Chapter Text

Chapter 1:  Cowboy walks into a SHIELD Lab

The first time Darcy Lewis met Jack Daniels he did not make the best of impressions. Darcy had been sitting at her desk working on purchasing orders and requests for her various scientists when Erin tumbled into her office. After all these years of working with Jane, Doctor Foster was no longer her only responsibility. The years of Darcy and Jane camping out in the middle of the desert in an abandoned old car dealership were long gone. Now when they went somewhere it was usually paid for by SHIELD and their security was seen to by SHIELD. It was necessary. The price of being right. After Jane's theories had been proven and at long last she was receiving the respect she deserved from the scientific community, they couldn't continue as their small two or three person operation, running on a shoestring budget, floating from university to university, hoping people would fund Jane's notions. It was a financial decision to join SHIELD, and Jane had made her acceptance of SHIELD’s offer contingent on them taking Darcy as well. They looked after each other.

There have been years and years of hard work, but now Darcy was a lab manager at SHIELD. She took care of a lot of scientists instead of just one, and she was good at it. She was a scientist Wrangler of the 1st order. Unfortunately, that meant a lot of other people wrangling as well. As it did on the day she met Jack Daniels.

Darcy looked up at Erin’s panicked entrance. “What's up?”

Erin was a quiet person who often needed a sort of leavening influence that Darcy provided in their interpersonal relations with some of the more interesting members of the SHIELD organization. Years of interacting with mad scientists, eccentric billionaires, spies, soldiers, and superheroes Darcy had very little fear of anybody. The rest of her scientists knew it and used her quite frequently to solve issues that arose between them and other areas of SHIELD. Most of the time Darcy was happy to do it when she wasn't busy with her actual job, but she supposed keeping order in the labs and making sure none of her poor little scientists got their heads bitten off by irritated spies, soldiers, superheroes, etcetera was just another part of the job.

“I need your help,” Erin said.

 “OK, with what?”

“I've got a tricky customer coming in and I'd really really appreciate some backup.”

 It wasn't the first time nor would it be the last that Erin would make this kind of request. Darcy was beginning to suspect that a seminar in standing up for yourself and acting very tough would be necessary eventually, but she didn't have time to administer a lecture today. So she just shrugged and said “when do you need it?”

“Can you come in like 10 minutes? That’s when he’s scheduled to pick it up.”

“Yep, I'll be there. Just give me a minute to close up these purchasing requests.”

She saved and secured her work and trooped her way down to the weapons development department five minutes later. Weapons development was one of the most popular areas of SHIELD, well-traveled and well-liked by people who really liked pointy sharp things or things that went boom, which was another reason Darcy was running out of patience with Erin's timidity. Most people treated their weapon makers very well. It didn't pay to piss off the people that made things go boom, it just didn't.  But then again, the people that worked at a place like SHEILA were very particular about their weaponry. Darcy supposed it wasn't out of the realm of possibility that one of them had a habit of getting a little zesty.

Unfortunately, it appeared that in the time it had taken her to save her work and shut down her workstation, Erin’s hard customer had arrived. An agent, and it had to be an agent based on the clothes alone, was standing in the public-safe area of the weapons development department. A cowboy in New York City? Alright, Darcy had seen some really wacky shit over the years. You would think she would be used to all kinds of crazy getups, but a man wearing a clearly bespoke suit and a cowboy hat in the middle of SHIELD headquarters wasn't one of them. He was standing with his hands on his hips with his back turned to the windows, staring down her poor helpless hapless little scientist.

“So when will they be ready?” The man asked, clearly having just gotten the news that his deadly items weren’t available to him just yet. Erin was looking desperately around for some manner of reinforcement and that reinforcement unfortunately was Darcy.

Darcy scrutinized the agent before leaping into the fray. He was tall, broad shouldered, wearing a dark blue suit with grey accents in a strange cut she wasn't familiar with. It definitely wasn't your average government issue black suit, but then anyone who wore a cowboy hat to work probably wasn't your average government issue spy either. He spoke in a broad rolling accent that Darcy identified as belonging somewhere vaguely southern western-ish. Linguistics had never been her specialty. The man hadn't been yelling, but his voice was off. Too tight and clipped. Harsh.

