Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

On a cold, bitter evening in late January 2024, a brilliant and striking sunset crested the sky of upper Manhattan. The streaks of yellow, orange, and red were stunning in a way that obliged the patrons of Central Park to look up at it, as they walked along the rolling pathways. Ever since "The Blip"—compounded by the strenuous tension created by the global pandemic of 2019—residents and visitors of New York City alike had inadvertently adopted a renewed appreciation for the little things: Fresh cut grass, the cheerful ambient sounds of children playing, the unmistakeable hip hop dance music that indicated nearby street dancers, and of course, sunsets. For others, the "high" of post-Blip life fell away just as quickly as it had came. While some took it as a new lease on life, others viewed it as just another speed bump in their otherwise monotonous existence. On this particular night, however, in the amazing multiple-block-spanning park, it appeared as if everyone was in full appreciation of the spectacle of the sorbet sky.

An FBI agent among the park-goers—fresh off the heels of his latest case which had brought him to The Big Apple—had too been admiring the colors of the sunset, when a glow of a different kind had caught his attention. The agent had been strolling the walkways of Central Park, reflecting on the details from his recently closed case, when he rounded a corner that brought him to a small alcove of shrubs and bushes. Nestled deep within the confines of the bushes, he spotted a faint silvery glow that vaguely resembled a distant star, its shimmering aura pulsing through the leaves. He glanced around his immediate area to see if any park attendees had also taken notice of this, but found that he was alone in his discovery.

With valiant caution, the agent proceeded toward the landscaping that encumbered his discovery. Once he closed the distance of approximately a meter between himself and it, he reached into the inside pocket of his jacket—where he always kept a spare set of gloves—and snapped them onto his hands. He reached out and with a parting gesture created a small gap in between two shrubs. Upon closer inspection, the glow appeared to be emanating from a small budding flower, approximately the size of a daffodil, although the flower itself more accurately resembled a small rose. He blinked his eyes rapidly, ensuring that what he was seeing wasn’t some trickery of light from the lamps that lit the Central Park walkways. But as he inched closer to the isolated flower, it was unmistakable that this was a novel glowing flower, sprouting from the ground in the middle of a northeast winter.

The agent rose to his feet, once more glancing around his immediate area for potential lookie-loos, and pulled his personal smartphone from his pants pocket. He quickly navigated to the phone app, and had his index finger hovering over the contact listing for his FBI partner, when he paused and briefly reconsidered. Eventually yes, he would want to involve his partner in this, if nothing else for the sake of transparency. Instead, his mind quickly snapped to prior colleague of his; a talented doctor that could be slightly more appropriate for this discovery. He scrolled back up through his contacts, hunting for the name of the person that he had not spoken to in almost a year, located it, and after a final wave of apprehension, he tapped the number to start the call.

The line on the other end rang only twice before his contact picked up.

“Hey there!” The agent said, matching the enthusiasm of his old colleague. “Listen… I, um, have something that you might want to take a look at.”

Avengers tower stood tall and brightly lit on that same frigid evening in January, its giant light-blue neon “A” permeating the night sky. The fantastically tall building, now effectively under new management, provided a home to many different businesses that called New York City their home. Among those blossoming new empires was that of a recent outfit who called themselves the “Young Avengers”. With the recent absence of the masked vigilante known as Spider-Man, paired with the subsequent rise in low-level antagonistic threats to the city—dangers deemed below the pay grade of the originally assembled Avengers team—a need had sprouted for a unique collection of talented and enhanced individuals that were worthy of accepting this challenge.

The Young Avengers, who had moved in and taken over the two floors located directly beneath the “Research and Development” sector of the tower, were a team that appeared to form in secrecy. Following the events that took place in Rockefeller Center the year prior, Kate Bishop—who has since taken over the alias of “Hawkeye”—pitched the idea of the "Young Avengers" to her friend and mentor Clint Barton—the original Hawkeye. Despite the initiative and talent that Kate had proven to possess during their battle against Wilson Fisk and the “Track Suit Mafia”, Clint remained apprehensive about the idea of this new blossoming power group. The ever-determined Kate saw Clint's position as a chance to make progress, rather than a hindrance. Over the course of several months, Kate balanced her collegiate life while she took to combing the streets—as well as the heavily encrypted archives of various secured databanks—for other talented individuals that might be interested in forming a rag-tag team that was “like the Avengers but younger”.

Kate Bishop’s very first “get” came to her via a freshman student out of NYU. In August of 2023, there was a ton of local buzz about the highly anticipated arrival of a particular student, with intentions of entering into the school’s quantum physics program. Most of the hype was due to her groundbreaking discoveries within the field, as well as her penchant for embarrassing the school’s professors by undermining their knowledge and lifelong pursuit within the field. The day that Kate went to visit NYU—with intentions of approaching Cassie Lang after one of her lectures—she bore witness to Cassie’s gumption first-hand, as she ended up conducting the second half of the lecture herself. As luck would have it, Cassie was just as eager as Kate to be a part of super-hero team, citing her unforeseen boredom of the curriculum as sufficient motivation to join a little ass-kicking superhero group.

A week later, Kate received a call from Cassie, claiming to have found their next potential candidate in the form of yet another student, this time based out of Massachusetts. The following weekend, Kate and Cassie took a bus ride to MIT, where they managed to hunt down a mechanical engineering student by the name of Riri Williams. The two girls experienced a somewhat "entertaining" interaction, as Riri had initially been elusive and flamboyantly untrusting, citing a previous encounter with the army of Wakanda and subsequent capture. Significant strides were made—but not secured—in gaining Riri's trust when Kate pulled up video footage of her and Hawkeye tag-teaming the Track Suit Mafia the year prior. What had finally gotten Riri on board was the discovery that, if the Young Avengers could be formed, there was a distinct possibility of setting up headquarters in Avengers tower—an almost lifelong dream of hers.

The third individual that was approached—and subsequently seal the deal for the official formation of the Young Avengers—was Doctor Darcy Lewis, a PhD in astrophysics. Kate made the case for the addition of Darcy, not on the basis of any super powers, but as a field operative that could provide ground support and intel when no one else could. Despite Doctor Lewis’s lack of “enhancements”, she turned out to be the most intimidating prospect that Kate approached for the Young Avengers. Darcy was the oldest out of all the candidates, the only one that had their PhD, and had multiple experiences in the field with Thor, Monica Rambeau, and Wanda Maximoff. And to further compound her anxiety of pitching the idea of a Young Avengers role to her, she wouldn’t even be offering her a role as an Avenger; she would be on the team, but due to where her relevant talents lie—talents that made her a desirable get for the Young Avengers—she would strictly be a field agent. However, much to Kate’s surprise, Doctor Lewis accepted the team's proposal practically on the spot. Darcy was smitten with all the opportunities that would come with being an operative within this new power group. It also didn't hurt that she would have access to the Research and Development sector of Avengers tower, provided that’s where their headquarters would be.

With all of the candidates “assembled”, Kate Bishop once again stated her case—now their case—to recognize the new collective as an official sub-sector of the Avengers. As for the team's title, the Young Avengers started as a joke—an attempt to appeal to the dry and cynical side that Clint wore like a well-fitted suit—but ended up sticking. The girls had workshopped several options for their group's name, but almost every other idea sounded like a "B" version of The Spice Girls or The Pussycat Dolls. So ultimately, the Young Avengers had been the winner.

Over the course of the following months, piece by piece, everything came together in relatively successful cohesion for the quartet. The final piece to fall into place was the acquisition of the two floors in the Avengers tower, but the femme-dominant supergroup refused to wait until the finalization before taking to the streets of New York City, to do their part in keeping it safe. One of those missions ended up leaving quite the mark on the four of them, which in turn became the catalyst for a certain set of “rules” that they would have to adhere to and operate under. And while it was agreed upon that they wouldn’t be “babysat” like children, they would have a sort of “director” to report to. When the four girls—plus Ian Boothby, Darcy’s friend, colleague, and former intern—met at Avengers tower for their official ribbon cutting ceremony, they were met by four impossibly intimidating individuals, three of whom were expected. The first was Clint, for obvious reasons; he was Kate’s mentor, as well as the most instrumental in putting things in motion for the group. The second was the infamous Pepper Pots, who helped broker the deal for the office space within Avengers tower. The third was Happy Hogan, who had been head of security for the tower when it was the official outpost for the Avengers, but had since moved to the compound in upstate New York. The fourth and final individual—the one whom none of the girls, or Boothby, were expecting to see—was none other than Sam Wilson, the new Captain America. Initially, the girls were under the impression that Sam was there simply in the name of ceremony; a spectator, and as the new leader of the Avengers to congratulate them. So it came as a surprise to learn that Sam was really there because he was deemed their new interim director.

“So, that kinda makes you, like, our Director Fury!” Darcy had pointed out emphatically, while the rest of her group stood dumbstruck.

“You can skip the ‘Director’ part,” Sam had returned with a slight grin. “In fact, just call me Sam, please. But make no mistake, I will not tolerate any nonsense from the five of you. You all will be treated like adults, but only if you act like adults.”

A few months and a few missions later, the main floor of the Young Avengers sector stood mostly dark, quiet, and vacant, save for two individuals. One of them had been entertaining themselves by bouncing a blue racquet ball against a wall, the repeated “thuds” echoing throughout the floor. His cohort, who had been pacing anxiously back and forth, would occasionally stop and sigh to herself in frustration.

“Ok, as a doctor, I reserve the right to feel like I should never be this bored, especially if my job entails working with the Young Avengers!” Darcy exclaimed.

“I think there’s another racquet ball around here somewhere, if you’d like to throw balls with me,” Boothby offered, continuing his activity.

“You and your blue balls can shove it. I didn’t join the YA to sit on the sidelines as a hopeless, talentless cheerleader, while everyone else on the team gets to go beat up bad guys.”

“I get that, Darce. But you should understand more than most that not every aspect of any job is going to be the thrill ride of a lifetime. Sometimes, you’re gonna be bored.”

Darcy let out an over-exaggerated exhale, not unlike a spoiled teenager who had been stripped of their internet privileges. Feeling as if she had finally out-paced herself, she plopped down in her desk chair and picked up her smartphone from her desk. As she mindlessly scrolled through her social media feed, attempting to quell her frustrations, pictures of Happy’s face and his video message from earlier that evening flashed in her mind.

At approximately 5:30 PM Eastern time, the team received a video call from Happy, alerting them to a potential issue at the shipping docks on the other side of the island. Everyone—including Darcy—was so anxious to see some action that they were already suited up and ready to go at the drop of a hat. Darcy had been loading her sidearm, and was ready to follow suit with the rest of her team, when she received a separate call from Happy.

“Hey Happy, what’s… going on?” Darcy asked, confused.

“Hey kiddo, I’m really sorry to do this to you, but I’m gonna need you to stay behind tonight,” Happy said with a look of unease.

“What? Why?”

"Do you remember what I told you during your training, that most missions involve both brains and brawn? And then other times, you'll need one more than the other?"

"Yeah, why?"

"Well, I'm afraid this is one of those edge cases, Darce. For what the ladies might have to do tonight, it'll probably take a lot of muscle."

Darcy felt a mix of disappointment and irritation bubble up inside her. She had spent months training and proving herself alongside the rest of the Young Avengers, and now she was being sidelined because her skills didn't align with the mission at hand. It wasn't fair, and she couldn't help but feel like she was being underestimated.

"But I can handle myself, Happy," Darcy protested, her frustration on her sleeve. "I'm not some damsel in distress who needs protecting."

Happy sighed heavily on the other end of the line. "I know you can handle yourself, kid. You've more than proven that. But this mission requires a different approach. Tonight, we need your brain, not your brawn."

From the front door Riri stood, waiting on Darcy. She noticed this, then with a sigh and an eye roll, motioned for her to continue on without her. Darcy then plopped into her desk chair, and rubbed at her temples.

When she first started with the Young Avengers, she knew there would be missions like these, where she'd have to be Zordon, while Kate and the other girls got to be the Power Rangers. She just wasn't expecting the "rejection" to sting this much.

“Ok,” Darcy said in a defeated tone. Her frowning face then curled slightly into a half-grin. "But you have to say that I'm too smart for this mission."

Now it was Happy's turn to let out a sigh.

"Darcy..." Happy began reluctantly, "you are too smart for this mission."

"Thanks Happy, have a good night," Darcy said, satisfied yet still annoyed.

“Thanks for understanding, Darce.”

“Yeah, ok.”

Darcy ended the call before Happy had a chance to say anything further. She then unholstered her sidearm and placed it on the glass top of her desk, which made a loud clank in the awkward silence of the office.

The status updates and memes on Darcy’s social media feed started to blend together, as she continued her mindless scrolling. She had the distinct feeling that she was actually getting dumber by the second, forfeiting her valuable time to the idiotic redundancies of the internet. Suddenly, her phone began to vibrate as a notification dropped down from the top of the screen, causing Darcy to jump in her seat. It was an incoming phone call, with the contact info stating “Jimmy W”. When her brain finally registered this information, she jolted from her seat and left the room, and accepted the call.

“Hey Jimmy, long time no talk!” Darcy was genuinely excited to hear from Jimmy, but at this point she would have gladly accepted a call from Pizza Hut.

“Darcy! How are you? How’s that super-hero life treating ya?”

“Man, word travels fast. How’d you hear?”

“You put me down as a reference, remember?”

Darcy slapped a hand to her forehead. “Oh my god, I did. I swear, this job is making me dumber by the second.”

“What’s the matter, I would’ve figured fighting alongside the YA would be a non-stop thrill ride?”

“Oh, it is, until you get left behind because of your lack of experience.”

“Ouch, always hurts to hear that one. But hey listen, if that’s the case, I’m glad I called you.”

Darcy, who had been pacing again frantically, had stopped in her tracks.

“Oh my god, please tell me you have something interesting to show me. I am bored out of my skull.”

“Actually,” Jimmy said, pausing for dramatic effect, “I do have something to show you. How quickly can you make it to Central Park?”

“Wait, you’re in the city?” Darcy asked with equal parts confusion and intrigue.

“Yeah, I just wrapped up a case. I was taking a stroll in the park to clear my head, and I came across something… interesting. I think you and your team might wanna see this.”

Darcy’s eyes grew wide with excitement, and she began to shadow box the air.

“Ping me your location, I’m leaving the tower now.”

“Great, see you soon.”

Chapter Text

With her energy renewed, Darcy walked quickly back into the office to gather her things. 

“Everything ok?” Boothby asked curiously. He was still bouncing his ball.

“Yeah, everything’s fine!” She responded. “I just, um… something just came up that I need to take care of. You think you’ll be alright without me for an hour?”

“Sure, no problem,” Boothby said carelessly, continuing his ball throwing. 

This was just another reason why she loved Boothby; he knew when to ask questions, and even better, when to not ask them.

As Darcy headed for the elevators, she pulled up the Uber app on her phone and ordered a ride. Once in the elevator, she began to fidget and shift her weight back and forth with excited energy. She had no clue what was waiting for her at Central Park, and for all she cared it could’ve been a pigeon eating an ice cream cone; she was just happy to have something to do. Ultimately it would’ve been better if that “something to do” was tagging along with the rest of her team, like she was supposed to, but this was a great runner-up. She was also excited at the prospect of seeing Jimmy again. The last time they saw each other was the “Wanda” debacle in New Jersey, and a lot had happened since then, so there would be a lot to catch up on, given the chance.

When Darcy reached the lobby of Avengers tower and pushed her way through the front doors, her Uber had already been waiting for her: A black Nissan SUV. She opened the door to the rear passenger side and stepped in.

“Darcy?” The driver asked.

“Yup.”

“Central Park?”

“Yup, let’s go.” Darcy slapped her knees anxiously in a mock “giddyup” manner.

The driver pulled out into traffic, and Darcy’s left leg began to inadvertently twitch and dance in anxious anticipation. The suspense was killing her. Whatever Woo needed to show her, she knew it would be a big deal. It wasn’t too often that Jimmy opted to consult with her if he didn’t have to. After all, he was still an FBI agent, and operated on the more “stable” side of the law, leaving the “big three”—androids, aliens, and wizards—to those that are fit to deal with such things.

A text alert chimed from Darcy's phone. Looking down, she noticed the contact name was “Stuart”, and let out a short chuckle. "Stuart" had been Bucky's alias during the singles speed-dating and mixer event back in December, which Darcy found inexplicably hilarious. And since she was looking to conceal their relationship as best as possible, "Stuart" was as good of a name as any to use for him under her contacts.

(Bucky) Hey kid, how’s tricks?

(Darcy) Still trickin'. Heading to Central Park, meeting up with an old friend. How was your day?

(Bucky) Good, but uneventful. Just wanted to check in real quick. Give me a call later!

Darcy took a moment to consider an appropriate final text message, but ultimately opted for an inappropriate text instead.

(Darcy) Will do. 🍆 🍑

Bucky was still getting the hang of emojis and how to properly use them, so Darcy was not at all surprised when she didn't get a response back.

Following their wildly unexpected hookup at the Grand Regency hotel back in December, the two of them came to the mutual decision that they would “take things slow”. Being in a romantic entanglement with someone from a competing company was unprecedented for the both of them, and it went without saying that it would be wise of them to proceed with caution. That didn't change the fact that it was almost bursting out of her; she had wanted to tell someone so badly about it.

Once Darcy had reported back to the team after the mixer, she expressed ad nauseam the disappointment in herself for not acquiring America Chavez for the Young Avengers. She felt like she had let them down, considering how successful they all were in their own recruitments for the team; and there Darcy had been, blowing it on her first attempt. However, Riri, Kate, and Cassie were ridiculously comforting when she had returned empty handed.

Still, the news about she and Bucky was almost bursting out of her; she wanted to tell someone so badly about it! Darcy already thought it looked slightly suspicious when she went to Boothby the next day, pleading for him to not disclose that Bucky had been there. She knew that if the ladies found out that Bucky was at the mixer event, there would be a thousand more follow-up questions, inevitably leading Darcy to spill her beans.

As her Uber ride wove through traffic toward Central Park, Darcy slipped into a lucid dream-inspired trance, as mental images from that day—and later that night—at the Grand Regency played out like a romance tale in her mind. For all the sneaking around and elusiveness that their situation had called for, it only made Darcy that much more attracted to Bucky. If she was being honest with herself, she had never been more turned on in her entire life, and every cautionary step they took brought on equal amounts of stress and burning desire. But Darcy just couldn't help herself: Bucky was hot, the sex had been hot, and keeping it a secret was ridiculously hot. She saw flashes of them, sitting in that corner booth, sipping champaign and eating chicken fingers. Then, more flashes of them furiously tearing each other's clothes off; a flash of his rock, a flash of the satiated look on his face when he jumped. And then a final flash when she—”

“Darcy? Ma’am? We’re here.”

Startled, Darcy quickly jolted upright in her seat and realized she had been daydreaming.

“Oh, right, thank you!” she exclaimed, grateful for the driver's patience.

She stepped out of the SUV, paid the fare, and began walking with her phone outstretched, navigating toward Jimmy’s pinged location.

Chapter Text

Darcy saw Jimmy for the first time as she rounded a corner on the walkway. He was standing at the edge of the paved path and the grassy area, silhouetted by an overhead safety light several feet behind him. As she approached, Jimmy still a two-dimensional blackened figure, he took a couple step toward her, and Darcy instinctively reached for her firearm. But as Jimmy came into few, with his unique smile and flawless hair, she relaxed her hand by her side, and instead used it to reach for a hug.

“Hey Darcy, so good to see you.” Jimmy said warmly. “Look at you, all grown up with a big-girl job!”

“Yep, and I almost shot you with my big-girl gun, too!” Darcy replied, mostly in a joking manner.

