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They’re at one of Tony’s stupidly expensive soirées. Actually, it’s not that stupid; that might just be the vodka talking. Darcy’s pretty sure it’s the vodka. (It may be stupidly expensive but that doesn’t mean there aren’t screwdrivers.)
“They’re called greyhounds when they’re made of grapefruit juice,” Tony informs her. He doesn’t even look flushed, which is ridiculous, because he’s been showing Steve around and generally being arm candy for the last hour, and anybody who remains in close proximity to Steve for more than ten minutes tends to end up rather pink, partly because Steve’s just that good a person and partly because hello, he’s what, seven feet of stupidly hot supersoldier.
“You’re talking,” Tony says. “You should probably know that I will never, ever scrub what you just said out of my brain.”
“Oh, please,” Darcy says, swaying a little. She’s on the balcony. When did she end up on the balcony? Which balcony is she even on? Mysteries she may never solve. “Every time he walks past you wearing workout pants it’s like your head is on a swivel.”
“So is yours,” Tony says. He takes a sip from something that is horribly, nauseatingly pink. He even seems to be enjoying it. Darcy loses her train of thought for a moment.
“Yes,” she says, “but I don’t go around asking him on dates.”
“They aren’t dates,” Tony says, a little weakly.
“Please,” she says again. “If I took him out for -” she takes a hand off the rail to count “- shawarma, dim sum, halal, pizza, sushi, shawarma, quiche - quiche, really? - and shawarma, because apparently you two fucking bonded over shawarma or something, I’m pretty sure you’d be calling it a date. Dates. Dating.”
“Dating,” Tony says, and then “we’re so not dating, okay. I always buy flowers, or drinks or something first.”
“You bought him half the food in Manhattan,” Darcy says. “Not to mention I’m pretty sure he had a cocktail. That totally counts as buying him a drink.”
“One day,” Tony says, deadly serious, “you’re going to go over to the dark side, probably because they offer you cookies, and we’re all going to be in such deep shit.”
“You should probably kiss him now,” Darcy says. “You can even have the balcony. See? Leaving the balcony for you two. To kiss on.” She weaves towards the glass door leading back inside, and looks back just before she reaches it, which is presumably why she then walks straight into somebody, headfirst.
“Tasha,” Tony says, sounding infinitely happier. “You haven’t got a date, right?”
Tasha - Natasha - Black fucking Widow - glares daggers at him. “No,” she says, “because you decided it would be fun to play beer pong with Clint and an obscene amount of tequila. Your point was?”
“Bruce is inside somewhere, right?” Tony goes on cheerfully. By this point both Darcy and Natasha are literally trying to stab him with their brains. It presumably isn’t working, because he’s still upright and, more horrifically, still talking. “He’s got a drunkenness thingy somewhere. Ask him for it. Then stab Darcy with it.”
“Then what?” Darcy says.
“Natasha introduced herself to me by injecting me in the neck,” Tony says. “I thought she was going to sell my kidneys or something.”
“Good times,” Natasha interjects. “I look back on them fondly.” It could just be Darcy’s imagination, or she could be eyeing the side of Tony’s neck. Either one works just fine for her. She stumbles a little to the side, and Natasha sighs and catches her. “Come on,” she says, and drags them back into the press of the party.
(Soirées never stay soirées for long when Tony Stark is in charge.)
++
Natasha does introduce herself to Darcy by injecting her in the neck, though Darcy would like to think she does it gently. Darcy, in return, introduces herself to Natasha by going “oh, god” and running for the nearest bathroom, where she then introduces her head to the toilet bowl. As introductions go, it isn’t quite as bad as the time she walked into the hallway (and Clint) in boxers and a bra with, inexplicably, a newspaper hat on.
On the other hand, it isn’t nearly as good as the time Steve threw her over his shoulder and carried her out of a burning building. (Nobody told her that being friends with the Avengers came with the risk of being kidnapped and held hostage every other week or so.) That, muses Darcy, retching miserably, was an introduction she wouldn’t mind repeating.
“Are you done,” says Natasha from outside the stall, “or would you like to finish throwing up your liver? Because I have a Bloody Mary waiting out here, and also a tray of mixed canapés for when you’re quite sure you’ve turned your stomach inside out.”
“God,” Darcy groans. “You know I’m feeling like shit when even I can’t muster up any enthusiasm for finger food.”
There’s a snort, and Darcy can’t tell if it’s schadenfreude or laughter, but either way, pretty cool, because she made the Black Widow amused.
Now she has to figure out how to do it without stripping her stomach lining.
She spits one last time and drags herself upright. Darcy isn’t entirely sure if she feels better or if she just feels bad in a completely new and terrible way. When she opens the stall door, Natasha hands her a damp paper towel and then her drink. “You look like Thor dragged you through a forest,” she says, charitable as always.
“You say that like you know,” Darcy retorts.
“Remember that event they were calling Tunguska Two?” Natasha says. “I do.”
“Wait, so, what, Thor and Loki fucked their way through the forest?” Darcy says, and then stops, because Natasha looks like she’s contemplating stabbing Darcy in the neck again.
“There was an incident,” she says, delicately, “involving Tony Stark being a monumental asshole and deciding to take it outside with the God of Thunder.”
