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Sam sat and watched the sun haul itself up over the horizon, the dawn looking as bruised as he felt. If Sam was smart, he'd go look for some ibuprofen and a place to pass out for an hour or seventeen, sleep off the jet lag and the worst of what he suspected was a couple of cracked ribs. Of course, doing that would involve him heading through the living area where Steve was currently engaged in one hell of an argument with Tony Stark—man, if people knew that Captain America could have a mouth like that on him—so it actually seemed like the wiser decision to stay where he was.
Also he'd maybe overestimated his ability to get back up off a couch this low. Damn, his ribs hurt.
Sam was just considering jettisoning the very last of his dignity and rolling off the couch and onto the floor, maybe trying to crawl unnoticed past Cap and Stark, when a tray appeared under his nose. He blinked. It held a glass of water, a bottle of painkillers, a steaming mug of coffee and a breakfast burrito that looked like it had been made with a frankly decadent amount of cheese. Sam's stomach, empty since a hurried sandwich snatched while waiting to board their flight in Frankfurt, let out an embarrassingly loud gurgle.
"If this is a new kind of stealth HYDRA attack," Sam said, looking down at the tray, "you guys are hitting confusing more than menacing, just so you're aware."
"Nah," said a voice, female and unfamiliar. "If this was an attack, I'd have tazed you already."
"Well, that's comforting," Sam said as the tray was deposited in his lap. He looked up to see a young woman perch herself on the arm of the sofa: long, dark hair fell over her shoulder in a messy braid, and she was wearing hipster glasses and a t-shirt that said 'I survived the Stark Industries Company Softball Game 2012 & All I Got Was This Lousy Cliché.' "Thanks."
"You're welcome," she said as Sam shook a couple of pills out into his hand and then knocked them and the water back. "I'm Darcy, by the way."
"Sam Wilson. I'm with—"
Darcy flapped a hand at him. "Yeah, Tony did lots of slo-mo holographic replays of what went down in DC, I know who you are. Kudos on the whole improbable feats of aerial acrobatics, by the way."
Sam raised an eyebrow at her. "That puts you a couple of steps ahead of me, I suppose."
Darcy shrugged. "Welcome to my world. I sort of live here?"
Sam raised his other eyebrow. "Sort of?"
"Technically I'm still paying for a dorm room at NYU," she said. "And it's crunch time on my thesis so really mostly I live in the library and mainline coffee and write about, like, the political consequences of social media responses to half of New York and a big ole chunk of London getting blown up? But it's surprisingly difficult to do that without using swear words and my advisor's getting sort of crotchety with me as is."
"See," Sam said, around a mouthful of burrito. There had to be four different kinds of cheese in here, and the salsa packed enough punch to wipe out his jet lag. He couldn't remember ever tasting anything more beautiful. "You said all that like it's an explanation but it's not."
Darcy rolled her eyes. "Okay, so back in undergrad I signed up for this internship position to take care of my gen-ed science requirement and got to be BFFs with my boss. Only then boom, SHIELD, aliens, my boss hooks up with an alien, months of intergalactic pining, more aliens that blew a lot of shit up, I got to see the seventh-largest city in Norway, was briefly promoted to Senior Intern and now Jane's gestating a ten-pound mini Thor so we're here where it's like moderately safer. Also I don't have to pay to do laundry."
Sam ate another meditative mouthful of burrito. "Scratch that, I'm not sure I want a full explanation."
"You learn swiftly, young padawan," Darcy said, tossing her braid back over her shoulder.
When he drained his mug of coffee, Darcy went out through No Man's Land—things were still going strong, it sounded like, though there were a couple of extra voices in the fray—and fetched Sam back the rest of the pot. "You look like you could use the rest of it," she said. "Caffeine is your only friend when you're a human among superheroes. That and knowing when to duck."
"I'll bear that in mind," Sam said dryly.
Despite the caffeine in his system and the ache in his ribs, it wasn't long before Sam fell asleep right there on the sofa. He woke up to find that the light had shifted clear across the room and the only sound that of the keys clacking as Darcy typed furiously on a laptop. She was glaring at the screen like the thing had offended her personally.
"Hey," she said without looking up at him. "The others have gone out to do something. We can order up dinner if you want it. There's a pretty good Thai place a couple blocks away, and I think Tony has this master pizza maker on retainer."
