Chapter Text
As Darcy stood staring at the dubious black door conveniently located under a deserted overpass, she knew that the little voice in her head telling her to GTFO was absolutely right.
Thing was, Darcy was sick of listening to that little voice. It was full of doubts, and criticisms; it made her feel worthless, useless. It liked to remind her that she was nothing more than a lackey, working for one of the greatest minds of the century, in a building populated by billionaires, superheroes, and literal gods.
Darcy didn’t live in Avengers Tower with the golden people. Nope, she schlepped into the lab every morning at 8am all the way from Queens, come rain, hail or shine.
Not that Darcy wanted to live in Stark’s ode to his own ego- working in the place was enough to crush her self-esteem- but maybe it would’ve been nice to have been asked.
Fuck it.
Besides, working in Avengers Tower did come with its perks. An amazing employee canteen that most Michelin restaurants would envy, pristine and modern workspaces (totally remodelled after Loki’s epic tantrum), eye candy on tap (just a glimpse of Captain America’s Adonis bod gave her the butterflies), and unprecedented access to global security intel for the enterprising hacker.
Immoral? Yes. But Darcy thought she deserved a bit of slack- entering data for Jane non-stop was enough to drive anyone to criminal activities. Besides, Darcy had spent all of her college years datamining and creating false documents. She wasn’t a genius, but she was damn proficient with computers.
Which was how she had ended up here, standing under the overpass in a scummy part of Brooklyn, peering anxiously at the spray-painted symbol of two red hands embracing. It just looked like ordinary graffiti, really, but thanks to the data she’d intercepted from Phil Coulson’s new and shiny SHIELD the day before, she knew what that symbol meant.
The Dealer was here.
Darcy rubbed her sweaty palms across the back of her jeans before hesitantly knocking on the door.
A few seconds later a small slat slid open, and Darcy looked up to see a pair of beady eyes watching her.
“What?” The man said, voice sharp and oddly high-pitched.
“Um…I’m here to see the Dealer. I…want to make a purchase.”
The beady eyes perused her for a few more seconds, before the slat abruptly slammed shut.
Darcy was about to knock again when there was a loud rattle of chains and the stiff creak of a bolt being unlatched as the door swung inwards.
“C’mon, then,” tsked the irritated doorman, when Darcy lingered outside, feeling pretty daunted by the long dark corridor ahead.
But there was no way she was going to chicken out now.
Steeling herself, she passed the doorman, waiting as he secured the door again and gestured for her to follow him through the labyrinthine hallway. Darcy couldn’t see anything but her guide’s white wifebeater, and from the rapid pace he was setting she could tell that the dark wasn’t a problem for him.
Either he’d been eating a shit tonne of carrots, or he had been a customer of the Dealer himself.
After several minutes of darkness, they emerged into a dimly-lit waiting area. There were a few battered looking armchairs at random angles in the small space, and there was an honest-to-god coffee table in the centre laden with old magazines.
It was like being in a very strange dentist’s office.
Before Darcy could try out the dubious structural integrity of any of the seats, her guide was beckoning her over to the intimidating metal door next to him.
“He’ll see you now,” the man said, pushing the door open just enough to let her slide in past him.
Darcy’s corneas immediately protested as the vicious white glow of halogen bulbs assaulted them. The room she stood in was ultra modern- everything shining silver or vivid white. On her left, at the far end of the long room was an ostentatious desk, with absolutely zero clutter on it.
A man sat on the far side of the desk, his tattooed hands clasped in front of him as he watched her.
Darcy hesitantly walked towards him, feeling so far out of her depth that she expected to drown any minute.
As she drew closer she noticed that the man- the Dealer, she assumed- was wearing a pristine silver-grey suit, the crisp white shirt half unbuttoned to show off a strip of skin completely covered in ink. Tattoos weren’t normally her cup of tea, but even with the ink extending up his neck and finishing just below his sharp jawline, Darcy could admit to herself that she was attracted to this man.
The small, vain part of her belatedly wished that she’d thought to wear something other than old jeans, a baggy sweater and a knit cap to hide her unwashed hair.
When she was standing right in front of the desk, the Dealer languidly gestured for her to take the seat opposite him. Up this close and personal, Darcy was surprised at how young the guy was- barely older than her, by the looks of it. His thick auburn-brown hair was parted to one side in an old-fashioned style, and his dark brown eyes were a little…eerie when set against the extremely pale, lightly freckled skin of his face.
