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25 January 2012 @ 00:15
"Simple, Not Easy" 6/18, Rated R to NC-17  
Title: Simple, Not Easy
Fandom: Thor (2011), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Rating: R to NC-17
Pairings: Darcy/Clint, Loki/Sif, Natasha/Coulson
Summary: Darcy should have seen it coming. She couldn't hang around the spandex crowd forever and not end up with a great big target painted on her back eventually. She was just surprised it took Loki so long.

Disclaimer: The Avengers and all related elements, characters and indicia © Marvel Studios 2012. All Rights Reserved. All characters and situations—save those created by the authors for use solely on this website—are copyright Marvel Studios 2012.

Please do not archive or distribute without author's permission.

Author's Note: This story is all Lunik's fault. HUGE thanks to my flatmate/betas/cheerleaders/people who couldn't get out of the way fast enough when I started emailing them drafts: Boosette, Celli, Victoria P, Seren, Fringedweller, Aj, the aforementioned Lunik, and everyone on El Jay who cheered me on during the nearly 4 months when this story ATE MY LIFE.

AO3 | LJ

Chapter 6

In theory, Saturday was her day off. In reality, Jane almost always went into work anyway, and Darcy usually joined her around lunchtime. Mostly to make sure Jane actually ate something.

Still feeling like crap, Darcy stayed in bed as long as she possibly could, and then wandered out into her living room to eat two bowls of Lucky Charms while she watched a Lifetime marathon of attractive-middle-aged-women-in-jeopardy movies.

She couldn't figure out why she was acting like she had broken up with her boyfriend. It wasn't as if they had ever actually made out, or anything. Loki's insistence on misreading their relationship only annoyed her because deep down, she wished it were true. But Clint treated her more like a pesky little sister than anything else.

She'd just got so used to having him around from sun-up to sundown. She blinked, and she could see him all over her place—lounging on the sofa with his feet propped up on the coffee table despite a perfect good tomato-shaped ottoman available for that express purpose. Leaning against her kitchen counter while she made smoothies, or opened beers with the churchkey he'd bought her after she'd used the countertop one too many times to pop the bottlecaps. One of her dining room chairs still sat in front of the TV, where he'd balance it on two legs, always teetering but never falling as they marathonned some TV show or watched an action movie with him bitching about the fight choreography and editing.

It was weird—her first week in the month since Loki had first snatched her from Jane's by mistake without him just being there. She felt like she'd been jilted at the goddam altar or some shit, which was ridiculous. It wasn't like she hadn't seen him around. Hell, she'd seen him in the cafeteria on Thursday, sitting with Banner eating a cheeseburger. He'd even waved. But it wasn't the same.

The worst part was, she knew that if she'd just told Clint about Loki showing up at the diner, Fury wouldn't have called off Darcy-watch. But that didn't really help, because what was mostly bumming her out was that it apparently took executive orders from their boss to make Clint want to spend time with her.

She'd just switched over to an Ace of Cakes marathon on Food Network when there was a knock at her door.

Clint was standing in the hallway, his hands in his jacket pockets.


"Hey," Darcy echoed, suddenly wishing she'd showered and changed out of her Julius the Monkey flannel pyjamas, and maybe actually brushed her hair.

"So, I'm thinking, we've already done the entire Golden Girls oeuvre... How do you feel about Soap?"

"Do I smell that bad?"

"No, the TV show. I rented it." He pulled a DVD in a flimsy white paper Netflix slip out of his pocket, and handed it to her. She automatically flipped it over to read the logline.

"1977? I wasn't even born when this was on!"

"You never saw it on cable?" Clint asked. "I think Comedy Central ran it in the mid-nineties."

"I was seven in the mid nineties."

Clint started to bang his forehead against the doorframe. Not hard enough to hurt. Just to make a point. Darcy burst out laughing.

"Um, gimmie, like, fifteen minutes? I just woke up," she lied, and he shrugged.

"Cool—I'm gonna get Doritos and soda from the kitchen downstairs. You want anything?"

"Nope. I'm good."

Half an hour later she was clean and dressed and back on her sofa, while a cheerful announcer told her that this was the story of two sisters—Jessica Tate and Mary Campbell.

Darcy couldn't stop grinning. Because Clint was next to her, his feet propped up on her coffee table, his jacket slung over the papasan chair, relentlessly razzing her for making faces at everyone's bell bottoms and being freaked out by the guy from Empty Nest being a total skeeve.

After that afternoon, they fell almost immediately back into their old patterns. While Clint no longer sat at the empty desk in Jane's lab during the day, he still met her in the lobby to walk back to the mansion after work, and more often than not they still hung out. After they burned through the first season of Soap, Darcy retaliated with Saved By The Bell. Thor couldn't understand why suddenly everyone was calling Agent Sitwell "Screech," but he was joined in his confusion by Dr Banner, whose idea of entertainment tended to be meditation, followed by Tai Chi, and topped off with an hour of sitting in the dark listening to Sufi drum music.