Sam struggled upright. The inside of his mouth tasted like ass, and his head had that fuzzy feeling that came from sleeping longer than your body was used to, but still not enough to get over a bout of sleep deprivation. "To do... something?"
"Yeah," Darcy said, scrunching up her nose, "I was a little worried about that too, but I figured they'd say if they were going to storm the UN or whatever. Cap said to tell you that he understood you needing a nap because you're not as young as you used to be and travel takes it out of the elderly."
Sam sagged back against the couch, rubbed a hand over his face. Man, he needed a shower and a whole other pot of coffee. "What I don't get is why none of the history books ever said Captain America was a goddamn smartass."
"Congratulations," Darcy said solemnly, "you have officially reached the appropriate level of jadedness for living here."
*****
Sam never did properly move in—DC was his city and no way he was going to give up his apartment—but he spent so much time in Stark Tower that once or twice he seriously considered making it his official mailing address. He did actually cancel his cable service, because the backlog on his DVR was getting ridiculous, and anyway Stark subscribed to channels Sam hadn't even known existed.
"You know there's one on there that just shows videos of cats being adorable," Darcy said one morning. The two of them were sitting on the couch eating cereal while Tony sulked over suit repairs and Steve was having a video conference with the President and the Joint Chiefs in the next room.
Even thinking that was weird.
"I'd say you were playing me," Sam said, continuing to flick through the channels, "but you got a history with this kind of stuff."
"Master of Reddit, ruler of Buzzfeed," Darcy said smugly. "All your obscure internet oddities are belong to me."
Sam grinned.
It had become a thing, the two of them eating breakfast together on the days when Sam had some down-time and Darcy wasn't sleeping off the effects of an all-nighter at the library. Sometimes they mocked morning talk shows, sometimes Darcy read out snippets about celebrities from internet gossip sites like Sam had a clue who these people were.
"You know, I got papped once leaving here by TMZ," Darcy said, "and suddenly I was all over the internet as Tony Stark's secret love child. He was so pissed."
"Not happy to have his reputation smeared?" Sam said, crunching his way through a piece of jam-smeared toast.
"Pfft, like Tony has a reputation. No, he just got his panties in a twist at the fact that they thought he could have a 26-year-old kid."
Sam frowned. "But isn't he—"
"Well duh," Darcy said, "but he's actively repressing that fact."
"How's that working out for him?"
Darcy looked at him over the rims of her glasses.
Sam snorted to himself. "Yeah, thought so."
*****
Sam had gone in to the VA to resign a couple days after everything went down in DC. He left Natasha sitting with a sleeping Steve in the hospital and went to his place, typed out a brief letter full of careful euphemisms and wrestled his rarely-used printer into submission. Of course, it turned out it wasn't really needed—when he knocked on the door of Marlene's office, she'd looked up at him and said, "Your pink slip's already in the mail, sunshine."
He'd raised an eyebrow at her. "Firing me before I get a chance to quit? Cold, Marlene."
The beads of her long earrings clicked together as she shook her head. "Well, you missed four days of work without telling anyone, and then when you did show up, it was on TV because the authorities were asking for the public's help in locating you. I figured the pink slip was just a formality."
"Aww hell," Sam said, leaning against the door frame. "Don't be like that."
Marlene sighed and leaned back in her chair. "I'll be as snippy with you as I want to be. You know how much it sucks, having to run a job search for another counsellor that folks here are going to trust, right when a big chunk of the city gets totalled and a bunch of 'em get triggered? Or that I liked having to take time out of my day to field questions about you from guys flashing FBI badges around? You think I needed any more paperwork in my life?"
"So what you're telling me is that you don't want this resignation letter?"
She rolled her eyes in a show of exasperation, but she couldn't really front with him. Marlene had known him for ten years now, had seen what he was like the first terrible few months after Riley's death. She'd dragged his drunk ass out of dive bars and helped him with his grad school apps and getting licensed as a counsellor. No way even some nosy federal agents were going to faze her. "Sam, if you don't get that out of here right now, I'm going to throw this stapler at you."
He held up his hands, pantomiming surrender. "I'm going, I'm going," he said, but he'd barely turned to leave when Marlene cleared her throat.
"You did good out there," she said. Sam looked over his shoulder to see that she'd gone back to her paperwork, but her hand was shaking as she moved the pen across the page. "I'm glad you're okay."
"Me too," Sam said.
"But you're not getting any sort of reference from me, not one."
Sam choked back a laugh. "That's okay, Marlene." He didn't think he was going to need a resumé for the next while.
