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The first time Steve met Darcy, they were at war.
It was his own fault. He was trying to get Bucky to enjoy the snowfall, and show him that the white-out surrounding the upstate Avengers’ facility was nothing like the isolation of Siberia. The best way to do that, according to Barton, was with a snowball fight.
It took their combined efforts to coax Bucky out into it, with Natasha making jibes in Russian about his yellow belly and Clint bragging he was wise to sit out a game he was going to lose. It didn’t make Bucky smile, but it did make him take the fight too seriously: they lost him in the snow, hidden among the trees.
In the middle of a furious exchange of volleys with Natasha, Steve saw a flash of dark hair in his peripheral vision on the open lawn, and flung his snowball at it, his reflexes kicking in before his perception. It was only as he pivoted with the follow-through that he realized he’d just doused a petite young woman with what amounted to compacted ice. An upturned coffee cup lay at her feet, staining the snow brown.
She spluttered at him, wiping her face clean with gloves hands, removing her little bobble hat to shake the snow off of it. “Hey jerk ! What did I ever do to you?”
“I am so sorry, ma’am,” he began, crunching his way over to her. The other combatants had stopped moving, all eyes turned to them. “I thought you were someone else.”
Her eyes narrowed. “Did you just call me ma’am?”
“I--yes?” Yards away, Bucky dropped down from a tree. Oh, this made him smile. Steve turned to yell at his friend. “You didn’t think to stop me?”
“Always a pleasure to watch you charm the dames,” Bucky called. Steve heard a huff behind him, but Bucky carried on. “I thought your reflexes were better than that.”
Bucky easily dodged the snowball that came his way--the aim was poor anyway, the missile splattering against a tree trunk--but before Steve had an inkling that there might be one aimed his way too, the back of his head was suddenly cold . Icy cold, with rivulets running down his neck, his teeth slamming together as he yelped.
Now Bucky was flat-out laughing at him.
Steve turned to find the girl stomping away from him, in the direction of the side door to the facility which appeared to have been her original destination. She left the puddle of coffee in her wake, steam rising from the ground.
He chased after her, reaching the door just in time to hold it open for her. She shot him a dark look as she passed through, though she did squeeze out a reluctant “thank you.”
He liked that. It meant she had manners.
It wasn’t the only thing he was admiring about her. Though her dark hair was soaking and sticking to her face, the cold had brought out a deep flush on her cheeks, the same rosy colour as her full lips, in contrast to her pale skin and wide blue eyes. It was the kind of colouring he’d always pictured on Snow White, and he absolutely could see this girl being named as the loveliest one in the kingdom. She stood nearly a full head shorter than him, wrapped in a burgundy coat that flared out around her hips.
“I really did think you were someone else,” he tried again. “I’m Steve.”
“I know who you are,” she replied bluntly, stomping the snow off her boots and turning away from him in the direction of the elevator to press the call button.
“I’m sorry you spilled your coffee. I could buy you a new one in Starkbucks?”
The elevator doors slid open and she stepped inside, pivoting to face him while she chose her floor.
“It was hot chocolate. Starkbucks don’t make it with black forest syrup, so unless you’re planning to head into town and buying me one from that little independent place, I’m outta luck. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to go fix my eyeliner before spending the afternoon Stark-wrangling.”
The doors slid shut, and she was gone.
Natasha sidled up out of nowhere. “Wow. You really pissed off Darcy.”
“Darcy? Is that her name?”
Something in his voice made Natasha raise one sly eyebrow, in an expression Steve had never warmed to. “That’s her name, if it’s of interest to you.”
“Why was she so mad at me?” he asked, exasperated.
“Wouldn’t you be annoyed if you walked a mile in the cold and didn’t even get to drink your hot chocolate because some asshole dragged you into a snowball fight?”
“I thought it was Bucky! And why does she walk that far for something to drink?”
Natasha shrugged. “She does it every day. Says it’s the only time she gets a break from this place.”
“You know her?”
The sly eyebrow became a sly upturn of the mouth. “You gonna finish this snowball fight?”
