Chapter Text
For as long as she could remember, Darcy had been attracted to Steve. It had started out as a crush in high school where heroic tales of Captain America reigned supreme in history books, his story the stuff of legends and his existence a downright mystery. At the time, his superhero image was more than enough to fulfill teenage Darcy’s innocent school girl fantasies.
Her crush on him persisted throughout college, present yet dulled by the realization of his miserable non-existence. She believed she had grown up and moved on, but the boys she chose to date always had one or more qualities reminiscent of the good Captain, although none of them stood as tall as he did, not just physically, but by strength of virtue.
After meeting Thor in New Mexico, she didn’t think anything could ever surprise her more than an alien demigod who shot thunder out of a hammer. But then stories of a new Captain America started circulating, and unable to believe them, she’d hacked into a number of government agencies before she found him on the database of her very own nightmare, SHIELD. It was him, really him, not some cheap modern copy of the original, and Darcy was torn between being sad for his sake and happy for hers.
When their paths finally converged, by some divine miracle that she even now contemplated in awe, nearly fourteen years after she had first started doodling his name in the margins of her textbooks, the mushy feelings she had for him went on a rampage of misbehavior and transformed themselves into full-blown yearning. Like, damn, but the fuckboys she met on Tinder didn’t stand a chance against him.
Which was unsurprising, to be honest. Because while she still didn’t know much about the person behind the mask, what little she did know about Steve, she found extremely sexy. His beautiful face, that fine, fine physique, those soulful blue eyes, that glorious set of his jaw, the purposeful way he walked… the list kept expanding as she grew to know him better. Everything about him, from his abysmal cooking skills to his ‘I can do this all day’ attitude, from his unbelievable kindness to his righteous anger, from his dry wit to the way he looked at her when they were together—everything turned her on.
When she discovered he didn’t have a girlfriend and had in fact been single for years, she thought maybe she’d try her luck on him, get him to go out with her and later sex him up hard and fast on his motorcycle. But he was flighty when it came to women. Didn’t go on a lot of dates, declined Natasha’s skillful matchmaking, brought women home for the night but was never seen with them again, and never ever, not even once, made the same advances toward Darcy when she was right there in front of him, dying to have his hands all over her like a fucking degenerate.
It was extremely frustrating. He was frustrating.
“Do you enjoy being alone and single, is that it?” she spat at him one day out of the blue, stomping over to where he was standing in the kitchen and practically plowing him over in her anger.
She noticed he was eating the leftover cake from his birthday and it made her angrier. She had made that cake.
“Where’s this coming from?” he asked with a bemused frown, otherwise unperturbed by her abrupt question and close proximity. The fact that he was clearly okay with her invading his personal space without warning should have told her something about the level of comfort he shared with her, but she was too busy glaring at him to notice. “No,” he uttered with a roll of his eyes, cutting a giant forkful of cake and stuffing it unceremoniously into his mouth. “I mean, I don’t mind it but—”
“But what?” Darcy retorted, fighting the urge to snatch the plate from his hand and force his attention on her. “You’re getting your manly needs met, so there’s no need to take up the responsibility of a relationship, is that it?” His frown deepened but Darcy was on a roll. “God, Steve, you make me sick! Do those women you bring home mean anything to you? They’re not objects you can use and throw away whenever the hell you want!”
Steve’s face suddenly hardened and Darcy felt like a class A jerk for descending on him in such a way, implying without reason that he was being a dick when they both knew he wasn’t. Just because she regularly had wet dreams about him didn’t mean his general cluelessness about her feelings for him should piss her off.
She couldn’t help it though. She wasn’t thinking straight. She felt like a fire-breathing dragon that had woken up from a decade long nap and was desperately looking to scorch something with her flame. Steve was the obvious target because every time he so much as looked at her, that spark within her ignited and burned, licking and clawing at her insides, melting away any rationality she possessed.