 While Erin was generally timid, Darcy could understand if the man's size was a bit of a threat. He was a little under 6 feet, though how tall he was exactly was hard to tell with the aforementioned cowboy hat, which made Darcy look at his shoes. Was he wearing cowboy boots as well? No cowboy boots, but not loafers or sneakers or her own Doc Martins. Some kind of Chelsea boot. She supposed that didn't add a lot to his height, but his overall bearing was big. Agents came in many different shapes and forms, and this was clearly the ‘I am a large man, do not irritate me’ type. Just as well that Darcy knew how to deal with this. Some agents got off on the power trip of being an incredibly deadly person that could cause untold havoc to those around, perhaps this guy was just another one of them.

Well if he was planning on causing untold terror and havoc in her labs with her little scientists she would have to do something! She waved helpfully at Erin to let them know that they were not alone in dealing with the cowboy. She set her shoulders. Years of experience had told had taught her that you could not show any sort of fear to these types, if you did they would know that you could be intimidated again, and even if you could you didn't want them to know that. It was something Darcy had tried multiple times to impress upon her scientists. The ‘do not to give in to bull shit’ lessons didn't appear to have stopped because Erin was cringing even as Darcy prepared for battle.

“OK, what's the word, baby birds?” Darcy chirped happily as though she were walking into a picnic. The man's shoulders stiffened slightly but he didn't whirl around so he had heard her come in. “Darcy!” Erin exclaimed with clear relief. “I was just telling Agent Daniels that I wouldn't have his new weapons ready until the beginning of next week.”

Agent Daniels, she had never met an Agent Daniels. That wasn't unusual. SHIELD had plenty of outposts, plenty of agents that Darcy had never had to interact with, plenty of perfectly well behaved agents.

“Well, there you go, Erin,” said Darcy encouragingly. “Turn that frown upside down! It’s just a short delay.” The agent finally turned to look at her as she came closer to the embattled pair. He had a strong aquiline nose that dominated his face and a small neatly trimmed mustache and full lower lip beneath it. He had deep, darkly colored eyes and the hair she could see peeking out from beneath the cowboy hat was either a very dark brown or black. Color did funny things under the fluorescent lights of the SHIELD hallways and labs. The man currently wore a foreboding frown and Darcy searched his face for a fracture point. This was what she called it when she picked something to find nice or interesting about someone to help deal with the aforementioned very scary people slash killers that she sometimes worked with. She found it surprisingly between his eyebrows. He had a tiny little furrow there when he frowned, and instead of finding it alarming or scary that the man was frowning at her, Darcy envisioned walking up to the man and poking him right at the little furrow point. Obviously she wouldn't! She would never do that to someone who wasn't a close friend, Particularly not at SHEILD, where people tended to shoot or stab first and respond appropriately to casual touching later.

She smiled brightly and said, “That seems pretty straightforward. What else can the Development division help you with, Agent Daniels?” The furrow between his eyebrows only got deeper.

“That's not when they said it would be done,” he stated flatly. Now that she was facing him she could understand a bit better why the man scared Erin so much. It wasn't his slightly aggressive posture, his outlandish outfit, or the harshness of his tone, it was the flatness in his eyes, the lack of anything friendly or polite looking out at her. It was really not a great shock. Darcy had more than a few friends who had a similar look in their eyes, but usually they could turn off what Darcy usually called the sharky eyes. This man had either never learned the trick of it or he just didn't care. Either way, it wasn't any of Darcy’s business whether the man actually ever smiled fully, but looking at him reminded her of a few of her other friends, friends who also sometimes had a hard time turning off that dark stare and remembering they were also people, not just human weapons.

So she simply cocked her head to the side and nodded at the man's statement. “And that must be very frustrating,” she said smoothly. “But these things will happen, Agent Daniels, science doesn't always work on deadlines.” Agent Daniels crossed his arms and drew himself up even straighter. My goodness, his shoulders really are wide, Darcy tutted to herself. The agent stared her down. It was the usual run-of-the-mill ‘I could take you down in less than 5 seconds, you are nothing but a little tiny scientist’, but Darcy didn't pay it any mind. Darcy had had margaritas last night with none other than the Black Widow. She did not find this man particularly terrifying. Watching Natasha Romanov drink jalapeno margaritas was terrifying, a very strange, far from home cowboy was not. He stared her down for a few more seconds as though waiting for her reaction, something, anything, but Darcy didn't give an inch.