*****
"Job hunting sucks, FYI," Darcy said. "What can you do with a Master's degree in political science? Not even work as a barista at Starbucks, apparently."
This morning's breakfast had been delivered from some greasy spoon Stark had recommended. He'd only picked at it before wandering away, and Pepper had politely declined anything in favour of sipping at a cup of herbal tea, but Steve had made vast quantities of hash browns and bacon disappear at speeds that awed Sam's inner ten-year-old. Now he was off showering while Sam ate his bacon at a more leisurely pace and Darcy made disgusted noises at her StarkPad.
"Everywhere wants me to have three to five years experience, but how the hell am I going to get three to five years experience if no one will hire me in the first place?" Darcy continued. "I am verifiably awesome, but not a single call back. I went out and bought an interview suit for this. An actual suit! Do you know how difficult it is to buy a suit on a budget when you've got a rack like mine?"
Sam choked on a mouthful of food.
"Oh please," Darcy said, pushing up the too-long sleeves of her baggy cardigan. "You're not blind, like you haven't noticed."
Sam made a command decision to just ignore that, because hell yes, of course he noticed, but he didn't think there was an answer he could give that wouldn't have his mother glaring at him from beyond the grave. "Maybe you just need to, you know, start highlighting your other marketable skills. You present them in a certain light, they're selling points, too."
Darcy peered across the table at him. "Go on," she said in a voice of arch suspicion.
"Well, you're really fond of reminding people how you tazed a god," Sam said. "That's your pro-active approach to things, thinking on the spot. You've got excellent time management skills, because you're juggling finishing up a master's thesis with job hunting and helping a friend through a rough spot—"
"Gestating an alien baby!" Darcy crowed. "It's like The Omen, only you know that any kid of Thor's is going to be adorably righteous instead of the spawn of Satan."
Sam wasn't going near that one, either. He continued, "You have managerial and leadership experience because you've been in charge of training other interns, right?"
"Intern Ian," Darcy said, looking off into the mid-distance. "It wasn't fated to be. And all because he thought moving across the Atlantic to be with me after knowing one another for seven weeks was a bit much."
"That sounds pretty sensible to me," Sam said.
"Pfft, what would you know about sensible? You'd known Steve for two minutes before you were like hey, let's technically commit treason, that's cool, and now you make your living strapping mechanical wings to your back and letting bad guys take pot shots at you. Actually, why the hell am I taking career advice from you at all?"
Sam sighed and speared the last piece of bacon with his fork.
"Do you even get benefits right now?" Darcy's eyes widened. "Oh my god, do you even get paid?"
*****
Point of fact, Sam was getting paid—well, technically he was the recipient of a new set of wings built by Tony Stark himself, and a research stipend from the Maria Stark Foundation which paid for flights and rental cars and the kinds of supplies you needed to break into dozens of covert bases across the world.
"Tony wanted to call it Mom's Amazeballs Scholarship for Global Ass-Kicking," Pepper said while Sam signed his way through the paperwork. She sounded wryly amused and more than a little bit long-suffering. "But I persuaded him that that might draw some attention from accounting."
"Yeah," Sam said as he initialled his way down page four, "probably don't want to be audited by the IRS when you're funding some shady stuff." That was something Sam was still getting used to: that he was a soldier again but one without a uniform or any real allegiance beyond the one he felt for the guy standing to his left.
"Oh no, I wasn't worried about that," Pepper said. "I was just worried that our CFO would think it was tacky."
"That a big concern of yours, huh?" Sam handed the papers back across the desk to her and watched as Pepper added her own signature to the last page.
"You've no idea how much time I spend persuading Tony not to manufacture every SI product in metallic red and gold," Pepper said, and for a moment Sam could have sworn that her eyes flashed gold, too, in the late afternoon light. "It's a constant fight."
"I hear you," Sam said.
*****
"Oh my god," Darcy said one morning, "so this one listing requires a Master's degree in econ or poli sci, but it's to be a nanny for the two kids of some billionaire. They also want you to speak at least one foreign language, preference for French or Mandarin, and to have basic hand-to-hand combat skills." She pulled a face that had Sam choking on his mouthful of cereal.
"Well, one out of three ain't so bad," Sam said, "you could still apply."
