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When Steve and Bucky first see Darcy, she’s in the corridor outside of Tony’s workshop, head nodding slowly under the massive headphones over her ears, voice low as she sings the words playing to her soul.
“Honey I’m on fire, I feel it everywhere. Nothing scares me anymore…”
They don’t know who stops first, only that they’re on top of each other, watching with wide eyes and frozen breaths as the curvy brunette dances minutely through the workshop door and into the abyss of roaring rock music, the glass closing behind her and silencing it all.
“…Damn,” Bucky chokes. Steve can only nod.
They bear each other’s words – Is me savin’ your scrawny ass going to be a thing, punk? running across Steve’s shoulders, continued with Maybe I’ll save your ass next time, ya jerk. scrawled along Bucky’s. The words aren’t romantic, but they’re perfectly them (had been perfectly foreshadowing, actually, but they don’t talk about that outside of Bad Nights and bitterness), and there isn’t anything more to them. No extra set of words, no tender spots where they should go or would have been – there’s no indication that the girl with the music is for them.
They want her anyway.
And they are quick to instigate themselves into her life.
Her name is Darcy. She’s smart-mouthed and funny and has a wicked sense of humor that doesn’t wilt under their comebacks. She doesn’t flinch away from Bucky when he snaps from a headache, too much Winter Soldier leaking through, and neither does she make jokes about Captain America when swears slip from Steve’s mouth. Her full lips quirk at the sight of them, she steals food from their plates instead of getting her own, and she takes extreme joy in organizing (and hacking) the iPods she harasses Tony into getting for them (thinking absolutely nothing of it when they both request the song they had first heard her singing). She’s a breath of fresh air to them, not a soldier, not a teammate, not really a civilian they need to protect. She’s just … Darcy.
She carries words from someone else on her skin.
(“I don’t want a soulmate,” she reveals to them one night, curled up on the couch in Stark’s entertainment room and more than a little drunk. She chuckles at their looks. “Not mine,” she clarifies. “Do you know what they’re going to say to me? I do. It’s written right there, right on my skin. Babe, your knockers are huge. Yeah,” she nods. “Exactly. Do you know what that does to your self-esteem as a kid, that your “one-and-only” objectifies your breasts? My parents hated it, thought I was going to grow up to be a whore or something.” She winces then, and takes another chug of beer. “You guys are great, though. I’d be okay if they were like you, if we could have what you guys have.” She pauses and nibbles the inside of her cheek. “Yeah. I’d want them then.”)
It doesn’t keep Bucky from watching her, though – doesn’t keep Steve from drawing her. The sketches are on the back pages of his paper, of her infectious smile and tangled hair, the shine of her eyes behind her glasses, the sassy way she pops her hip when she’s cracking a joke, the tick of a frown when she’s annoyed. They don’t stare at them, exactly, because that would be a little creepier than they can justify, but on the Bad Nights the drawings somehow come out, and maybe they play that song, but those are Bad Nights and they’re just … them.
(“If her soulmate don’t treat her like a damned queen, I’m gonna fuckin knock their block off,” Bucky growls into Steve’s chest one night, skin slick and hot. “Off. And then I’ll use it to beat in the rest of their body until there’s nothin left of it to bother her ever again.” And it says a lot that all Steve does is snort at the declaration).
In the end, it turns out that the man behind Darcy’s heartless soulmark is not (and has never been) in a position to treat her like a queen, and Bucky almost does decapitate him, only Darcy gets there first.
It goes like this.
A man called Justin Hammer (Tony gives a few choice words to fill in as a middle name that quickly get more degrading) attacks the Tower with what looks to be giant Iron Man-inspired gray robot that walks too stiffly and moves more than a little slow. It’s huge, though, its punches heavy and hard, and it tears into the glass of the building like scissors to paper. Thor, Clint, and Hulk are handling the monstrosity from the outside while Tony, swearing fiercely about the “genius” behind Hammertech in dripping venom, digs for a way to hack into the system, Bucky as his guard. Natasha and Steve are directing the evacuations with quick efficiency and everything inside stutters to a halt when a worse-for-wear figure rolls from the robot’s invading fingers and onto the floor right and right in front of (what the hell is she doing here?) a startled Darcy.
“Okay, not the entrance I wanted, still pretty…pretty good,” the figure grumbles, rolling to a slow stand and brushing dust from his (seriously?) suit as he gathers his bearings. His eyes widen as they land on the brunette woman in front of him, zeroing on her chest with a stupid expression that melts into a leer. “Babe,” he waggles his eyebrows. “Your knockers are huge.”