“No, I have a hot chocolate to deliver. She said she was going to a meeting--do you know which one?”
Natasha tsk ed. “Don’t go embarrassing her by having it sent into the meeting. You already called her ma’am .”
“I don’t get it.” What else was he supposed to call a woman whose name he didn’t know?
“Then I can’t help you.”
Natasha slid back out into the snow, Bucky holding the door to let her pass before coming inside himself. He smirked at Steve and clapped him on the shoulder. “Good shot there, champ. You always did have a way with the ladies.”
“It’s alright. I can fix this.”
~
The problem with being an Avenger was Steve spent so little time in one place that even though he ostensibly lived at the facility, he was often only there long enough to sleep. The rest of the time he was on goodwill missions around the world, or on actual missions keeping the world in one piece. He saw more of the UN in Geneva these days than he did of his own bed.
The problem with being interested in a girl who worked with the Avengers is that she often wasn’t often in the same place as he was. Whenever he was home he’d ask Friday for Darcy’s whereabouts, but nine times out of ten she wasn’t on the base. He looked out for her at Christmas, but she’d gone home to spend it with her family.
The problem with being friends with Natasha Romanoff was that she never gave you an easy ride.
In the days following the snowball fight, Steve did his best to find out more about Darcy, and Natasha did her best to thwart him. She mostly seemed to want to force him to confess that he was interested, but Steve was wary about involving her. He trusted Natasha with his life--and had done on more than one occasion--but he didn’t necessarily want her anywhere near his romantic life. Some things ought to be private, and damnit, he was going to prove to Bucky that he was capable of talking to a woman he liked.
He managed to discover that Darcy’s surname was Lewis, and that she dealt with the admin side of running the Avengers, having previously been an assistant to Doctor Foster. Everyone he spoke to had high praise for her, including Pepper, but that praise put her in demand, keeping her on the move. She did the legwork to rehabilitate the Avengers’ image, while they turned up and smiled for the cameras.
Still, Steve did what he could by way of apology for ruining her day. He might not have bought her the replacement hot chocolate--all too aware, after Natasha’s warning, of having it delivered to her in a meeting from himself and how mortifying that might be for her--but he did persuade Pepper to stock black forest syrup in the Starkbucks on site.
The next time he actually managed to interact with Darcy was in a meeting, the Avengers corralled around a conference table while Maria went over their latest PR strategy.
“I don’t see why you’re still making Steve the mouthpiece in this,” Tony cut in. “I am clearly more popular with the public.”
“No, Mr. Stark, the public finds you more entertaining ,” Darcy replied, glancing up from the laptop she was running the presentation through. “And that’s only the American public. Globally, the Captain is considered more trustworthy, and more importantly he is well liked outside of the US.”
Steve squirmed in his seat as all eyes turned to him.
“There’s no accounting for taste,” Tony said with a shrug. “Wait, people who aren’t even Americans prefer Captain America to me?”
Darcy looked at him levelly. “Your name is still synonymous with weapons and war. On a personal level, people consider you arrogant and volatile. In a few places, you’re pretty much still regarded as a murderer. Oh, and the last time you gave a press conference you went off script and insulted the daughter of the French president. So yeah, we’re keeping the Captain as the figurehead.”
Natasha nudged Steve under the table, and when he glanced at her the Eyebrow was in place. He gave her a gentle shake of his head and turned his attention back to Darcy.
There was something a little familiar about her. Not like he knew her, but because she reminded him of someone. And now, as he saw her stare down Tony, almost daring him to undermine her, he knew who. He’d seen that expression so many times on Peggy’s face. It wasn’t just the expression, either, that hint of pent-up frustration waiting to be unleashed on the first sucker who tested her patience; with her hair pinned up, it reminded Steve of Peggy a lot. As did her curves.
Apparently he had, as Natasha would say, a type.
He cleared his throat. “Perhaps more involvement from Tony in this region would help rehabilitate his reputation,” he suggested.
“He’d need a firm hand,” Maria said.