"Uh," Darcy said, "je te pardonne ton ignorance pour cette fois, thanks, but I did a semester abroad in Nantes, I can hold my own. I'm just not so hot on the combat outside of tazing people. Or like that one time I kicked Tommy Phillips in the balls back in eighth grade, but he totally had it coming. Also I'm not sure I want to spend time looking after the spawn of anyone who's not Jane, not even for six figures."
"You know," Sam said after a moment, "if you want, I could show you some of the basics some time. How to throw a solid punch, that sort of thing."
The look Darcy shot him was pure mischief. "What, get down and dirty on the mat with you?" She did a little shimmy in her seat that had him blinking and trying to ignore the curves of her hips in those jeans. "Thanks, but I don't think I'm cut out for that sort of stuff. Some people are good at fighting with their fists, I'm good at fighting with my rapier wit. Or, you know, obscure hipster references, whatever."
Sam shrugged. "If you ever change your mind, just let me know."
Darcy tossed him a sloppy salute. "Will do, fearless leader."
Sam added some more cereal to his bowl and then the thought struck him. "So just how much longer until Dr Foster has the kid? It seems like it has to be soon, right? She's really..." He struggled to find a synonym for 'huge' that wouldn't have Darcy deciding she did want to learn how to throw a punch, after all. "... Advanced."
"Oh my god, I know right, it's been forever," Darcy said, eyes widening. "But it turns out that an Asgardian pregnancy lasts for twenty-one Earth months. They're like goddamn elephants."
Sam should probably stop eating cereal while talking to her; the choking thing was getting to be a habit. "She's going to be pregnant for almost two years?"
"Well, Bruce said he thought it would probably split the difference and be more like fourteen or fifteen. Something to do with the shape of Jane's placenta, which honestly is when I stopped listening because like, I love my friends, but I'm not so interested in their placentas."
"Huh," Sam said, voice sounding hollow even to his own ears. "Well, it's refreshing for it to be 7:17 in the morning and for me to already know that I'm going to spend the day numbly horrified."
Sam liked how Darcy laughed: a little too loud, nothing elegant about it, but she put her whole body into it, head tossed back and mouth open wide. Sam always had liked people who threw themselves into life headfirst.
*****
The second time they went to Minsk on a wild goose chase, their intel failed them: what was supposed to be a long-abandoned laboratory which might contain more files about Barnes turned out to be a fully-functioning HYDRA stronghold, guarded by a bunch of actual, honest-to-god killer robots. One of them had wielded an EMP cannon that knocked Sam out of the sky. He ended up with one hell of a concussion, and more knowledge of what a Belarussian ER looked like than he'd ever wanted to have.
Sam remembered lying on the ground, the November air cold in his lungs and his head ringing, staring up at the cloudy sky while Steve took care of the last robot.
This time last year, the biggest headache Sam had been facing was metaphorical and caused with figuring out how funding cutbacks were going to affect the centre's budget. This year, his headache was literal and caused by homicidal robots. He could hear a little voice in his head, one that sounded suspiciously like Darcy Lewis, muttering What even.
"Hey buddy," Steve said, his face appearing in Sam's line of sight. He had a smear of engine oil along one cheek and a rip in one of his jacket sleeves. "How're you doing?"
"The fact that you have to ask that," Sam said, "tells me that maybe you're not doing so hot on the tactical thinking side of things. Ow."
"I got rid of all the robots," Steve said. "Maybe we can get you an ice pack or something before we check out the rest of this place."
"The whole concept of self-preservation just passed you right by, huh," Sam said, reaching out a hand so that Steve could help him stand up, thinking of Steve throwing himself off that helicarrier and blindly trusting that Sam would be there to catch him. "The day they taught that in class, you were playing hooky."
"That was probably the week I was out with the chicken pox," Steve said, so solemnly that Sam knew he was messing with him.
"You are a laugh riot," Sam said, but he appreciated the way Steve didn't move away, kept one hand clamped firmly on Sam's elbow when he swayed a little bit.
"Yup," Steve said, amiably, and slung his shield over his back.
"There's not a damn thing I could say that would make you call it a day, right?" Sam asked. "Just head back to the hotel, order some room service, sleep for a week or six?"
"Nope," Steve said, just as amiably, and strode off in the direction of the base.
Not an ounce of self-preservation in the man's body; and here Sam was, following him anyway.
*****
It was two in the morning by the time the Stark Industries private jet touched down in New York, just after three when they reached the tower. Sam had expected that the only welcome back they'd get would be from Jarvis, but when they stepped out of the elevator into the main living area, it was to the sight of Natasha and some sandy-haired guy with a boxer's nose sitting on the sofa. The lights were turned down low and there was what looked like a 50s B-movie playing on the TV, the sound muted. Natasha had a bowl of popcorn on her lap.
