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“Hey,” Whispered Darcy, “Who’s tall, blonde and confused over there?” Well, whisper was probably the wrong word, she didn’t so much whisper as speak under her breath in a tone that was probably just low enough to not reach the tall blond standing in front of Dr. Banner’s lab.
Jane looked up from a number-riddled spreadsheet at Darcy’s question. “What?” was her articulate response.
Darcy sighed and nodded at the crisply dressed soldier-type clearly visible through the glass walls of Dr. Foster’s lab. “Who is that?” She hooked her thumb at him.
Jane followed the directing digit “Oh. I don’t know.”
Her eyes immediately fell back down to her spreadsheet of numerical gibberish. Apparently tall blonde hotties, built like particularly cut line backers, didn’t interest her enough to divert her from data analysis for more than 3 seconds. Well, maybe it was more accurate to say that only one tall blond hottie interested Jane. And he was stranded somewhere near the far side of the galaxy waiting for Jane to fix his magic rainbow bridge thing so he could come back and they could have lots of sex and babies. So, with that kind of incentive, it was really no wonder that it was nearly impossible to get Jane to stop with the science long enough to eat and occasionally catch a few hours of sleep. It really should have come as no surprise to Darcy that the physicist had no interest in checking out the man meat of SHIELD. Even a specimen as delicious as the one in the hall.
“Right, Well, I’m gonna take a coffee break.” Darcy relocated a stack of binders from her lap to the already loaded desk in front of her and stood tugging her hoodie straight. SHIELD was full of hot, jackbooted-thug types, and she was generally more than happy to leer at them from within the confines of Jane’s fishbowl of a lab. Rarely does she initiate any kind of interaction with them however, as most are pretty severe and more than a little bit terrifying. But this guy, he was in stark contrast to the average SHIELD agent.
For starters, he looked different. He was not wearing the standard issue Men-In-Black suit. Nor was he wearing the rarer, but equally SHIELD appropriate, leather catsuit. Instead, he was dressed in some neatly pressed khakis and a crisply starched blue plaid button down. Add to that his, lack of confidence and seemingly sweet demeanor, clearly visible to Darcy even across a crowded lab and through a sheet of bullet proof glass. He was unlike any SHIELD employee she had ever observed. And she observed pretty much everyone who walked down their impressively transparent hall.
To sum up, he was incongruent, and that interested her.
“Lost?”
The man in question, or at least, the man currently featured in Darcy’s questions, turned and looked surprised to see a small woman in casual street clothes standing at his elbow. She didn’t exactly fit into the SHIELD mold either. But no one had complained about her clothing choices so far, and Jane just didn’t care what she wore, so she saw no reason to spend her hard earned cash on a government-lab-appropriate wardrobe.
After a moment of staring at her he glanced at the door clearly labeled “DR. BANNER” then back at Darcy. “No. I don’t think so. I was supposed to meet Dr. Banner here at 3pm.”
He held up his left hand displaying for her the watch that clearly showed the big hand hovering over the 3 indicating that it was 15 minutes past the designated meeting time.
Darcy peered into the dark lab and then looked back up at blonde and confused “Oh yeah, Dr. B. is probably in his quiet room meditating. There was a minor freak out over here about half an hour ago. Some lab assistant dropped something fragile and important.” She paused for a breath and noticed he was staring at her with brow furrowed in concern.
“Oh, He didn’t go all green and huge or anything, but his eyes kind of did that glowy thing they do when he’s stressed. And people started rushing around in panic. But Dr. B. took a couple of breaths and walked out. No big incident.”
She waved her hand flippantly and nodded with the sense of finality of a story well told, before adding, “He probably won’t be back for a while though. When he needs to zen out he is usually gone for a couple of hours.”
Blond and slightly less confused nodded and looked a bit at a loss. “I guess I should wait for him to get back.” He turned to lean against the wall of glass beside Dr. Banner’s door, apparently preparing to wait, possibly for hours.
Darcy blinked and shook her head. “Don’t be dumb.” She ducked back into Jane’s lab for a moment to grab a sticky pad and a sharpie. “We’ll leave a note and then you can buy me a coffee. There is no point in standing around waiting for an indefinite period of time.”
She scribbled: “Getting coffee, be back soon.” on the neon pink sticky pad, ripped off the top sheet, and slapped it on the door. “Here,” she handed him the sharpie, “You can sign it if you want.”
“Er, ok.” He took the pen and wrote a very neat “Steve” beneath her scribbled chicken scratch.
“Steve huh? Nice to meet you Steve. I’m Darcy. Lets go get some caffeine. I know a great little place around the corner, barely any hipsters.” She grabbed his hand and tugged him down the hall towards the elevators.
He followed after her looking more lost than he had when she first noticed him.
And that is how Darcy met Captain America.