“What do you say, Cap? You willing to be that firm hand?” Tony made a kissy face.
Steve was sure Darcy had a gone a little pink when he next looked at her.
After the meeting was over and everyone had deserted the conference room, he sought her out, hovering nearby while she packed up her notes.
“Ms. Lewis,” he said, clearing his throat.
“Captain.” She didn’t look at him, instead shoving paperwork into a briefcase. Her nails were painted glittery fuchsia, in contrast to the black pantsuit she wore, and the curls falling loose from her chignon appeared closer to chestnut than the black they’d been when wet.
“Steve, please. I know I didn’t get chance to make it up to you the last time we met, but I hope you’ve noticed I tried to make amends elsewhere.”
That made her pause and blink up at him. “Oh, I noticed. Everybody noticed. Jane wants to know what dirt I’ve got on Stark. She refuses to believe that I don’t have any, and I mean, she’s right, but I’m not going to use it for that . I figured it had to be you, but nobody ever said anything.”
He let her ramble, idly wondering exactly what she knew about Tony that she wasn’t supposed to.
“So, er, thanks. It was kind of overkill though, I did already get you back so we were even. Anyway, places to be, people to see, superheroes to blackmail…”
She hurried out of the room and if Steve hadn’t known better, he’d have sworn she seemed a little flustered. Nervous, even. And yet the calm, in-control way she’d handled Tony during the meeting made that unlikely.
That was how life went. He only saw Darcy in meetings, where she barely addressed him directly, but she impressed him every time. She was gradually whipping Tony into shape, the preparation she did slowly rebuilding the reputation of the Avengers even in places that were hostile to them.
He catalogued the ways she was different to Peggy, to convince himself he wasn’t interested in her only because of who she reminded him of. But there was plenty to list: outwardly, Peggy had always been immaculate about her appearance, lips and nails matching, not a hair out of place. Darcy dressed up for meetings, but whenever she didn’t need to be in business wear she’d be found in more comfortable attire, bright colours clashing with earth tones.
And there was a softness to her that Peggy had never showed, a willingness to take care of people and put them at ease. Maybe it was because she wasn’t the only woman in the room anymore and didn’t feel like she had to fight for her place, but Steve suspected it went deeper than that: the way she automatically made sure Doctor Foster, and by extension Thor, were ticking along hinted at a natural urge to nurture.
For his own part, Steve struggled to think of things to say to her. He knew so little about her interests, beyond what she liked to drink, that when he tried to initiate conversation he came up blank. More than once he’d made himself look like a fool, before having to walk away and face Bucky’s teasing.
They spoke a lot more in his dreams. She tended to be in charge there too.
The pattern only changed when the world went to hell once more, Thor rushed back to the facility for treatment with Doctor Cho after receiving a blow that would have killed any mortal man. They’d completed their mission, but Thor wasn’t the only Avenger injured, with Steve having to help Bucky make the walk from the quinjet to the medical bay.
He wasn’t surprised to find Darcy there, comforting Doctor Foster by Thor’s bedside while he was stitched up. She looked different like this than when he normally got to interact with her: wrenched from her bed in the middle of the night, curls a mess and her face clean of make-up. That, and the casual clothes she’d thrown on made her look so much younger, more vulnerable, than she ever did in meetings.
She acknowledged him as he came inside, her glance flicking to Bucky and back between them with a hint of tenderness. Steve realised she was cataloguing the whole team as they came through, checking they were okay, though most of her attention was with her little group.
Later, with the top half of his tactical suit cut to ribbons so the medical staff could get to wounds which had nearly healed on their own, he sloped off in the direction of his quarters. He was showing more skin than he was comfortable with, but there was no point getting changed when he’d be showering as soon as he reached the privacy of his rooms. The team was okay, healing, and he’d earned his rest. But down a side corridor he heard the distant sound of a sniffle, and his feet turned in that direction before his exhausted mind could catch up.
Darcy was leaning against a wall at the end of the corridor, her hands wrapped around her mouth to try and stifle any sobs that might leak through.