He was still a babe, though.
“What can I do for you?” She immediately clocked his accent, a distinctive one that she’d heard a fair bit in London.
There was a menacing looking skull tattooed right on his Adam’s apple, which was a bit distracting.
“Um…I heard you’re selling some…interesting stuff,” Darcy said, hesitantly. She’d never even bought from a run-of-the-mill drug dealer before, so she really had no idea how to behave with this imposing man.
There was a faint shimmer of amusement in the Dealer’s dark eyes, before he turned business-like once more.
“I might do…if you have the means to pay for it.”
Oh, that was her cue. She tried to stealthily reach under the hem of her sweater, fishing out the wad of bills she’d stashed in her bra that morning.
In hindsight, she probably should’ve removed the money before now, but she figured it hardly mattered if she flashed the man a bit.
She doubted she’d be seeing him again.
The Dealer raised a single brow, drawing the rolls of notes towards himself and deftly flicking through them.
It was all the money Darcy had in the world, all of her savings from various birthdays, Christmases and even the Bat Mitzvah her grandmother had insisted upon.
It was money that should’ve been going towards a deposit on an apartment, maybe even a house in the future, or paying off the small remnants of her college fees, but here she was, handing it all over in order to be…special.
The Dealer nodded, looking satisfied as he transferred the money into a bag and tucked it away somewhere behind the desk.
He reached both of his hands across the table, clearly expecting her to do the same.
“Aren’t you going to ask if I’m a cop, or something?” Darcy said, before her brain could catch up with her mouth.
A ghost of a smile traced the man’s lips.
“You’re not a fed. Simon would’a known if you were.”
Darcy frowned. Who the hell was Simon?
Ah, the doorman with the impressive sight, of course. Intriguing.
The Dealer looked down at his hands pointedly.
She didn’t want to piss the guy off, but…she did have some questions!
“Wait, okay. Sorry to not be a cool cucumber about this, but…what’s my power going to be?”
Darcy had decided she’d quite like super strength. Or telekinesis. Either would be super cool and super useful in battle.
The Dealer shrugged. “I don’t know.”
Darcy was flummoxed. “What?”
“I don’t choose the powers I give, and the customer doesn’t choose the power they get.”
Darcy obviously still looked completely lost, because the Dealer sighed a little bit before adding: “The abilities manifest and that’s it, I’m just the conduit. The power you get will be unique to you.”
“Oh, okay.” The SHIELD brief had not made that clear. Darcy had assumed that the Dealer had possession of certain powers and a paying customer got to choose whatever they wanted.
This was…pretty worrying, to be honest.
Somehow she doubted she’d be offered a refund, though.
“Hands,” the Dealer prompted, not unkindly but not very patiently, either.
Darcy took a fortifying breath before lifting her hands out from her under quaking thighs and reluctantly grasping the Dealer’s. His hands were warm but dry, and just as Darcy was beginning to wonder if this whole thing was a bunch of malarkey, a blinding white light issued from where their hands were joined, and Darcy felt an electrical surge run through her body.
It was over before her mind had even caught up to what was going on. The Dealer’s hands fell slack against hers, and Darcy peeled her eyes open to watch the man sit back heavily in his luxurious desk chair.
She felt…weird.
The door she’d come in banged open, and Simon beckoned to her.
Darcy slowly eased out of the chair, glancing anxiously back at the Dealer. His skin was ashen, eyelids heavy.
“Um…thanks, I guess,” she managed, lamely.
The Dealer nodded, lifting a hand to her as she turned and walked out of the room.
Oh God, what have I done? She thought, as she stood in the dingy underpass once again, the black door with the red hands shut firmly behind her.
What have I done?
“Foster, I’ve got a bone to pick with you.”
“Wonderful,” Jane muttered bitterly, setting down her wonky homemade doohickey that Darcy could never remember the name of.
Tony Stark’s loudly obnoxious voice was rapidly followed by the loud, obnoxious man himself, who strode into Jane’s lab like he owned the place.
Well, technically he did. But still.
“What is it, Tony?” Jane asked, doing a great impression of patience. Darcy watched the exchange from the corner of her eye, quietly sipping her jumbo coffee and trying to help Thor set up a Pokémon Go account all at the same time.
