The ink on Darcy’s skin draws his eyes again, and again.
…
Her hands are tied, blue silk cord wrapped around her wrists and woven through the metal scrollwork of the headboard. Darcy lies on her stomach, hands curling around the cold metal of the frame, but the cold iron does nothing to cool the heat in her body, the warmth radiating from her skin, the wet ache between her thighs. Darcy presses her thighs together, grateful her ankles are free of the cord that binds her wrists.
“I told you not to move,” Steve says. His voice is low, gravelly, with all the authority of the Captain bleeding through.
Darcy had, at one point or another, woken up in some peculiar places. Hospital, twice. Asgard, just the once. Mrs Vega’s azaleas, but she’d been 18 at the time.
And really, Darcy conceded as early morning sunlight tinted the room, this time the peculiar part wasn't the ‘where’ (she was, thankfully, still in her own bed) but the ‘who’.
It could have been Thor, the shoulders were right, the skin just tawny enough. Even the hair was the right colour, if the wrong cut. But it had been months since she’d seen Thor and why would he be at her apartment and not Jane’s? No, this wasn’t the big guy. Didn’t smell right, not like a storm over the lake during summer. This guy, Darcy shuffled a little closer and gave a delicate sniff, reeked of gasoline, sweat and the faintest sickly smack of blood. Closer inspection showed a mottled pattern of bruising forming along one side of his ribs.
She slowly drew her hand out from beneath the comforter and tried to push her hair more firmly out of her face. Waking up next to a sleeping man was new for her… well, at least one she didn’t know. The expanse of his back was impressive, so much so that she’d have to get onto her knees and probably wake the guy to lean over an get a peek at his face. Was that something she really wanted to do? Was waking her, albeit injured, uninvited bedfellow the best course of action here? Darcy chewed her lip as she shuffled backward, ass-first toward her side of the bed, intent on a smooth and steady escape.
It was a steady move, if an awkward one, one foot blindly peeking out from beneath the covers dangling in mid air as she sought the floor. Cold morning air met her toes and-
A firm hand clamped about her wrist and yanked her back into the bed as the once impressive and now terrifying bulk of her overnight visitor settled over her. His knee jammed between her thighs, fingers tightened painfully around her wrist and his spare hand came up to grip her throat in an obvious threat. He was banged up, lip and nose bloodied, right temple bruised and even if he hadn’t borne his injuries so obviously she could see his distress clearly in the haze of his eyes. Big, blue, Captain America eyes.
Well, fu-
His grip tightened and his chest moved rapidly its stilted adrenaline-fuelled breaths. Darcy’s own anxiety suddenly eclipsed the ‘who’ as her own hands came up to grip at his wrists. Her fingers wouldn’t fit around them, so instead her too short nails raked at his skin as she desperately tried to form words and bucked ineffectively beneath him.
“P-p…ple-” her plea tapered off into a small scream, contained in the band of his hands, loud in her own ears and maybe just enough to reach his.
“Who. Are. You?” His hands pulsed tighter with each word, the confusion and fear still very much present in his eyes.
Darcy’s mind proved that her survival instinct wasn’t about to kick in as it instead mused sadly that she was about to die in her most loved place: her bed.
Her head began to swim and black seeped in at the edges of her vision, like the world’s shittiest Instagram filter.
This was not, she thought with no small amount of resignation, how she’d imagined finding Captain America in her bed would play out…
She blinked back tears and-
The weight lifted from her torso, the overwhelming smell of gas and human distress dwindled as her vision cleared and she scrambled up against her headboard in time to watch Captain… no, Steve Rogers, back into a wall. He wasn’t a superhero in that moment, just a hurt and confused man.
“Wha-?” she croaked, her voice broken and her throat aching.
“Who are you?” he looked her over, eyes clearer but face and body stiff from his injuries.
“I’m Darcy. We haven’t met but I’m a friend of Thor’s. This is my home.” She hugged her knees to her chest.
“Thor-” One hand, knuckles bloodied, came up to grip at the ends of his hair as he drew in a few steadying breaths. “I wasn’t… I was in bad shape last night. Thor said this was a safe house. I just… I just came here.”
Thor, Darcy decided, was absolutely off her Christmas card list.
“Well,” Darcy gave a slow nod, “It is my apartment. And it is safe.” Steve’s shoulders relaxed a little as he regarded her with something that looked heartbreakingly like hope. Then, his shoulders slumped and he looked down at his hands and then to where she was curled against the headboard. She knew that he was thinking of how he had just attacked her. Honestly, she’d be thinking of it for a damn long time too. Still, he needed the rest more than she needed the apology. Darcy uncurled her legs and made a show of primly pulling her comforter back up over them, she gave a quick nod toward her bathroom. “But you have to shower if you want back in the bed.”