“Hey,” Steve said softly, creeping towards her. “You okay?”
It was a stupid question, the evidence that she wasn’t okay was painted in tear tracks down her cheeks, but she nodded her head furiously anyway. “Yep,” she insisted with a wavery voice. “I’m fine. Just got choked up for a minute there about Thor.”
“But you had to hold it together for Doctor Foster,” he guessed. He was level with her, and she wiped at her tears with shaky hands. Tonight her fingernails were Tiffany blue.
“Yeah, but Thor’s going to be okay. Takes more than that to finish him, but he’s the only one who can keep me supplied with good Asgardian pastry so I panicked for a minute there.” She smiled up at him, the first time she’d ever done so, and he had to resist the urge to gather her to him. Then her gaze dropped down to the remains of his tactical suit, the way its shredded remains barely covered his torso, and her eyes widened. “Oh my god.”
“It’s worse than it looks,” he reassured her. “Most of the damage is where they cut it to get to my injuries.”
The sound she made next was a whimper, which had to be the last of her crying bout escaping. She looked away again, and he noticed how flushed her cheeks were. It was wrong to take note of how pretty she looked when she was this upset, but he couldn’t help it. There was something about her all sleep-rumpled and flushed that appealed to him.
“I should go,” she said, her voice reduced to a croak. “See how Jane’s getting on.”
“Right. If you need anything, anything at all, you only need to ask.”
She was gone, and he kept on in the direction he’d been headed, where one of the shadows peeled away to walk with him.
“You and the brunettes, huh.”
“Shut it, Buck. Besides, you know people think you’re one of the brunettes.”
He shrugged. “Nat says it’s hot.”
~
The next morning, Natasha was waiting for Steve before they went into the mission debrief.
“I know something you don’t,” she said in a sing-song voice.
“You’re an intelligence agent. You always know things that I don’t.”
“Yes, but this thing is about Darcy.”
He hesitated. He wanted to know badly, he really did, but what Natasha knew probably wasn’t meant for his ears, so he needed to respect that.
Natasha’s smile broadened, sensing his weakness, but he shook his head. “Let her keep her secrets.”
To his surprise, the mischievous smile disappeared, the expected weedling not forthcoming. Instead, her expression softened, and Steve felt like he’d passed some sort of test.
“Is the correct answer. You officially have my approval.”
Steve was left scratching his head, wondering what she was talking about.
~
The best part of a year rolled by, until the snow fell again, blanketing the facility in hush and the anticipation of the winter holidays.
After their encounter following Thor’s injury, Steve didn’t see any more of Darcy than he had before. Truthfully, he thought about her more than he talked to her, even though he eagerly soaked up every morsel of information people dropped about her. He found himself sketching her face from memory regularly, and she was a regular participant in his dreams.
The snowfall only served to remind him of how little progress he’d made since he’d first met her. It was a little pathetic, really, how he’d spent so many months pining over a woman who barely gave him the time of day. The fresh snow had to be a sign that it wasn’t meant to be, and he needed to look elsewhere.
It was too much to expect to find someone to share this life with anyway, as chaotic as it was.
The holidays brought Secret Santa, and Steve put his name down hoping he didn’t get one of the admin staff he barely knew. Though most of them would be going home for Christmas itself, along with Darcy who he knew would be spending Hanukkah with her family, then taking some additional leave. So he wasn’t surprised, or even disappointed, that he didn’t draw her name.
What would he have even given her? One of the drawings he’d done of her in 1940s pin-up style? A portrait of her with the soft smile she sometimes wore when Tony was behaving himself? Nothing ruined the holidays like having to get a restraining order against Santa.
Instead, he went about seeking out gourmet pizza vouchers for Barton, adding them to the sack in the common room where all the gifts had to be left by Christmas Eve.
It meant that finding Darcy in the common room on Christmas morning came as something as a shock. She was wearing an oversized sweater with flashing fairy lights strung into the yarn and an elf hat tipped jauntily on her head.