Jimmy gestured to the lanyard around her neck with the work badge attached, and her picture with a big blue “A” on it.

“I like it. It suits you.” Now that they had moved under a safety lamp, Darcy could see a proud-dad smile on his face.

“I guess it makes sense, you know?” Darcy said with a dorky shrug. “I just couldn’t keep myself from incidentally running into Avenger after Avenger, so I just said ‘screw it’ and literally joined them.”

It may have sounded like Darcy was only teasing when she said this, but the old axiom of “if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em” was eerily closer to the truth than she had credited. First, it had been Thor. Then, it was Thor again. And then, five minutes after graduating with her PhD, she teamed up with Jimmy for the first time to help save the town of Westview, New Jersey. And finally, she had been approached by a team of badass ladies. At a certain point, Darcy had to accept it as fact that the universe was trying to send her a sign.

“So, what brings you out to a dimly lit portion of Central Park?” Darcy asked.

“Ok, this is really weird. I mean, maybe not ‘make a whole New Jersey town disappear’ weird, but it’s up there.”

“Alright man, don't keep me in suspense.”

Jimmy stuck out his arm to motion for Darcy to step toward a remote collection of bushes. She didn’t see it at first, but as Darcy inched closer, she noticed a faint silver light that was pulsing through the spaces in between the leaves. Peering through the makeshift hole she created in the bushes, she could then see that it almost resembled a rose. Darcy's curiosity peaked as she leaned in closer to examine the mysterious flower. Its petals were translucent, glowing softly in the moonlight. Her mind immediately equated it to a single-standing Christmas light decoration, possibly a solar-powered one that got left behind after the holidays. However, the silver light that emitted from its core pulsed rhythmically, giving her the feeling that this thing could have a life of its own. She glanced at Jimmy, who wore a mixture of excitement and unease on his face.

“Whoa,” Darcy said softly.

“Yeah, that’s what I said,” Jimmy responded, crouching down next to Darcy.

“Have you ever seen anything like this before? I mean, it’s like a 3D neon rose, just growing out of the dirt.”

“I’m no horticulturist, but I don’t believe that plants are supposed to glow like that.”

"So you think it's alive?"

Jimmy gave a dopey shrug. "Once again, not a horticulturist."

The two agents continued to marvel at the novel discovery in silence. In addition to it’s silver star-like glow, it also appeared to emit some sort of visible waveform that captured their attention in a way that silenced the world around them. Their pupils suddenly began to dilate, and a warm comfort began coursing its way through their bodies. It was as if someone had wrapped them up in a big, subduing hug.

A notification alert that came through on Darcy’s phone disrupted their dreamlike trance. The normalcies of reality came flooding back to their brains, and they both took a giant sigh. Darcy produced her phone from her jacket pocket, and smiled; it was another text from Bucky.

“You need to take that?” Jimmy asked, shaking off the fog that had temporarily clouded his mind.

“Nah,” Darcy responded, “it’s just a text from this guy I met at a singles event last month.”

Darcy's body seized up in fear the moment those words escaped her lips. This was not information she would have willingly shared, even if she had been more cryptic about it. She couldn't take the risk of revealing the secret relationship between herself and "Stuart" to anyone else, and here she was, clearly breaking one of the most important "rules" that she and Bucky had implemented to protect themselves. Was it the flower that had caused Darcy's sudden case of "loose lips"?

“That’s funny, I wouldn’t have taken you for the ‘singles mixer’ type,” Jimmy said as Darcy read the words from Bucky’s text message.

“Yeah, you know, I guess I just wanted to ‘mix things up’ I suppose,” Darcy replied with self-amused laugh.

Mix things up? Since when did she ever make jokes like that? Jokes that somehow transcended the “dad joke” level of jokes. Her trademark had always been her award-winning combination of wit and sarcasm. However, she didn’t think it aroused any suspicion on Jimmy’s part; he simply chuckled and continued glaring at the strange flower.

“So…” Darcy began, “what do you wanna do about this?”

“Well, that is what I brought you out here for. As a bit of a consultation. Do you think you have anything in your R&D lab that you could use to run some tests on it?”

“It’s possible.” Darcy said optimistically. “But do you think it’s safe to just pluck from the ground? Or even ok to take in the first place? I mean, we don’t know anything about it, or how it got here, or if someone put it here.”

Darcy realized that she was beginning to sound frantic, as she rambled on to Jimmy.

“This is a public park, not a community garden. People can’t just come plant whatever they want, and expect it to still be there when they return.”

“You sound like a homeowners association.”

This inspired another quick chuckle from Jimmy, before his face returned back to it’s curious state.

“Ok, well in that case, I guess I can take it back to the lab and run some tests,” Darcy said, still staring blankly at the glowing flower. “When do you leave New York?”

“My plane leaves first thing in the morning. You got my contact information. I trust you, but just keep me updated with what you find.”

Jimmy put on another set of gloves, and handed a pair to Darcy. Once she had them on, Jimmy then handed her a small thin cardboard box with the words “Baskin Robbins” on top.

“It’s a little cold for ice cream, don’t you think?” Darcy asked with one arched eyebrow.

“It’s never too cold for ice cream,” Jimmy responded with a smirk.

He then opened the container in the same way that a person proposing to their partner would open the ring box, revealing an empty inside.

“It’s for the flower,” Jimmy confirmed.

Once Darcy had donned her gloves and accepted the box, she rose to her feet and made her way around to the other side of the shrubs. Once on the other side, she bent down in a crouched position once more, positioning herself only inches away from the flower. On the opposite side of the shrubs, Jimmy stood and peered over to watch the field agent in nervous excitement. Darcy could feel her heart pounding through her chest as she slowly reached her right hand out toward the glowing flower. The primitive part of her brain began whispering that this might not be a good idea, to touch the flower with only a thin layer of latex between it and her skin. The naturally curious part of her brain, however, quickly dominated those thoughts as she finally made contact with it, placing her thumb and index finger around the stem.

As her two fingers finally made contact with the flower, an intense flow of energy began coursing through her veins. It was an amplified version of the sensation she had felt moments before, when they had been peering at it through the bushes, seemingly hypnotized. As Darcy’s fingers began slowly plucking the silver rose from the soil, an electric jolt had then taken her by surprise. Her heart accelerated to the pace of a racehorse, and she felt as if the flower had just transferred something to her. With the flower almost completely out of the dirt, everything suddenly appeared to be moving in slow motion. The detailed ambient sounds of the night dampened to a quiet hush. As if she were having an out-of-body experience, she could see herself in third person, pulling the flower from the dirt to place it in the box.

The moment the chrome botanical left her hand, and was placed securely within the box, the sights and sounds of reality came rushing back in, knocking her backward onto her butt. Jimmy quickly rushed over and extended his arm to help Darcy up off the ground.

“My god, are you ok?” He asked, genuinely worried. 

Jimmy suddenly began to wonder why he allowed Darcy to do this; to pluck this strange glowing flower out of the ground, with no other protection other than a standard evidence glove. It was as if the logical side of his brain had been temporarily overridden, with thoughts of “hey man, it’s all groovy” carelessly floating throughout the synapses.

“Yeah, yeah, I’m fine,” Darcy confirmed with a confused demeanor.

She brushed the dirt off her pants from where she fell, then shook her head in an attempt to clear out the strange fog that had formed in her mind when she plucked the flower. Even as it lay in the box, still pulsing with its eery star-like glow, Darcy felt herself hypnotized by it. In a knee-jerk act of defiance, logic took over and she closed the lid on the ice cream box, sealing the flower safely inside.

Jimmy walked closely beside Darcy, ensuring she wouldn’t fall and hurt herself, as they made their way back to the same area of the park that Darcy had originally entered. Due to her persistent daze, Jimmy offered to hail her Uber ride back to the tower. The timing once again appeared to be perfect, stating her car would arrive around the same time they would reach the park entrance. It wouldn’t be until later, when Darcy made it safely back to the tower, that she’d again scold herself for allowing Jimmy to handle her smartphone. It was a risky move, allowing him to have control of her device, even temporarily. There was no reason to believe that Jimmy would go snooping through all the various apps that were open on her phone, but there was a distinct possibility of a text message coming through from Stuart.

When Darcy’s Uber ride had arrived, Jimmy helped her climb in, as if he were safely seeing someone off that had a little too much to drink.

“Just remember to keep me updated on the tests, Darcy,” Jimmy said with a smile that was filled with equal parts warmth and caution.

Darcy put two fingers to her eyebrow in a “salute” gesture.

“It was good to see you, Jimmy,” Darcy responded, giving him a goofy, uncharacteristic wink.

Jimmy chuckled at her, then closed the door to her Uber ride, and watched it pull out slowly into the upper Manhattan traffic.

When Darcy lackadaisically pushed her way through the double doors that led into their open floor plan office at Avengers tower, Boothby had been at his desk with his headset on. From context it sounded like he was nearing the end of his conversation. When he spotted Darcy entering through the doors, he put his hand up in the air as a sign of acknowledgement that she had returned, and she responded with a similar gesture. Although she had felt fine when she arrived back at the tower, and during her subsequent trip up the elevator to their respective floor, Darcy began to feel a slight weakening in her leg muscles, as if they were falling into an absurd relaxed state. When she plopped into her desk chair, it was with such a force that it began rolling away from her desk. With a hushed giggle, she used her feet to roll herself back to her respective spot at the large, shared desk.

“Where have you been?” Boothby asked, pulling off his headset. “That was the team, by the way. It was a false alarm, so turns out you didn’t miss much.”

Without saying anything, Darcy placed the cardboard Baskin Robbins container that held the flower on the glass desk top, then furtively slid the box in Boothby’s direction. He glanced down at it with a confused look, then back up at Darcy.

“You don’t think it’s a little cold for ice cream?” Boothby said suspiciously, peering at Darcy through narrowed eyes.

“That’s what I said!” Darcy exclaimed loudly, causing Boothby to roll backward in his chair in surprise.

“You did? When?”

Darcy only shook her head, wagged her index finger, and then gently tapped twice on the lid of the ice cream box.

“Careful, don’t touch it.”

Boothby’s face shifted dramatically from a look of amusement to one of concern. With exceeding caution, he reached for the ice cream box and flipped the lid open to expose the still-glowing flower inside.

“Ok…” he said worriedly, “I guess you didn’t go for ice cream, then?” He asked Darcy this while maintaining eye contact with the strange green rose.

“Do you remember Agent Jimmy Woo, from the FBI?” Darcy asked.

“Isn’t he the guy you worked with during that debacle in New Jersey?”

Darcy nodded her head in confirmation.

“He found this in Central Park, and called me down to take a look at it. It’s pretty, right?”

Darcy’s voice shot up in volume as she said this, causing Boothby to instinctively recoil in caution.

“Um, yeah I suppose. So what, you guys just found this in the park and just randomly decided to pluck it out and bring it back here?” 

The manner in which Boothby asked this had bordered on accusatory, but still in the coded way that he and Darcy often spoke to each other.

“What? I told him that we probably had the proper equipment in R&D to run some tests on it. I figured it’d be a fun little project for Riri and I.”

“I don’t know about this, Darce,” Boothby said hesitantly. “To me, it seems like—”

“Oh, come on, man!” Darcy exclaimed, cutting him off mid-sentence. “Not every single thing we do here as the Young Avengers is going to be beating up bad guys. Sometimes… something like this falls into our lap.”

“Yeah ok, but Darcy, this is really weird. I mean, it’s a freaking glowing rose.”

“Weirder than a purple alien, with a ballsack for a chin, snapping his fingers and making half the universe disappear?”

“Ok, no, not exactly. But…”

“But what?” Darcy asked emphatically.

“I just wish you would have called and told me about this. We’re supposed to be partners, remember? What if something happened to you?”

“Ugh, ok fine!” Darcy said in a defeated tone. “Next time I find something strange in Central Park—or anywhere else—I’ll be sure to tell you about it.”

At that moment the Young Avengers team—Kate, Cassie, and Riri—came marching through the double doors of their office space.

“Well that was a huge waste of time,” Kate said in a put-out tone.

“Hey, it’s not a waste of time if we did our part, and it turned out to be nothing,” Cassie chimed in reassuringly, obviously attempting to remain positive.

“Yeah, it kinda works out anyway,” said Riri, bringing up the rear. “I have tests to study for.”

“Have I mentioned how cool it is that you have a suit, and can just fly back to Massachusetts as if you were taking the school bus home?” Cassie said in an almost fan-girly way.

“Girl, what are you talking about?” Riri responded with laughter. “Your suit can fly, too.”

“Yeah, but not nearly as fast.”

After Cassie said this, she sat down in one of the rolling desk chairs with an exhausted thump, and looked over to notice Darcy and Boothby huddled over what appeared to be a small container.

“What’s going on over there, guys?” She asked, using her feet to roll herself in the chair toward them.

Cassie’s question alerted both Riri and Kate, and they followed suit so they could also see what they were observing. Moments later, the five of them were all huddled around the small ice cream container that sat on the glass desk, lid propped open, displaying an odd glowing flower.

“Um, what the hell is that?” Kate asked, breaking the silence that had fallen over the room.

“I found it, in Central Park,” Darcy said, maintaining steady eye contact with the hypnotizing rose.

Boothby shot her a subtle glance with narrowed eyes, urging Darcy to elaborate.

“Ok fine, a friend of mine found it in Central Park,” Darcy clarified sarcastically. “He called me and we took a look at it together. I told him we’d see if we could run some tests on it upstairs.”

“So… it was just growing out of the ground?” Cassie asked. “Were there others like it?”

“Nope, just the one. We didn’t want to just leave it there, in case it could, you know, hurt someone. So I plucked it out of the ground and brought it back here.”

“Whoa!” Riri said in an overtly suspicious tone. “You touched that thing?”

“What? I wore gloves!” As Darcy said this, it suddenly dawned on her that maybe it had been idiotic to pick the flower.

Upon hearing this, Kate immediately ran to a tall footlocker by the entrance of the office. Everyone else, including Darcy, looked up to watch Kate as she rummaged quickly through the locker, grabbed a small tote, and brought it back to where they had been huddled.

“What’s… going on?” Darcy asked Kate cautiously.

“I’m looking for a thermometer,” Kate responded, digging through the items in the tote.

After a brief moment of scurried hunting, Kate found the infrared temperature reader, grabbed it, and quickly pointed it at Darcy’s forehead. Darcy put both her hands up as if she were being held at gunpoint. After a two second pause, the temperature reader beeped twice in confirmation of its completed scan.

“Well, you’re not running a fever,” Kate said with a puzzled expression, “but you are temping slightly warmer than you should be. You need to take a decontamination shower, asap.”

“Oh come on, really?” Darcy asked as if she were just told to pick up her dirty laundry off the bedroom floor.

“Yes, really.” Kate confirmed, then turned to Cassie. “Cass, can you get that started for her?”

Cassie nodded her head in confirmation, then extended a hand to Darcy to aid her out of her desk chair.

“Oh, Darcy, have you told anyone about this yet?” Kate asked as she and Cassie had turned to leave. “Like, anyone outside of this room?”

“No, not yet.” Darcy said, feeling lightheaded.

“Good, let’s keep it that way.”

The other four team members stopped to look at Kate, all with confused expressions on their faces. Since the inception of the Young Avengers, Kate had assumed the role of “team captain”, and next to Darcy had demonstrated the most amount of caution and restraint. So naturally, when she proposed keeping this a secret from Happy and Sam—at least in the interim—it came as a complete shock to everyone else.

“We’ll eventually tell them, ok?” Kate clarified. “But for now, we need to take care of this. Riri, you can head home so you can study, and I’ll figure out a safe place to keep this until tomorrow when we can run some tests on it.”

“Are you kidding me?” Riri asked with a hand on her hip. “Something interesting is happening here, and I ain’t about to leave now, right in the middle of it!”

“Ok fine, then you can handle finding a place for it. It’s probably best that you handle it, anyway. Hopefully your nanotech armor should shield you from any harmful elements.”

Riri nodded in confirmation. Cassie guided Darcy down the hall where they took the elevators down to the decontamination showers, while Riri stayed behind with the flower. After punching a few buttons on the slim metallic band on her right wrist, a soft whirring sound emitted from it and the band began to expand in all directions, forming a protective glove around her hand.

“I love nanotech,” Kate said softly with a grin.

“I know, right?” Riri confirmed emphatically. “I’ll take this up to R&D and get a 3D scan started on it. It’ll probably take a while to complete, so you guys can go on home. I’ll make sure to put a security lock on it, so no one can mess with it.”

“Alright, just please be careful. We don’t need anyone else touching this thing, at least until we find out what it is.”

Boothby and Kate watched in stunned, anticipatory silence as Riri scooped up the glowing flower with her armored hand. As she stood motionless with it in the palm of her hand, the rest of her team stood holding their breath.

“It’s fine, guys,” Riri said, letting out a short chuckle, “I’m perfectly fine.”

Both Kate and Boothby let out a sigh of relief. The trio made their way toward the elevators, and as Riri pushed the "up" button, Kate and Boothby got onto the adjacent elevator that would take them to the lobby.

The elevator doors closed, and Kate let out a long exhale, her mind still reeling from the discovery of the strange flower. She glanced over at Boothby, who met her gaze with a furrowed brow.

"Do you think it's dangerous?" Boothby asked, breaking the silence.

Kate shrugged. "I don't know, Ian. It's unlike anything I've ever seen before. We need to find out what it is before we jump to any conclusions."

Boothby nodded in agreement as the elevator dinged, signaling their arrival at the lobby. They stepped out into the lobby of Avengers tower, blending in with everyone heading home for the evening. Kate couldn't help but feel a sense of unease as they made their way towards the exit.

"Kate?" Boothby's voice broke through her thoughts.

She turned to face him, her expression serious. "Yeah?"

"I think we should inform Happy and Sam about this," he suggested.

Kate took a moment to consider her response. "I think so too. Eventually. Let's see what Riri uncovers first, then we'll talk about getting those guys involved."

Chapter Text

Several floors below the Young Avengers sector, Darcy and Cassie shared a brief sauna together. They took the one-on-one opportunity to catch up on each other’s lives, and share details that didn’t directly relate to the YA. The combination of the decontamination shower and the steamy sauna assisted with resetting Darcy’s mind and body back to square one. And although she felt much more refreshed than she did an hour prior—when she had made contact with the glowing flower in the park—her mind still felt a little... tipsy.

As she and Cassie sat in the cedar wood-lined sauna, making small talk, Darcy found it more difficult than ever to resist the urge to spill her guts about Bucky. Only hours ago, she recalled the tantalizing sensation she felt by the idea of keeping her relationship a secret. However, a newer and more dominant feeling of anxious excitement had emerged; one that begged her to share her delicious secret. Even in her altered state, Darcy knew that it was way too soon to share this news with her team. After all, she was just dating someone new, but a guy that just happened to operate under the Thunderbolts team. And this was no ordinary group of enhanced individuals; it was a collective of renegade soldiers, all of whom had rap sheets long enough to stretch to the moon. So as difficult as it was, Darcy knew she must keep a lid on that jar.

On the floor directly above the Young Avengers sector, Riri Williams sat in a tall drafting chair with her reading glasses on, analyzing the real-time information that was feeding out from the 3D scanner's monitor screen. The flower sat stationary on the scanning platform, while the infrared beams of the scanner rotated around it. Despite the lack of any valuable insight on the enigmatic rose, her expression remained one of bewilderment and fascination.

There was an audible beep that came from the direction of the double doors, and as Riri spun in her chair to look, she noticed Darcy and Cassie scanning their badges against the security panel, prompting the glass doors of the lab to slide open.

“You know what would be really cool?” Cassie spoke up, “what if this was like the rose from Tangled?”

