Fic: Things That Shine, 4/?

[coffeebuddha]

Title: Things That Shine
Author: coffeebuddha
Rating: PG-13/FRT
Characters/Pairings: Darcy Lewis/Bruce Banner, background Jane Foster/Thor, background Tony Stark/Steve Rogers, background Clint Barton/Phil Coulson
Word Count: 1906 this part, 6256 overall
Disclaimer: Nothing belongs to me.
Summary: Darcy was seven the first time she fell in love. The second time it happens, she's twenty-five, hung over as all get out, and has a real chance of getting shot, which is actually more alarming than the giant green guy who's holding her hostage.
Notes: Sequel to Living a Bangles Song.
Part One / Part Two / Part Three

It takes six more lunches and three spontaneous visits to Banner’s lab before he notices that Darcy’s still calling him ‘Dr. Banner’ on the rare occasions she doesn’t default to a pet or nickname.

“You don’t have to call me that, you know,” he says. His ears are pink, Darcy notices.

“Do what,” she asks, because she’s distracted by the ears and the pink and the general adorableness. It’s not her fault; that shit is super distracting.

He clears his throat and trades her grilled pineapple chunks for his chocolate humus. “You can call me Bruce.” A barely noticeable twist of his fingers that she doesn’t have to be a behavior expert to know is an almost controlled nervous tick. “I don’t mind.”

Darcy grins at him and steals back one of her pineapple chunks to dip in the humus. “Sure thing, Bruce.”

The pink spreads to his cheeks. Adorable.

---

 “I’m not used to being on this side of this conversation or, well, either side of it really, so I’m warning you in advance that this might get rough.”

Darcy jumps, one hand scrambling to flip her browser from Tumblr to the ‘Please Don’t Blow Up The Break Room Again’ powerpoint she’s supposed to be putting together for Coulson while the other sweeps a pile of loose paperwork over her half finished crossword puzzle.  Her coffee tips over, and her resulting lunge to try and grab it ends up scattering papers, post-its, and pens everywhere. A finger--calloused and grease stained with a thin half crescent of black grime embedded under the nail--hooks into the edge of her mug and steadies it before more than a couple of drops can spill, and when Darcy looks up to grin her thanks, she has to pause and blink, because holy shit, that’s Tony Stark.

(It’s not hero worship or anything. It’s just that in all the times Stark’s been in and out of the office, he’s never given her any more notice than the occasional casual leer at her chest. So this? It’s a little different.)

“Conversation,” Darcy asks dumbly. God, his sunglasses are cool. She wonders if she could pull them off. Maybe he’ll let her try them on. Maybe this whole thing will go badly and she’ll start crying and he’ll let her have them. Darcy starts thinking about super sad things like melted popsicles and Halloween costumes that don’t look even a little like what they’re supposed to be just in case she needs to bring the tears. “Were we talking about something?”

Stark hitches his hip up on the edge of her desk and gives her a definite once-over over the top of his sunglasses. Darcy snaps her fingers and points at her face, rolling her shoulders forward to close her blouse a little bit more, though hell if she’s going to do up another button. Stark smirks at her, unapologetic, and Darcy would be lying if she acted like she doesn’t like him a little more for it.

“Bruce,” Stark says. His posture is all leaning, slumpy casualness, but Darcy gets the feeling he’s anything but.

“Sweet guy,” Darcy offers, since Stark seems to have stalled at Bruce’s name. “A little trouble with anger management, but we all have our bad days, and at least he gives super clear signals on when it’s time to turn and walk away. My first college roommate was kind of like that, except instead of Hulking out, she’d dig into her stash of Easter chocolate. If it was November and she had a Cadbury egg in hand, you got the fuck out of there.”

Stark blinks at her. Why does that keep happening?

“It was frozen,” Darcy adds, because that’s probably what’s giving him pause. “It’s not like she kept a box under the bed or anything. That would just be gross.”

“Mold and ants,” Stark says, and when Darcy nods, he mirrors it. That’s strangely satisfying. She tilts her head to the side, and he does the same. Neat.

“But you wanted to talk about Banner.” She smiles and braces her elbow on her desk to prop her head up on the palm of her hand.

Stark blinks again, seems to shake a little without actually moving at all, and one of his eyebrows is steadily climbing. “The guy’s been through a lot of shit, but he seems to have a soft spot for you,” he says slowly. Darcy tries, and probably fails, to not beam too brightly. “So I want to make certain you’re not going to screw him over.”

Darcy laughs. She can’t help it; Tony Stark acting like someone’s protective father is the most hilarious thing she’s seen all year, and she was there when Fury tripped over his coat when Natasha walked by in a cocktail dress.

“That’s so cute,” she exclaims. “You want to know what my intentions are!”

Stark glares. Or it might be a pout. Maybe a combination. A glout? Plare? Whatever, she’ll think about that later.

“We have lunch,” she says now. There’s a giggle that’s still threatening to bubble up in her throat, but she mostly manages to tamp it down. “I knew a woman once who thought sushi was scandalous, but I promise I haven’t been dipping my California rolls in his wasabi.” Well, not yet, anyway.