“...flew back in last night. Pepper kept going on about the chef they brought in to make dinner today, so I wasn’t going to miss out on that, not when the alternative was mediocre Chinese food because we already ate the stuff my mom made...” she was saying to Clint, who nodded at Steve in greeting and went back to his conversation.
“Are we all here?” Tony yelled. He was stood in the middle of the room in a Santa costume, belly padding and all. “Can I empty Santa’s sack now?” Steve wasn’t the only to grimace.
“Nat’s not--” Clint began.
“Too bad,” Tony cut him off. “I said ten a.m. and we all know I have no patience. Alright, first up…” he reached into the sack at his feet and pulled out a gift bag. “Rhodey!”
The parcels were handed out, Steve knowing as soon as he picked his up that it contained art supplies. He only vaguely paid attention when Darcy collected her gift, a foot-long oblong box that could have been anything. Instead, he focussed on the small pile of presents he had to open, and those of his friends gathered around him.
Bucky, for once, seemed to be enjoying himself, even when he opened up his gift to find a tube of metal polish and a buffing cloth. He barked out a dry laugh, dropping it onto the table in favour of the mound of candy he’d collected and was working his way through.
“I reckon Nat can figure out who my Secret Santa was, and I can track them down to terrify ‘em. Probably some paper pusher who doesn’t know the first thing about me except for the arm.”
“Buck…”
“I didn’t say I was going to hurt anyone. Just put the wind up ‘em!”
A loud hoot sounded from behind Steve, and every head in the common room swivelled in its direction. Tony stood next to Darcy, holding aloft a…
Wait. No. That wasn’t what Steve thought it was. Surely not.
“Is that a dildo?” Bucky whispered.
Darcy’s mortified stare in the direction of the offending item suggested it was.
“That’s a dildo,” Sam confirmed. “A Captain American dildo.”
“ ‘Maybe this will solve your problem’ ,” Tony read from the tag, while Darcy buried her beet-red face in her hands.
Half of the faces in the common room swivelled towards Steve instead, his own face heating up in response.
“I didn’t authorize those,” he heard himself say, while Bucky snickered behind him.
Natasha chose that moment to make an entrance, gasping as she saw what Tony still held above his head. “Tony, you need to put that away now .”
His arm dropped immediately. “It’s not my fault Santa sent her something so inappropriate.”
“She wasn’t meant to open it here! She wasn’t even meant to be here.”
“What?” Darcy whimpered from behind her hands.
“Didn’t you read the other part of the tag?”
Darcy shook her head.
“The part that says don’t open this in front of other people!”
“I’m just going to go,” Darcy mumbled, shooting towards the door at lightning speed while Tony yelled after her.
“Don’t forget your present!”
“I’m about to beat you to death with it,” Natasha growled, and at that the fun stopped, everyone averting their eyes and pretending that they hadn’t seen anything. No, ma’am, we were all sitting here focussed on our own gifts.
When Steve turned around, Bucky waggled his eyebrows. “Guess she had to resort to other means if she couldn’t have the real thing.”
“This is your girlfriend’s terrible sense of humor.”
Bucky shrugged. “I thought it was hilarious. I haven’t seen you go that shade of puce since Maggie O’Hara tried to kiss you in second grade.”
“It was tasteless.”
“Nat did say Darcy was meant to open it in private,” said Sam. “I think even she would have found it funny then. And a girl has does have needs, or so I’ve been told.”
Steve knew that. He didn’t need those needs invading his imagination, not when he didn’t have some privacy of his own. “But why the--that--don’t they come in--” he spluttered “--plain versions?”
“Why the Captain America one?” Sam raised his eyebrows. “You’re kidding me, right? Of course Nat’s going to use this opportunity to tease her about her little crush.”
Steve stared at him blankly.
“I think you broke him,” said Bucky cheerfully, unwrapping another piece of candy.
“What crush?” Steve asked.
“You’re right, man, he’s clueless,” Sam said to Bucky. “Completely clueless.”