“You mean the one that gave Rapunzel her healing powers?” Riri asked with a sly grin.

“With my luck, the only powers I’d get from it would make my hair grow insanely long.” Darcy said in a self-deprecating tone.

Riri and Cassie exchanged a quick, understanding look. They had actually discussed Darcy briefly, during the ride to the docks earlier that evening, citing their mutual empathy for her not being able to tag along. And although it went undiscussed, they both considered how awesome it would be if this mysterious flower somehow caused Darcy to become... enhanced. They all loved Darcy just the way she was, of course, but it would be undeniably cool if she had her own "superhero ability".

“Are you feeling any better?” Riri asked Darcy.

“I’m alright, just a little worn out,” Darcy responded in a slightly higher tone than usual. “I did experience this odd electrical current sensation when I plucked it from the ground, but that tapered off pretty quickly. I still feel a little woozy, though. Almost like I've had a few shots of whiskey.”

The two girls exchanged another worried look, which this time did not go unnoticed by Darcy.

“Hey! I promise, I am totally fine!” Darcy proclaimed, gesturing emphatically.

The last thing Darcy wanted to do was alarm any of the ladies—or Boothby—and subsequently jeopardize her potential involvement in any future missions. An unforeseen setback that further separated her from the rest of her team would be a most unwelcome guest. And what would happen if—and when—Sam and Happy found out about this? Kate had worked incredibly hard to put the Young Avengers team together, and the last thing Darcy wanted was to put her teammates at risk.

Darcy then had a sudden, knee-jerk instinct to reach for her phone and text Bucky; she still hadn’t told him about most of this. For all he knew, she truly did meet up with an old friend in Central Park, and nothing more. But eventually she would have to tell him about the call from Jimmy and how he found the flower in the park, touching the flower, and experiencing that weird hazy feeling that warmed her insides, as if they were wrapped in a fleece blanket fresh from the dryer. What would Bucky say to her when he found out? They had only been dating each other for a few weeks, so she couldn’t claim to know how he’d react, regardless of how strong their connection had been so far. Darcy made a mental note to text Bucky during the Uber ride back to her apartment, with tentative plans on filling him in on everything that had taken place that night.

An hour later, an exhausted Darcy Lewis stepped through the front door of her studio apartment, threw her keys into the bowl that sat on the table next to the door, and breathed a sigh of relief. Earlier that evening, she had been bored out of her mind, practically pleading for a mission to drop in her lap. Now, located on the opposite side of tedium, Darcy wondered if perhaps she got more than she bargained for. She appreciated that the weird "drunk" side effects had subsided, from where she made contact with the flower in the park. But now she was exhausted of both body and mind, and her crappy little twin sized bed—complete with rusty springs and the cheapest mattress Ikea offered—had never looked so beautiful.

Darcy's modest little studio apartment was only meant to be a temporary living arrangement, giving her the proper amount of time to “figure things out”. The idea of staying put in one location—after spending so much of her twenties jet-setting around the globe, going wherever the work took her—ended up being one the major selling points of joining the Young Avengers. However, that didn’t make the concept of putting roots down scary as hell. She had grown accustomed to the “luxuries” of picking up and heading somewhere new at the drop of a hat. It also had a certain air of mystery that Darcy found incredibly appealing. But as soon as she crossed the stage to accept her PhD diploma, something shifted in her mind. It was like a switch had been flipped, signaling the end of one incredible chapter and the start of new and even more exciting possibilities.

Darcy trudged to the far right corner of the apartment that housed her bed, and began taking her clothes off, letting them fall to the floor with apathy. She disrobed to only her underwear, then threw on her oversized hoodie with the "Culver University" logo on it. It had been purposefully too large when she bought it—there's nothing quite like that big comfy sweatshirt you can wear day or night, Darcy thought—but ever since the physical training she completed in order to secure her job with the YA, it practically swallowed her whole.

Shuffling toward the kitchen, Darcy opened the door to the fridge, produced a large piece of chilled New York pizza and a Rolling Rock long neck, and meandered back to her bed. Before sitting down, she grabbed one of her most beloved items, a breakfast-in-bed style TV tray. Purchased at the same time as her discount mattress, it was a perfect piece of functional art, effortlessly holding so many things of importance: Beer, food, phone, and laptop when she wanted to work in bed. She turned on her phone to stream The Office and ferociously chewed through the cold pizza. 10 minutes later, Darcy switched off the lamp on her nightstand and placed her phone in its charger for the night.

The second her eyelids closed, they immediately shot back open; the mental note she had made back at the tower, to text Bucky about her day, had completely slipped her mind. As much as she wanted to fill him in on her experiences with the mysterious glowing flower, she simply did not have the energy for it. In exchange, she settled for a quick “hello, goodnight” inspired text message.

Hey Stuart, it’s ok if you’re asleep. Sorry for getting back to you so late. Hope you had a good day at work. Talk to you in the morning. XOXO.

Darcy set her smartphone back in the charging cradle, and once again closed her eyes to let sleep enfold her. Only an hour passed, however, before she was jolted from her dreamless sleep.

Like a catapult Darcy shot up in bed, her chest moving up and down from deep, labored breathing. She glanced at the alarm clock on her bedside table, which read 2:15 AM.

“Fuck…” She whispered to herself in disappointment, rubbing her eyes.

Darcy apprehensively reached for her phone to check for messages. She read up on a sleep study a while back that proposed if you often wake up at night or experience insomnia, you should attempt to eschew the smartphone. Darcy was unsure if there was any legitimacy to the study, and if your phone could really keep you up at night, but regardless she avoided it when she could. But now, it was as if her arm and hand were possessed, as it slipped the phone from its charging cradle.

Peering at the bright screen through squinted eyes, she saw that she had a text notification from Bucky.

Hey there, Doctor Feelgood 😉. I missed talking to you tonight. Maybe we can make up for it with a video chat tomorrow night? 💦 🍑 ❤️.

Earlier that night, Darcy thought Bucky needed some lessons in how to properly use emojis, but now it suddenly appeared as though he'd gotten the hang of it. Darcy liked to believe that Bucky had never used emojis before he met her; he certainly didn’t use them within the first few weeks of them communicating with each other. But now, every once in a while, he’ll send one to her, and it never ceases to make her day. There was one time she had messaged him while he was at the grocery store, picking out fruit, when he sent her a peach emoji; they both had a good laugh after she explained what the peach emoji actually meant. Then there was the time he had sent her a text message comprising only of flag emojis, for all the countries he had been to; it was a long text. But now, just seeing his name pop up on her phone—even if it's his secret identity—unleashes a wild scurry of butterflies in her stomach.

Darcy was about to send him a follow-up text, but then noticed the "Snoozed Notifications" small type at the bottom of the message thread. She let out a small sigh of disappointment, although her face remained curled in a satisfied grin. After placing her phone back on the charger, she folded her hands together on her chest and attempted to fall back asleep.

What Darcy initially mistook for the cloudy haze of slumber—that you never see coming until it’s too late—ended up being queer flashes of light behind her eyelids. There was darkness, and then there was a lightning strike of brilliant emerald and silver that lit up the synapses in her brain like the Fourth of July. Her heart once again began to pulse in excitement. And finally, a sultry trickling sensation coursed its way through her extremities, warming her bones on this frigid northeast winter morning.

Between the flashes of light, she began to see quick frames of Bucky’s face pass through her mind. She saw his vulnerable grin as he finally began to soften during their dinner at the Regency hotel. There was another flash of green and silver, and then his face as they stood at the elevators, both of them nervous about the prospect of going upstairs. Darcy then saw a burst of brilliant fireworks, followed by Bucky’s face as it contorted in climactic pleasure, when she had rode on top of him in that hotel room.

Darcy had been completely unaware that her right hand had traveled south, down her panties, and began gently massaging her vagina in a slow, deliberate motion. Her fingertips delicately caressed her upper labia, with considerate contact being made with the hood over her clitoris. The mental pictures that Darcy had collected of Bucky began to spin around and around in her mind like a carousel, and she envisioned that it was his hand down there; it was his skin pressed up against hers, in all the right places, touching her in all the right ways. Her fingers were his fingers, as they seductively slid down the center of her pussy, gently pulling the lips apart, and inserted inside of her. The creaks of the decades old bed frame echoed throughout her apartment, but were inaudible to Darcy; she only heard choirs of angels singing hymns of sexual liberation. Her left hand became his left hand—transforming from skin to metal, but loving it just the same—as it groped her breast with valid assertion. A tiny puddle began to form on her bedsheets as the lips of her vagina tightened and her fingers continued gliding in and out with incredible ease. Darcy then felt a sudden and breathtaking release of pressure, as pure elation spread from within her in all directions. The orchestra of her body crescendoed into its final bar of music, and all at once every single muscle relaxed from it’s contracted state. When her heartbeat once again returned to a resting pulse, her eyelids grew heavy, and for the last time that night, she drifted off to a dreamless sleep.

Chapter Text

In the early morning hours of the day that followed Jimmy’s discovery of the mystery flower—and Darcy’s subsequent interaction with it—bright beams of sunlight cut through the thin, cracked blinds that hung over the single window in Darcy’s studio apartment. These streaks of natural light dimly illuminated the living room nook of the apartment, which consisted of a futon—donated to her by Riri Williams—and a small Ikea coffee table, with a modest 37” flat screen television propped on top of it. This was a section of the apartment that Darcy rarely visited. Due to the nature of her work schedule, and how it seamlessly blended with her personal schedule, she rarely had the time or energy for purposefully sitting down to watch TV or movies. This was of course fine with Darcy, as she really only had an active interest in two major subjects these days.

The first of those two subjects was her career. Since her time as Jane Foster’s assistant, her love for astrophysics only grew in rapid succession. Her involvement in the field was catapulted into the stratosphere when she and Jane had their first run-in with the demigod known as Thor. Once she became aware first-hand of the vast secrets of the universe—that so many others in the world craved to know and understand—everything else in her life dulled in comparison. Her drive to understand the universe never stopped, propelling her through the rest of her time with Jane and securing her PhD in astrophysics. After graduation, she found amusement in her proclivity for falling ass backwards into situations that brought her to places like Westview, New Jersey, and other events leading up to her new job with the Young Avengers.

Darcy’s second active interest—aka Bucky Barnes—was a relatively new one. Back in December, she was at a singles event at the Grand Regency hotel, working one of her very first missions as a field agent. Her objective was to pitch the Young Avengers to an elusive and mysterious individual named America Chavez. If the mission had proved to be a success, America would've been the first “magical” Young Avenger on the team. Unbeknownst to Darcy, ex-Hydra agent, former part-time Avenger, and current Thunderbolts operative Bucky Barnes was sent to the Regency hotel on the same exact mission. Once she and Barnes became aware of each other’s objectives, things escalated into an ugly mess that found them at each other’s throats. When America broke the news that she wouldn’t be joining either team, Darcy and Bucky were of course disappointed. An unmistakeable release of pressure was felt, however, which led them to discover that they had slightly more in common than they originally anticipated. The two operatives were suddenly abandoned by America, who treated them to their dinner, as well as her hotel room for the night. Darcy and Bucky would initially scoff at her offer, but as the evening wore on, the idea of accepting the hotel room for a late-night romp had become irresistible. In the late hours of the night, the two would eventually give in and participate in a mutually satisfying sexual tryst.

Darcy had not seen Bucky since the following morning, when they both awoke in the hotel room, confronted with the striking reality of their new situation. After a lengthy discussion, they acknowledged that there were shared feelings between them, but it would be best to take their relationship slow, and keep it a secret at all costs.

As the light of the morning continued to repel the shadows of Darcy’s apartment, Eastern standard time reached 7:00 AM and the alarm on both her smartphone and bedside clock rang out loudly. With a groan, Darcy shifted to switch off both alarms. As reality seeped into her consciousness, the first thing she noticed was that she'd become drenched with sweat during the night. This struck Darcy as odd, since New York was in the middle of the coldest months of the year, and this amount of nighttime perspiration was unlikely, especially considering how ineffective her small space heater was. The second thing she noticed was that, although she had still been wearing her oversized Culver University hoodie, her underwear was missing. As she pulled up her comforter and shook it lightly, confusedly searching for the missing panties, she found them bunched up at the end of the bed. Darcy sat up—her legs hanging off the mattress, and feet touching the cold hardwood floor—she rubbed her eyes and attempted to recall the night before, specifically when she had finally laid down to rest. She had no issue recalling most of the events that occurred the day prior, including the discovery of the strange flower in Central Park, and it having some weird effect on her after she plucked it from the ground. However, memories of waking suddenly in the darkness of the early morning flashed in her mind, and she began piecing together the possibilities of what could have led her to removing her underwear.

Darcy got up from her bed and walked over to the space heater, which had been running all night long, and switched it off. She stood for a moment, glaring at it in confusion. The heater was in the exact same place and position it had always been, and was set to the usual temperature, so nothing about it indicated why she might feel this hot, and in the middle of winter. In an act of defiance, she forcefully removed her hoodie and tossed it onto her bed, then retreated to her bathroom where she set the water of the shower to a much colder temperature than she normally would. The water felt wonderful on her skin, cooling her down to a level of degree that felt ultimately more sustainable.

As she pumped a handful of shampoo into her hand and began massaging it into her hair, more missing memories of late last night and early this morning came flooding back. Darcy now remembered jerking awake around 2 or 2:30 AM, for a reason she still couldn't fully understand. She then recalled looking at her phone and noticing that Bucky had texted her back, and had refrained from sending him a follow-up message. But then what?

Darcy rinsed the shampoo from her hair, then repeated the process with the conditioner, doing her best to shed light on the lost moments from early that morning. A nugget of an idea came to her after she rinsed out the conditioner and began soaping herself with her favorite lemongrass-scented body wash. Could she have... masturbated? Was that the reason why she woke up with no bottoms? While it wasn't out of the question—the idea of her doing that as a way to assist in falling back to sleep—certainly she would have remembered doing that, right? After rinsing off completely, she turned the water off with a frustrated huff and toweled herself dry, hoping that the rest of the lost memories would return to her later.

While setting out her clothes, she instinctively pulled out items that would be suited for warmer weather: A tank top and a pair of shorts. Even after shutting off the space heater, and taking one of the coldest showers of her life, Darcy still felt like her skin was radiating an abnormal amount of heat. She knew, however, that she'd look psychotic, showing up to work in the middle of winter, looking like she was ready for a day at the beach. So as a compromise, she donned more winter weather appropriate clothing, and shoved the warm weather clothes into her backpack, with plans on changing once she was at work.

Darcy was fully dressed and had been brushing her teeth when she heard a chime ring out from the living room area in her apartment. It turned out to be a notification from the proprietary tablet that paired with the Stark Tech from the R&D department at the tower. The night before, when Riri began the scan of the mysterious flower, she set up two separate tablets to be paired with the 3D scanning machine, so that both she and Darcy could receive intermittent notifications throughout the scanning process.

As she swiped to unlock the tablet, it automatically opened with the page displaying the scanning results. It showed that the scanning had officially reached 100%, but the analyzing processes had just begun. She silently prayed that the results would be ready by the time she arrived at the tower later that morning, or at least before the workday ended, so she and Riri could review them together.

An hour later, Darcy strolled into the main Young Avengers office space with her backpack, a brown paper bag that held three bagels with cream cheese, and a large cup of iced coffee. She had been the first to arrive that morning, and to her relief, because she was absolutely ravenous and did not want anyone to bear witness to her scarfing down over 2,000 calories for only one meal.

All of the overhead lights—set to motion sensors and timers—turned on one by one as Darcy walked to her desk. The main floor that belonged to the Young Avengers was a sprawling contemporary landscape of technological equipment, computers, monitors, electric standing desks, and a few giant orb balls as alternatives for normal desk chairs. Other non-essential amenities included footlockers, a dining and kitchen area—complete with a stove and oven—and a "relaxation nook" at the back of the office. This nook came furnished with a sofa, a couple of armchairs, and a handful of nap pods for those long days at the office. Between the office's square footage and the amenities, it was more space than the five of them needed, but it also gave them room to grow if opportunity presented itself.

As she sat and ate, Darcy scrolled through the last few text message exchanges between her and Bucky, hoping that something would jog her memory. She could feel certain memories breaking through, such as weird flashes of fireworks, as well as Bucky's handsome, chiseled face. Then, there were more recollections poking through; additional signs that once more pointed to the obvious conclusion, that she had given herself a downstairs massage in the wee hours of the morning.

Darcy's train of thought was abruptly derailed when she heard a beep from the office entrance, and looked up to see Ian making his way through the sliding glass doors.

“Hey there Seal, how was your night last night? Get any rest?” Boothby asked, setting his messenger bag down on the floor by his desk.

“Seal?” Darcy asked with a sly grin.

“You know, Seal? 'Kiss from a Rose'? It was on the Batman sound—"

"Oh, I get the joke, Ian," Darcy said, cutting him off. "I just wanted to give you a moment of hope before I had to let you know your joke didn't land."

"Well, I tried," Ian said, pretending to be annoyed.

"I’m fine, though. Thanks for asking. Although I am burning up, is it hot in here to you?”

“Hm, no not really,” Boothby responded, taking only a moment to consider his response.

“So weird. I woke up drenched in sweat this morning, and ever since then it like I cannot get cool enough.”

“Are you showing any other cold or flu symptoms? Do you feel sick?” 

“No, not at all,” Darcy responded, shaking her head, the confused look intensifying on her face.

A moment of contemplative silence passed between them, as they both considered other possibilities to her warm temperature. Eventually, Boothby gave a befuddled shrug and took a seat at his desk, directly next to Darcy. He typed in his password for his work laptop, then turned back to her.

“You know, you could try a few minutes in the cryochamber downstairs. I’ve used it a couple times, and it always serves as a great reset for my body.”

Darcy considered this option for a moment, although she was skeptical due to how ineffective her cold shower had been earlier that morning. However, there was most certainly a difference between the temperature of a shower versus how cold a cryochamber could get, so perhaps it could be worth exploring.

“Exactly how cold do those cryo chambers get?” Darcy asked.

“Mm, they range from about -100 to -160 degrees celsius,” Boothby said without looking away from his computer.

Darcy’s eyes widened in amazement. That low of a temperature was intimidating, even with her skin feeling as hot as the sun. But the idea of doing a “factory reset” on her body, and resuming normal homeostasis was too tempting to pass up.

After another moment of careful consideration, she turned back to Boothby.

“Would you mind showing me how it works?”

When the duo had returned to the office from Darcy’s first experience in a cryochamber, she admitted that she did in fact feel refreshed, and almost to a point where some normalcy to the regulations of her body had returned. This afforded her the opportunity to check on the status of the mystery flower upstairs. She could have simply referred to the tablet that Riri had set up for her, but she opted for a chance to stretch her legs and take another look at the flower in person.

The first floor of Research and Development was a futuristic marvel of steel and glass, with sleek desks and computers lining the walls. Darcy scanned her keycard, the green light blinking in welcome, and entered through the sliding glass doors. The air in the research facility was crisp and sterile, the scent of cleaning chemicals and technology filled Darcy’s nostrils. Inside, the lab was bustling; a stark contrast to how it was the night before. When Riri, Cassie, and Darcy sat and observed the flower late last night, they had the R&D lab to themselves. Now, in the peak hours of the morning it was almost flooding with scientists. Spotting the 3D scanning station, she was relieved to see that everything was still as it was the night before.

Darcy made her way to the scanner where the mystery flower lay. The scanner glowed with a soft blue light, and the analysis meter flashed at 54%. Some quick mental math dictated that the results should be available for review just in time for Riri to arrive later that day.