“Just had a lovely chat with the not-so-late Phil Coulson. He was not a happy camper. Care to guess why?” Tony demanded, disdainfully prodding at one of Jane’s sadder looking machines. He really hated that she still insisted on making tech out of old bits and bobs, and he was never afraid to show it.
Slapping his hands away, Jane placed her work-in-progress away from the mechanic’s grabby hands.
“No.”
“‘No’ you don’t care to guess, or ‘no’ you don’t know what Agent Agent is upset about.”
Jane huffed irritably. “Tony, I’m really busy right now. Can you just say what you came to say or, you know…clear off.”
Stark peered at her over the rim of his sunglasses. “That’s no way to speak to your landlord.”
Jane smirked lightly. “Sure it is. I could have used a much ruder word than ‘clear’.”
Darcy snorted with laughter before she could stop herself. Three sets of eyes turned to look at her.
“As you were, minion,” Stark said, waving at her dismissively before turning back to Jane.
Darcy smothered the hot flash of irritation and flipped him the bird. Thor grinned up at her conspiratorially. His patience for Tony was pretty limited, too.
“Coulson called me up to accuse me of hacking some super-secret New SHIELD info. When I told him where to stuff it, he said that his top hacker had traced the IP address to, guess where, that’s right- this very lab,” he declared dramatically, gesturing to the absolute chaos that was Jane’s enormous workspace.
Darcy felt a trickle of icy panic slip down her spine as she blindly tapped some made-up figures into the spreadsheet.
Holy shit, I’m so fucked.
A deep frown was creasing Jane’s brow. “Why would I hack SHIELD? They’d have more reason to come after my research than the other way around.”
Tony shrugged. “So you’re pleading innocence?”
“Yes,” Jane said, firmly. “I wouldn’t be surprised if someone in this building had reason to hack SHIELD”- here she fixed Tony with a deeply accusatory look- “But it’s no one in my lab.” With that, Jane picked up her tools and began fiddling with her doohickey again.
That was a cold dismissal if ever Darcy had seen one, and unsurprisingly, real-life Diva Tony Stark didn’t take to it too kindly.
“You better not be lying to me, Foster.”
“Goodbye, Tony,” Jane replied, not even looking up at him.
Darcy heaved a sigh of relief as Stark shrugged, heading for the exit, but immediately tensed when he paused for a split second by her workstation.
“Hey Point Break, Cap called a meeting for 1pm. Don’t be late,” he said, waiting for Thor to nod distractedly before moving on.
Thinking that was the last of it, Darcy set about deleting all the bogus data she’d just input while eavesdropping.
“Oh, and gofer girl?”
Darcy glanced up, meeting Stark’s sharp gaze as he hung back in the doorway. The man had never even noticed she existed before, and she didn’t really appreciate that today of all days he would suddenly do a 180.
“Um…yeah?”
“The last ten lines of data there were a total car crash. You might need another one of those,” he said, gesturing to her coffee and smirking when she scowled at him.
“Bastard,” she muttered under her breath as Stark disappeared into the hallway with a flourish of finely-tailored-suit.
“Indeed,” Thor murmured, nodding sagely as he captured a Bulbasaur.
The rest of the day was hell for Darcy. Every passerby in the corridor beyond the lab suddenly became a member of Stark’s security, about to come in and detain her for hacking SHIELD communications. She had been an idiot to think she could outsmart SHIELD, Tony Stark, and JARVIS- sooner or later, one of them was going to figure out that she was behind the hack, and she was going to be in so much shit.
The fact that Jane had so vehemently insisted that no one in her lab could’ve possibly done such a thing made Darcy feel even worse. Jane wasn’t just her boss, she was also her friend, but Darcy had never divulged the true extent of her computing abilities to Jane and it seemed a bit late to start now.
Mercifully, at around 4:30 Thor decided that he wanted to walk in the park with his ‘lady love’, and as he all but dragged Jane out of the lab, the tiny physicist had told Darcy to call it a day.
From the way Jane and Thor were grinning at each other as they hurried to the elevator, Darcy suspected they’d be doing more than walking in the park. There were going to be some very traumatised squirrels roaming around Central Park tonight.
After shutting down her computer and checking that none of Jane’s doohickeys had been left on, Darcy packed up her satchel and stomped to the elevator.