"So how come you're stilling hanging out with me?" Darcy asked one night as they ate slices of pie and drank endless cups of coffee (Clint) and hot chocolate (Darcy) in a diner on 77th while sheets of rain came down outside.

Clint shrugged. "I like you."


"Why exactly is that so hard to believe?"

"Well, it's not like you were around all that much after we left Puente Antiguo," she pointed out, trying not to sound desperate or pathetic despite the fact that she had totally been both desperate and pathetic when she thought he'd only hung out with her because he'd been ordered to. "I figured you were just, you know, over the whole hanging out with the townie thing."

"Not over it," he said, his grey-green eyes crinkling at the corners as he smiled at her over the rim of his coffee cup. "And we still have three seasons of Soap to go."

"This is true. I need to find out who killed Peter."

"Okay. But we're not doing all of Benson."

"Benson got his own show?"

Clint dropped his head into his hands with a moan. "Thank you for taking this opportunity to remind me you young you are."

"You mean how old you are."

"That, too."

"You're just lucky I have a thing for totally cut old guys with Blanche Devereaux fixations."

"What, what?"

Clint looked completely stunned. Magneto could have been blowing up cars all up and down the block, and he probably wouldn't have noticed. He sat there in the cracked red vinyl booth, his mouth hanging open and a forkful of cherry pie halfway between his plate and his mouth, staring at Darcy like she'd just whipped off her top then and there.

"Seriously, you're only just now figuring this out? It's been, like, six months." Darcy couldn't help it. She laughed. All that drama and angst, and he was the one even more clueless than she had been. "Six months during which we could have been having mind-blowing sex, may I add."

Clint raised one hand toward their waitress. "Can we get our check?" he asked in a slightly strangled voice. Possibly because Darcy had hooked her calf around his under the table, her knee sliding against his thigh while she innocently sipped her cocoa.

They didn't actually go back to the mansion and have wild monkey sex, despite Darcy's inventive suggestions that finally got Clint to drag her off the sidewalk. He crowded her into the covered doorway of a closed manicure shop to shut her up with his mouth. Which worked spectacularly well, despite the fact that the rain had turned cold and was dripping down her neck from the back of her coat, and her glasses had fogged up.

The smile he gave her right before he pushed her up against the glass door made a shiver run down her spine and heat pool in her belly, and that was before his lips even touched hers. It was the way his eyes crinkled up at the corners, the way he filled her entire frame of vision, the way he seemed completely present in the moment. It was heady, and it was sexy, and it was part of why she'd been fantasising about jumping him for months.

Clint kissed with intent.

None of that hesitant feeling-our-way-around-each-other bullshit. He gripped her hips in his large, strong hands, kneading them as he did things with his tongue that Darcy was pretty sure ought to be illegal in at least four states. She very nearly melted into a puddle of goo right there on the street.

She wanted to touch all of him, without a zillion layers of damp clothing between them, and she was pretty sure based on the way he was trying to slide his hands up under her shirt, he felt the same way. If it weren't for the fact that alleys were practically unheard of in Manhattan and it wasn't even nine o'clock, Darcy would have had her wicked way with him right then and there.

Instead, they made out in a taxi the seven blocks to the mansion, and then headed back to their rooms to dry off. When he knocked on her door (guys having way less hair to towel dry), he had that look on his face like he's about to call the whole thing off. So Darcy grabbed him by the wrists and dragged him to her mouth. If he'd been having second thoughts, that seemed to clarify the situation nicely. He kicked her door shut at the same time he picked her up like she weighed nothing at all (and as she did not weigh nothing at all, Darcy found that stupidly hot) and she wrapped her arms around his neck and legs around his waist, which brought very excited parts of her anatomy right up against clearly excited parts of his.

Oh my God I'm kissing Clint kept running on a loop through Darcy's brain, making her head spin. Giddy breathless laughter slipped out between frantic kisses that gradually became less about immediate release and more about the joy of discovery. For example, Clint figured out in about two seconds that Darcy would moan and writhe against him when he sucked hard on her bottom lip. Darcy learned from trial and error that he wasn't particularly ticklish, but dragging her short nails over the base of his skull made him cant his hips against hers and pull her so close it was like he was trying to wear her like a coat.

Despite the open bedroom door, they ended up on the crazy expensive black leather sofa, making out like teenagers. As far as Darcy was concerned, this was pretty damned awesome. Particularly the look on Clint's face when he finally got her UNM sweatshirt off and she was lying on her back in nothing but a pair of yoga pants and her very best red lace bra.

"Jesus, you're amazing." Clint just stared at her with this look on his face that was unlike anything she'd ever seen before. Darcy could feel a flush creeping up her neck. He reached down to cup one breast in the palm of his hand, thumb tracing the edge of the scalloped lace. "So fucking beautiful."