The results couldn't arrive soon enough, she thought to herself. When this all started out, the only stake Darcy had in this was the promise to Jimmy of discovering what it was; after all, he was the one who found it. But now she had a personal venture in it as well, because she was the one who touched it, and was now experiencing odd residual effects from doing so. Peering down at the flower, she noticed that although it wasn't glowing as vibrantly as it had been when she and Jimmy discovered it, it still had a silvery shimmer that was undeniable. Darcy recalled seeing it for the first time, peeking through the bushes, and feeling it draw her in like a tractor beam. There was something indisputably amazing about this thing, and she wanted badly to know more about it; no, needed to know more. Because now it's not just about figuring out what it is, but also deciding if she could expect any long-term effects from making contact with it.

Today, we're gonna figure out exactly what you are, little guy, Darcy thought to herself once more, before turning to leave.

Darcy’s stable condition persisted all the way up to 1 PM that day, when she took her lunch. The elevator doors opened to reveal a bustling cafeteria, filled with the aromas of various foods and the sight of people sitting and chatting at tables. Darcy approached the sandwich station and picked out a turkey and cheese on wheat bread before heading towards the courtyard. The ground was covered in a thin layer of snow, and she could see her breath in the air. Two lone figures stood out against the white backdrop, huddled over their cigarettes. In contrast, Darcy sat alone at a nearby table, her jacket providing a pop of color amongst the winter hues; she alone was the only person brave enough to eat outside, withstanding the frigid temperatures.

She took a bite of her sandwich, the texture of the bread and the crunch of the lettuce and turkey satisfying her deep hunger that raged on, despite the three whole bagels she ate that morning. As Darcy chewed, she pulled her phone from her jacket pocket, noticing a text message from Bucky, and her face immediately lit up. Swiping on the push notification and unlocking her phone, she saw that the message was a photo of the bare backside of John Walker, who was in a shower stall. Bucky’s face was in the forefront of the picture, wearing a big goofy smile and giving a thumbs-up. The text portion read:

Just finished up with combat training. John and I are about to soap each other down. 

Darcy cackled to herself, loud enough for the two smokers to turn briefly in her direction. She put a hand over her mouth and raised the other in a half-hearted apology. After taking a moment to consider a proper response, she set down her sandwich and began typing.

That’s a nice ass, but not the one I was wanting to see.

As she waited for a response, Darcy's fingers automatically navigated to one of her go-to mind-numbing games on her smartphone. The brightly colored screen lit up her face as she tapped and swiped, lost in the virtual world. She played until her fingers grew tired and her eyes grew heavy with boredom, signaling it was time to return to work. Despite the intellectual tasks that filled her day, Darcy enjoyed having a small amount of personal time reserved for frivolous activities that provided only temporary satisfaction but still managed to bring a smile to her face.

Darcy was in the elevator heading back up to the YA floor, when she received another text from Bucky. At first glance, just looking at the lock-screen notification, she could tell he sent her a photo, but couldn’t see what it was. As she unlocked her phone to get a better look at it, her eyes widened and a cupped hand instinctively shot up to cover her mouth. It was another naked backside, but this time it was unmistakably Bucky’s. The text portion read:

Had to ask Yelena to take this. I felt more comfortable asking her than John. When she asked, I told her it was for my Tinder profile.

Alone in the elevator, Darcy began giggling like a school girl. Her favorite aspect of the photo—aside from the photo itself—was that Bucky had been in a shower stall, and completely naked. The only bare part of him that she could see was his ass, but that was enough to kick up a flutter of butterflies in her belly. She also found it hilarious that he got Yelena to take it for him. Darcy wasn’t sure what her amusement said about her character, but when it came to Bucky, any such feelings of jealousy and envy were practically nonexistent; at least, not at this juncture of their relationship. After a month of dating, she and Bucky had a few conversations where Yelena was mentioned to some extent, and the way he always presented her made their dynamic sound more like one resembling siblings or good friends, void of any romantic notions.

As Darcy reached the main YA floor and stepped off the elevator, she began to feel lightheaded, on top of the increased fluttering in her stomach. It was a feeling adjacent to having low blood sugar—or being “hangry”—but it much closer resembled the sensation she experienced when making contact with the glowing flower in Central Park. As she swiped her badge to enter the office, she saw that both Boothby and Kate were inside. He seemed to be showing her something on his computer monitor, and as Darcy approached to get a better look, she suddenly lost her balance. Her knees gave out and her legs felt weak, causing her to fall. In an attempt to steady herself, she reached for her rolling desk chair but only succeeded in sliding across the floor.

“Oh my god, Darcy, are you ok?” Kate asked loudly and wide eyed. She rushed over to where Darcy had slid to, and helped her get up in her seat.

“Uh, yep, I am totally fine.” Darcy said, situating herself into her desk chair, still light-headed and spacey. “I’m just doing what Dave Grohl said, ‘learning to walk again’.”

Kate let out a small chuckle before her face quickly returned to a look of concern.

“Also, you are burning up," Kate said emphatically. "Do you still have the same consistently high temperature from last night?”

“Um, sort of?” Darcy replied, steadying her breathing. “Ian took me down to the cryochamber earlier today, and that seemed to help out quite a bit.”

“Ok, so you were stable for a little while, but then your temperature just shot back up again?”

“Y- yeah, like, right when I was—”

Darcy stopped mid-sentence. Initially, she wanted to tell Kate that her symptoms had returned when she got off the elevator only moments prior, but that was a bit of a lie. When the text message came through—the one that revealed Bucky’s perfectly shaped ass—that was when the “swooning” sensation began to set in again; the light-headedness and her burning hot skin. In the midst of regaining her composure, Darcy’s mind began connecting the dots, and retracing all of the common denominators when she experienced these feelings. And so far, all signs pointed to Bucky. Each time she had any more than a passing thought about him—such as a nude photo of him—it was like an instant triple shot of whisky.

“Right when you were what, Darcy?” Kate asked, interrupting Darcy's train of thought.

By now, she had pulled a small thin flashlight out of the first aid box—the one that held the infrared thermometer from last night—and was pointing it at Darcy’s pupils.

“Um, nothing. I think I just felt a little woozy when I got off the elevator on our floor. But I’m fine, I promise! I’m sure it was just a weird coincidence.”

Kate turned off the small flashlight and glared at Darcy with lips pursed and a blatant look of skepticism.

“Do you think this has to do with that flower you found last night?” Kate asked, first to Darcy, then to Boothby.

Darcy held her hands up and shrugged her shoulders, not unlike a small child might do when they’re caught red-handed, stealing from the cookie jar. At that moment, a brief clip from AC/DC’s “Back In Black” played through their office's loudspeaker; it was the indicator that Riri had arrived. When she first joined the Young Avengers, knowing that she'd be flying in her suit between her dorm room in Massachusetts and the tower in Manhattan, she insisted that the song play every time she landed on the roof’s platform, where she made her grand entrance. She claimed that it was like an homage to Tony and his legacy, and the rest of the team heartily agreed.

After Riri arrived and got situated, the four of them took a trip up to R&D to get a renewed glimpse of the mysterious silver rose. Although there were still plenty of scientists and technicians in the lab, it was significantly less crowded then when Darcy visited it that morning.

“The DNA structure for this plant is like nothing I’ve ever seen before,” said Riri, combing quickly through the analysis results. 

The tests for the mysterious flower had not yet completed upon Riri’s arrival like Darcy had previously predicted, but there was enough available information to make some cursory judgements. As she scrolled through the hundreds of lines of analytical data, Riri spouted off nonsensical techno jargon that went over the heads of Ian and Kate. Darcy understood a few things here and there from context, but her “tipsy-esque” state had only intensified on their trip up to R&D, and her ability to focus began to wane heavily. She’d tune in one moment, to vaguely register words like “the flower’s genetic makeup” and “the protoplasm is non-existent”. Her brain would then suddenly make a hard right turn into Bucky territory; it was as if she couldn’t keep herself from thinking about him. She couldn’t recall getting this lovesick when she was 13 years old, so why the hell was it happening now? Could this all be related to the flower?

At one point during the litany of scientific mumbo jumbo that Riri was still spouting off, Darcy exclaimed out of nowhere “Flower power!” and everyone stopped talking to look at her. This garnered a sympathetic laugh from the group, as well as concerned side-eye glances from other's in the lab. And when the group had made their way back downstairs to the Young Avengers office, and Cassie had finally arrived, Darcy practically screamed her name as if she hadn’t seen her in ages, and then proceeded to give her a long, exaggerated hug.

Shortly after Cassie arrived, everyone's phones started ringing as an incoming call from Happy came through. Kate answered the video call and projected it onto one of the large screens in the office.

“Hey ladies—and Ian—it looks like we got another tip about some funny business going down at the docks,” Happy was saying, his face two inches too close to his phone. “I have a weird feeling that something might actually be going on, so I do want you all to go back out there, but please proceed with caution. Darcy, I know we had some words yesterday, and I feel I was a bit harsh. Would you like to head out there with them?”

“I sure would, Happy Gilmore! I mean, Hogan!” Darcy exclaimed to the monitor. 

“Is, um, she alright?” Happy asked to the other girls, his face scrunched in confusion.

Everyone—aside from Darcy—looked at one another with worried expressions. They had previously discussed the idea of eventually filling in Happy and Sam on what Darcy had found the previous night, and her subsequent symptoms. But more developments had occurred since then, and judging by the shared looks on their faces it appeared as though no one was quite ready to debrief Happy on it.

“Oh yeah, she’s fine!” Kate interjected. “We think she’s just a little under the weather.”

“Oh ok,” Happy said, his face relaxing, “in that case, Darcy are you ok to sit this one out again?”

“You got it, boss man! Springsteen!”

Appearing to not be overly concerned about Darcy’s state, Happy laughed off her final comment, bid the group good luck, and ended the video call. 

Kate, Cassie, and Riri began suiting up for their second excursion to inspect the suspicious ongoings at the shipping docks, while Ian stayed with Darcy to keep a watchful eye on her. The three of them were almost out the door before Riri turned back for one more comment to Darcy and Boothby.

“If this turns out to be another false alarm, I’m coming straight back here, and we’re going to figure this out. Hopefully the analysis results will be complete by then, and we can discern if it’s just coincidence, or if the flower is somehow affecting her condition.”

Riri then turned toward Boothby.

“Ian, please keep an eye on her, and make sure she doesn’t get into any trouble, or do anything stupid.”

“You mean like, touch another glowy flower?” Darcy asked, chiming in. Her face was curled into a smug grin, assured she had just said something clever.

“Yeah, like that.” Riri said with a chuckle. “Call us if anything comes up.”

After the ladies left, Boothby made up one of the nap pods in the back corner of the office with a blanket and pillow, so that Darcy would have somewhere comfortable to relax. He had felt a pang of anxiety shoot through him as he watched the team exit the office, leaving him alone with Darcy. Ian assured himself that Darcy would probably be fine, and that he was more than qualified to take care of a sick friend. He spent many nights—and mornings—in college taking care of hungover friends and roommates, so seeing to Darcy's needs couldn't be that much different. Then again, none of his drunk friends had ever discovered and fondled a magical flower that was blooming in the middle of winter.

Once Ian had Darcy situated in the nap pod, he went back to work so he could communicate with the rest of the team, and hoped that after a short nap, things would return to normal.

Several blocks away, in a tastefully appointed studio apartment on the upper east side of Manhattan, Bucky Barnes sat on his living room couch, his feet propped up on the coffee table, with a copy of The Hobbit in his hands. Despite it not being his original copy from when the novel was first published, it still appeared as though it had seen some action. Bucky would only admit it to those that were curious enough to enquire, but the Tolkien classic had become one of his favorites, as well as a comforting re-read when he needed something familiar to fall back on. The book had unintentionally become one of the last remaining links to his previous life; a life that he thought would have faded into obscurity by now, yet it persisted, barely holding on.

Bucky had reached one of his favorite parts of the book—the hilarious interaction between Bilbo and Gollum, where they play games for possession over the one true ring—when a text alert from his phone jogged him from his reading daze. He was initially annoyed with whomever was texting him—how dare they interrupt him while he was reading—but then became more annoyed with himself, knowing he should've put his phone in "Do Not Disturb" mode. With a puff of air through his nose, he set the book aside face down, and picked up his smartphone from the coffee table. The text message was from Darcy, and although his initial reaction was delight, his face soon turned into a concerned frown. The message read:

Bucky. SOS. XOXO.

Waves of anxiety and worry began to pummel Bucky, as his mind reeled from all of the disastrous scenarios that were running through his mind. It was only three words, each punctuated by a period, but it still felt cause for concern. First of all, they had agreed to not use real names when communicating over the phone, so the fact that she referred to him by his real name was curious. “SOS” was also cause for concern, for obvious reasons. And then ending the cryptic correspondence with her favorite text message sign-off line “XOXO”. Bucky’s knee-jerk reaction to this was that she was in some sort of trouble. If she was calling for help, and using his real name, that wasn’t a good sign.

Panic set in as Bucky read Darcy's text over and over again, desperately trying to think of what to text back. Understanding that this could be urgent, he jumped to his feet and frantically pulled on his shoes and leather jacket. Right before another wave of uncertainty was about to strike, a second text came through—a location ping—and it was the final flag he needed to dart out his front door like a maniac, possessed by fear and urgency.

At Avengers tower, on the main floor of the Young Avengers office space, Boothby sat at his desk with his wireless headset over his ears. He had one headphone cup nestled onto his right hear, so he could keep up with the communications between Kate, Cassie, and Riri for their current mission, but kept the left headphone cup displaced so he could also listen for Darcy in the back corner. Before the team left, Riri put a monitoring bracelet on Darcy’s left wrist, which kept everyone on the team up-to-date on her vitals, so they would know right away if her temperature spiked any higher. However, since Boothby had gotten her settled into the nap pod an hour ago, he could hear a steady stream of music—Katy Perry to be specific—with changing songs every couple of minutes, which meant that she was still awake and feeling ok. He would also occasionally hear her belt out the chorus to the songs while they blasted at full volume on her phone. At one point, he had left to get a snack from the vending machines by the elevators, and he could hear her singing along to “Teenage Dream” from the other side of the sliding glass doors to the office.

Ian had been shaking his head with a smile on his face, a thankful acknowledgement of Darcy’s stable condition, when a heavy and abrupt double knock echoed throughout the office. He rose cautiously in his desk chair, pivoting his head around quickly to glean what the noise could have been, and where it originated from. Eventually his eyes landed on the sliding glass doors at the front entrance of the office. He felt his heart leap upward in his chest when he discovered a dark figure in a leather jacket standing on the other side of the doors. Temporarily frozen in fear, Ian stood at his desk and watched as the figure started to wave at him with a motion that was not unkind. He instinctively glanced back at Darcy’s nap pod, and it was then that he noticed the music from her phone had stopped. Then, emerging from the darkened corner, Darcy came into his view, wearing a tank top and shorts, with bear feet, and was excitedly tip-toeing in the direction of the front of the office. Ian quickly cut Darcy off, wanting to beat her to the front door, and had been so preoccupied with doing so that he was completely shocked to discover the person on the other side of the doors was someone he recognized; he was, however, not someone he expected to see at Avengers tower.

Chapter Text

“Bucky! It’s Bucky! Bucky’s here!” Darcy said excitedly, jumping up and down.

When he had first approached the sliding glass doors, Ian felt as though the stranger looked familiar, although he couldn’t quite place him. But as Darcy jumped up and down, celebrating his arrival like a cheerleader on quaaludes, a look of shock and surprise grew across his face. Then, as if in slow motion, Ian turned around to face Darcy

“Um, Darcy… did you by chance invite the Winter Soldier here?”

Ian asked only this one question, although he had several.

“Yes I did!” Darcy exclaimed again. “He’s my hero!”

When Darcy made a move to open the sliding glass doors from the inside, Ian attempted to intercept, but his dumbfounded state had greatly reduced his reflexes, and was able to push her way past him. As the doors slid open, making way for Bucky to step inside the office, he only remained in the doorway with an equally confused look as Ian.

“Hey you two…” Bucky said with a confused grin. “What’s… going on?”

Bucky’s face relaxed in recognition of Darcy's safety—as far as he could tell. Only Ian continued to look back and forth between the two, confused and slightly horrified, as Darcy ran and jumped into Bucky’s arms. As if someone had only tossed him a bag of flour, he effortlessly caught her, and she began planting kisses on both of his cheeks.

“I am so glad that you made it, Bucky! I’ve had the weirdest day, you have to come in so I can tell you about it!”

Bucky gently set Darcy back down on the floor, his gaze mostly locked in with Boothby’s, who was still dumbstruck and speechless.

“I… don’t want to intrude,” Bucky began, switching his glance between Darcy and her colleague. “I came because you texted me ‘SOS’. I was worried.” He let out a nervous chuckle.

Bucky was beginning to feel like the proverbial third wheel, or like the houseguest that was invited by one person, but their invite was not made aware to anyone else at the party.

Taking him by the hand, Darcy led Bucky into the main bullpen of the Young Avengers office space, and began pointing out all the different things that she thought he should know about.

“Ok Darcy, slow down,” Bucky said, motioning for her to take a seat in her desk chair. He then grabbed Ian’s chair and sat across from her. “Are you ok? Is there something I need to be concerned about?”

Speaking up at the same time, Ian and Darcy said “no” and “yes” respectively. This was the first time that Boothby had opened his mouth since Bucky had arrived, so naturally he looked to him first.

“Is… she ok?” Bucky asked Ian in a much lower volume. “Has she been drinking? Smoking?”

Ian slapped the palm of his hand to his forehead, completely lost on where to begin; he was still trying to catch up, himself.

“Um ok,” Boothby began, considering his words carefully. “For now, I’m going to skip past the part where you showed up out of nowhere, for inexplicable reasons, and I guess I’ll focus on filling you in.”

Bucky’s face shifted back to a look of concern, as Ian began slowly pacing back and forth.

“Has she told you about the flower yet?” Ian asked.

“The flower? What flower?” Bucky responded, his confused look intensifying.

“Ok, I’ll take that as a ‘no’.” 

Darcy had taken Bucky’s right hand in hers, and was staring at him dreamily as he spoke to Ian.

Ian continued, “So, an old colleague of Darcy’s found a strange flower in Central Park last night, and called her down to take a look at it with him. It was very weird. Like, it glowed and everything."

"She found a glowing flower?"

"Yeah, it had like this strange silvery glow to it. Anyways, she agreed to bring it back here so we could run some tests on it. And ever since then, she’s been experiencing some… odd side effects.”

“Wait, she actually touched this flower with her bare hands?” Bucky asked in a manner that was slightly accusatory. 

“No, she had a glove on. But ever since she picked it out of the ground and brought it back here, she’s been acting strange, as you can see.”

Darcy now had her lips puckered, and was making kissing gestures at Bucky. He turned his head to look at her and gave her a worried smile.

“Ok, give me a quick rundown of everything that’s happened since then. Don’t leave anything out.”

Ian grabbed an unused desk chair and rolled it over to have a place to sit, then proceeded to fill Bucky in on everything that had happened—that he was aware of—since the night before. From bringing the glowing neon flower back to the tower, to the tests they had ran that day, to all of Darcy’s symptoms she’s experienced, as well as the remedies they had attempted thus far.

Suddenly, notifications from several electronic devices began ringing throughout the office space. Bucky, who had been considering all of this new and alarming information, looked inquisitively at Ian.

“That should be the analysis results, actually,” Boothby said, walking over to his work computer.

After a bit of typing and mousing, he brought up a screen that displayed several lines of analytical data, and Bucky got up from his chair to join him. Although he was unsure of what exactly he was looking at, he leaned in closer alongside Ian to read the results. Ian gave him a nervous side-eye smile.

“I- I’m Ian, by the way,” Boothby said, his voice shaky with intimidation.