Steve freezes in his spot at the words, stomach dropping like a rock at the realization that this man is Darcy’s soulmate. He hears Bucky’s violent curse, the igniting of Tony’s gauntlet repulsor-
and Darcy’s high-pitched, infuriated shriek as she lunges with the taser she’s pulled from seemingly nowhere.
“You fucking asshole!”
(It’s later declared that the injuries to one Justin (douchebag cunt shellfish-fucking camel licking thank you Tony we get it) Hammer were caused by his own device and poor planning, and that there is absolutely no evidence of electric shock from any handheld device. The man’s twitching form is loaded somewhat carefully into a waiting ambulance, granted a courtesy kick from Bucky’s boot that Steve doesn’t really try to stop, followed by Tony, who’s on the phone with Pepper who’s on the phone with lawyers and that’s an entirely different mess. Hulk and Thor are making a game out of ripping the prone robot apart, the occupants of the Tower are opting to continue work on undamaged floors, and Darcy is nowhere to be seen).
(Steve does get a call from Tony less than ten minutes later, a confirmation that You fucking asshole! is indeed inscribed on Hammer’s right butt cheek, and to “find Lewis right now and get her very, very drunk”, not that they need to be told).
She’s in their living room, curled up in a chair that’s facing the window and the Manhattan skyline, headphones around her neck and silent. She turns wide eyes to them when they enter, not quite tear-filled but more than a little devastated. Bucky leans over, curving his metal arm around the front of her shoulders as Steve drops down to the floor in front of her, hands on her knees.
“Is it bad that sometimes I used to wish that they were- that he was dead?” She whispers, then snorts. “Too bad that didn’t become a reality.”
“I’ll kill him if you want him dead,” Bucky murmurs, pulling her closer. “Say the word.”
She laughs, a tear slipping out that’s quickly followed by another and then more. They let her cry.
(Justin Hammer ends up so deep in prison that Steve can’t find him. Tony just smiles grimly, snaps his fingers, and that’s that).
It takes three weeks and five days, when they’re watching Bucky play (and threaten) Splashy Fish, for Darcy to laugh again.
And surprisingly, Steve, so overwhelmed by the sound of it, is the first to kiss her.
There’s no hunger, no tongue, nothing sexual at all, but her lips mold to and press against his in delightful softness, smooth from her purple lipstick. There’s a minute of hesitation that has Bucky reaching out to stop him, but then she’s kissing back, timid and unsure, and he smiles against her.
“But… but I’m not yours,” she whispers when they part, eyes darting back and forth between them.
“Hey, sure ya are,” Steve argues, grinning. His hands find her hips, fingers tangling with Bucky’s, which are already there. They share their own look as the smaller man’s chin lowers to rest against her shoulder.
“We want you, doll,” he adds, and they both delight in the way her eyes flutter closed. “That’s all that matters.”
“You, us,” Steve continues, rubbing circles into her sides with their thumbs. “Take it slow, do it right. Dinners, dancing-.”
“Stolen kisses,” Bucky finishes, and tilts her head to do just that.
(And it is slow. As much as Darcy had claimed to have hated her soulmate for the entirety of her life, she had still had a whisper of hope that it would turn out to be right. That the person behind the words would be completely different than them, charming and loving and the second half of a fit. Where Steve and Bucky have the promise that they were at least meant to be in each other’s lives, Darcy has no such assurances. They’re quiet, patient, just as nervous. They fall into a tentative union that’s not really different from before, only with more touches (Steve), more smiles (Bucky), more happiness (Darcy). Tony quips about how adorable they are – “Bruce ships you guys. Seriously. It’s adorable.” – and Thor’s approval is so loud that Clint, three floors up, texts his and Natasha’s own blessings).
Darcy grins, small and shy and snarky. “Okay.”
(Eleven months later, when it happens, they don’t fall into bed, but rather move there slowly, slide down holding each other with touches and lips and sighs. They kiss Bucky’s scars and soothe Steve’s body and brush against the words under Darcy’s breast. They move carefully, every minute purposeful, Darcy in between Bucky and Steve as they make their case to the universe and take victory no matter what their marks say. Because after, when they’re satisfied and pliant and soft, Steve hooks his iPod to their stereo and plays that song, and Bucky uncaps a blue Sharpie and scrawls a line along the curve of Darcy’s shoulder blade – Kiss me hard before you go. – passing it to the blonde so he can paint his own line on the other – I just wanted you to know, that baby you’re the best. Afterward, they give the marker to her, dictating to her wide eyes and parted mouth the words they want her to put on the opposite sides of the ones they already have.
“So we’ll have to rewrite them.” Bucky shrugs, nips below Darcy’s bellybutton as his fingers travel up Steve’s straining thigh. “Just means a bit more.”)