“The fuck, Darcy?” Steve’s furious voice reached her through the unpleasant haze in her mind and she blinked at the tiny smudge of buttercream on his top lip. Setting the plate of cake aside, he flicked his tongue out to lick away its traces before focusing his attention fully on Darcy. “You’re outta line, doll. I don’t kidnap them and force myself on them against their will.”
“So?” She couldn’t look away from his mouth. She wanted to stop talking but something had possessed her to keep going. “That makes no difference whatsoever! Because you’re still doing what you’re doing!”
He arched a challenging brow. “And, pray tell, what is it that I’m doing that’s so wrong?”
Darcy huffed. God, he was infuriating. “Oh, please,” she scoffed. “You think you can… that you can just…” Dammit, he was making her forget her words and re-think the point she was trying to make, with his searching eyes and lush lips and his stupidly hot face hovering over hers waiting for her to finish what she had unthinkingly started. “For God’s sake, Steve, do you want to have sex with me or not?”
His expression faltered and Darcy watched with some satisfaction as her words put a nice big crack on his stony exterior. Her satisfaction was short-lived though, as shame soon caught up, prickling at her skin and making her regret ever opening her unfiltered gob.
She hadn’t planned this, hadn’t for one second imagined this was how this confrontation would pan out. It had only ever been about venting her frustrations out on him, trying to gauge his stand on the concept of relationships, and if nothing, an indirect attempt to get him to ask her out.
Not this. Never this. Oh God, they were friends! She had ruined everything! Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuuuuck!
“Yes.” His soft voice broke through her frantic thoughts and Darcy gaped at him, opening and closing her mouth like a fish out of water, unsure whether she’d heard him right.
“What? Steve—?”
He straightened up from his casual lean-against-the-counter stance and stepped into her, reaching up to take her chin in his hand. “Yes,” he repeated, louder this time, before pulling her in for a rough kiss.
It was hungry and hot and demanding, but Darcy barely had time to respond. It was over too soon and she practically fell into him, chasing his mouth, when he broke away. He stared down at her with dark eyes and she noticed his lips moving but couldn’t, for the life of her, hear anything beyond the roar of blood in her ears.
“… tonight at seven,” his parting words reached her as if from afar and she nodded dumbly, watching him walk out of the kitchen with a small smile on his face.
What the fuck had just happened?
Had Steve Rogers really agreed to have sex with her?
The rest of her day passed by in a blur. No matter what she did, time refused to slow down. Reading dreary self-help books didn’t help. Jane and her science were surprisingly excitement-free. Scrolling endlessly through various shit-posting blogs on Tumblr barely put a dent in the passage of time. And anytime she let herself think about what she had gone and done, an icy ball of fear blossomed in her gut, tearing through her system and lodging itself in her throat like a poisoned apple.
Blowing up at Steve for his one night stands and then propositioning him for the same was the worst thing she’d ever done, and that was counting the time she’d vomited in her dad’s favorite hat and blamed it on her younger sister. Also counting the time she’d ditched a depressed post-Thor Jane to make out with some hipster rando in the back of his minivan.
There was no denying that she wanted Steve, but was it really too much to hope for a relationship with him first, or at least the promise of a relationship before she fulfilled her fantasy of climbing him like a tree? If she’d had that, the near entirety of her day wouldn’t have been spent alternating between fretting about the outcome of their tryst and daydreaming about being caged in his strong arms, imagining the wet slide of his body against hers and the number of ways he could absolutely destroy her and make her see stars…
An hour before he was supposed to call on her, her anxiety hadn’t subsided but she was equally excited to see him. She had briefly contemplated telling him the truth and asking him out like she should have done in the first place instead of pouncing on him like a hissy cat when he was minding his own business. But the idea was immediately scrapped. She didn’t want him to think she was a fickle little kid. She wanted him and now she’d have him.
Besides, she reasoned, as she stared at her freshly showered reflection in the mirror, seeing nothing of the model-types Steve normally brought home. Who was she kidding? He probably wouldn’t have agreed to a date anyway. She’d have to make do with whatever part of him he was willing to share with her, no matter how small, and she’d have to be happy with it.