Worrying about SHIELD and her still unknown ‘superpower’ had really done a number on her energy levels, and she was ready to curl up in bed and eat takeout like a total slob.
“Hurry up,” she tsked, viciously stabbing the button for the elevator again. “JARVIS, what’s the deal?”
“My apologies Miss Lewis, the lift was paused briefly on the eighty-seventh floor,” came the calm response.
Darcy crossed her arms, tapping her feet impatiently as she waited for the doors to slide open.
When they finally did, she hurried in, barely taking stock of her surroundings as she whirled around and poked the button for the lobby.
Alas, that whirling motion was the exact moment that her ancient satchel decided to give up, and the strap on her shoulder split with a heart-wrenching tearing noise, a flock of loose pages flying across the confined space of the descending elevator.
“Fuck!” Darcy whined, diving to her knees and grabbing for the paperwork.
Unfortunately, the other occupant of the elevator dived down at exactly the same time, and in an act of supreme awkwardness, Darcy found herself on her knees holding hands with the Winter Soldier.
“Oh,” she breathed, looking up into Barnes’ pale eyes. Despite his now permanent residence in the Tower, Darcy had never seen him in person.
She’d read every one of his files, though, so she felt she knew quite a bit about him. His epic friendship with Cap, his horrendous seventy-year captivity with Hydra, his shaky return to the superhero fold after the events in DC two years prior.
What she didn’t know was why he was still holding her wrist in his right hand, or why his pupils were suddenly dilating like crazy.
**
“Um…what?” she managed, trying desperately to pull her arm out of his grip. No luck. In fact, her escape attempt just led to him bringing his metal (!!!) hand up to clasp the side of her neck. It was unyielding and warm, the mechanisms humming against her skin.
“I wanna fuck you so badly, you have no idea,” Barnes rasped, his deep voice sounding completely wrecked.
Darcy reeled away from him, but his hands didn’t budge. She looked down and saw that the veins of his flesh hand were pulsing a hideous dark blue.
“Dude, what the hell-”
Barnes’ eyes were wide as saucers now. He looked downright unhinged. “I’m gonna eat you out first. Bet you taste so sweet. Get you all wet and then bend you over-”
“Get off me!” Darcy screamed, beyond weirded out now and rapidly entering into fear territory. Barnes was literally panting, his cheeks and neck flushed as he pressed himself up against her. He was only half-leaning on her, but he was heavy, and she knew that she had no hope of dislodging him.
“Sergeant Barnes, release her at once!” JARVIS’ voice thundered through the speakers, filled with a threatening rage that Darcy had never imagined the AI to be capable of.
Barnes didn’t take any notice, not even when JARVIS abruptly halted the elevator and started an ear-splitting alarm that made Darcy want to cry.
Realising that she was going to have to save herself, Darcy scrabbled for the remnants of her heavy satchel, and grabbing onto a frayed strap she swung it with all her might, clocking Barnes in the side of the face.
Super-soldier or not, the blow set him off kilter just long enough for Darcy to wrench herself out of his grasp and leap to her feet. She picked up her satchel and ran for the doors, almost crying with relief when she realised that JARVIS had already opened them for her.
She ploughed through a herd of astonished accountants, glancing back only for a second to make sure that that… psycho wasn’t following her. From what she could glimpse, Barnes was still slumped on the floor of the halted elevator, looking as stupefied as she felt.
Darcy didn’t slow down. She ran for the nearest stairwell, hurdling down the steps and ignoring JARVIS’s numerous inquiries and pleas for her to stop.
She didn’t even take a proper breath until she was standing outside the Tower, sucking in the muggy air of the city.
“Holy. Shit,” she said to herself, with feeling. She had just been attacked by the Winter Soldier- damn near sexually assaulted, if she were being honest with herself- and she needed a few minutes to try and calm down her heartrate.
Even after the fiery doombot in New Mexico and the aliens in London, Darcy was pretty sure that she had never been in so much danger before. Barnes had been like a man possessed, pinning her and practically slavering all over her.
**
What the fuck were Captain America and Tony Stark doing allowing someone like that live among regular people? The guy was even more of a liability than his SHIELD, Hydra, and Stark Industries files had let on.
Gritting her teeth and tying a firm knot in the tattered straps of her satchel, Darcy headed for the subway.