“Hey Ian, I’m Bucky.” They both smiled and laughed, knowing an introduction on Bucky's part was superfluous. “So, do you know what any of this means? I mean, to me it might as well be in a different language.”

Ian swallowed past the lump in his throat, feeling slightly more at ease with the concept of the Winter Soldier standing behind him.

“Well, I’m not the team’s leading tech analyst, but there should be enough here for me to glean a few things from the data.”

Bucky remained silent as he watched Boothby comb through the results of the scan, occasionally muttering incoherencies to himself. After a few moments of staring, Bucky took his seat once again, realizing that he wasn’t going to be much help, especially if he was peering over the poor guy’s shoulder.

“So, are you two like… dating?” Boothby asked, trying his best to sound casual.

“Yes! We are totally dating!” Darcy said excitedly. She was still sitting in her desk chair, and had been drifting in and out of the conversation.

“It’s… complicated.” Bucky said to Ian in a clarifying manner.

Ian had a reply for this, but for his own safety, he kept it to himself.

“You said a moment ago that she did a cryo treatment this morning,” Bucky began after a moment of silence. “Did that do anything for her? Did it seem to help at all?”

“You know, I think it did actually help curb her symptoms, at least for a little while.”

“Do you think that it could help out again? Obviously it’s not a cure, but if we can get her to be more lucid, it would certainly be more helpful.”

“You are more than welcome to take her down to the cryochambers for another treatment, if you think you can handle her.”

Bucky narrowed his eyes at Ian, his lips curled in grin.

“Yeah, I think I can handle it.”

“Great, that will give me an opportunity to go through these scan results more thoroughly. Hopefully by the time you get back, I’ll have more information to share.”

Bucky did his best to guide Darcy gently down the hallway, into the elevator, and down to the floor with the cryochambers. She would occasionally get distracted by something—usually having to do with a part of Bucky—but eventually they arrived safely and intact.

The cryochamber facility stretched out like a never-ending hallway, its sleek metallic walls gleaming under the bright lights. Doors lined only one side of the corridor, each leading to its own private room with a cryo machine. Bucky held open the door for Darcy and followed her inside as she stumbled in, her cheeks flushed and her movements unsteady. But despite her intoxicated state, Darcy's fingers deftly navigated the control panel of the machine, her eyes focused as she programmed the start up cycle. With a soft hum, the cryo machine came to life, its low vibrations filling the otherwise silent room. Darcy turned to face Bucky, a faint smile on her lips as she gestured towards the machine.

“This is the part where I have to strip down to my underwear…” Darcy said in a loud whisper, giving Bucky a not-so-subtle wink.

Bucky gave her a furtive grin, then turned his back to allow her some privacy as she undressed. He could hear the rustling of her clothes coming off, and had to active fight against the urge to turn back around and watch.

A minute later, Darcy spoke up again. “Ok, you can turn around now.”

When Bucky turned back around, he was only inches away from Darcy, who then pushed him backward by his shoulders. The force that Darcy exhibited when she pushed Bucky took him completely by surprise, as he stumbled and smacked into the wall behind him. She had stripped down to her underwear, but instead of climbing into the cryochamber, she thought it better if he also took his clothes off. With Bucky up against the back wall, Darcy scrambled to undo his belt and unbutton his jeans, while planting incessant kisses on his face.

“Hey, uh, Darce?” Bucky asked in a trepidatious tone.

“Oh my god, you have no idea how badly I’ve wanted you,” Darcy said passionately in between kisses.

At this point she had successfully infiltrated his belt and pants, and was trying to pull them and his boxer briefs down.

“Hey, Darcy?” Bucky said again, his hands raised high above his head.

“I want you inside of me, right now,” she whispered in his ear, ignoring his requests for her attention. With his jeans now at his ankles, she began fishing inside of his underwear, taking hold of his cock. “Mmm, there he is…” Darcy said, licking her lips as she looked into his eyes.

“Darcy, I don’t think this is a good idea,” Bucky finally blurted out.

“Why not?” Darcy asked, in between kisses on his neck.

“Because, it’s not right. Whatever's going on with you right now, you are not your normal self.”

Darcy once again pretended not to hear any of this, and proceeded to unbutton Bucky’s shirt.

“Ok look, I’ll make you a deal,” Bucky began desperate tone, taking hold of her wrists. “If you still feel like… this by the time you’re done with your cryo treatment, we will…” His words trailed off, unsure of how to end his sentence.

“Fuck?” Darcy asked. She was now trying to stick her tongue in his mouth.

“Yes, that. If you’re not feeling better when you’re done, we’ll do that.”

Bucky took her by the shoulders and held her back at arms length, putting some much-needed distance between them. Darcy gave him a fake albeit playful pouty face, pursing her lips together in manufactured agony.

“Fine…” Darcy said, drawing out the last part of the word so it sounded like “fine-Ugh!”.

Darcy spun around, allowing Bucky to open the cryochamber door for her, and once inside he sealed the door and began the two minute cycle. With the help of the external monitor, Bucky was able to keep a watchful eye on her the entire time. And as he watched her, he considered the irony of the situation; the idea of Darcy making herself into a human popsicle via subzero temperatures, for the sake of robbing her of her horny-ness. It was the proverbial cold shower, and one he desperately hoped would return her to a semi-normal state when she emerged on the other side of the two minute session. And perhaps they would switch spots, so he could have a cool-down, and clear his head.

Ever since their initial meeting at the Grand Regency hotel back in December, they had texted or called each other almost every day. Sometimes it was nothing more than a quick exchange, but oftentimes it snowballed into a passionate and heartfelt conversation. But their meeting here tonight at Avengers tower had been the first time they’d seen each other in the flesh since December. Their respective jobs would sometimes require longer hours, and missions that would take them out of state for several days, which were more reasons why they had decided to take things slow, after kicking things off with a “bang” at the hotel.

Now here Bucky stood, staring through the monitor at the woman he had come to care for so deeply, in such a short amount of time, wanting so much to take her in his arms and make sweet, passionate love. The cruel justices of the world would not be kind to them, if they were to disregard the “rules” they had made for themselves. He took solace in the waiting, however, knowing that if they could delay the gratification they both yearned for so badly, that they’d know when the right time would be to take things to the next level.

Darcy and Bucky were mostly silent during their trip back up the elevator, and to the main floor of the Young Avengers office. Although it wasn’t an uncomfortable silence, their dynamic—and Darcy’s overall demeanor—had shifted drastically. The cryotherapy had its intended effect on her, and when she exited the chamber she felt more like herself, and less like a ravenous horndog that wanted to jump Bucky's bones. The awkwardness set in when Darcy realized she had pretty good recall of everything she did and said in her "drunken" state, and now had to contend with the sobering reality of that fact.

"I'm sorry I tried to attack you," Darcy said to Bucky, staring at her shoes during the elevator ride.

"That's ok," Bucky said with a reassuring smile, and began gently rubbing her back.

"You better refrain from any personal contact, or I'm gonna go all She-Hulk on you again," Darcy commented, but making no attempt to break off his touch.

As they reached the sliding glass doors of the office, and Darcy scanned her keycard, Boothby had looked up excitedly from his computer and strode to meet them. He could tell almost immediately that Darcy was more like her usual self again, and felt his entire body relax and sigh in relief.

“Hey, how’d everything go?” Boothby asked excitedly. “It sure seems like you’re more like... well, you.”

“Fine,” Darcy said plainly, giving a careless shrug. “Everything’s fine. How were things here? Any news on the scan analysis?”

Ian closed his eyes and took a deep breath in, as if mentally preparing himself for something big to deliver. “So while you were gone, I had a quick chat with Riri about the test results, and—”

“Wait, please don’t tell me you told them about Bucky being here.” Darcy interrupted.

“No, no, of course not,” Boothby responded in a reassuring tone. Darcy’s face relaxed after it had suddenly contorted into a anxious grimace. “We were going over the results, and most of what we discovered is heavily encrypted.”

“How heavily?” Darcy and Bucky asked in unison. They looked at each other, a modest smile growing on their faces.

“Let’s put it this way, it would probably take weeks for us to crack through this code. And even if we managed to get that far, there’s no telling if we’d even understand what we’re looking at.”

Darcy and Bucky both let out an audible sigh.

“So that’s the bad news,” said Boothby, continuing on. “The good news is, there was a big fat thumbprint left behind in some of the flower’s metadata.”

“Ok…” Darcy said with trepidation. “So what does that mean exactly?”

“It means this.”

Boothby tapped a few buttons on the tablet he was holding with the scan results, and moments later the same information was mirrored onto a large monitor that was mounted on the wall.

On the monitor in front of them, they saw a headshot of a young woman, approximately in her mid twenties, displayed next to a big “Oscorp” logo. Under the headshot read the name “Wildheart, Nova”. The three of them stood in a line, taking in the information that was displayed on the screen.

“So,” Bucky said, breaking the silence, “is this our botanist?” 

Without breaking eye contact from the screen, Boothby said, “Dollars to donuts, that’s what my money’s on.”

Darcy walked over to her desk and began packing items into her purse, then picked up her sidearm, checked the chamber, then slid it into the holster she strapped to her leg. Ian and Bucky exchanged a concerned look, as Darcy's actions echoed in the silence of the office floor.

“Hey Darcy, what are ya doing over there?” Bucky asked, trying to sound more curious than worried.

“What does it look like?” She shot back in a frustrated tone. “We’re going to Oscorp. If this Nova person is the scientist responsible for the flower upstairs, she should know how to cure me.”

“Darce, let’s pump the brakes a second,” Ian chimed in. “The only thing we know about this girl is that she’s affiliated with Oscorp. Other than that, we don’t know anything about her. And besides, even if she’s there at Oscorp headquarters at this hour, what are you going to say to her? ‘Hey, I found your strange alien flower growing—and glowing—in Central Park, so I plucked it out for myself and now I’m like the surface of the sun, please help?’”

“What other choice do I have, Ian?” Darcy exclaimed, spinning around to face both he and Bucky.

Both Ian and Bucky were deeply unsettled by Darcy's increasing frustrations. They couldn't tell if it was a symptom of her condition or if she was genuinely frustrated, but either way, didn't have the courage to ask. The tension in the air sizzled like a live wire, making them both uneasy as they tried to discern the cause.

“Eventually, I would love to be able to think about my boyfriend without my entire body feeling like it’s going to catch fire, and as of right now, ‘Ms. Wildheart’ is my only ticket. So I’m leaving for Oscorp, right now. You guys can come if you want.”

Darcy slung her purse over her shoulder, and turned on her heel and headed toward the door. Ian and Bucky glanced at each other, shrugged, and followed her out of the office.

When the trio climbed aboard the elevator, Darcy forcefully pushed the button with the letter “B” next to it, causing Ian and Bucky to glance at each other once more.

“Wh- why are we going to the basement, and not the lobby?” Boothby asked, his voice unsteady.

“We need our own car. We’ll check out one of the SUVs from the basement level.”

Darcy said this in such a commanding way, and with unmistakeable confidence, that Ian physically felt himself recoil. He looked over to Bucky, who had a sly grin on his face, and only gave Ian a shoulder shrug in response.

Because they were headed into a potentially dangerous situation—with little intelligence on their end—there was a part of Bucky that was genuinely concerned. However, in the past he had engaged in far more risky missions with significantly less information. So ultimately his worries were eclipsed by the invigoration he felt by witnessing Darcy at work, donning her game face. He'd be lying if he said he wasn't also slightly turned on by her "take charge" attitude.

This may not be indicative of how she normally conducted herself on missions, but Bucky saw a certain spark in Darcy's eyes that he recognized from the singles mixer. It was a twinkle of subdued rage, that had manifested within her and was begging to be released. He had been the one most responsible for igniting that spark of rage at the speed-dating event, as they combatted over America Chavez. And although Bucky had found her fury to be adorable, he acknowledged that she had the potential to harness those feelings and channel them in a positive way. He secretly hoped that he would have the opportunity to help her with this, provided her "situation" could be resolved. Darcy was not yet aware of this, but that night they shared together, she helped guide him out of a darkness he hadn't been fully aware of. And to help her in carrying that rage and passion like a torch—instead of snuffing it out—would be an incredible way to pay her back for her kindness.

15 minutes later, a black SUV peeled out of the basement parking garage of Avengers tower, with Darcy in the driver’s seat, Ian in the back, and Bucky riding shotgun. Her driving from the tower to Oscorp was intense and a little scary, even by New York City standards, leaving Bucky and Ian terrified to ask any of the follow-up questions they had. Ultimately, Bucky would be the brave soul to speak up first.

“So, do you have a plan for how you’re going to approach this Wildheart woman?” Bucky asked, doing his best to sound nonchalant.

“No, not really,” Darcy responded. “I don’t think there’s much to plan for, really. We go to Oscorp, track her down, and ask her politely for an antidote.”

“And if she doesn’t have an antidote?”

“Then I’ll ask her to make one.”

“But Darcy,” Ian began, finding the courage to chime in, “she could refuse to do any of that for you. In fact, you could get in trouble by admitting that you stole—”

“Jesus, Ian! Will you shut up, please? I am trying to focus on being pissed at Bucky right now. Because if I let him charm me, I’m gonna get all hot and bothered again, and the more functioning brains we have on this case, the better.”

“Wait, do you really think that’s what’s happening?” Bucky asked curiously.

“Bucky! Have you not been paying attention? Every single time I think about you, I become hotter than the sun, and wetter than the ocean, and I just know that I can’t continue on like this forever. It’s just not sustainable. And on top of everything, I now have to deal with the fact that Ian knows about us, and it’s completely unfair of me to ask him to keep his mouth shut about it.”

Silence fell over the SUV once more as it continued to speed toward the main Oscorp headquarters, weaving effortlessly through the nighttime traffic. Darcy remained determined and in control, while Bucky felt as if he'd just been scolded by a parent. And Ian sank into the backseat—feeling like a third wheel more than ever—as his mind wrestled with Darcy's comment about being wetter than the ocean. Suddenly, a cell phone ring chimed out, breaking the silence, and Bucky reached in his coat pocket to retrieve it.

“Hey Yel.”

“Ok.”

“Ok, thanks a lot. I owe you big time.”

“Ok, talk soon.”

Bucky ended the call, put his phone back in his pocket, and nonchalantly stared forward. Darcy began furiously glancing back and forth between him and the road in front of her.

“Well?” She spoke up loudly. “Are you going to share with the class just who the hell that was?”

“Oh, that was just Yelena,” Bucky said casually. “She’s forwarding me intel about Nova as we speak.”

Sure enough, Bucky’s phone began chiming incessantly with one notification after another. His general helpfulness, paired with his knack for keeping a cool head, only made things worse for Darcy when it came to staying mad at him. At this point, it was a possibility that she’d have to resort to conjuring those frustrated feelings she felt for him from the singles mixer, if she was going to make it to Oscorp before she “flamed on” again.

By the time the trio was pulling their car into the Oscorp parking garage, they had received most of the intel on Nova Wildheart that Yelena graciously agreed to gather for them. This too worried Darcy, the idea of Bucky doing favors for her, especially ones involving members of his team. What did he tell her, exactly? Does Yelena now know about their relationship? Had he been evasive enough to forego the truth? Again, these would have to be questions that found answers at a later date.

The intelligence they received stated that Nova, the botanist, graduated Summa Cum Laude from the prestigious Oscorp Institute of Advanced Sciences, earning her PhD in Botany. Her groundbreaking research, performed under the Oscorp banner, focused on unlocking the latent magical energies found within plant DNA. Nova's thesis on symbiotic relationships between plants and mystical energies garnered attention for its innovative approach, and would surely open up new and exiting avenues for the scientific community.

Darcy found all this amusing because if she received this information 10 years prior, it would have all sounded like nonsensical pseudoscience. But knowing what she knows now—and what the entire world knows, thanks to the Avengers and Thanos—there’s no telling the true validity between magic and botany. In fact, she had no other choice but to believe it, especially if she was experiencing side-effects of that "magic" first-hand. Continuing the trend of being honest with herself, she’d be lying if she said she wasn’t worried about all the possible ways this could go wrong—seeking help from an unknown botanist, wherein she may have inadvertently destroyed her hard work. Again, all of these issues would have to be grappled with when the time comes; no use in worrying about them all at once.

It was approximately 8:30 PM when Darcy, Bucky, and Ian valiantly marched through the main entrance of Oscorp laboratories, the vague details of their mission firmly supplanted in their minds. The massive lobby of the scientific industry leader was mostly vacant, given the normal post-work hours. However, it remained brightly lit thanks to the generous overhead lighting, which lent the space both a professional and welcoming feeling.

Darcy approached the large reception desk first, while Bucky and Ian chose to hang back a few steps behind her. The receptionist—an early twenty-something female with an incredibly youthful face—sat behind a long desk with a partition that rose up high, forcing visitors to look over it and down at her.

“Hello, can I help you?” The receptionist asked curiously.

“Yes, we are here to see a former… colleague of mine,” Darcy responded. “You might know her, Nova Wildheart? She works in the—”

“Oh yes, I know Doctor Wildheart!” The receptionist interrupted, now with more excitement in her voice.

“Yes, Doctor Wildheart!” Darcy exclaimed, meeting the receptionist’s enthusiasm. “She’s an old friend and classmate of mine from OIAS. If it wasn’t for her, I never would have passed my 'Advanced Botany’ class.”

“Well, that certainly sounds like Doctor Wildheart!” The smile on the receptionist’s face then retreated slightly. “I’m afraid that she’s not currently taking any visitors. There's a big keynote presentation from our CEO next week, so she's been locked inside her lab, trying to meet the deadline with her work.

Darcy softened her face and leaned forward over the desk partition, as if to tell a secret.

“Is there any way that you could at least ping her, and let her know that I’m here?” Darcy asked, just above a whisper. “I understand that she’s busy, but we haven’t seen each other since graduation, and I’d love the chance to talk to her.”

The receptionist twisted her lips, seeming to consider Darcy’s request. After a moment, she picked up her phone, gave Darcy a reassuring smile, and began punching a few buttons.

“Who should I say is here?” The receptionist asked.

“Um, you can just tell her it’s... Darcy. Darcy Lewis.”

Unwilling to admit it, Darcy feared this might be the moment that her "plan" would collapse in on itself. However, she refused to let those negative thoughts deter her ambition, and simply smiled back at the receptionist.

The receptionist punched a few more buttons on her phone, then held it up to her ear, smiling back at Darcy while she waited for the line to connect.

“Hi, Doctor Wildheart? I am so sorry to disturb you, but you have a visitor here in the lobby. She say’s her name is Darcy, and that you two went to Oscorp Institute together.”

There was a brief moment of silence before the receptionist spoke up again.

“Well, she said that you two had a class together, and were friends.”

This was beginning to worry Darcy. She couldn’t hear Nova on the other side of the conversation, but she feared that things might slip from her control sooner than expected.

Darcy decided to interject, as an idea struck her. “Tell Doctor Wildheart—um, Nova—that I’m here to talk to her about her flower experiment in the park. She should know what I’m talking about.”

The receptionist relayed this information back to Doctor Wildheart over the phone receiver, and was followed by another moment of silence.

“Ok.”

“Ok, great, I will let them know!”

The receptionist placed the phone receiver back in its cradle, and with another smile met Darcy’s eye line once more.

“Doctor Wildheart will be out momentarily to speak with you,” she said with a polite grin. “If you’d like to have a seat in our waiting area, I will direct her toward you when she arrives!”

The scenario that Darcy preferred was one where the receptionist handed them guest laminate passes, and were politely ushered back to Nova’s laboratory. And while the scenario that the three of them had to settle for was slightly less appealing, it ultimately meant an opportunity to discuss the flower with Nova face to face, which was perhaps the most vital part of their plan.