"So how come all those nights watching cheesy tv on this sofa," Darcy punctuated her statement by arching her back, shifting against him in a way that made them both gasp, "you never tried to cop a feel?"

Clint looked sheepish. "You were always reminding me how much older I am than you. I didn't want you to think I was a creeper."

"You dork," Darcy laughed, propping herself up on her elbows. "Jane's boyfriend is over a thousand years old. Like you being born during the Carter administration means fuck-all. You get my sense of humour. You're totally cut. You even live in my building."

Clint raised a brow. "So I'm convenient?"

"Yeah, conveniently hot."

"You think I'm hot?"

"Shut up. You know you are. And funny, and smart, and snarky, and did I mention sexy?"

"With Rogers and Thor around, not too many people seem to think so."

"Yeah, well, clearly they're blind." Darcy rolled her eyes and then, for good measure, rolled her hips. "More for me."

They got back to the serious business of seeing exactly how much or little it might take to get each other off without being naked, aided by gravity, friction, and Clint's utter fascination with her rack. But he pulled his mouth away from hers long enough to lick her earlobe and whisper, "So if you had a thing for me all this time, why didn't you make a move?"

Darcy pulled back, and looked him straight in the eye. "I wasn't sure if you had 'Property of the KGB' stamped on your butt, and the Widow scares me."

"Actually, technically, it would have been 'Property of the FSB.'"

Darcy punched him in the shoulder. Mostly because as a Poli-Sci major, she totally knew that.

"Me and Tasha—that was over a long time ago."

"Then what the hell are you waiting for, cowboy?"

Clint pulled her into a long, wet kiss that left her light-headed and gasping, and they rolled over so she was on top. She had his shirt rucked up so she could check out his six-pack while he was struggling with the three hooks and eyes on the back of her bra one-handed. He might have been the world's best archer, but he was seriously going to need practice with the amazing feats of engineering that were Darcy's underwire date bras. At least if he was relying on the pinch-and-release method.

"Jesus, this couldn't have a front closure?" he finally said into her cleavage, and Darcy buried her face in his neck, laughing.

"Clearly you have never dated a girl who's a double-D," Darcy pointed out with a wicked grin as she reached behind her back and undid the hooks.

As she pulled her arms through the straps and let the bra fall into her lap, Clint looked stunned. As if he'd just seen the face of God, given a lifetime supply of lube and condoms, and told that they were relocating the Avengers Initiative to Hawaii. In that order.

As he closed his mouth around one pink nipple, Darcy decided it was even possibly worth getting kidnapped by a supervillain in the first place. She closed her eyes, her mouth falling open as he swirled his tongue around the tightened bud and sucked—hard. A low groan was pulled out from her lungs as heat flooded through her, and she wiggled against him, desperately seeking more. More of him, more of this, more of everything.

Clint shifted, half sitting up, half pulling her down against him before reaching up to knead the other breast, his callused hands raising gooseflesh along her arms and making the hairs on the back of her neck prickle. Her higher brain functions had pretty much switched off, and her senses were in overdrive. Clint's skin was warm against hers, and it wasn't enough. His neck, his mouth, his chest and arms—as beautiful as they were—just weren't enough.

"More," Darcy panted, not even realising she was saying it aloud at first. "God, Clint—"

He stopped torturing her breast and kissed her again, both hands cradling her face, fingers sliding through her hair, catching on tangles and knots and she didn't care, because it just felt so good. He felt so good. Darcy splayed her fingers on his chest, sliding one hand down, following the light trail of hair, and Clint's hips jerked against hers.

Darcy had just started unfastening his belt when Clint's phone started beeping incessantly at the same time someone started banging on Darcy's door. As soundproof as her quarters were, Darcy could still hear the Widow swearing in Russian as she tried to pull her Lobos sweatshirt back on the right away around while Clint rebuttoned his jeans.

He jerked the door open. Natasha didn't even blink, despite the fact that Darcy was pretty sure anyone with half a brain could see what had been going on. Especially as Clint was sporting a pretty damned impressive, if she said so herself, hickey just about the neck of his black tee-shirt.

"Doom and the Goblin are on Liberty Island with a dirty bomb and fifteen hostages. Wheels up in ten," she said and then dashed off down the hall.

"Shit, I gotta—" Clint said helplessly, and Darcy made a shooing motion with both hands.

"Yeah, I know. Go. Don't get your ass shot up before I get to see it naked."

Clint gave her a jaunty salute, and then disappeared into his room to suit up and meet the rest of the team in the Quinjet.

Chapter 7
(Deleted comment)
ljc: avengers (hawkeye arm)taraljc on 26th January 2012 07:24 (UTC)
OMG this fic would SO put out for you! Yays!