Stark’s mouth twitches, probably wants to quirk into a smile, but he forces a serious expression. “Look,” he says. “You’re young, you’re hot--“ Another pointed look at her chest. “--and you could probably pass for normal if you didn’t open your mouth. Be honest with me here. I love the guy, but what’s a girl like you doing with someone like Bruce?”

Darcy frowns and drops her gaze to the finance report she’s been idly curling the corner of for the past several minutes. “He’s not boring,” she finally says. And then, because it’s the truth, “And he has really, really great hair. And have you seen his smile?” Darcy looks up again, warming to her subject, and grips the edge of her desk. “Does that smile not melt you like a marshmallow?” She points at him, because she’s always suspected that Matt Bomer is actually infallible, and she’s definitely feeling more than a little dramatic when it comes to Banner’s smile. “If you say it doesn’t, then you’re lying.”

“It’s a pretty great smile,” Stark concedes graciously.

“Swoon worthy,” Darcy says, and Stark nods thoughtfully. He seems distracted, so she asks, “Can I have your sunglasses?”

“What?” Stark frowns down at her. “No.”

She pouts.

Stark sighs and hands them over.

“So that’s it,” he asks, because apparently even Tony Stark is better at staying on topic than she is, and isn’t that just a little sad. “That’s why you’re hanging out with him?”

Darcy shrugs and pulls out a compact to admire her new sunglasses. Yeah, she can totally pull these off. She snaps the mirror closed and drops it back in her top drawer. “Well, those are the official reasons, yeah.”

“And the unofficial?” There’s a look on Stark’s face that reminds Darcy all of the sudden that he’s kind of a really dangerous dude. “Because if you do anything to break his heart…”

Darcy snorts. She’s never been all that good at appropriate responses to danger. Exhibit A: Thor and her taser. “If I ever break his heart, you can bet I’ll be AWOL and halfway across the world before he can even start smashing. Do I look dumb enough to stay where any of you could find me after I’ve pissed you off?”

Stark starts to open his mouth again and Darcy raises a hand to stop him.

“Look, he’s this really great guy who doesn’t seem to have a lot of friends, and since I like him, I can take advantage of that by bogarting a lot of his free time. There’s no giant conspiracy here.” Darcy swallows, and forces herself to look Stark in the eye. Fuck genuineness. This shit is hard. “If he wants more than that from me, then I’m totally happy to go there, but right now he just seems really lonely and I like making him smile. What’s so wrong with that?”

“Nothing,” Stark says, and his eyes flicker toward her Captain America mug. Huh, Darcy thinks, because that makes a lot of things she’s seen and heard about Stark and the Cap slide together in a way that makes a whole lot more sense.

Darcy smirks, and this is getting far too serious for her taste, so she says, “If I was looking for some quick fling, I’d go after Clint.”

“Coulson would kill you if you tried,” Stark immediately says, but he looks a little less tense around his mouth, and Darcy grins at him.

“I bet he wouldn’t if I let him watch.”

Stark blanches and Darcy laughs and Coulson opens his door to tell them both to get the fuck out for the next hour at least, fucking hell, are they actually serious with this?

---

“I had a strange run in with Dr. Foster earlier,” Bruce says later that day while they’re eating Thai takeout on the ramshackle couch in his lab. It’s a hideous orange plaid, and Darcy generally tries not to think too much about why SHIELD would even have that, because fuck knows Banner didn’t bring it with him.

“Oh?” Darcy tucks her bare toes under Bruce’s thigh, and he passes her a lab report he’s been scanning to place on top of the growing pile on the ground to her left.

“It didn’t really make sense,” Bruce says, and only he could manage to sound apologetic about someone else’s incoherence. Darcy wiggles her toes, and he puts a little more weight on them to pin them down.

“That’s not unusual.” She eats a bite of duck, then stretches to offer another to Bruce, who turns his head to accept the bite without looking away from his papers. “What did she say?”

“Something about the New York Public Library being a nice place for a reception and how she thinks she looks best in jewel tones.” His brow creases in confusion, and Darcy hooks a hand in his elbow to haul herself close enough so that she can easily smooth the lines away with the pad of her thumb.  Bruce looks at her, and his forehead stays smooth despite the slight downturn of his mouth. “There was also something about a ‘sacred bond’ and how what you two have is thicker than blood. Do you know what she meant?”

“It’s Jane,” Darcy says with a shoulder roll that gets a kink out of her neck and could be interpreted as a shrug. “She probably pulled a couple all nighters in a row and had one of her ‘moments’.”

Bruce doesn’t look entirely convinced, but all he says is, “If you say so.” and “Watch the dripping. Watch the dripping!” when Darcy tries to read over his shoulder and accidentally tilts the takeout container a little too much.

A few minutes later, once Bruce is engrossed in his reports again, Darcy pulls out her phone and texts Jane.

It is SO not cool to talk to a girl’s not-boyfriend about wedding shit!!! Crossing a line, there, Foster!

And then a few minutes after that:

But out of curiosity, what kind of waiting list would a place like that have?

Thanks for reading! Feedback is always appreciated. :)