Bucky tossed the empty wrapper at Steve’s face. “Darcy likes you, just like Maggie O’Hara did. Only because you’re an idiot and can never carry on a conversation with her, she thinks you’re just being polite whenever you talk to her.”
“That’s not right. That can’t be right.”
“It is right,” Natasha interrupted, pulling up a chair next Bucky and stealing a handful of his candy. “But she made me promise not to tell you, and you asked me not to tell you what I knew. I’ve spent the last year dealing with two knuckleheads who decided it was easier to pine from a distance.”
“But Darcy’s...she’s not like me. She says what she thinks.”
“She does. But she thinks you’re out of her league.”
Steve scoffed. “That’s ridiculous.”
“That’s what I told her. Also, at first she thought you were with Buck, but I set her straight on that.”
“So you decided to buy her that for Christmas?” Sam asked. Nat shrugged.
“I need to go find her,” Steve said, pushing himself out of the chair. “I need to talk to her.”
“I don’t think that’s what she needs ,” Bucky said, with another wiggle of his eyebrows. Steve ignored him and walked away.
The problem was finding Darcy. He spent a solid five minutes knocking on her door with no response. If she was in her quarters, Friday refused to say.
It didn’t help that someone had been by and dropped off her gift, which was propped up against the jamb like an obscene doorstop. Steve had the urge to throw it in the trash, but he also didn’t want to touch it--not when it was likely Tony would have Friday take photos of him holding it.
Worse, he found himself jealous of the damn thing. If she took it and actually... used it, it would be closer to her than he could ever dream of. Did dream of. Needed to stop dreaming of.
He gave up on her quarters, trying her office instead, and any other place she might have taken refuge, but he couldn’t find any trace of Darcy in the facility. All Friday would say was that she was safe.
Darcy also didn’t turn up to dinner, leaving it to Steve to order a plate of food to be sent to her wherever she was, so she wouldn’t miss out on what she’d been looking forward to most.
It was only when the snow starting falling again, gently spiraling out of the sky, white speckled against the inky blue of the night, that Steve glanced out of a window and saw a dark head out in the grounds.
He didn’t go straight to her, instead returning to his kitchen to heat up milk in a pan, pouring it into two mugs with cocoa powder. It wasn’t like the kind they made in Starkbucks, or the little place in town, but it was how he liked his.
Then he went to join her.
“It’s a beautiful night,” he said in greeting, letting his feet crunch loudly in the snow so he didn’t startle her as he approached. She was sat on a bench, wrapped up in a fluffy blanket, frozen flakes of snow glittering in her hair. Her cheeks had blossomed the shade of pink he liked with the cold.
“Peaceful, too,” she replied, though the small smile she gifted him with let him know she wasn’t admonishing him for intruding.
“I brought you this.” He held out the mug. “It’s not what you’re used to, but it’s how my mom always used to make it. At least, when we had the money for the cocoa.”
She took the drink from him with another smile, wrapping her mittened hands around the mug and pulling it close to her face for the extra warmth. “It smells amazing.”
He sat down next to her on the bench, grimacing as the cold of the already-fallen snow he’d sat on made its presence known through his pants.
“You want some of the blanket?” she offered.
It was a temptation, the idea of being wrapped up close to her, but not when she didn’t know. “No, I’m fine. I always run hot.” It was the truth. A truth.
“That you do.” Then her eyes widened and she ducked her head, taking a hurried sip of the hot chocolate. “Mmm, it’s good.”
“I’m glad you liked it.” But that was all he could think to say. Once again, his tongue failed him in her presence, and the events of the day still hung between them, neither wanting to break the peace and address them.
Except this is what always happened. He was willing to be bold, daring as the Captain. When it came to his personal life, he needed to apply a little of that courage too.If what Natasha had said earlier was true, he didn’t have anything to lose here.
“I missed you at dinner,” he said, feeling his way into a bigger discussion about everything that had happened.
“I got the plate you sent. Thank you.”
“You could have come. Nobody was going to say anything to you. I made sure of it.”