"Hey fellas," she said, "fancy meeting you here."
"Nat, Clint," Steve said. "Good to see you both. I'm going to head to bed—I'll see the two of you at the meeting in the morning?"
"Same bat time, same bat channel," Natasha said easily.
"Night all," Steve said, before heading down the hallway that led to the guest rooms, leaving Sam standing there.
"So," he said. "You're back?"
"Looks like it," Natasha said as she worked her way through the popcorn one kernel at a time. "You guys still trying to find someone who doesn't want to be found?"
"Looks like it," Sam echoed back to her.
Natasha's mouth twisted in something that might have been amusement; it was hard to tell in the low light. The guy next to her—Clint—didn't say anything, just watched Sam with the kind of assessing, long-distance stare that made him think of snipers.
"You're blonde now, huh?" Sam asked, when he couldn't think of anything else to say and he was still too wired to try for sleep.
Natasha shrugged. "Temporary. I needed to get past White House security for a bit."
"You are one scary lady, you know that?" Sam said appreciatively.
Clint snorted.
"Aww shucks," Natasha said.
*****
At least when he talked with Darcy, he got relative normality. No grim, focused discussion of where next to search for her brainwashed assassin of a childhood best friend; no calculatedly breezy anecdotes about her ability to break someone's neck with her thighs. The one time Sam had tried to talk sports with Tony, when the two of them were stuck alone in the elevator going all the way up from the ground floor, it had ended in a heated argument and Tony trying to buy the Baltimore Orioles just to prove a point.
Sure, Darcy was horrifyingly quick to dismiss any music made before she was born, but she was smart and funny and when Sam talked to her it was easy to pretend, for a bit, that he'd wake up in the morning and take the bus to work at the VA and eat a tuna sandwich for lunch, that he'd spend Saturday reading that library book that was almost due back and the most pressing thing on his agenda for Sunday was laundry. She had fierce opinions about grilled cheese sandwiches and zombie movies and congressional politics, and she was completely blasé about the fact that she'd somehow ended up living with a motley assortment of billionaires, extra-terrestrials and superheroes.
"What?" Darcy said once, when they were eating scrambled eggs and watching Thor battle a sea monster on CNN. "You guys all put your pants on one leg at a time, same as the rest of us. Except for that time Tony and Rhodey got really drunk and there were no pants to be found. Oh, and also Jarvis, because you know, obvious reasons." She tilted her head back and looked up at the ceiling. "Hey, Jarvis, what up?"
The fact that she was more interested in what Sam thought about waffle toppings than she was in him being Cap's partner was oddly reassuring. He sort of got to depend on it.
*****
Sam was late getting up for breakfast one morning, three bouts of transatlantic jet lag in as many weeks doing a number on his body and making him still feel groggy after a shot of bourbon and eighteen hours on an orthopaedic mattress. He staggered into the communal kitchen a little after eleven to find Darcy singing—something off-key and upbeat that he didn't recognise—while whisking what looked like a bowl of pancake batter.
"Morning," Sam said, making a bee-line for the coffee. He knew there had been a time in his life before he needed coffee to function, but he honestly couldn't remember it. He knocked back the first cup almost hot enough to scald.
"Not just morning, but good morning," Darcy said, pointing at him with a dripping whisk. "I got a job! Ask me how! No really, ask me, I'm dying to tell someone."
Sam blinked. "Hey, that's great news, Darcy! I think you were subtly hinting there for me to ask you how you got hired."
"You are correct, sir," Darcy said, setting the bowl of batter down on the counter and adding a healthy splash of vanilla extract. "So I sent my resumé and stuff in to a recruitment agency a few weeks ago, complete with tweaks as suggested by you, and I got a call yesterday from a corporate head hunter for a position with..." She trailed off and looked at him expectantly.
"I'm going to guess not Starbucks," Sam said.
"Stark Industries Research Division!"
"After all this time, you got hired by the company whose building you live in?"
"Who'd'a thunk it, right? I asked him if he was playing a practical joke on me, but apparently not! Then I called Pepper and asked her if she was playing a practical joke on me, but it turns out the CEO of a vast multinational isn't super involved in the hiring of Level 1 policy analysts. Shocking, right? But she did give me some excellent advice on how to lean in so I got my starting salary bumped up by $5k!"
