Chapter Text
"Son," Darcy says, staring down in disbelief at the pink, sticky disaster that is splashed across her blouse. "Of. A. Bitch."
Did she mention her blouse is silk? And never-before worn (by her, at least?) And technically not in her budget even on clearance? Because, yeah. All of that, so really, it's less disbelief and more horror.
Even better, the whole mess is her own fault. She knows better than to try to answer emails with one hand while she's carrying her lunch tray with the other, even if she hadn't sprung for a rejuvenating strawberry milkshake to shake off the doldrums of too many status meeting calls. She's just going to have to chalk it up to Monday and work out an appropriate consequence for her stupidity later. (Actually, she figures she can just hang the ruined blouse on the wall of her (tiiiiiny) apartment so she can 'enjoy' the view while she sits at home and doesn't spend any money.)
At least the guy whose back she'd blindly walked into had been spared any mess. From the look of him, he's one of the grad student/lab rats and Darcy knows they have enough to deal with just from trying to keep up with the head geeks. Darcy waves him off and gets herself out of the cashier's line to go find the nearest bathroom to see if there's anything she can salvage.
Of course, Gaston (NB: Not actually his name, but it works better in a professional setting than The Dickwad From Marketing), who'd taken Darcy not wanting a second date as a threat to his social standing (hell, she hadn't exactly wanted a first date, but she and Jane had been new to the facility and she'd been a little lonely, honest mistake) is smirking at her from two steps away.
"Tell me, Lewis," he says, grinning like an ape (which is just insulting to the simian species in Darcy's opinion) along the rest of his group of slavering idiots/zombies/friends, "does your mil--"
"If the next words out of your mouth involve 'milkshake' or 'yard,' I will taze you until you piss yourself," Darcy snarls. Evidently, she has reached some sort of perfect storm of not-giving-a-shit, because he actually stops talking and the entire group just sort of backs away until she whirls and storms off. She's sure the twitter and snapchat and vine uploads are in full process, and god, she doesn't even want to think about periscope. Her only saving grace might be that Fury probably has an edict against photo/video shot inside the facility. She'll just keep thinking that anyway.
Fortunately, the Ladies room off the cafeteria is empty. Unfortunately, the spill is even worse than she'd feared. She stares at her reflection in the mirror and really, just wants to cry. There's no way she can go back out like this, but it'll take hours to get home and changed and back, and see above, re: no fucking money to go buy even a crappy t-shirt.
"Okay, Lewis," Darcy says to her reflection. "Get a grip and think."
She considers her options as she peels the shirt off and wets some paper towels to start getting the stickiness off her skin. Jane probably has an extra lab coat Darcy can borrow. It'll look stupid, but Jane tends to wear them oversized, so there's a chance it'll button over Darcy's chest and not be indecent. It's at least something, Darcy decides.
"Okay, odds on Jane actually having her phone turned on and near her body?" Darcy asks her reflection. "Yeah, not good." Before she can fish her phone out of her purse, there's a knock at the door. "Go away," Darcy sings out. She's actually kind of proud she managed not to use any profanity.
"C'mon, Darce," Clint calls. "It's just me."
"I appreciate the support, but I'm not putting this damn shirt back on, so let me text Jane and try to figure something out."
"I got you covered," Clint says. "Unlock the door."
Darcy seriously doubts that—aside from his field gear, his wardrobe basically consists of UnderArmor tight enough that there's no way she could get her boobs in it, and torn up t-shirts with holes in strategically bad places—but maybe she can fake her way up to Jane's lab with one of his jackets.
"Fine," she sighs, and flips the deadbolt. He opens the door just enough to slide inside, which Darcy appreciates, since she really isn't all that keen on flashing anyone walking by outside. Flashing the guy with whom she is currently fuckbuddying (and okay, maybe a little more than that, but they haven't actually, y'know, talked about things yet) is another story, but even that's not going her way, as it is definitely not a sexy-bra day.
Judging by the slow once-over he's giving her, he doesn't seem to care, but Darcy does have standards.
"I missed the action, but yeah, you really did a number on this," Clint says, picking up the damned blouse and eyeing it with a semi-professional eye (Darcy has seen some of the shit he's come back covered in from the weirder Avengers' calls, so if he's impressed, she guesses she really did it up right.)
"Thanks, I hadn't noticed," she snips back at him, crossing her arms and glaring.
"But you're all cleaned up," he says with a mock frown. "Here I was, all primed to help out—"
"Wait, am I really so pathetic you feel like you have to set me up for the 'always a day late and a dollar short' crack?" Darcy asks.
"Pathetic is not really the word I had in mind." Clint smirks cheerfully at her and she rolls her eyes. (Hey, snark is the lifeblood of their relationship. It just is what it is.) "Okay," Clint says. "As much as I hate to cover you up right now, I brought you this." He holds out a plastic shopping bag. "You left it at my place last month–I stuck it in my gear, but kept forgetting to give it to you--"
"Ohhh," Darcy says, snatching the bag out of his hands and all but waving the black t-shirt she finds in it. "You totally get a pass the next time you forget I'm waiting for you 'cause you're down on the range."
"Don't think I won't take you up on that," Clint warns.
"I know you will." Darcy pulls the shirt over her head, and in the first break she's caught yet, it's not even a bad match for the skirt she's wearing. Plus, it smells a little like Clint from where it's been tucked in with his gear—the warm leather of his arm guards under the sharp metallic bite of his arrows, topped off with mint from the gum he chews when he's on the range. Darcy can totally deal with wrapping herself up in that (also, she acknowledges that liking it as much as she does means she probably should take the hint and talk to him about what she thinks they both already know, but… One crisis at a time.) "We probably won't make it 'til the end of the week before you're gonna need to."
She picks up the ruined blouse and turns on the water in the sink. It's probably hopeless, but she should try—
"Ho, wait, wait," Clint says, snatching the blouse out of her hands. "Nat says not to do anything to it, just get it to her cleaner, the sooner, the better." He drops it into the plastic bag. "I got it—it's your conference call day, right?"
"Right," Darcy manages to answer, a little off-balance because nowhere in her life plan did the goal of having an Avenger dropping off her laundry appear. To be honest, just hearing that he knows her schedule is kinda unreal. Seeing as how it's all happening, though, it's definitely time to allow an exception to her No-Romantic-Shit-At-The-Office rule. "Thank you." She leans up and presses a kiss to the side of his mouth. "Down payment for actual thanks later."
"Excellent," Clint says. "Cause I gotta tell you that watching you threaten Dickwad kinda turned me on."
"Pfft," Darcy says, waving airily. "What doesn't turn you on, Barton?"
"About you?" Clint traces his thumb over Darcy's cheekbone, which does completely unfair things to Darcy's breathing. "There isn't much that doesn't turn me on," he says, to which Darcy feels the only proper response is a for-real kiss, one that's slow and unhurried, where she's pressed close with her arms wrapped his neck and his mouth's teasing hers open so he can lick into her. It's pretty fucking spectacular, at least until Darcy's phone bings at her and reminds them where they are.
"For sure picking this up later tonight," Clint tells her with one final brush of his mouth on hers, and leaves her to neaten up her hair and get her breathing under control. She's still a little flushed when she follows a few minutes later, but seriously, is she really supposed to care when the reason is so excellent?
Yeah, Darcy doesn't think so.