Darcy, Bucky, and Ian sat in three of the plush leather armchairs in the waiting area, taking in more of the wide-open aesthetics of the Oscorp building. On the large wall directly adjacent to the waiting area was a massive LED screen that displayed a 10 minute “Oscorp demo”, showing off just a few of the trailblazing technological achievements that have surfaced from the infamous laboratory. Intercut between every stock image of a scientist in a lab or a doctor shaking hands with a patient, there was an entitled shot of Norman Osbourne, the current CEO and founder of Oscorp. Most of the shots where Norman was featured showed him participating in various philanthropic activities, including posed photos with army vets in wheelchairs and ladling out soup at a homeless shelter. Darcy supposed this was not accidental, knowing Osbourne had a certain knack—and history—for making headlines across the news outlets over his controversial business practices and questionable ethics. At the end of the day, Norman was just another Elon Musk-type that was seen in many different lights by the public, all depending on how his work and legacy directly—or indirectly—affected them.

Roughly 10 minutes had passed since they sat down in the waiting area, anxiously anticipating the arrival of Doctor Wildheart, and not a single word had been exchanged between the trio. Darcy was far too nervous to converse or make any small talk, and Bucky and Ian were too terrified to say anything to Darcy. The two of them breathed a sigh of relief when they saw a young woman resembling Doctor Wildheart emerge from the hallway area beyond the front reception.

“Ok, give me a minute to try and handle this on my own,” Darcy whispered to Bucky and Ian. “I’ll wave you guys over if I need backup.”

As Darcy closed the gap between her and who she assumed to be Doctor Wildheart, she donned the biggest, most genuine smile she could muster, and extended her hand.

“Hello, I’m Doctor Nova Wildheart,” the scientist said with a stern smile. “The front desk said that we knew each other from college, but you don’t look familiar.”

“Hi Doctor Wildheart, my name’s Darcy Lewis,” Darcy said in a kind, reassuring tone. “We actually didn’t go to school together. I understand this is not a great way to begin our interaction, luring you out here under false pretenses and all, but I do really need your help.”

A concerned look formed on Nova's face.

“Ok, so what exactly can I help you with? If you could be as quick as possible, I have—”

“A deadline, yes,” Darcy said, cutting her off. “Thank you so much for coming out here to meet with me, I’ll be as quick as possible: I have a bit of a… confession to make.” Darcy paused, unsure if she should jump right into it.

“Ok…” Nova replied cautiously.

“So last night, I may have discovered something that belongs to you… in Central Park.”

Nova’s eyes narrowed on Darcy, who had leaned in slightly closer.

“The silver flower,” Darcy said in almost a whisper.

A furtive grin began to curl at the edges of Nova’s lips.

“Ah, so you’re the reason why my data feed was interrupted. I’ve been meaning to go to the park to check on it, but I guess I can say ‘thank you’ for saving me the trip.” This last part was expertly cloaked in sarcasm.

“Yes, I am so sorry about that,” Darcy said, still keeping her voice low. “I am something of a scientist, myself. And if I had known it belonged to you, I would’ve left it alone. But I didn’t want anyone to touch it and get hurt.”

“How would you know they would get hurt? And how would they even know it was there? I planted it way back behind some bushes. Someone would have to be specifically looking for it, in order to find it.”

"Well, it was glowing, after all. So while it's presence wasn't necessarily obvious, it also wasn't super hard to find."

Doctor Wildheart let out a frustrated breath of air.

"Ok, so I'm assuming it's still there in the park, then?" Nova had subtly crossed her arms over her chest.

Darcy looked guiltily down at her feet, then back up at Nova. “Ok, so like I said, someone was bound to find it, because it was pulsing and glowing, like a little star sprouting from the ground. And I know they’d get hurt because I… touched it.”

“You what?” Nova’s voice shot up substantially in volume, giving Darcy a look of stern incredulity.

"I know, I am so sorry!" Darcy exclaimed, now sounding more genuine than ever. "But I just didn't—"

Nova held up a hand to Darcy to cut her off mid-sentence. For a moment, Nova stood there with her arms crossed, the tip of her shoe anxiously tapping the tile floor, as if frantically searching for her next words. She then abruptly turned and walked toward the front reception desk. Darcy, who was starting to feel increasingly worried, turned to look at Bucky and Ian. She gave them a shrug, and they both gave one in return. When Darcy turned back to find Nova, she saw that she was now trotting back from reception, carrying a single visitor's pass. She held it out to Darcy, who accepted it cautiously.

“Let’s go," Nova said sternly. "We need to talk.”

Without waiting for a response, Doctor Wildheart walked quickly back the way she had came, leaving Darcy temporarily stunned. For the first time she looked to Bucky and Ian for guidance, who only shrugged with wide-eyed expressions. Darcy's glance darted to Nova—who was now disappearing around the corner—then back to the waiting area. She held up both of her hands and mouthed the words “10 minutes”, then turned to run after Wildheart.

Darcy followed the botanist through a winding hallway that would eventually dead-end with Nova's glass box of an office. Nova scanned her keycard and held the door open for Darcy to enter. They were greeted by an exceedingly well-lit area that was nearly twice the size of her studio apartment. Doctor Wildheart’s lab was, for the most part, impeccably well-kept. Half of the space was dominated by CPUs, monitors, and other various scientific equipment. The other half was colorfully decorated by plants and flowers of all shapes, sizes, and colors. One of the shorter walls in the office space was completely dedicated to a hydroponics station, which was nursing plants ranging from smaller, recently-sprouted flowers, all the way to plants with long vines that drooped all the way to the floor. The main thing that Darcy clocked over all other details was the existence of only 100% pure organic plants; no synthetic flowers to be seen.

Nova grabbed the chair that was neatly pushed up against her desk, and turned it around to take a seat, motioning for Darcy to also grab a nearby seat. Nova sat down across from Darcy with a clipboard and a pen, and adjusted the bold framed glasses on her face. Her platinum blonde hair was pulled back in a sturdy pony tail, and when she crossed one leg over another at the knee, she exposed her black pencil skirt that hid behind her white lab coat. For a moment Darcy felt a twinge of jealousy over Nova's sensible yet sleek and sexy heels—the kind that she herself could never pull off, no matter how practical they were.

“Ok, Darcy,” Nova began, narrowing her eyes once more at Darcy, “why don’t you catch me up on what you’ve been doing with my scientific research.”

Darcy felt her heart begin to thud rapidly in her chest, and suddenly became aware of how dry her mouth was. All of the bravado and confidence that she had manifested on the drive over from the tower had now seemingly dissipated without a trace.

“Ok so, last night an old colleague of mine called me to Central Park to look at something—your flower. When I got there, he pointed it out to me. From the walkway, I could barely make it out through the bushes, but it appeared to be pulsing and giving off this silvery glow, like a star in the night sky. After we looked at it for a minute, I agreed to take it back to my lab to have it analyzed. So I plucked it out of the ground, wearing a protective glove, but when I held it—for the brief moment I did make contact with it—I experienced this strange sensation. It was as if the flower had its own form of energy, and it somehow made its way through me; it was almost like a low-voltage shock. But even before I held the flower, it seemed to have this hypnotizing effect, like it drowned out the entire world. I also felt this weird, comforting sensation, like someone just wrapped me in a warm blanket or something.”

Nova had been furiously jotting down notes on the clipboard she had sat down with. Darcy had been so wrapped up in relaying her experience to Nova that she didn't notice her note-taking at first. But when she did, she paused abruptly.

“Go on, you were saying?” Nova said, looking back up at Darcy, a hint of impatience in her voice.

“Y- yeah, like I was saying, it was just this weird sensation. But it wasn’t bad. In fact, it was kind of nice. But ever since I brought it back to my lab to have it analyzed, I’ve been experiencing some other not-so-pleasant side-effects.”

“Such as?” Nova asked, not looking up from her continued scribbling.

“Well, for one, I get love-drunk every time I even think about my boyfriend,” Darcy responded casually.

Nova’s furious writing ceased, and she peered at Darcy over the brim of her glasses.

“I hardly think fawning over your partner is a side-effect,” Nova said in a flat tone.

“Trust me,” Darcy chimed back in, “I wouldn’t either. But seriously, every time I’ve thought about him in the last 24 hours, my skin gets hot, I say things without thinking, and I literally feel like I’m drunk."

Darcy paused and looked down at her feet, letting out an exhausted sigh. The gravity of her situation was weighing on her shoulders more heavily now than ever. She felt a mass of conflicting feelings swirling like mad within her, but her sudden lack of confidence stuck out the most. Joining the Young Avengers was supposed to be a step in the right direction; a stride toward a fulfilling career, where she was free to contribute to a great cause. And yet here she was, once again causing problems for herself and for her team.

Taking a deep breath in, Darcy continued, “I am... a lot like you, Nova. Sorry, Doctor Wildheart."

"Please, you can call me Nova."

"Thanks. Nova." Darcy felt a slight relaxation in her tightly contracted muscles. "I’m a career-driven woman with a PhD and a good head on her shoulders. Usually. So men rarely have this kind of effect on me. And I know how crazy this all sounds, but I'm—"

"You don't sound crazy, Darcy," Nova said, in a tone that was neither reassuring nor dismissive. "What other symptoms have you been experiencing? Remember, try to be as exhaustive as you can."

Darcy stared up at the ceiling to recall any details of her experience that she's accidentally left out.

"Ok, so maybe the weirdest symptom I've experienced?" Darcy began, taking another deep breath. "I have been... super horny."

Nova’s writing stopped again, and this time she peered at Darcy with a furtive grin.

“Exactly how horny are we talking, here?” Doctor Wildheart asked, her tone insinuating a genuine curiosity, from both a medical and personal perspective.

“Like, ‘15 year old Darcy at a Backstreet Boys concert’ horny,” Darcy clarified. “On the drive over here, I had to actively stay pissed at my boyfriend in order to keep myself from pulling the car over and polishing his pole in front of a Sbarro's. And before that, I made a clear ass out of myself when I stuffed my hand down the front of his jeans.”

Nova had stopped taking notes, and was glaring at Darcy with a mixed expression of confusion and amusement.

“Look, I’m telling you the truth. Something is happening to me, and I’d really appreciate your help. I know I don’t deserve it because I may have messed up your experiment, but right now you are clearly my best bet for returning back to normal.”

With an exasperated sigh, Nova set down her clipboard and pen. She then took her glasses off, gently folded the arms in, and began touching her glasses to her mouth in a thoughtful gesture.

“Have you attempted any remedies yet?” Nova asked finally, after several moments of contemplation. “And have any of them been successful?”

“For a period of time, yes,” Darcy responded. “The only thing I’ve found that helps is a quick cryotherapy session. When I’m done, I'm basically my old self again. But as soon as I get a text or call from the boyfriend, my IQ drops by 75 points, and I become useless.”

Nova took another moment to consider this new information, then said, “So, just to clarify, you’re going about your day, business as usual, and suddenly you get a text from your boyfriend. That makes you hot and heavy. Not necessarily a revelation when it comes to relationships—especially ones in their infancy—but let’s play along for now. You start to develop other symptoms such as excessive warmth, drowsiness, lowering of inhibitions, loosening of lips, and boom you’re like a drunk college girl ready to fuck. Only, minus the alcohol part. Am I on track so far?”

Darcy nodded her head.

“Then, throughout the day, as these symptoms worsen, you attempt to combat them with cryotherapy. Not a terrible idea, by the way. Nothing like a cold shower, know what I mean?”

Darcy assumed by this point Nova had officially dropped her professional facade, and was now letting her true, devil-may-care attitude shine through.

“But then the symptoms rise up again, naturally,” Nova began again. “And this time, in addition to another cold shower, you choose to stay purposefully angry at your boyfriend, to keep yourself at a distance from him. The ole ‘push them away, before they can push you’.”

“Ok, great,” Darcy said impatiently, “now that we’ve established what’s going on, can we please move on to the phase where you fix me? I mean, you developed this flower, that must mean you have some sort of antidote, right?”

Darcy, frustrated with Nova's seemingly lackadaisical demeanor, was now out out of her chair, pacing anxiously around the botanist's workspace.

“Who do you think I am?” Nova asked quizzically. “I’m a botanist. I made this flower as an experiment, to be planted and raised in the outside world. I didn’t intend for someone to pluck it out of the ground, like fucking Rapunzel!”

“So you’re saying you don’t have an antidote?”

“Of course I don’t! This was supposed to be a little side project, on top of all the other work I do for this company.”

“Ok, well what the hell am I supposed to do now, then?” 

Darcy’s voice had raised to a level that could be heard by other Oscorp employees passing outside of Nova's lab. A few had even stopped to ensure everything was ok—or to be curious lookie-loos—but Nova had waved them away. She let out another deep sigh, and felt a small wave of guilt crash on the shores of her mind. It was not entirely her fault that Darcy happened upon the glowing flower in Central Park, and decided to pick it up with her hands. However, it was her flower, and if she hadn’t planted it there in the first place, they wouldn’t be in this predicament right now.

A chime from Darcy’s phone rang out, breaking the awkward silence in the lab. As she checked it and saw the notification, she rolled her eyes.

“Great, just great,” Darcy said, putting her palm to her forehead.

“Would that be the man of the hour?” Nova inquired.

“Yep, sure is!" Darcy exclaimed, throwing her hands in the air emphatically. "Just my boyfriend, trying to be helpful, and amazing, and thoughtful! I fucking hate it. Doesn’t he understand that I’m trying to stay pissed at him? I told him 10 minutes! Just give me 10 minutes, but did he listen? No! And now I’m here with you, and you’re telling me that—”

Darcy—whose face had turned beet red—abruptly stopped her yelling, as if she suddenly ran out of words to say. A cloudy haze began to form over her eyes, blurring her vision. Her eye lids then became heavy, and her legs went weak, and she collapsed to the laboratory floor with a thud.

Chapter Text

Bucky and Ian sat anxiously in the Oscorp waiting area, while Darcy discussed with Doctor Wildheart the finer details of her experience with the flower. Bucky had never been fond of waiting. It made him feel helpless, like he had no control over the situation. But this time, it was different. This time, he wasn't waiting for a mission or a fight; he was waiting for Darcy, hoping that she would be okay. At the same time, Bucky couldn't help but notice the worry etched into Ian's face. It mirrored his own feelings, the fear of losing someone they both cared about deeply.

"You think this Doctor Wildheart is gonna be able to help Darcy?" Bucky asked Ian, who was staring off into space.

"I sure as hell hope so, man," Ian replied, trying his best to sound cool and reassured.

Ever since Bucky showed up at the Young Avengers office, events had escalated so quickly that Ian barely had a chance to process that he was "hanging out" with the Winter Soldier. And now that he had a second to finally consider the fact, he was actually kind of excited about it, but also mostly intimidated. Ian knew and understood his role for the Young Avengers, and he performed it well. He thought more of himself than just glorified tech support for the badass ladies he got to work for, and he was fine with playing the part of ground control. His high confidence levels could in large part be contributed to the fact that everyone he worked alongside was within his age range, so there was no crotchety old white dude to constantly impress—save for Happy, of course.

Sitting next to Bucky, however, made him feel many different shades of insecure. The Winter Soldier was a dude—an old dude—that had a storied history, to put it modestly. He once upon a time teamed up with his best friend Captain America to punch Nazis in the face. He was captured and groomed by Hydra to be a ruthless, mindless killing machine for decades. Then, in rapid succession, he was a wanted fugitive, an honorary Wakandan, and an Avenger. And now, after a brief stint with "Captain Falcon", he was a Thunderbolt. Bucky had never spent a lick of time behind a computer, because he never needed to. His bonafides were always meant to overshadow Ian's, which he was mostly ok with. But it didn't make him feel any less intimidated to be in his presence.

"So..." Ian began, breaking the silence, "how do you like being a Thunderbolt?" His voice was a little shaky, but still managed to sound casual.

"Eh, it's ok," Bucky replied noncommittally. He was leaning forward in his chair, his elbows planted on his knees. "Sure as hell beats working for Hydra."

"Oh man, I bet that's right!" Ian said, letting out an inflated laugh.

Bucky shook his head and chuckled to himself.

"Relax man, you're alright," he said, reaching out to give Ian a pat on the shoulder. "People get nervous around me all the time. It gets old fast, but that doesn't mean that I can stop being empathetic about it. I did a lot of terrible shit as the Winter Soldier, and I have to atone for all of it, which includes being patient with people that I don't fully understand."

"Well, for what it's worth," Ian started, "from the perspective of one of those people that most don't understand, I think you're doing a great job. I mean, obviously I haven't known you personally for very long, and it's very possible you think that I'm an idiot, but I do know Darcy. And I have noticed a general 'improvement' in her mood this last month, which can only mean that you have been very good to her."

Bucky's face curled into an almost bashful smile at this remark. He was proud of the fact that he rarely needed validation for anything in life. But being told that he was treating Darcy well was an undeniably good feeling.

"Thanks man, I appreciate you saying that," he replied, giving Ian another pat on the shoulder.

"But I swear to god, if you break her heart, I'll kick your ass. Metal arm or no, I'll throw down."

The two stared at each other momentarily before they started chuckling lightheartedly. Moments later, Ian's smartphone began chiming, and as he produced it from his pocked and looked at the notification, a worried look crept across his face.

"Oh shit," he said, slapping his left palm to his forehead, "we got a problem."

"What's going on, is that your team?" Bucky asked.

"Yeah, they're heading back to the tower right now, and they're going to have questions for me if I'm not there. They'll already have questions if I'm there and Darcy isn't." Ian had risen from his seat and was anxiously pacing the waiting area.

Bucky calmly rose to his feet and grabbed Ian by the shoulders.

"It's going to be ok, Ian," Bucky said, looking into Ian's eyes. "Take the SUV back to the tower, and come up with a possible alibi for yourself along the way, if you happen to make it back after your team. I'll stay here and keep an eye on Darcy. If your team asks, just tell them that you sent her home. I'll text you later with an update."

Ian nodded his head aggressively, as if he were psyching himself up. He thanked Bucky, then ran for the Oscorp building's front entrance. 

Bucky was about to sit back down when he heard a voice calling his name; a female voice, and it wasn't Darcy's. He pivoted quickly to search for whomever was calling for him, and noticed the same blonde hair girl from earlier—presumably Doctor Wildheart—was racing toward him. She looked worried, which did not inspire a ton of confidence within him.

"Bucky? You're Bucky, right?" Nova asked, panting and out of breath.

"Yeah, what's going on? Is Darcy alright?"

"I don't know, she just went unconscious. Can you come help me?"

Without a second thought, Bucky galloped over the furniture in the waiting area and ran toward the hallway from where Doctor Wildheart had just come, but then stopped when he realized she needed to show him the way.

Darcy awoke, groggy and confused, to find herself in a completely different room than the one Nova had originally brought her to. Despite her throbbing head and blurred vision, she quickly deduced that, in the midst of her roaring rampage of anger toward Doctor Wildheart, she experienced a sudden loss of consciousness. But what had happened after that? Had Nova brought her here? There was an overtly sterile aroma to the glass box she was in, and she could make out a rhythmic beeping sound.

Glancing down first, she noticed she was in a reclined position; someone had placed her in one of those white beach chairs that you sit in at the Red Cross when donating blood. Although the health monitor—the one that Riri had given her earlier—was still on her left wrist, there was now a heart rate monitor on her right finger. She gazed at it, the confused look on her face intensifying, and her eyes slowly followed the monitor's cable up to the machine that it was attached to—the source of the beeping she heard. That was when she discovered Bucky, sitting dutifully beside her. How long had she been here? How long had he been here, watching her, making sure she was ok, and that someone would be there when she woke up?

Just how fucking thoughtful of him, Darcy thought to herself, as she closed her eyes again, tempted to go back to sleep.