Ugh. Chiding herself for her pathetically lovesick thoughts, she rummaged inside her closet and settled on a lacy white negligee she’d purchased last year and had never thought to wear until now. It was a delicate single-strapped thing which pushed her boobs together for a picture perfect cleavage and flared the rest of the way till her upper thighs. It wasn’t that scandalous but you could definitely see her panties through the sheer fabric. Darcy put it on and immediately felt beautiful.
Precisely at seven, there was a knock on her door and she asked the AI to confirm it was Steve, not too keen on showing off her sexy underwear to anyone but him.
“Yes, Ms. Lewis, the Captain’s on the other side.”
Heart pounding, Darcy rushed to open the door, prepared to strike a seductive pose for his benefit (not that she really knew how), only to stop short at the sight of him. Her jaw dropped at the fancy attire he wore; navy blue dress shirt paired with black and gray pin-striped pants and nice polished shoes. It was a ridiculously hot look on him, but she couldn’t for the life of her understand why he’d decided to dress up just for the short trek to her apartment. Was he canceling on her to go somewhere else?
Steve in turn appeared just as surprised by her. “What…” he began with a soft, startled laugh, looking her up and down with wide eyes that lingered indulgently on her chest before rising to meet hers. “What’s going on?”
Darcy was floored. What’s going on, indeed.
He shuffled closer. “Am I dreaming?”
She quirked a brow at him then, her previous uncertainties about this night vanishing at the stunned look on his face. “I should hope not,” she said, preening a little. “If this was a dream, you’d be wearing pants with suspenders, a miner’s helmet, and nothing else.”
He stared. “Is that what you dream about?”
She could have flirted with him, responded with a mischievous ‘maybe’ or even a soft smile with strategically lowered eyes. Instead, she put her hands on her hips and mumbled defensively, “So what if it is?” It was almost embarrassing how bad she was at playing coy.
He didn’t seem to mind, as he gave her another heated once over, Darcy trying not to enjoy the attention too much. “Yeah?” he murmured, playing along. “What else? Do I have a tool belt?”
Babe, you have no idea!
“Oh, definitely.”
The corners of Steve’s lips twitched and he crossed the threshold, kicking the door shut behind him as he bridged the distance between them, his hands falling to her waist. Darcy craned her neck to look at him. He’d never stood this close to her before and the faint scent of his aftershave was making her weak in the knees.
“This is… you look…” He seemed to be struggling for words, his throat bobbing. “You really gonna wear that?” His palms coasted along her sides, fingers flexing and pressing against her flesh in the barest of touches. She was finally in his arms, his to devour and possess, just like she’d always dreamed, and it was exciting and unbearable at the same time. Why wasn’t he touching her? Why hadn’t he jumped her yet? The intensity of his gaze on her was heated enough to set her panties on fire, so what was holding him back from taking her right then and there?
The wait made her nervous. Based on the kiss he had given her earlier in the kitchen, she had assumed maybe he was the take-charge type, a hard and fast kinda guy, but he seemed in no hurry to take off her clothes and ravish her against the wall like she’d initially thought he would. Instead, he was being all weird and gentle, looking at her like she was killing him from the inside.
So, she took charge. She slowly ran her hands up his chest and wrapped them around his neck, pressing her body to his, thrilled to feel his arms tighten around her in response. “If you don’t like what I’m wearing,” she pushed on her toes to whisper in his ear, “you’re welcome to take it off, Captain.”
His head bowed a fraction of an inch, the tip of his nose brushing her cheek on its way down, inhaling deeply. Goose pimples erupted all over her skin and Darcy shivered.
“You know that’s not what I meant,” she heard him say, low and restrained, but oh so full of promise.