“Darcy, I’m so-”
“Gross and sweaty. Shower. Shower twice. Use the lemony shampoo.” The lemon one was the good stuff Jane had bought for her birthday (or, more accurately, she had bought for Jane to give to her on her birthday). It always made her feel better.
He stayed planted at the far end of her bedroom, shuffling from foot to foot. “I can leave,” he murmured, “I’m healed up enough now.”
“Sho-wer,” this time she jabbed her finger in the right direction, “Then bed.”
When : From Monday July the 11th to Sunday July 17th
What : Hello, Darcylanders! I’m happy to officially announce the first Darcy Lewis Positivity Week! Each day of the week will have a different theme. It’s up to you to take the daily theme, create something - graphics, gifs, fanart, fic, videos, meta, headcanons, cosplay, moodboards, picspams, manips, drabbles anything! - and post it to your blog. Each day of the week will have a prompt related to the ideas of things that compose the darcyland fandom, the idea to spread kindness in the fandom and counter-act the hate of some trolls that was directed towards the character and some of us.
How : Make sure to tag your contributions with #darcylandweek (it needs to be on your first 5 tags for it to be found). Only positive content will be re blogged it means no harmful, unhealthy things or negativity. Don’t repost somebody’s else work, put triggers warning on your posts if it needs to be done, put the nsfw or too long works under a cut. Don’t bash other characters, it’s a positivity week (!)
Prompts:
Day 1 (July 11) : Friendship (is magic) - the day to celebrate Darcy and her friendships, either canon or not.
Day 2 (July 12) : Love thy body - the day you’ll use to show body positivity for the character.
Day 3 (July 13) : I ship what I ship - the day you’ll use to show your love for your favorite Darcyland Ship.
Day 4 (July 14) : Favorite Trait - The day you’ll use to explore your Darcy Lewis’s favorite personality trait or fact (canon or fanon).
Day 5 (July 15) : Fav Trope - the day you’ll use to show your love for your favorite Darcyland trope (AUs, kinks, clichés…)
Day 6 (July 16) : Canon in MCU Fix-it - the day you’ll use to incorporate Darcy in a MCU canon plot/scene to change it so everything is fine and dandy.
Day 7 (July 17) : My Shout Out To - the day you’ll use to show your love, admiration, awe to a Darcylander that deserves it.
Don’t forget to reblog this post to spread the word ^^
Stood up by a guy I've been seeing for a month. He said he'd be 15 minutes late, max. It's over an hour now, no word and I'm hungry. How long before I declare the night a bust?
when the last eagle flies over the last crumbling mountain
The door to Wanda’s room was open. It was almost always open, and that little bit of normal helped smooth out the knot of worry tightening in his gut. “Hey, Wanda,” Steve says, rapping his knuckles on the doorframe. “Do you…oh.” The carefully prepared words in his head falter on his tongue. Wanda isn’t alone.
Steve’s jaw goes slack and his brain rebels against the scene painted before him. Wanda is sitting wrapped up in the covers, a soft smile on her lips, head leaning on Darcy’s shoulder. Both girls are watching something on the television, a cartoon of some sort with a butterfly and a horse.
They look comfortable, intimate, and Steve’s heart cracks, a spike of jealousy settling in his guts. He had no right to be jealous, no right to want as much as he did. Darcy looks up from the tv and waves at him with a small ball of yarn in her hand. His eyes dip down to the generous bit of cleavage on display and Steve clenches his fist tighter, dropping his eyes to one of the bean bags decorating the room.
He felt like a heel for looking, for wanting more than he could ever have. He felt worse for being sweet on both girls. As much as he told himself to treat Wanda like a kid, the advice never touched his heart. She was beautiful and powerful, and she woke something up inside of him, that primitive bit of his brain that wanted to protect her, wrap himself around her and hold on tight.
The last few months Natasha’s been needling him to ask Darcy out. He’d done his best to drag his heels about it, but for once Nat’s matchmaking had struck a cord. Darcy worked in the lab, keeping Dr Selvig in order and mostly dressed. She’d been closed off at first, wrapped up in layers of sass. He still wasn’t sure if she forgot people’s names on purpose or it was a deliberate move to distance herself from idiot. He was secretly a little smug that she almost always called him Steve, unless she was angry. He wasn’t a good enough man to not appreciate the fury that could dance in Darcy’s eyes, her cheeks flushed red, and her lips…perhaps it was best he didn’t follow that train of thought while standing so close to Wanda.