“Ugh, what time is it?” Darcy asked groggily, rubbing her eyes with her fingertips.

“Almost 10 PM,” Bucky responded softly. “Do you remember passing out?”

“Vaguely.” With each passing second, reality began slowly streaming back into Darcy's consciousness. “Where’s Ian? And where’s Nova?”

“Ian went back to the tower. He received an alert that your team was heading back there, so he headed back as well so he could cover for you.”

“That was… nice of him. I suppose.”

Darcy said this in a tone that had a modicum of sincerity; she was grateful for Ian's help. But more than anything, she was irritated and vexed, which blinded her true nature of being sarcastic yet approachable and personable.

“Yes, yes it was,” Bucky said with a hint of admiration.

Bucky's immediate concern for Darcy had been quelled, now that he knew she was ok and awake, which meant that half of his mind had drifted back to the brief conversation between he and Ian. Bucky considered himself to be a decent judge of character, with his keen ability to analyze everything that a person did or said in order to size them up. He also prided himself on being able to do this even when the subject had no clue their character was being assessed. And what he had learned from Ian, from the brief period of time he interacted with him this evening, was that he was a "stand-up" guy. He was happy and relieved to know that Darcy had someone like Ian on her team; a partner that she could count on to watch her back.

After a minute or two of Darcy and Bucky sitting in a somewhat awkward silence, Doctor Wildheart walked through the automatic sliding glass doors of the immaculate and sanitized room. She was carrying a tablet in one hand, and a large cup of coffee in the other. Making her way toward where Darcy was laid out, Nova took a seat next to her, giving her a befuddled look.

“So, what was all that about?” Nova asked, laughing to herself. “Actually, don’t answer that. We don’t need you getting all worked up again.” She then turned to face Bucky. “Mr. Barnes, I need you to go ahead and tell her what we discussed earlier.”

“Really? Now?” He asked. “She just woke up, can’t we give her—”

“No, there’s no time,” Nova interrupted, waving her hand dismissively. “Plus, I have to be back here early tomorrow morning, so the quicker we get this done, the sooner I can go home.”

“Wait, what the hell is going on?” Darcy asked, frustrated from being left out of a conversation about her.

As she attempted to prop herself up on the reclining beach chair, both Bucky and Nova motioned at the same time for her to remain relaxed and reclined.

“So," Bucky began in a cautious tone, "Doctor Wildheart has a… theory about what might be going on with you, Darcy. She’s still a little unclear as to how or why her flower had this odd impact on you, but she thinks she understands what your body is going through.”

While Bucky was saying this, Nova was taking a sip of her coffee and nonchalantly nodding her head. Darcy, herself, felt like she could use a large cup of coffee right about now. 

“Ok, well are you going to keep me in suspense?” Darcy asked impatiently, scanning both Nova and Bucky with wide eyes.

Bucky looked to Nova for confirmation once more, and she calmly nodded her head.

“Whatever that flower did to you," Bucky began again, "it seemed to make you go a little… 'love-drunk'. And to combat those feelings, you’ve tried doing the cryotherapy. You also did plenty of mean yelling at me, and—”

“Mean yelling, what are you five?” Darcy interrupted, her face curled into a rageful expression.

“See, see!” Bucky said pushing back in his chair, his hands raised in frustration. “This is exactly what I’m talking about! Darcy, this isn’t you."

Darcy crossed her arms over her chest and looked as far away from Bucky as she could manage. Bucky let out a defeated sigh and leaned forward again in his chair, closing the distance he created between he and Darcy.

"What we think is happening," Bucky began, his relaxed tone sounding forced, "is that you've created a sort of pressure pot for yourself. You started pushing back against these lustful feelings that your body was trying to act on, and when you tried to ignore them in the style of lashing out at me, those feelings began piling up with nowhere to go."

“Right,” Nova chimed in, “your conscious mind—before you touched the flower—was already firmly fixated on Bucky, yeah? You guys met only a month ago, shared a romantic evening together, blah blah blah. Something totally out of a fairy tale. And then you guys don’t see each other for four weeks! That’s fucking crazy!"

"I'm sorry, Bucky," Darcy said, "but did I wake up in the middle of a couples counseling session? I thought Doctor Wildheart was a botanist, not a fucking relationship therapist."

Bucky was primed to respond, but Nova held out a hand, letting him know she's "got this".

"Anyways," Nova said emphatically, "so we think the unidentified magical properties of the flower have amplified those feelings you had toward Mr. Barnes. And when you tried to literally fight those feelings, your body and mind decided to push back. And the unsustainable war that raged on inside of you is what led to you passing out.”

Silence fell over the room, as Nova and Bucky eagerly waited on a response from Darcy.

“Ok…” Darcy said slowly, moving her eyes suspiciously between her boyfriend and the botanist. “So you guys have figured out what’s going on. Now please say that you've found a way to fix me.”

Darcy's tone was still laced with frustration and anger, but a healthy dose of hope began to seep through.

“Well,” Nova started again, now sounding nervous, “as I said earlier, I don’t have an antidote yet. It was unforeseen that I'd need some sort of anti-venom for a small pet-project. But, I have a cursory counter-agent compound that I might be able to leverage… if we can run a few tests.”

Nova took another long sip of her coffee, and looked to Bucky as if she were bouncing the "conversation ball" back to him.

“What kind of tests are we talking about here?” Darcy asked cautiously. 

Bucky looked to Nova, and then back to Darcy. “Doctor Wildheart needs to isolate the particles that you absorbed from the flower, and the most effective way to do that is to let the ‘fever’... intensify.”

“In other words,” Nova said, chiming back in, “we’re gonna exacerbate the hell out of it. It’s gonna get real ugly in here. I may need to get y’all a privacy partition."

For a moment, Darcy thought she might still be groggy from her unexpected free-fall to the laboratory floor earlier. But after a moment of consideration, Nova and Bucky's proposal began to clarify in her mind.

“So…” Darcy began, “you wanna get me like, super horny?”

“In a nutshell, yeah,” said Nova.

“And you think that’s going to help you develop the antidote quicker?”

Bucky took a deep breath in. “Yeah, we think so.”

Darcy's eyes once more darted between them, as they stood waiting for an answer. She then looked up to the ceiling, considering her own response.

 Finally, Darcy confirmed, “Fuck it, let’s do it.”

Chapter Text

It was 10 PM when Darcy had awoken from her untimely loss of consciousness. Now, it was closer to 11 PM and once again Darcy sat quietly with Bucky, in the glass box style office that Doctor Wildheart referred to as her makeshift monitoring station. In their shared silence, Darcy pondered the finer details of their plan that was only minutes away from unfolding, and wondered exactly how insane it was. On the surface, the idea of intentionally getting her "love-drunk" in order to formulate an antidote held some merit. But the more she thought about it, the more it sounded just flat out crazy. Ultimately, Darcy knew her best bet was to defer to Nova's judgement, because she was the botanist, and it was her flower.

“One last time, are you sure this is ok?” Darcy had asked Nova as she placed electrodes on various places on her head. “I don’t want to get you in trouble, and I don’t want you to feel obligated to help me.”

“Oh please,” Nova responded, “do you know how much boring research I have to put up with here, in order to finally break through to a case as interesting as this? Think about it, I somehow created plant life that causes people to get ultra-horny. This could make me rich!”

Everything that was hooked up to Darcy—in order to monitor her vitals and current status—was done in a way that could be monitored from another room. This was an aspect of the testing that Nova insisted on. She may have overstated the importance of simulating Darcy's progression from "Docile Darcy" to "Horndog Darcy" from how it had naturally occurred the previous night and earlier that day. So while Bucky and Darcy wouldn't be completely alone like they were before—Nova would be right down the hall, monitoring from another room—it would certainly be the most amount of privacy they'd had since their hookup at the Grand Regency hotel.

There was also the issue of post-test "safeguards", for when they'd need to bring Darcy back down from her heightened state after the completion of the tests. Because there was no cryochamber at Oscorp, their best option was throwing ice on Darcy, in hopes of shocking her back to reality. So Bucky had gathered several plastic totes, filled them full of ice, and placed them by the handwashing sink. Additionally, Nova double-checked the fire extinguisher, to ensure it was up to date and would theoretically be useful against Darcy.

“Ok, you two,” Doctor Wildheart said, one hand on her hip and the other holding her cup of coffee, “I’ll be in the other room, monitoring Darcy’s progress. Just holler at me if you need anything.”

They watched as Nova exited through automatic sliding glass doors, and walked down the hall to the monitoring station. By this point, the entire Oscorp staff—save for the security personnel—had gone home for the night. When Nova finally agreed to help find a cure for Darcy, she and Bucky were concerned about being “found out”, and that the process could be interrupted. Nova reassured them, however, that over the years she had worked for Oscorp, she won them—and herself—so many outstanding awards that they let her do almost whatever she wants, even if it involves working on a “pet project”. So with most of the building empty, it did more to set Darcy and Bucky at ease.

A "beep" rang out from the loudspeakers of their makeshift medical exam room, which indicated Nova was about to communicate with them from where she was monitoring.

“Alright guys, the tests have begun.” Nova’s disembodied voice rang out from the loudspeaker. “It’s time to… do your thang.”

A steady beep from Darcy’s heart rate monitor echoed throughout the glass room, as she lay reclined on the beach chair. Bucky, sitting by her side, shifted anxiously in his seat. The awkward silence between them was brought on two-fold: not only by their current circumstances, but also because this was the first significant chunk of time they had spent together in person since the singles mixer; when Darcy was in her right mind, that is. Bucky cleared his throat in preparation of eventually sparking up a conversation. Darcy looked anxiously around the room, trying not to feel as awkward as her brain was dictating.

“So, what do you want to talk about?” Bucky finally asked with a smile.

It was the version of his smile that made Darcy go weak in the knees, and rouse up the butterflies in her stomach—the ones that had seemed to taken up permanent residence as of late. A month ago, when they had been natural competitors, gunning after America Chavez, Darcy loathed every version of Bucky's smile. She couldn't get over how smug and self-assured he seemed to be. But then they had the opportunity to get to know each other, and suddenly that smile wasn't so bad anymore. Now, that smile meant he was genuine, and present in the moment, making Darcy feel comfortable and at ease.

“Um…” Darcy began, looking up at the ceiling momentarily for inspiration. “How has work been?”

“How’s work been?" Bucky asked rhetorically with a suspicious grin. "We haven’t seen each other in a month, and you want to talk about work?”

Darcy laughed at herself, for coming up with such a mundane talking point, and Bucky laughed too.

“Ok, I’ll think of something else then,” Darcy said teasingly. “What was it like growing up in Brooklyn in the 1940s?”

Bucky's expression shifted into one of approval and intrigue, and took a moment to consider her question.

“It was… interesting,” Bucky said, after considering the right word to describe his childhood. “In a lot of ways, not much has changed since then. Even back in the early 1900s, New York City had a pretty vibrant and diverse culture, so you got to see all walks of life, and meet interesting people all the time. You just had to know where to look.”

“So, you got to attend one of the very first Stark Expo’s, right?” Darcy asked curiously.

“Oh yeah, I went with Steve, along with a couple of girls.” Bucky gave Darcy a playful wink, as if she should be slightly jealous. “It really was something else, getting a sneak preview of all the amazing technology that was on the horizon, and then waking up all these years later to see how it all turned out.”

“What was Steve like back then? I mean, before the super soldier serum.”

Bucky took a moment to consider her question, a nostalgic grin creeping over his face.

“Steve was the best friend a guy could ask for,” he said, swimming in the deep end in memory lane. “Even when he was five feet tall, he stood as if he were the tallest guy in the room. He was literally the brother I never had. He was kind and caring, and was ready to stand firm and defend his morals at the drop of a hat.”

As Bucky further detailed his younger years that involved his best friend, Darcy took his hand in hers and held it, gently stroking it with her thumb. She watched how his eyes lit up when he talked about Steve or the army, and how his face would contort in goofy ways when recalling certain memories. And as she did this, she wondered exactly how many other people had seen this side of him; this soft, gentle; vulnerable side, that was so dissimilar to what the general public had presumed him to be.

“Tell me what it was like when you were growing up,” Bucky said warmly, reaching his fill for talking about himself.

“Well, growing up in the 90’s was a wild time,” Darcy said with a chuckle. “We were the last generation to grow up without the internet, but it was introduced to us early enough for MySpace and porn to have a profound effect. In a weird way, looking back, it almost seems as though we grew up in this secluded vacuum, completely removed from the generation before and after us. We were too late to take advantage of low-rate mortgages, and the days when you could practically tell people that you were going to start working at their company, and they’d smile and say ‘climb aboard’. But we were too early for days of influencers and learning to code at age 10. And just having a better idea of where technology was going, and what kind of role it would play in our lives.”

As she talked about the days of her youth that were far removed thematically from his own, Bucky felt his heart and soul begin to expand, as if he were gradually accepting more of her into his life. Darcy was not the girl of his dreams, because until fairly recently his nights were riddled mostly with nightmares. But getting to know her better, and learning about the person she truly was, felt like being led into a new chapter in life that wouldn’t have to be as terrible as his personal history had dictated for so long.

“Keep it up, you guys, you’re doing great.” Nova’s voice rang out from the loudspeaker.

Darcy and Bucky smiled warmly and laughed at one another, in silent agreement of the silliness of their predicament. Having to engage in a loving and passionate conversation on cue, as if they were guinea pigs in a scientific trial, was indeed ridiculous. Setting aside the voyeuristic element, they both agreed that their plan seemed to be working. What started out as disingenuous and forced small talk had evolved into a thoughtful conversation that the couple desperately wanted to have.

“You know,” Darcy began again, “I know that this thing we’re doing is staged, for the sake of finding the antidote. But I’m really happy that you’re here right now.” She looked down, where their hands remained clasped together, then back up to meet his eyes. “I’ve really missed you these last few weeks, and it’s been killing me that we haven’t been able to see each other. I know that it's the right thing to do, keeping our relationship a secret from everyone, but it doesn't change the fact that it kinda fucking sucks. It's been a long time since I've genuinely cared for someone, and formed this kind of connection. So it's kind of killing me that we can't see each other more.”

“I get it, Darce,” Bucky said with a kind smile, nodding his head gently. “I really miss you, too. Ever since we met, rarely a minute goes by when I don't think of you.” He paused for a moment, appearing to consider just the right words. “It’s as if… you’ve somehow unlocked something in me that I didn’t know existed. For as long as I can remember, my entire life has been dedicated to transforming into a hardened soldier. Someone that's meant to feel nothing but passion for the sake of completing the mission. Even after I was out under Hydra’s thumb, and living the post-blip life, it felt like I was only meant to exist here. Like there wasn’t room for anything else in my life, and all of the opportunities, the ones that everyone else gets throughout life, had simply passed me by.”

Bucky broke off eye contact with Darcy, and cleared his throat. He shuffled awkwardly again in his seat. It suddenly dawned on Darcy, as she gave his hand a reaffirming squeeze, that opportunities for opening up like this were probably not afforded to Bucky very often. She was no man, but she was a doctor and a scientist, which meant that she had a decent idea of how uncomfortable it's been for men to speak up about their feelings. So that fact that he was willing to say what he had, told Darcy that this relationship would be one worth enduring the hardships it brought along with it.

After a beat of silence, Bucky spoke up again.

“You know, when I was starting to adjust to life after the blip, and Steve being gone, I learned a lot about the world as it stands now. But it wasn’t just the big things, like electric cars and smartphones and SpaceX. It was the little things too. Like, when I moved into my apartment, Sam had given me a couple of housewarming gifts, knowing that I didn’t have much yet. One of them was this thing for the kitchen, that held your spatula or ladle while you cooked, so you didn’t have to set it on the countertop. I remember when I first opened it, I had no fucking clue what the hell it was. The concept was so simple, and yet it solved such a common problem that everyone could relate to.” Bucky's voice began to waver slightly. “That’s what you were for me, Darcy.”

“A spatula holder?” Darcy asked with a giggle.

Bucky chuckled in return, then continued. “You were—are—someone in my life that I didn’t know I needed, until you were right under my nose. When we were sitting in that corner booth at the hotel, I remember thinking to myself that maybe, just maybe, there might be room in my life for something else. Something more. And just maybe, not everything had passed me by like originally thought.”

Bucky’s eyes began to glimmer under the bright lights of the exam room, and a single tear fell down his cheek. Darcy felt a sudden tightening in her chest and throat, taken aback by his beautiful words. She soon felt her own tears trickle down her face, and they both began laughing at themselves, broken from the spell that they had been under only moments prior.

“Here, lean forward for second,” Darcy said, her voice shaky from the happy crying.

Bucky leaned toward her, and with her thumb she wiped away the tears that had unexpectedly streamed down his face.

“Keep up the good work, guys.” Nova’s voice rang out again from the loudspeaker. “We’re getting closer, but we still have a ways to go.”

The sudden interruption had further broken through their spell, causing them to fall back into more shared laughter.

“Maybe we can change topics to something a little less… mushy,” Darcy said with a furtive grin.

“Ok, that sounds nice,” Bucky replied with a smile of his own, giving her hand a gentle kiss.

After a brief a moment of silence, Darcy spoke up, a bashful look on her face.

“Early this morning, like around 2 AM, I shot up in bed, as if I just woke from a crazy dream. But I wasn’t having a dream, or a nightmare. It was like my body just decided suddenly that I needed to be awake. And I started having these crazy flashes of you in my head. That was the first time since touching the flower that I began to feel… hot.”

Bucky’s face, which had been somewhat solemn, suddenly transformed into an expression of piqued interest.

“This strange warmth felt like it was slowly spreading throughout my body,” Darcy began again. “Like, I could actually feel it branching out and growing. It was like my veins were tingling with electricity, as if every inch of me was being consumed by this newfound heat. At first, it was overwhelming, and scary. But then I realized that it wasn't just physical warmth—it was... something more. It was passion, and desire, and a deep longing for you.”

Bucky listened intently, captivated by Darcy's words. As she continued recounting details from that morning, his gaze was fixed on her, his whole world seemed to fall away. Nova's voice echoed in the background, but it was as if he and Darcy were in their own little world.

“Then more flashes of your face cycled through my head,” Darcy continued. “They were mostly images—or memories, perhaps—from back at the hotel, and they were playing like a slideshow. I saw your goofy grin when we were talking over dinner. Then I saw you, coming back inside with snow on your coat, and you met me at the elevators. And then finally, I saw you… later. I saw your face as we were… fucking.”

The monitor that sat next to Darcy, that indicated her heart rate, began to beep faster.

“This was the weird part,” Darcy continued, “I started to masturbate, but I didn’t realize it at first. It was as if some invisible force had guided my hand down there.” She looked away from Bucky momentarily, her face turning red. Then, looking back and into his eyes, “Bucky, I had one of the most explosive orgasms of my life. I don’t want to diminish the climax that you and I shared together at the hotel that night, but this was absolutely tantric.”

Bucky’s face had spread to a wide grin, intently listening to Darcy’s recollection, and hanging on every word. Meanwhile, the heart rate monitor continued its increased intervals of beeping. The skin of Darcy’s hand had also increased in temperature, and he feared it would soon reach a degree that would be unbearable to touch.

“Whatever you guys are doing in there, keep it up!” Nova’s voice rang out once more.

As Bucky was staring directly into her eyes, Darcy began to feel their connection deep in her soul, and suddenly her "symptoms" were taking shape once again. Her breathing became deep and methodical, ever-present of her steadily increasing heart rate. The warm, branching sensation—the one that she had just described to Bucky—was once more coursing through her veins. Her eyes, which had been fixated on his, had made their way down to notice the bulge in his pants, and she bit her lower lip with sexual desire. Darcy made no physical movement—only concentrated on her breathing, and controlling these lustful thoughts that were now swarming around in her brain.