“No?” Darcy hummed distractedly, tugging at his collar in impatience. God, he smelled so good, and his grip on her was so gratifyingly firm. Why the hell was he making her wait? “What, then?” She brushed the words against his neck and was rewarded with a soft groan. He was this close to surrendering. “Steve,” she whispered reluctantly. “Are you having second thoughts?” Could it be that he was just as worried about what this could mean for their friendship as she was? “We can forget this ever hap—”
The rest of her sentence was lost against his mouth as it pressed into hers with fervor, making her gasp. Steve pulled away to growl something like “not fucking possible” before they were kissing again, insistent and needy, pushing and pulling at each other, hips bumping, lips smacking, their movements quick and urgent as they worked toward quenching the thirst that consumed them. Steve spun them around and they fell against a wall, his hands on her thighs flipping up her nighty to bury his fingers between her legs. Darcy broke away to let loose a low moan, eyes popping open and head thunking back on the wall. Her breath came out in gasps and Steve was the same.
He didn’t bother taking her panties off. They were roughly pushed aside, so he could slide his fingers through her slick with purpose. A curse fell off his lips when he felt her. “Christ, Darcy… you’re so wet.”
“For you, always for you… you make me so… aaah, fuck Steve,” she babbled, lifting up on her toes in a full-body arch when his thumb grazed her clit. “Please,” she gasped, tugging desperately at his belt. “Take this off. Do it now!”
“Yeah, yeah,” he rasped, stepping away to shuck off his pants and underwear in one go. They pooled around his ankles and she barely had time to admire what he was packing down below before he was flush on her again, devouring her with heady open-mouthed kisses, their tongues tangling and bodies moving together in a steady grind. He wasn’t even in her yet and she could already feel the tension building between her thighs.
She slipped a hand between them to wrap her fingers around his length, feeling him hot and heavy in her hand, and he tore his mouth from hers, letting his head fall to her shoulder and making a delicious little sound that was somewhere between a whine and a moan.
“Sweetheart.” He sounded overcome and Darcy felt herself getting wetter as a zing of pleasure shot up her spine at the low, husky timbre of his voice. Her grip on him tightened reflexively and he bucked into her with a shudder.
It was really all it took, her touching him. He had her hauled up and wrapped around him in no time, her feet crossed at the small of his back, a non-stop stream of yes, yes yes looping around in her head as he squeezed her ass and flattened her against the wall. Wall sex was happening, people. Her fantasy was coming to life.
“Fuck, yeah,” she breathed when he pushed into her without preamble. “Give it to me.”
Steve huffed out a laugh, his face red and alive with so many emotions, it was difficult to decipher them in the moment. He pulled out and slammed back into her with enough force that she slid a few inches up the wall. “The mouth on you…” he murmured, grabbing a fistful of her hair and yanking it back to bare the long column of her throat to his questing lips.
It felt so amazing to be stretched and filled like this again after a depressingly long dry spell that Darcy couldn’t help the sounds she was making. Her moans echoed around the room and her thoughts and words became increasingly incoherent as Steve drove into her with deep, unforgiving thrusts, his hands on her ass unyielding and his fingers digging almost painfully into her skin.
“Yes. Aaah, yes! Steeeeve,” she cried, hyper-aware of everywhere his body touched hers. The wet slide of his length between her legs, the mark he was sucking on her neck, the hard ridges of his abs against her belly, it all became too much too fast. “…feel so good. Don’t stop, don’t stop, don’t stop…”
She’d been in a heightened state of arousal all day, imagining all kinds of filthy things they’d do to each other later on, so it came as no big surprise when her orgasm exploded out of her rather suddenly. It was all she could do to not flat-out sob with the relief that flooded her. Her spine bowed and she threw her head back, crying out his name.
For one long, blissful moment, the world around them disappeared and Darcy reveled in the euphoria. Her eyes were closed, so she couldn’t see Steve, but she heard him suck in a sharp breath, possibly unprepared for either or all of three things: (a) her abrupt climax, (b) the amount of noise she was making, and (c) the way she was fluttering around him, clenching so hard her abdominal muscles ached.
“Jesus,” he whispered, faltering just for a second before picking up his frantic pace.