“Hey,” Wanda says. The smile on her pink lips turns bright and she sits up, waving her hand at him. “Come watch with us.”
“No..I mean, I don’t think that would be a good idea.”
“Nonsense. We don’t mind, do we, Darcy?” Wanda asks.
“Nope, come watch the movie with us,” Darcy smiles. She pats the bed beside her and somehow Steve’s feet are moving without his telling them what to do. He ends up wedged between Wanda and Darcy, with the blankets thrown over all three. He’s very careful not to let his thoughts slip down dangerous paths, and keeps a close eye on Wanda’s ring covered fingers.
“Dude, move your arm,” Darcy says, curling her hand over his wrist.
“Sorry, I–”
“Shh, movie,” Wanda murmurs. She tucks herself into Steve’s side and he automatically wraps his arm around her to keep her close. Darcy’s eyes flick between the skein red yarn she is winding into a ball and the movie, her arm brushes his and Steve feels himself heating up at being in the middle of bed with two beautiful women. Two women that were stepping out together, and now he was in the middle of them.
Steve tries to make himself smaller, to not feel Wanda’s body pressing into his side, arm looping over his belly. He covers Wanda’s hand with his own, unsure if it’s to hold her close or stop his own thoughts from slowly slipping into the gutter. It’s not an easy task, he wasn’t the prude Natasha and Tony seemed to think he was, the USO tour had been an education and what he didn’t learn at the hands of the girls there he figured out with Peggy in the few quiet moments they had together in the middle of the war.
The movie catches his attention, he had a soft spot for animation, after all, and soon his body relaxes back into the cushion. He lets the story flood his mind with imagery, making note here and there to sketch his own version of Amalthea and Molly Grue. Steve’s heartbeat and breathing slowly match up with Wanda and Darcy’s. A warmth settles in his chest, settles the butterflies that swirl in his belly.
Somewhere along the way his eyes well, tears catching in his eyelashes. His breath catches in his throat, heart clenching tight in his chest. “It’s okay, this gets me everytime too,” Darcy whispers into his ear. Her voice is wet with tears and she nuzzles his shoulder, breasts pressing into his arm. Wanda laces her fingers with his, rings biting into his flesh. The ball of yarn Darcy was winding rolls off the bed. Darcy covers his and Wanda’s hands with her own as the credits begin to roll. He should go. Leave them alone. Tell them something. Steve holds his tongue and stays.
…I’ve grown familiar with villians that live in my head
They’ve been running for months, bouncing around the globe between friendly countries and not so friendly ones since the war between friends and breaking out of the Raft. She felt out of sync with the rest of the world more often than not. A ghost in her own life. The crackle of raw power lit her up inside, sparked at her fingertips, and turned the world red. When the energy flows through her body, into her hands, she can feel the earth beneath her feet, and the weight of the sky above. Her body tunes in with the world around her, with the heroes at her side, and Steve, the man that she’s been gravitating around like a satellite in orbit.
So while doing some pirate research for the play I’m writing I stumbled upon one of the most amazing things I’ve ever read. In the 5th century A.D. there was a Scandinavian princess called Alwilda who’s father tried to set her up to marry Alf, the Prince of Denmark. Alwilda wasn’t cool with this so she and some female companions dressed as men, stole a ship, and sailed away. Eventually they met a company of pirates who were in need of a new captain and they were so captivated by her that they elected her as their new leader. Her crew became so infamous that Prince Alf was sent out to stop them. When their ships met he took Alwilda prisoner and she was so impressed by Alf’s skill that she agreed to marry him after all and eventually became the Queen of Denmark.
Medievalist here for triumphant fact-checking: this story is, if not true, at least true according to the history of the Danes (Gesta Danorum) written in the 12th century by Saxo Grammaticus. You can read his account of Alwilda’s story in the original Latin here, or in English translation here. Highlights include:
She exchanged woman’s for man’s attire, and, no longer the most modest of maidens, began the life of a warlike rover. Enrolling in her service many maidens who were of the same mind, she happened to come to a spot where a band of rovers were lamenting the death of their captain, who had been lost in war; they made her their rover captain.
I love the implication that there were lots of Danish maidens just WAITING for the opportunity of a life of piracy…
germansingergirl
kaledo-art
gummygunk
dailybridgerton
stormborns
turnnoffyourmind
tangentwithtanner
