen. In fact, he was pretty sure it looked a lot like what Darcy did on a daily basis. She took care of the Avengers the same way Bucky had always taken care of him. She tried to support the people who were so busy trying to save everyone else, that they sometimes forgot how to save themselves.
This is the picture Steve painted for Darcy at 3 AM, baking muffins in the Avengers communal kitchen. Darcy was sniffling by the time he was done, but trying not to show how much Steve's description of her touched her heart. She even let him eat some of her muffins straight from the pan without yelling at him to let them cool first. When Steve asked Darcy to teach him to dance, she could not refuse. He was like a big, sad golden retriever but with blue eyes.
The problem was, dance could mean a lot of things. Darcy pointed this out to Steve and asked if he had a preference. Steve, bless his giant dorky heart, told her he liked the informal way she had been dancing before. Darcy soon learned that Steve was only familiar with the music he had been exposed to in movies during movie nights, and whatever the others had been listening to. Friday nights became their lesson night whenever they were both in the tower. Darcy started by giving Steve a playlist of some of her favorites in each genre to listen to during the week. Then they would talk about how he felt about each playlist and she might point him in the direction of similar songs to what he liked or certain artists. Once they had narrowed down what Steve liked, Darcy and Jarvis made him his own Happy Playlist. A third playlist was made that combined both of their happy songs for their Friday night lessons. Darcy started by working on Steve's rhythm with simple things like rocking, tapping his foot, or drumming his fingers while he helped her bake.
Then Darcy worked on finding where Steve most felt the rhythm. He was definitely lost when it came to what he should be doing with his arms. He would either flail them awkwardly or over-correct and move them too stiffly. Darcy almost wet herself when she caught him doing robot arms one day, which led her to discover he had been watching Youtube dance videos during the week. Steve seemed to most feel his rhythm in his hips, swaying and bopping alongside Darcy at the counter.
Next, Darcy taught him some different ways of dancing with a partner. They giggled their way through twirls and swayed together while she baked brownies one Friday.
Darcy broached the topic of swing dancing, and while it made Steve nostalgic and a little sad, he still wanted to learn. Darcy wasn't an expert, but she could teach him some basic steps. Steve took it upon himself to learn some fancier moves from Youtube which he then taught to her.
Finally, Darcy proposed that they take their show on the road. Or, in other words, that they start going out dancing on Friday nights. Steve was nervous but excited, and that is how Fridays became their night to go out to various clubs that one or the other found. Sometimes they went to little places with great live music, and they would make their own dance floor between tables. Sometimes, they dressed in their vintage best and went out to swing clubs were they picked up fancier moves than Youtube could teach them. Sometimes, they went to dark, sweaty clubs with flashing lights and let the press of like-minded bodies and pounding music erase any stressful thoughts.
The more music and dancing that Steve familiarized himself with, the more comfortable he seemed in his own skin. His sleep improved so gradually, he wasn't sure when he went from counting the rare nights that he slept well to counting the rare nights that nightmares chased him from his rooms.
Darcy had a hard time deciding what she wanted to crochet for Steve. His super soldier serum kept him running hot, so he rarely bothered with anything cozy for warmth. However, she was browsing Pinterest late one night when she found the perfect gift. She crocheted him a throw pillow in the shape of a music note, and added a jaunty crocheted bow tie in the same color as the one Steve liked to wear when they went swing dancing. Steve thanked her profusely, and sent her a bouquet of daisies in the same red as the bow tie the next day.