She took a moment to sip at the drink again, and he wasn’t sure if she was going to respond. “It wasn’t them I couldn’t face.”
“It was me.”
She nodded, and he had to reach out to brush away her hair so he could see her face.
“You have nothing to fear there. I wasn’t going to judge you. Seeing that this morning was--” he grasped for the right word, “--bewildering, but it didn’t make me think less of you. I’m not the prude Tony says I am. In fact, Natasha helped clarify the situation after you left.”
Darcy’s eyes widened again, but this time she looked up at him, hope and terror at war in her expression. “What?”
Steve took a deep breath. “You like me, apparently. The same way I like you.”
“What?” she repeated, filled with the same bewilderment he’d admitted to before.
“We like each other, but we’ve spent a year dancing around each other instead of doing anything about it.”
“I was trying to keep things professional!” she protested. “If you knew what I...thought and how often I thought about you, it would make things weird--and I called you a jerk the first time we met, so that was weird because I’m just Darcy and I don’t get to call Captain America a jerk--”
“Darcy--”
“--and then I thought you were with Barnes, until Nat told me she was doing him, but you never seemed very interested in talking to me and you walk around with that chest,” she gestured in the vicinity of his pectorals, “and those arms and also that face, and expect me to form a coherent sentence and all I wanted to be was good at my job, I did not sign on for--”
“--Darcy, you can breathe now.”
“I can?”
“Yes. You don’t have to explain everything now. We have plenty of time to talk it over. Maybe inside, where it’s warmer?” The snow was falling a little faster, a little thicker, and it wouldn’t be long before she started to shiver even with the blanket.
“Oh. Right. Sure,” she said, looking a little shellshocked.
“And then maybe when we’re done talking, I could take you on a date.”
“Sure,” she repeated, nodding her head vigorously. “You could take me on a date. Or two. Or even three.”
“I’d like that. Although, I don’t know how we’ll ever see each other. It feels like I spent the entire year being in a different place to you.”
She shrugged. “When you’re dating the person responsible for the scheduling, I don’t foresee that being a problem.”
He smiled. “Well, that definitely seems to have its benefits then. Come on, let’s get you inside.”
He took the empty mug from her and they both rose, Darcy shuffling along beside him still swaddled in the blanket. She only unwrapped herself when they stepped through the doorway into the corridor, the heat seeming stifling after the fresh cold of outside. He couldn’t take his eyes off of her, but she blinked past his shoulder and up to the ceiling.
“Oh my God,” she muttered, and Steve followed her gaze upwards. For a moment, he thought he’d stepped into the woods, the world above him swathed in hanging greenery like the cocoon of a tree’s branches. Then he realized exactly what had been pinned above them:
Mistletoe.
Every inch of the ceiling above them draped in it, waiting for them to return from the snow outside.
“I am going to kill Nat,” Darcy whispered.
That wasn’t how Steve felt, not when Darcy was stood mere feet away from him, warm and flushed and snow-kissed. “It is tradition. You know how I feel about tradition.” He stepped closer to her, listened to her breath hitch and watched her eyes dilate. He swapped the empty mugs into one hand, and she dropped the blanket to the floor.
“In that case,” she said, stepping forward herself to meet him in the middle, “we should do the traditional thing.”
She had to go up on tip-toe and he had to bend down so that their lips could meet, but when he finally got to taste Darcy--hot chocolate lingering on her lips and tongue--he decided it was worth a crick in the neck. When he got to curl his fingers into her hair, and press her up against him, he decided it was worth any price he had to pay. The mugs were discarded on the blanket with a gentle clink.
When they pulled apart, briefly, so he could hitch her into his arms for easier kissing, she cast an appraising glance at the ceiling. “How many sprigs do you think there are up there?”
“Hmm?” He was more interested in the soft span of her throat than her question.
“Because I think we need to kiss for every one of them, or we haven’t done this properly.”
Now that held his interest. “I agree.” He pressed an open-mouthed kiss to her jaw. “Merry Christmas to me.”
“And the happiest of Hannukahs to me.”