“And what would you have done if I had needed them today?” The man asked in a voice cold enough to give someone frostbite. Darcy looked over at Erin, who was standing to her left and slightly behind her now.

“We,” Erin said quietly, “would have done our best to offer you substitute weapons if you needed them for an assignment.”

“Do you require substitute weapons for an urgent assignment?” Darcy asked him. The man glared at her again. Really, she thought, this was just getting old.

“Yeah, Yeah!” She waved her hand.  “I'm sure you're very eager to get your hands on whatever Erin has promised you! “What is it, Erin? Shooty, stabby, or exploding?”

“Er, shooty,” Erin replied. The agent’s eyebrow rose sharply at Darcy's question, angry expression disrupted by sheer incredulity. Shooty, stabby, or exploding. Darcy watched the man's mouth move, miming the words she had just spoken, and his face resolved into a sort of consternated look as though he couldn't quite believe that someone was saying “shooty” in his presence.

“My new guns.” He stated flatly. “They are necessary.”

“Yes, I’m sure they are. So tell me, Erin, why aren’t the nice man's guns ready?”

“Safety testing,” Erin replied, finally on solid ground. “It's taking us longer than we thought it would to manufacture the custom rounds for your gun type.”

“Well, there you go,” Darcy said brightly. “Erin here is just trying to do you a kindness, Agent, by making sure your weapons don't blow up in the field outside of their intended explosive properties! Really,” Darcy told him with a grin, “You should be saying thank you for making sure I don't blow myself up!” The agent blinked hard as though completely and utterly shocked by her nerve. Darcy crossed her own arms and waited for the man to decide whether to start shouting, shooting, or otherwise being more of a pest. He did none of those things. His face instead reset to a carefully neutral expression. He wiped his hand over his eyes and sighed gustily. Darcy waited. Prayers for patience were not an uncommon reaction to dealing with Darcy Lewis.

“You're right.” His face now looking decidedly less like a thundercloud, he directed the conversation back at Erin. “I apologize. I forgot my manners. You know us agents, we hate to be without our shooty things.” Well done, decided Darcy. The man actually had a very nice voice when he wasn't angry. The sharp edges had smoothed, leaving a soft baritone. When he wasn't scowling at people, the agent had a nice face, and now that he had decided to play nice it was on full display. Small wrinkles decorated the corners of his eyes and his lower lip had softened. His mouth was wide and full under the mustache.  He wasn't smiling per se, but it wasn't glaring and frowning either, which Darcy had to count as a victory for her.

“Thank you for ensuring that I will not blow up,” he told Erin. Then he extended a hand to Darcy. “We haven't formally been introduced, I'm Agent Daniels.” It was probably safe, Darcy decided. She had shaken hands with literal demigods. The agent was probably not going to attempt to break her hand, today anyways. His hand was warm and much larger than hers. The labs were kept at an annoyingly cool temperature, even colder than most office buildings. It was a chill Darcy felt during the daytime even through the thick padding of her coziest sweaters, especially when she had been sitting down for a long time. But his hands were warm and thoroughly calloused. Even if Darcy had been stone blind, she would have been able to tell he was an agent just from the hand. She couldn't tell if the calluses that ran across his palms and decorated the tips of his fingers were from a specific weapon or just all the weapons, but she knew her friend Clint Barton AKA Hawkeye had hands like this. She clasped it firmly and did her best to ignore the way it practically swallowed up her much smaller, much softer hand.

“I'm Darcy Lewis,” she stated. “I'm a lab manager.” But not of the weapons lab, though she wasn’t about to tell him that after swanning in here to break up the conflict. They pumped hands a couple times politely, and Darcy was relieved that he did not attempt to crush her hand in some kind of ridiculous misplaced dominance game. Just because she could later revenge herself in all sorts of creative ways did not mean that she wanted to need to.

“When should I come back for my guns then, Doctor Libitz?” The agent asked as he dropped Darcy’s hand.

“I can have them for you by Tuesday!” He nodded, apparently satisfied.

“Much obliged.” His hand went up and tugged on the rim of his hat before he turned and left the lab. The automatic doors swooshed shut and the tension drained from the room.