She did a little shimmy across the room, and Sam leaned back against the kitchen counter, enjoying watching her be so uncomplicatedly happy. "Congratulations," he said softly.
"Okay, so this batter needs to sit for like fifteen minutes," Darcy said, coming to a stop in front of him, "and since you're no longer quasi-mentoring me and I'm a responsible member of society now, and nothing seems in immediate danger of blowing up or being invaded by fascists, I think we should make out."
Sam slowly set down his coffee mug, looking warily at her out of the side of his eye the whole time. "See, I thought you were the one person I hung out with here who was normal. Darcy, this—"
"Oh, honey, no," Darcy said, taking off her glasses and setting them down next to his coffee mug. "Here's your Cheshire Cat moment: we're all mad here."
"You know, this isn't reassuring me any," Sam said, because he was almost ten years older than her, a vet who spent most of his time trying to be Captain America's strong right hand and who sometimes woke up thinking he was back in Afghanistan. Given the way his life had worked out so far, he couldn't really criticise anyone for acting on impulse, but he didn't want to be anyone's passing whim, either.
Darcy pulled a face at him. "I never figured you for the insecure type, soldier. C'mon. You're funny, you're brave, you're the only guy willing to go toe-to-toe with me about federal funding policies. I really like you. Also, your ass in those flight pants is like, a thing of beauty and a joy forever."
"You're describing my ass with a line from Keats?" Sam said.
"And you know poetry!" Darcy said, spreading her arms wide. "See, I thought that was a line from a Ke$sha song or the Dalai Lama or something. I'm totally hot for your mind."
Sam couldn't help laughing. "This is the most interesting proposal I've ever received, I'll give you that."
Darcy took another step closer to him. "Is it working?"
"Signs are pointing to probably," Sam said, giving into temptation and putting his hands on her hips. This near to her, he could feel the warmth of Darcy's body, the faint citrus smell of her body wash, and she was smart and pretty and she liked him.
Darcy grinned. "Yay! And I didn't even have to take my shirt off."
"Well," Sam said, mock innocent, "if you want to take that probably to a definitely."
"Oh, I see how it is, I'm wise to your game," Darcy said, and then she was kissing him, mouth hot and tongue wicked and Sam decided to just go with it, fling himself off this height and trust he was going to land okay. He kissed her back, wrapped one arm fully around her and buried his other hand in all that thick, dark hair.
"It's a pretty good game," he murmured against her mouth.
"No criticism here," she said, her hands pushing up under his t-shirt; the scrape of her nails against his stomach made Sam shiver. "You think it would be really unhygienic if we took our shirts off in the kitchen?"
"This is Tony Stark's kitchen," Sam pointed out, "I think that would be in the top ten least unhygienic things to have ever happened here."
"You make a logical point," Darcy said, which was why she was standing there in her bra and Sam had his sweatpants down around his ankles when the living embodiment of the American Dream strode in.
"Sam, you need to suit up, we've got an oh my god, Miss Lewis, brassiere," Steve said. He spun right around, and even only able to see the back of his head, Sam could tell Cap was blushing furiously. "I'm so sorry, just, Bucky's just turned himself in at the US embassy in Toronto, we need to get there right away."
"I think I saw a porno once that started like this," Darcy said thoughtfully, at the same moment that Sam said, "Canada? Why the hell would he want to turn himself in in Canada?"
"You know," Steve said, voice sounding tight, "these don't seem like the most important issues right now. I'll be waiting for you downstairs."
"Great," Sam said. "I'll just... get some pants then."
Steve left, and Darcy cracked up: great, heaving hiccups of laughter that did amazing things to her boobs. "Oh my god, I just mortified a national icon! That's another thing ticked off my bucket list."
"Another Cheshire Cat moment, huh?" Sam asked her, trying his best not to crack up too, because Steve needed him but her laughter was contagious.
"Pretty much," Darcy said. She went up on tip toes and kissed him before stooping to retrieve her t-shirt and pulling it back on. "Have fun in the Great White North, soldier. I have to go downstairs and sign some stuff later, but I should be here when you guys get back."
"Yes, ma'am," Sam said, watching her go because he was only human, and then tugging his sweats back up and jogging for his room and his kit. Maybe they were all mad here, he thought, maybe they were all living lives that no one else would have chosen, but what the hell—Sam hadn't regretted jumping in headfirst yet.