Chapter Text
Darcy clutches the edge of her sink and bites her lips together nervously. The stick in her hand is short and slim, not the sort of thing she'd normally pay any attention to, much less be tugging her hair out over, but today is no usual day and Darcy is not feeling like a usual Darcy. She's feeling like a very freaked, panicky Darcy, the kind of Darcy who refers to herself in the third person and locks herself in the bathroom while her boyfriend is out saving the world so that her house's artificial intelligence can't spy on her.
She's pretty certain JARVIS knows what's up anyway, but she prefers to pretend that she has at least a smidgen of privacy.
“Am I reading this wrong, JARVIS?”
Of course, the whole 'no privacy' thing is pretty handy when she wants a quick confirmation.
“I can't be certain how you're reading it, miss, but I believe that congratulations are in order.”
“Right,” Darcy says numbly, dropping the stick in the trash can. “Congratulations. Right. People do that.” She sinks down to sit on the toilet and buries her face in her hands. “I need a drink.”
“That wouldn't be advisable given the situation,” JARVIS scolds, and Darcy winces, because he's better at making her feel guilty than her grandmother.
“I'm not actually going to drink,” she says quickly, waving her hands dismissively. “I just want one. I should get someone to drink for me. A drinking proxy. Is that something people do? I think they should if they don't.”
JARVIS doesn't answer, which is really all the answer she needs. Even his silence manages to sound disapproving. Darcy pulls her legs up and tucks her knees under her chin. And it's not that she's not excited, not that she doesn't want this, especially if it's with Bruce, but it's so completely out of left field that she doesn't even know how to begin to approach it. It doesn't feel real yet, more dream than reality, and she has a sudden fierce stab of longing to go visit her mom.
“JARVIS?”
There's a pause, then what feels like the entire room sighing around her, and JARVIS asks, “Yes, Miss Lewis?”
Darcy worries at a torn cuticle on her thumb. “You'll keep this quiet, won't you? I don't want anyone to know yet.”
“Of course.”
One corner of Darcy's mouth tips up in a small grin. “I'm serious, bud. Not even Tony. And don't think we don't know you tell him all the juicy stuff first.” She pouts. “Which is tragic, because I thought we had something special going with our gossip circle.”
“I assure you that I will be the very picture of discretion,” JARVIS says with a sniff. Darcy wonders how that works since he doesn't have nostrils. “And I did inform you of Agent Coulson's repeated overnight stays with Agent Barton before anyone else.”
“You're good people,” Darcy says fondly, her heart just barely starting to edge out of her throat.
Which of course means that Loki would choose that moment to appear in the bathroom. Darcy shrieks and flails to keep from falling off the toilet.
“Darcy Lewis, I presume,” Loki says. He looks thoroughly unimpressed. Well, fuck him, Darcy thinks. If he has a problem with her Power Rangers shirt and bed hair, he can add it to his pile of issues to cry about the next time he hides in his closet for an emofest.
“Well, I'm sure as shit not Dr. Livingston.” Darcy crosses her arms over her chest. “Your helmet is stupid. You look like a goat.” She pauses, lips scrunching to the side as she considers him. “A drag queen goat.”
Loki blinks at her. Darcy smirks and estimates that she'd be able to get him to the point of twitching within an hour. That is, if he didn't kill her first. That's kind of a real concern with him. Darcy smiles serenely at him, because she can totally be a team player, nonthreatening and small town charm to the point where even Doctor Doom sends her a Christmas card. Loki's brow furrows.
“I did not expect someone quite like...” He pauses and tilts his head ever so slightly to the side. “You are Dr. Banner's Darcy Lewis, correct?”
“Well,” Darcy sighs, because, well, really. “I like to think of myself as my own person, but I'm with Bruce, if that's what you mean.”
His hand is hard on her arm, fingers biting in tightly enough to bruise, and Darcy yelps and instinctively flinches away from him as he yanks her to her feet. It's not even close to a deterrent to Loki, the reigning asshole of Asgard, and Darcy would kick his ankle if she didn't think he'd take that as a sign that it'd be okay to just lop her head off. It's possible that he isn't a lopper, but she's had a few run ins with magic—including one unfortunate incident with an ex who thought he was the next Harry Houdini and had wanted her to wear a cheap, unflattering sparkly leotard that had made her ass look as big as Texas—and a straightforward lopping would probably be preferable to whatever magician's tricks he has hidden up his fancy, fancy sleeves. “That was all I needed to know.”
Darcy's pretty certain that he thinks his grin is some combination of evil and intimidating, and she should probably be freaking the fuck out right now, even though he really does look like a slightly deranged mountain goat all decked out for the annual pride parade. He looks like a tool, but that doesn't make him any less dangerous. She should probably be yelling for help. Her watch is in the bedroom, which means her panic button is out of reach, and something tells her JARVIS is in the middle of some mysterious technical difficulties, but Pepper might still be in the living room, which is close enough that she might be able to hear a particularly loud scream.
Instead, she throws up all over Loki's boots.
On the bright side, she thinks right before everything goes black, at least she can legitimately blame that on the morning sickness.