Chapter Text
His back was killing him from two nights spent dozing in a hospital chair. He had refused any treatment beyond a hasty bandaging of the bullet graze on his thigh. And once it had become clear that Nat and Bucky were just fine, he had been sitting here, waiting for her to wake up.
It was well into the third day when she finally came to, eyes fluttering open and letting out a sharp hiss as she tried to move.
Steve sat up abruptly.
“Darcy?” he pulled his chair closer to the bed.
“Ow,” she said, falling back against the pillows.
Steve managed a half grin, “Getting shot’ll do that.”
He had really managed to mess things up for her, hadn’t he? The faster he got out of her life, the better.
“How ya feeling kid?” he tried in a falsely chipper tone.
“Like I’ve been shot,” Darcy deadpanned back. “Nat and Bucky?”
“Just fine,” Steve reassured her, “Nat’s currently trying to convince Bucky to take it easy. It’s going about as well as you’d expect.”
Darcy smiled.
“Well,” said Steve, feeling like quick and clean was probably the best approach. For who, he wasn’t really sure, because he could already feel the pain of it roiling in his gut. “Now that you’re awake and it seems as though your brain is largely intact, Stark’ll be angling to get you back to work probably sometime tomorrow.” He stood up gingerly, brushing off his pants, uncomfortably aware that they were the same pair he had been wearing when he brought her in here. “So I’ll see when they can transport you back state side.”
“Steve,” Darcy was looking at him with something between frustration and apprehension, “are you really just going to walk away?”
“What do you mean?” he tried innocently.
She just raised an eyebrow at him, and cut her eyes over to the discarded bloody shirt he had been wearing when she was shot, the debris of brief and perfunctory meals eaten by her bedside.
“Looks like you haven’t gone anywhere for a while…and back in the warehouse…I just thought that maybe…” she trialed off, color rising in her cheeks. She looked sad in a way that Steve really didn’t like.
He sighed, settling back down on the chair. “Jesus, Darce, I’ve known you three weeks and you’ve been possessed and shot. My record’s not so great where you’re concerned.”
“I work for Stark, Rogers,” she said with a small grin, “you’re not so bad.”
He looked back at her with an incredulous smile. She sounded a lot like she meant it.
He paused for a moment, the thought of walking out that door forcing him to think about all the things that he had been avoiding.
On the one hand, he knew that putting her in dangerous situations would always terrify him. On the other hand, he knew exactly how angry she would get if she knew he was trying to protect her against her will. And, come to think of it, he felt a fair amount of anger at the old men back at the museum that had kept her out of the field for so long. How was he any different, right now?
Ultimately, though, his choice was pretty simple. The thought of going on a dig without her at his side yelling at him about proper procedure was simply unthinkable, now that he had thought about it.
“Well,” he said slowly, “having you on digs would really cut down on funding paperwork, since you do work directly for the Stark foundation.”
A smile was flirting around the corner of her lips.
“And I suppose your research skills aren’t terrible,” added Darcy, “I think I could put up with you if it means being allowed out in the field.”
“You know,” said Steve, his bravado carrying him through, “It wouldn’t do anything good for your reputation to be out in the middle of nowhere with crews of rough men.”
“And barely civilized archaeologists?” Darcy said with a grin, looking up at him “I suppose we could form a…partnership of sorts, if it’s the only way I can get out into the field.”
“I suppose I could handle that,” said Steve evenly, “if it means easier access to Stark’s money.”
“It’s a deal,” said Darcy, holding out her hand to him.
He took it in his, it was small and strong, and he never wanted to let it go.
He took a breath, and took a chance.
“I suppose I might as well tell you,” he said gruffly, “if we’re going to be business partners, that I’m hopelessly in love with you.”
“Oh,” said Darcy with a sort of blank look of shock on her face.
“Oh?” Steve echoed with a raised eyebrow, “is that all you can…” and then he couldn’t say anything at all because she grabbed him by the collar and kissed him of her own free will for the very first time.
It wasn’t that the other time Steve had kissed her hadn’t been memorable, far from it, but the way she pulled at his lips with her teeth, the way that she pressed her tongue into his willing mouth, the way her hand slid around his neck and her fingers pressed into the skin of his shoulders made him think that he may, in fact, be in way over his head with Darcy Lewis.
He pulled back, grinning broadly at the flushed and wanton look on her face.
“So,” she said a bit breathlessly, “How do you feel about Egypt in the spring?”
“What?” Steve asked a bit absently, busy tracing his fingers across the soft curve of her neck.
“Stark has a dig planned in Khartoum. Supposedly no one else will touch it because the tomb is cursed,” one hand reached up and she laid her fingers over his, entangling their fingers.
“Ancient Egyptian curses huh?” said Steve, pulling her hand to his mouth and brushing his lips across her knuckles, “sounds like fun.”
“Of course,” said Darcy, “I’m going to need a few weeks of rest to recover before we head out.” She looked up at him with perfectly innocent eyes as she dropped her hand to his chest and slowly pressed lower and lower down the buttons of his shirt.
Definitely way over his head.
He grinned roguishly. “That can be arranged,” he murmured low, before pressing her back against the pillows of the hospital bed, braced above her carefully to avoid her injury, but kissing her like he might drown if he didn’t.
“Steve,” she said breathlessly a few moment later, “you know that I…I never thought I’d find anyone to…but you…”
He quite liked her ineloquent and at a loss for words, if only because she was never short of them otherwise and it was him that had her babbling and breathless.
“I know,” he said, brushing a stray hair from in front of her face. “Just promise me one thing, okay?”
“Anything.”
“You gotta get off my case about those damn potsherds,” he almost managed it with a straight face.
“What? You know perfectly well that the classification of sherds is the only way to properly date…”
He couldn’t help it, he burst out laughing at the indignation on her face.
“You’re terrible,” she said grumpily, with a halfhearted swat at his arm.
“I know,” he settled beside her on the bed with a satisfied smile on his face.
“Steve?” she said after a moment.
“Hmmm?”
“This time, I think it’s your turn to get the ancient curse, okay?”
This, he thought to himself as he laughed and turned to kiss her, is going to be a hell of a lot of fun.