“Ah,” Darcy says wisely. “So they were cockfighting over Loki.”
“It’s all about the incest to you, isn’t it?” Natasha says, which is when Pepper comes in and says “Tony wants to know if you’re having sex all over the bathroom yet,” so they exit stage left as gracefully and non-post-coitally as possible.
++
Two weeks go by and Darcy doesn’t get kidnapped, so it’s no surprise when halfway through the third week, while she’s out at a Starbucks, the barista grows fangs and hits her over the head with a pump bottle of caramel syrup.
She wakes up considerably stickier, though it doesn’t smell terrible. The ants will love it, she thinks, from where she’s stashed halfway up a fucking tree in what looks like Central Park. A tree, seriously. The monster of the week is some sort of space squirrel; there’s two of them, perched in a tree overlooking the lake, and then there’s her, sticking to bits of bark and leaves and things and a little too worried about the fifty-foot drop to consider moving.
Darcy giggles. It’s possible that she’s also slightly concussed.
“God,” a voice says right behind her left year. “You really have no idea when you’re talking, do you?”
Darcy nearly jumps straight out of the fucking tree, but an arm catches her by the waist. “You’re a jackass,” she says, “have I mentioned?” The world lurches a bit and she groans. “Also, can we have at least one conversation where I’m not about to throw up on you?”
“Possibly,” Natasha says, and when Darcy turns around she’s actually hanging upside-down, like a bat. A bat from hell, Darcy thinks, and giggles again.
“I’m going to tie you to the tree so you don’t fall out while I go and deal with those,” Natasha says, jerking her head towards the bushy-tailed, bright-eyed, and possibly mutant aliens by the lake.
“Huh,” Darcy says, “usually I don’t ask about that until the second date at least.” It’s the nausea, she swears up and down.
“All right,” Natasha says, looping cord around Darcy’s waist and crossing it over her chest and under her arms. “What about - you don’t fall out of the tree or throw up on some unfortunate passerby, and I’ll ask you on a date where I won’t stab you in the neck and you won’t vomit.”
“Deal,” Darcy says, and watches as Natasha swings herself up into the leaves and vanishes in a rustle of green and black. She closes her eyes - just for a while - and listens to the birds, the traffic in the distance, the sounds of a city that should not fucking include alien squirrels.
She drifts off, probably, because the branch she’s sitting on shakes at some later point (minutes? hours?) and she opens her eyes to Natasha, three inches away.
“If you kiss me I’m probably going to throw up on you, and then we won’t be able to go on a date,” she says.
“Oh my god,” says a faint, tinny voice, “I heard that.”
Natasha grimaces and lifts a hand to her earpiece. “My comm is not a speakerphone,” she says. “One day you’re going to get me killed doing that.”
“Oh please,” Tony says, echoing. “You’ll probably scare me to death first.”
“Tony,” says another voice, “you’re being really rude. If they’re on a date you shouldn’t be intruding.”
“Oh god,” Darcy says, “Steve?”
“Looks like we’re going on that date,” Natasha says, and starts unwrapping the cord.
++
Darcy has to make some mental revisions to her list of Best Ways to Meet Somebody (because seriously, “you can call me Tasha” has got to be pretty high up on her list of Meeting Somebody).
Pretty high on that list is getting carried down a tree by Black Widow, not least because, sensible and small-calibre-bulletproof and waterproof and nonconducting though her suit may be, it offers a fantastic view from the vantage point of a fireman’s carry.
Also reasonably high on the list is going to a tiny cafe in Chinatown and watching Tasha say something that could, for all Darcy knows, be “your mother is a bus”. It’s probably more like “bring us ambrosia”, because the soup buns are fucking delicious. Tasha offers to teach Darcy Cantonese. Darcy offers, in return, to gargle acid and save herself the trouble, because she’s a) tone-deaf and b) distracted by soup buns.
Probably at the top of the list, however, displacing Steve Rogers’ uniformed ass, is the way Natasha smiles when she kisses Darcy good night.
“You should so come in for coffee,” Darcy decides.
“Given the amount of caffeine you consume,” Natasha says, “it would probably actually be coffee.”
“Spoiler alert,” Darcy says, “it so isn’t coffee. It’s called I have a new couch since the last one caught fire, would you like to help me desecrate it?”
Natasha smiles, and that’s the top of the list in a whole new way.
++
“So,” Tony says, sitting down next to Darcy the next day.
“Nope,” Darcy says, grinning.
“Tony,” Steve chides, curling his hand around the back of Tony’s neck.
“So,” Darcy says, grin getting wider.
“Nope,” Tony and Steve say in unison.
“That’s what I thought,” Darcy says smugly, and Natasha, passing behind all of them, smirks and thumps the coffeemaker into action. Darcy smiles at her over Tony’s head.
“Ugh,” Tony says, “I’m sorry I asked, I can already feel the cavities forming.”
“Tony!” Steve says, chiding.
“Coffee,” Natasha says, and narrowly avoids the frenzy that happens whenever Tony and Darcy are both within five feet of hot fresh caffeine.
“I can’t believe you,” Natasha and Steve say together.
Darcy and Tony smile, and for once, nobody needs to say anything.