Darcy opened her eyes and gave him a dreamy smile. “I saw stars,” she told him. He was struck dumb for a moment, then he surged forward and kissed her with his mouth open, groaning as he came inside her with quick, shallow thrusts.
They stayed connected in their embrace for a while, foreheads touching, chests heaving. Her legs, still wrapped around his waist, were beginning to tremble from the strain, but she was too blissed out to care. “That was incredible,” she mumbled, stealing one final taste of his lips.
The spell broke. Steve slipped out of her and gently set her down, holding tight when she buckled under her own weight. “Yeah,” he said with a smile, tugging a fallen strap back on her shoulder. “Go wash up.”
Her heart sank at his words. “You’re leaving?” She tried not to sound too disappointed because it wasn’t like she hadn’t been expecting this.
But Steve surprised her with an amused, “We’re both leaving. Will you please go wear something decent now?”
She watched him pull his pants up and carefully tuck his shirt in before zipping them. “Where are we going?”
“Out to eat. I’m hungry.”
“But where? In the building?”
“No. Out.” He laughed when she opened her mouth to ask for more details. “What’s with all the questions?”
She scowled at him. “I have a right to know.” But she was mostly curious. Of course, they’d had meals together before, but it was always in the communal kitchen. They never went out to eat unless it was with the whole Avengers gang in tow.
Steve raised a hand to her chin, pinching it affectionately. “It’s a restaurant, okay? It’s nice. You’ll like it.” He jerked his thumb in the direction of her bedroom. “Now, please go wash the fuck up and put on a dress that’s not see-through! I don’t want people swooning at the sight of you while we’re having dinner.”
Darcy flushed, realizing how exposed she was, with half her tits spilling out of their lace cups and the gusset of her panties still tucked to one side, the mess they’d made sliding down one leg. She bit her lip and mumbled, “Fine.”
There was a slight limp to her gait as she walked around him and headed to her bedroom. Her mind was swirling with thoughts, confused at his odd offer to take her to dinner. He was from a different time, she supposed, and perhaps felt compelled to pay her back for letting him into her pants with a bite to eat? Hmm, that made little to no sense but at least he was being normal with her. It’d have killed her if things between them had ended in awkwardness.
A feeling of numbness and denial settled over her and she spent long minutes in the bathroom trying to understand her warring emotions. She also replayed the last five minutes with Steve in her mind, recalling details she had missed in the heat of the moment. It had all happened so fast. Maybe she should have made an effort to make it last longer. She wanted him so much.
A warm bath would have been nice after a toe-curling romp such as that, but Darcy quickly stripped off and washed away the evidence of their coupling. Wrapped in a towel, she walked out to find Steve standing in the doorway, looking into her room with interest.
“Sorry,” he said when she jumped. “May I use your facilities?”
She waved a hand and didn’t see him go in, busy scanning her closet for an outfit fancy enough to match his. A blue-green wrap-around dress caught her eye and a stunning blood red one with a modest V neck and cinched waist. She held them both up when Steve came out.
“Which one?”
He pointed to the red and said, “Peggy had the same dress.”
“Right,” Darcy said, ripping said dress from its hanger, scrunching it up, and tossing it in the wastebasket without a moment’s hesitation. “I’ll burn it later.”
Steve threw his head back and laughed, looking strangely delighted at her vehemence.
She glared at him. “You think that’s funny?”
He grinned, unapologetic. “Very.” His eyes fell to the other outfit she was holding and he added, “I like that better anyway. Brings out your eyes.”
She nodded, unclenching. “Okay. Turn around.”
“Why?” he teased—ever the troll—but obeyed nonetheless and didn’t try to peek.
Darcy quickly dropped the towel and wrapped the blue-green dress around her. She liked it. It was soft, comfortable, and accentuated her curves. The cut of it didn’t allow for a bra but she did put on clean underwear before clearing her throat and asking Steve to turn back around.
“So, do I look classy enough to be on Captain America’s arm?”
“Sweetheart, you’re way out of Captain America’s league.”