This had officially been the shittiest day of the year, and tequila was in order. Fortunately, she had a large bottle of Jose Cuervo stashed in her cupboards from Jane’s birthday two weeks prior, and she planned on treating herself.
The subway was typically jam packed, and Darcy had to be pretty judicious with her elbows in order to even get onboard. Leaning against a partition, she fished her iPod out of her jacket pocket and dialled up the ear-splitting sounds of Nine Inch Nails as she ruminated darkly on handsy and entitled super soldiers.
It was late April and the subway carriages were already at that stage where they became unbearably hot if you were unlucky enough to be riding the rails for anything more than five minutes. Darcy rolled up the sleeves of her jacket, trying in vain to cool herself down.
As they got nearer to Queens, Darcy moved out of her little nook to get closer to the doors, lest she get trapped on the train. It wouldn’t have been the first time.
And that was when it happened.
The train jolted lightly, and Darcy naturally reached out to catch herself on the railing closest to her.
Unfortunately, a man was already holding onto the railing.
And also unfortunately, Darcy’s hand landed right on top of his.
Just as her brain had sussed out that the stranger’s veins were turning darker under her fingertips, Darcy looked up to find the older-looking man staring at her bizarrely.
Oh, fuck.
***
Darcy attempted to pull her hand away from the man’s equally clammy hand, but when she caught the look in his eyes, she felt a weight drop in her stomach. The man had the same unhinged, hungry expression as Barnes, and Darcy knew with a certainty what was about to happen before the man even opened his mouth.
“Let go of me!” she hissed, frantically clawing at his hand, but it did nothing to slacken his surprisingly strong grip.
“I want to fuck your tits! They look so soft,” he gasped, all but salivating as he stared at her chest.
Before Darcy could get ready to swing her satchel like a weapon for the second time that day, the creepy man was suddenly shoved bodily away from her.
“What the hell is your problem? She told you to stop touching her!” An incensed-looking woman shouted.
The man who had assaulted Darcy had his hands on his knees, gasping for breath. Everyone in the near vicinity was staring at them, and Darcy felt a hot flush rise on her throat.
***
“Are you okay, honey?” Her saviour asked, kindly. Darcy nodded, murmuring a quiet ‘thanks’ as the woman fixed Mr Perv with an icy glare.
With perfect timing, the train pulled up at the next platform, and Darcy, mindful of the dozens of eyes fixed on her, hopped off, content to walk the extra twenty minutes home if it saved her from further humiliation.
This is the worst day, ever, she thought to herself morosely, trudging through the late afternoon sunshine.
Darcy hadn’t always been such a negative nelly, but over the past couple of years she’d found herself becoming quieter and more withdrawn. She frequently struggled to sleep properly, and she found herself dwelling on things that her ‘old’, college-era self wouldn’t have batted an eyelid at.
She didn’t like it. She didn’t like that Barnes and that other old pervert had made her feel so…defenceless, so scared. In both instances she’d been so afraid that she’d forgotten about her taser. It was literally right there in the easily accessible side-pocket of her satchel, but she hadn’t even thought to reach for it.
She felt like all her gumption was being leeched out of her day by day. BAMF Darcy Lewis was a thing of the past.
Seriously, who had she been kidding? Going to that fake ‘Dealer’ and expecting to be made into a superhero? Darcy wasn’t a superhero. She wasn’t a super anything. She was just an average Joe floating through life- once upon a time that hadn’t bothered her in the slightest, but she found that negativity rubbing up against her natural optimism more and more these days.
Fixing herself a quick bowl of curry for dinner, Darcy half-watched the latest episode of Game of Thrones. Normally she was engrossed in the show, but her mind kept cycling back to the double assault she’d experienced that afternoon, and her dinner lay mostly untouched.
“That’d be a cool power,” she murmured to herself, as Melisandre brought Jon Snow back from the dead.
And then it hit her like a stack of bricks.
“Oh my God,” she cried, not caring that her neighbours could probably hear her talking to herself like a crazy person.
The way Barnes and that man had behaved wasn’t normal, and in each case it had only happened when they were touching her.
Darcy peered down at her hands in trepidation.
That was her power.
Making people want to have sex with her.
“Motherfucker!” She hissed furiously, gathering up her jacket and keys and hurrying from her apartment.
The Dealer had a shit tonne to answer for.