“I want to fuck you so bad right now,” Darcy said in a low, devilish tone.

Bucky found his own heart beating fast within his chest, and his erection strengthening, threatening to burst through the zipper of his jeans. He considered again how unorthodox this entire situation was, having to turn Darcy on, and keep her turned on. Talking dirty over the phone, or in text messages, was one thing. It was a completely different story when you had to do it on command, in a controlled environment, while someone else was monitoring the action. His love and adoration for Darcy, however, effortlessly trumped any insecure feeling he had at that moment, and proceeded to lose himself within the reality of it all.

“I want to fuck you too,” Bucky responded softly, leaning in closer to Darcy.

“I’d love to pull your cock out of your pants, and suck you dry,” Darcy returned in her seductive tone.

“I want you to sit on my face, so I can put my tongue inside you.”

“Guys, we’re almost there!” Said Nova’s disembodied voice. At this point, however, it was only muffled words to Darcy and Bucky.

Darcy quickly released her hand from Bucky’s grip, and began massaging the part of his pants that held back his erection. Bucky scooted forward in his chair, affording her easier access.

“I want you to fuck me,” Darcy began again, continuing her rubbing. “I want you to fuck me hard. I want you to make me come so hard that I see God.”

"I wanna feel you finish on me," Bucky said, his voice quavering. "I want to feel your wetness on my fingers and on my cock. I want to feel your pussy pulsating with desire."

Darcy and Bucky’s faces were mere inches from each other, and only seconds away from devouring each other alive. The air had become thick and moist like the heat of a southern June morning, the temperature rising to a point of causing fog and condensation on the glass walls. Nova's voice was faint as she came running down the hallway, but was complete inaudible to either of them; the only thing they heard was the pulsing of their own heart beats, throbbing in their ears.

The glass doors to the room slid open, and a gust of cool air came swooping in, along with Doctor Wildheart.

“I got it guys!” Nova exclaimed. “I was able to isolate—”

Nova stopped mid-sentence as she witnessed a ravenous Darcy dive off her recliner—ripping out all of her connected wires in the process—and pounce on Bucky like a lioness attacking their prey. He fell to the floor with a thud, toppling backwards out of his chair. With one swift motion, Darcy straddled him at the waist and ripped his oxford shirt off, sending the buttons flying in different directions. As she dug her fingers into his chest, making visible claw marks along the way, he screamed in pain and surprise. It was then he finally noticed that Nova had returned, and was standing still, frozen in horror.

“The ice!” Bucky yelled at a wide-eyed Nova. “The ice, now!”

Nova ran to the handwashing station to retrieve the first bucket of ice, but by that time the contents of the buckets had been reduced to warm water, with tiny specks of ice bobbing at the surface.

"Um, we got a problem, here!" Nova yelled from the other side of the room. "All of the ice has melted!"

Bucky didn't respond, as he was too busy fending off Darcy's attacks and advances, so Nova made the snap decision of using the fire extinguisher instead. She briefly considered still using the lukewarm water, but decided that the extinguisher would be safer.

Nova raced back over to where Bucky was struggling to subdue Darcy, grabbed the fire extinguisher, aimed it at Darcy's back, and pulled the trigger. A giant plume of thick, white smoke burst out from the black tube, completely enveloping the two grappling figures on the floor. The sounds of struggling ceased, and Nova could hear her own heart beat thudding inside her ears over the immediate quiet. Wide-eyed and terrified, she cautiously took two steps backward. In her mind, she hoped that when the literal smoke cleared, Bucky would have Darcy restrained, allowing her to run back to the monitoring station and grab the antidote.

"D- Darcy?" Nova called out, her voice quavering. "Bucky?"

There was a sudden clearing in the extinguisher snow, and Darcy—her face contorted in an ominous scowl—stepped through it, lurking toward Nova like Michael Myers.

“Ok, Darcy,” Nova said nervously, her hands raised in a 'halt' gesture', “the tests are done now! It’s time for us to cool off. Why don’t we—”

With unnatural speed, Darcy charged at Nova, and she let out a terrified scream. As she tried running for the doors, the motion sensor refused to register and open, allowing Darcy to close in on the helpless animal that had come between her and her prey. The hazel color in Darcy’s eyes intensified, causing them to look like two flaming molotov cocktails made from absinthe bottles. The temperature in the sealed room began to rise, and condensation quickly formed again on the glass walls. And now, only inches away, Darcy swung out her hand with lightning speed and grabbed Nova by the throat.

“Why won’t you just let me fuck my man?” Darcy said in a low growl that only vaguely resembled her own voice.

With her fingers dug into Nova’s throat, Darcy forcefully pushed her against the glass door, causing a loud “bong” noise to reverberate throughout the room. Then, Darcy effortlessly picked up Nova and held her against the glass wall, her feet dangling inches off the floor. Nova made choking sounds as she gasped for air, her arms flailing desperately, attempting to break Darcy's control over her.

“Darcy!” Bucky shouted, rising to his feet. “This isn’t you, Darcy! Put Nova down. It’s me that you want, right?”

Darcy looked back at Bucky with an unsettling jerk of her head, Nova still effortlessly pinned against the glass doors. Her scowl that threatened to eat Nova’s face off suddenly transformed into an evil grin. And in one quick motion, Darcy tossed Nova across the room like a rag doll, and she fell into a collection of laboratory glassware. With Nova out of the way, Darcy once again descended upon Bucky with that familiar look of burning emerald in her eyes.

Bucky readied himself as Darcy bowed her head determinately and charged toward him. She attempted yet another spectacular and gravity-defying leap, but Bucky was able to parry her attack. He effortlessly wrestled her outstretched arms down so they were pinned to her sides, and spun her around to position her in a tight bear hug. Darcy screamed and thrashed in his locked grip.

"Aaaahhhhhh!" Darcy screamed, her voice guttural and primal.

Knowing he couldn't hold her for long, Bucky looked desperately for Nova, praying that she was ok.

"Nova!" He called out over Darcy's shrieks. "Nova, where are you? Are you ok?"

Over the screeching and thrashing, Bucky could hear the faint rustling of shattered glass from the other side of the room. From behind a countertop island, Nova's hand—cut and bloodied—emerged like that of a rising zombie from beyond the grave; Bucky was both relieved and concerned. She was alive, thank heavens, but as she slowly hoisted the rest of herself back up into a standing position, he could tell that she did not look good. Several areas of her face, arms, and legs had been cut badly, with blood beginning to stain her white lab coat.

"Oh my god, Nova, are you ok?" Bucky asked, still doing his best to keep Darcy restrained.

"Y- yeah, I'm fine," she replied, her voice weak.

"Do you think you can make it back ok, to start the antidote mixing process?"

"I- I think so."

Nova hobbled toward the sliding glass doors, using the countertops to steady her balance. The doors slid open as the sensors registered her movement and Bucky held Darcy tight as he watched Nova limp through them, then down the hall toward her monitoring station. Darcy sensed Bucky's sigh of relief, and used his split-second moment of reprieve to bite down violently into his hand. Bucky screamed out in pain and surprise. His grasp on her loosened, and Darcy broke free of his control. Bucky examined his bitten hand, which was now bleeding, then looked up toward Darcy. She stood motionless, only feet away from him, and again an evil smile cursed her face. Now frozen in shock, Bucky registered another significant rise in the room’s temperature, and genuine concern further settled in.

A sudden pop from above caused Bucky to jump nervously, and the sprinkler system inside the medical station began raining down buckets upon buckets of water. Darcy, seemingly unphased, continued slowly stalking her prey, licking her lips in anticipation. A deep-seated fear settled within Bucky, as he backed away slowly from the woman he had come to care for so much. Very little was known about Darcy's illness, and what they did know had nothing to do with superhuman strength. So it was equally shocking and horrifying for Bucky to witness Nova being tossed across the room like she was yesterday's trash. And what if her strength superseded his own? What if the question now was not how to restrain her, but if he could restrain her? He prayed silently—and quickly—that the situation wouldn't escalate to that point.

“Darcy, please,” Bucky begged, instinctively holding out his metal arm. “This is not you! You need to snap out of it! Please, just—”

In a swift motion, Darcy grabbed hold of the wrist of Bucky’s outstretched hand, yanked him toward her, then kicked him in the chest, sending him flying backwards. Bucky slammed into the opposite wall, then crashed into a collection of medical supples and machines below him. In the midst of the broken shards of glass that was now his bed, Bucky struggled to get to his feet, his bare skin cutting from the glass fragments.

So that's what it feels like to get kicked in the chest, he thought to himself, recalling the thousands of times he'd performed the same move on his enemies.

He was at last able to get himself to a kneeling position, just in time to witness Darcy close in on him again. The last of the sprinkler water was drizzling from the ceiling, and Darcy's soaked clothes stuck to her like a wet magnet. The light behind her created an almost perfect silhouette, and her devilish stare was more piercing than ever. The determined look on her face transformed into one of sadistic amusement, and Bucky's blood ran cold.

"Look, Bucky," Darcy said in that same low tone, "look at the monster you've created. Aren't you proud?"

Her cadence reminded Bucky of Regan from the exorcist, and how it sounded like a layered version of her natural voice, if one had been dropped several octaves.

"Darcy, please, you don't have to—"

Bucky, still kneeling on the floor, started to plead with her again, but an index finger shot up to her plump, red lips in a mimed "hush" gesture.

"Oh, come on, baby. Don't you wanna have a little fun?"

In a lightning fast motion, Darcy's hands gripped the tail of her shirt and pulled it up and over her head, exposing her breasts and a black lace bra. Sex, however, was the furthest thing from Bucky's mind.

With terrified eyes staring up at her, Darcy took hold of Bucky’s neck and lifted him slowly from the floor. The shattered remains of glass fragments fell to the floor from Bucky’s clothes. The pressure on his windpipe was extraordinary and brought stars to his eyes. She effortlessly raised him past her eye line, and higher into the air, until his feet stood several inches off the ground. This time, Darcy didn't need a wall in which to hold Bucky against. It was just as easy to hold him up by his throat, while she peered at him with starving eyes and lips curled in an evil grin.

“D... D... Darcy...” Bucky managed to choke out. “I’m not... going... to fight you.”

His words were staggered, having to say each one through gasps of air.

“I won’t... fight... you.”

Then, Bucky’s words trailed off, with the pauses in between each getting longer, and the light in his eyes began to slowly fade away. With the increasing pressure that Darcy enforced around his neck, it would only be seconds before he completely blacked out, and then who knew what would happen to him. He could be looking down the narrowing barrel of life, waving goodbye to all that he knew. Which was just about perfect. Just when he had finally found someone to love.

He thought, with the last remaining ounce of blood flowing away from his brain, that he might be able to fight his way out of this. He had been too afraid to fight back. He didn't want to hurt Darcy; she was the love of his life. That was probably just the lack of oxygen talking, though. How could he love somebody, and have someone love him? He already made up his mind, he wasn't going to fight back.

I could die like this, he thought to himself. In the hands of a beautiful woman, and by the hands of them too? There were worse ways to go.

From the fog of his darkening vision, he noticed a figure—with platinum blonde hair and a white lab coat with red spots—rush through the glass doors, seemingly in slow motion. The figure was carrying something; a syringe, perhaps? It looked to be filled with a shimmering opaque liquid. This was the last thing Bucky saw, before he was dropped to the floor with a hard thud.

It was perhaps the glass fragments on the floor, or the dripping water from the ceiling that kept him from passing out. Stars danced across his vision as the blood rushed back to his brain. He struggled to prop himself up, slipping on the water and broken glass. Blinking his eyes rapidly to clear his vision, Bucky noticed Nova standing still in horror, as Darcy turned around to face her, the sharp point of the syringe jutting out from her left buttock. The duo began repeating their same routine from earlier, with Darcy advancing toward Nova, as she cautiously backed away.

“You just don’t know when to quit, do you?” Darcy said in that same ominous and gravely tone.

She took another single step toward Nova.

“He… is mine!” Darcy said, hissing, taking another slow methodical step forward.

“You are just—”

Darcy voice abruptly stopped, and her body slowly came to a standstill. Bucky wiped sprinkler water from his face and eyes, his heart beating out of his chest. His body trembled as he witnessed Darcy take one final step forward toward Nova. He saw her right knee start to buckle, and in a mad, valiant effort, he dove toward her, using himself as a shield for Darcy to collapse onto as she fell lifelessly to the floor.

Chapter Text

The following morning, when Darcy Lewis awoke from a deep and dreamless slumber, the first thing she noticed was the sound—and smell—of crackling bacon. The distinguishable aroma immediately conjured up memories of her childhood, when she’d wake up late on Saturday morning to find her dad listening to classic rock music as he lovingly slaved over a stove, preparing a breakfast feast for the family. Her mom might be sitting in the breakfast nook, laptop open and checking emails, the workaholic she was. Sometimes she’d offer to help her dad out in the kitchen, but he would always smile and say the same thing: “I don’t need anything but your love”.

The second thing Darcy noticed was that she did not wake up in her own apartment. In fact, she didn’t even recognize the studio she was in. As she shot up in bed, immediately concerned about her current whereabouts, she did notice that the dark blue comforter that enveloped her looked oddly familiar, as well as the pillowcase with the alternating light and dark blue accent stripes. Her nose then caught another familiar scent, as she shook the comforter off of her; it smelled just like—

“Hey there, lady,” said a voice, calling from the nearby kitchen. A head poked around the corner, revealing Bucky’s kind, warm face.

Both relief and confusion crashed over Darcy, as she lay in what could only be Bucky’s bed, listening to the sounds of him making breakfast. In place of her typical nighttime hoodie—the one with her college logo—she was wearing one that simply said “Brooklyn” on it. And in place of the jeans she had been wearing the day before, she was now wearing shorts—the same pair she had packed the previous morning. 

Darcy had come to the conclusion that she was in Bucky’s apartment. Exactly how that came to be, she hadn’t the slightest clue. Her memories of the night before—not unlike an evening of hard drinking and blacking out—were mostly a blur, with intermittent polaroid-inspired fragments laced between. She swung her feet off the bed and planted them on the floor, the cool hardwood feeling like magic against her skin. 

Just then, Bucky himself emerged from around the corner, wearing an apron with “Kiss the Cook” monogramed on it. Giving her another kind smile, he sat down at the edge of the bed, and leaned in to kiss her forehead.

“You’re awake,” he said matter-of-factly. “You hungry?”

Darcy’s eyes opened wide. “Oh my god, I’m starving!” She exclaimed.

“So, how much do you remember about last night?” Bucky asked, placing a plate full of bacon, eggs, and toast in front Darcy.

Wasting no time, Darcy crammed one of the slices of bacon in her mouth, and began recounting what she could from the night before.

“I remember… us arriving at Oscorp, and me talking to Nova. I remember that I passed out, and woke up in a different room. And then I remember us talking and having that deep conversation, and then…”

Darcy trailed off, looking upward to recall further memories. After a moment of consideration, she only shrugged, and went back to her breakfast.

“You don’t remember any of the dirty talk?” Bucky asked curiously.

Darcy let out a chuckle as she chewed scrambled eggs. “There was dirty talk involved? At Oscorp? Please don’t tell me we had a three-way with Doctor Wildheart.”

This got a genuine laugh out of Bucky.

“No, you’re safe. No three-ways were had last night. At least, none that involved you and I.”

“Ok, so… what happened with the tests?”

Bucky gazed at her wide-eyed with incredulity.

“You really don’t remember anything after the tests started?”

“No, I don’t. So can you please go ahead and tell me?”

After a deep breath and a long swig of black coffee, he filled Darcy in on everything that happened late last night. From the heartfelt conversation they had, up to the moment where it escalated into crass dirty talk. Darcy blushed relentlessly when he detailed all the things she had said to him—and the things he said in return. Her jaw just about hit the floor when he segued into the part where she briefly had strength that rivaled that of the “super-solider serum”, and somehow bested him in a fight.

“You’re fucking with me, aren’t you?” She asked with a grin. “None of this happened, right? I mean, ok, I can see the dirty talk happening, that kinda sounds like me anyway. But for me to Hulk-out like you described…”

“I promise you, Darce,” Bucky replied, his eyes widened, “all of this happened last night. You lifted Doctor Wildheart up off the ground by her throat. You lifted me up by the throat, and then kicked me across the room. You were… fucking scary.”

Darcy shook her head in disbelief. Over the next few weeks, her whole experience with the flower and the gravity that it held would eventually start to sink in. But for right now, none of this made any sense to her. As she sat pondering the things her mind was willing to let sink in, Darcy fingered the leaves of a small dead plant on Bucky’s table, a concerned look on her face. She looked miles away, and deep in thought. A single leaf from the plant gently snapped off its branch and fell to the table top.

“So, how did you two… stop me?” Darcy asked, low levels of guilt hanging in her voice.

“Well, I thought that you were either going to… fuck me, kill me, or both. You were choking the life out of me, but I wasn’t about to fight back. I just… I couldn’t, Darce. 

Bucky paused, his expression shifting from humored to concerned.

“Then, Nova came, just in time to save me. And you.”

Bucky reached into the right pocket of his sweat pants, and produced two small vials of a glowing silvery mixture, setting them in the middle of the table for Darcy to inspect.

“This is what we worked so hard for last night,” he said softly. “She came running back into the med room, and gave you a shot of this stuff, right in your butt cheek.”

“Oh man, so that’s why my ass hurts.”

Bucky couldn’t help but chuckle. It was these subtle nuances and idiosyncrasies that made her so unique. It was also one of the things he loved most about her. Even after everything that he told her about last night—all the things she couldn’t remember—she still held close her witty and sarcastically dismissive attitude.

“Mm, what time is it?” Darcy asked, brushing breadcrumbs from her hands. “I need to get to work.”

“Nope,” Bucky responded, “not today.”

“Wait, what do you mean?” Darcy asked with a look of confusion.

“You’ve called out sick.”

“No, that’s ridiculous. I need to be there for my team,” Darcy said dismissively.

“Darcy, what your team needs is you in your top form. You need a day off, to… recompose. I mean yesterday, you were a scary sex-crazed she-demon! We need to make sure that Nova’s antidote worked, and that you’ll remain in a stable condition. And I think the best way to do that is for us to spend the day together, hanging out, watching movies, and you know… catching up for lost time.”

Bucky said this with a kind smile, with no hint of impatience or dismissiveness. Darcy returned with her own loving smile, and reached out her hand to take his. When she did this, the first thing Bucky noticed was how cool her hand was; not white hot. His smile widened, and they shared another moment of comfortable silence.

“Come on, I’ve got some movies picked out for us to watch,” Bucky said, getting up from the table, clearing both of their plates. “I’ll let you have first dibs.”

“Oh!” Darcy exclaimed, getting up and walking over to Bucky’s living room nook with the piled up Blu-ray movies. “Do you have Mr. and Mrs. Smith?”

“What kind of dumb question is that, Darce?” He called from the kitchen, scraping food into the garbage. “Of course I have it. In fact, I should have it on DVD and Blu-ray.”

Darcy let out a tiny squeal of joy, and when Bucky joined her in the living room with two fresh cups of coffee, they sat on the couch and put in their movie. Bucky lifted his arm, and Darcy almost instinctively nestled herself under it and against his side, wrapping her arm around his chest. He laid his head against hers, and they readied themselves for a day of doing a whole lot of nothing.

As the television came to life and the movie began playing, there was a faint rustling sound in the opposite corner of the room. From the breakfast table, the dead plant—the one that Darcy had mindlessly toyed with only minutes earlier—began to lightly twitch. Then, a beautiful and vibrant shade of green branched and circulated throughout the plant, and the shriveled brown leaves that had lay limp began to rise as its veins coursed with new life.