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Darcy Lewis has been in New York for all of two weeks and the thing she misses most diner food. Which is completely ridiculous, because there are probably 10,000 diners in the five boroughs. Or 20,000, it’s hard to say. But so far, she has tried 13 of them and been disappointed every single time. It’s just not the same.
What she misses, specifically, are the pancakes she used to get on Saturday mornings at Isabela’s, the little diner in Puente Antiguo. She doesn’t know what Issi did, she never would say, but those pancakes were the best thing she ever ate. Light, fluffy, warm, with a hint of something….covered in butter and warm maple syrup, it just made her feel like everything was going to be just fine.
Last she had seen Issi’s place, it was blown to hell, they were being loaded in vans, debriefed, Jane shipped off to do research, and she back to Culver with an A in her last six credits. The day she graduated, a guy in a black suit pretending to work for the University interrupted her pictures with her parents to give her an important student loan document, that when opened later in the privacy of her apartment, was an order to report to New York no later than the following Monday, signed Nick Fury, Director of S.H.I.E.L.D.
This is how Darcy ended up with a nice one bedroom apartment in the Avengers Tower and a job wrangling non-science stuff for the science squad of Jane, Erik, Bruce Banner, and Tony Fucking Stark. And it had been seriously awesome for the first 48 hours, because Thor was back to Asgard again, and she and Jane had some quality bonding time.
Then Thor came back, and good-bye Jane time. Not that she could blame her. After all, if Darcy had a cut, Norse God/Alien boyfriend, she probably wouldn’t have time for anything else either. Erik had always been nervous around Darcy undiluted by Jane’s presence, and usually didn’t leave the lab for much other than sleep and showers.
So Darcy was on her own, in a city of millions of people, with no one she really knew well. And she was home sick for, of all things, a one little town in New Mexico and the world’s best pancakes.
This was how Darcy ended up, on a Sunday morning, in a place called Lou’s. It’s all glittery vinyl booths and 1950’s formica table tops, and has a decent rush going when she grab a seat at the counter. Down the way from her are an older couple in their mid-fifties, bent over a cross-word puzzle and bickering as Darcy studies the menu. Something about them is familiar, but she can’t quite put her finger on it.
The waitress, with a nametag that read’s Beth and a shy smile, gets to her and she orders a coffee, trying to decide between another round of pancake disappointment or getting something else, when it starts.
“Ohhhhhh….” came the moan, sounding every bit like someone’s dirty ringtone. “Ohhhh, yesss. Yes, Yes, YES! Oh, YES, YES YES, PLEASE, YES!”
Darcy was shocked to realized that the sound was coming from the woman next to her, her greyish blonde curls bouncing as she tossed her head, savoring bites of what was clearly a double stack order of pancakes, and earning the stink eye from her husband.
“You know, Sally,” the man said, in a native Manhattan accent. “That bit was a lot funnier when we were 20-something.”
“Maybe next time, you’ll think twice before claiming I don’t know what the capital of Turkey is.” She smiled at him, then tucked back into the pancakes.
Darcy turned to the waitress, grinning like a fool. “I’ll have what she’s having.”