Fic for @iamteambucky
Here’s my fic for the @beefybuckyswap! @iamteambucky requested Steve/Bucky/Darcy, and I tried to do it justice. My love for early women’s health history might have snuck in too. I hope you like it!
“That's the problem with sold-state drives,” Darcy explained. “They don't heat up, and my laptop no longer doubles as a hot-water bottle.”
“Yeah, wow, living in the future really sucks,” Bucky deadpanned. “Here's my Advil.” He handed over the little bottle and a glass of water, and watched Darcy suck them both down. “You want an actual hot water bottle?”
“Nah.” Darcy slumped back on the sofa and closed her eyes. “You free to hang out?”
“I think I can manage that. You need some petting?” Bucky teased, poised and ready to cuddle.
“Eurgh. With your eyes,” she commanded, and laughed when he made a sad noise. “Okay, fine. Sit here and I'll use you as a pillow.”
She sat up for a moment while Bucky took his spot, and then took great joy in snuggling down on his thighs. They were very, very nice pillows.
“You're still nicer to deal with than Steve,” Bucky assured her.
“...that's not really a high bar there, kiddo,” she said, cracking one eye and peering up him.
Bucky shrugged. “I take what I can get in this world.”
Darcy grinned at him, and settled back on the sofa. At least her boys had had the sense to get nice furniture. And nice legs.
Admittedly, they'd only been her boys for about a month now. She'd met Steve before, mostly noticing him as an attractive and infinitely sad lump of supersoldier. He was nice enough, she supposed. And she'd heard that Bucky had been found, and come home with Steve, and was adjusting.
Thor had dragged her along to Tony's 'because I want to' party and she'd gone with great huffs and sighs. Everyone was fine. They were fine. But a gal could only take so much super-powered white-boy angst, before needing to find Nat and go into a corner to do shots.
She had been rescued this time not by Nat, but by first an utterly transformed Steve – he was glowing. He was alive, and funny, and dweeby in a charming sort of way. And he'd introduced her to Bucky, who was quiet and charming and made the mistake of asking her what she did.
(Also he was gorgeous and his bicep was the size of her head and he was gorgeous. Exactly the way she liked her men. He'd turned around at one point, his waist twisting and hips moving into relief and her mouth had gone dry.)
“Really?” she had wound up saying about sixteen times that night. “You want to know this detail? Okay, man, your funeral.” And she'd explained some weird aspect of her research or another, or told him how they knew things, or told him her instagram feed so he could add her, because this was the life of someone who interned for someone who dated a sorta-kinda god who was definitely a superhero.
She and Bucky had hit it off that night, and Steve, popping in and out of the conversation, had been sweet and funny and deliciously sarcastic. So had Bucky, for that matter. And, somehow or other, her science talk and her instagram feed and her promise to show Bucky where to get coffee that didn't involve standing in line while someone fretted about coconut milk had landed them...here.
Well, had landed them in bed first. Her and her boys. There was nothing super-serious yet, and Darcy was one million percent okay with that. The feelings between Steve and Bucky were super-serious enough for about six people, and she was just a gal trying to make it in the big city, as she often told them. Dinner and drinks and some heart- and other things- pounding sex was about all she wanted.
She reminded herself of this, having found herself practically in Bucky's lap, on their sofa in the Tower, waiting for the Advil to work and for her back and belly to stop aching quite so horribly.
“What did women do about this shit?” she asked, desperate for distraction. The usual wasn't really going to swing it that moment, even if her head was like two inches from what she knew was a very, let's say, proportional dick. “When you were little, I mean.” Something occurred to her. “Did you know what women did?”
Bucky laughed out loud. “Not when I was really little. But I've got – I had – sisters.” he corrected himself and Darcy pushed herself up to hug him because Christ that was a horrible sentence to say.
“You have,” she informed him, and went in for another hug. Some things were way, way more important than not really wanting to be touched.
“Lie back down,” he said, and pushed her gently into his lap. “Right. Yeah, so, Mom was relatively young, plus three sisters, plus, I mean, everybody and their brother lived on top of each other.” Bucky smiled down at her. “It sucked, if you were wondering. My littlest sister, she was like you. Every time of her month was hard on her, poor thing. Hot water bottles, Midol, you name it.”
Darcy brightened. “You had Midol?”
“Uh huh. Kinda cool that's still around,” Bucky said. “But for what they actually did...” He shrugged. “Mom made pads out of rags, I remember watching her sew them. And I had a girlfriend who did the same, and made a kind of belt that she'd pin them to.”
Darcy nodded, relaxing a little at his soft, rough voice. “Yeah, I read about them. Before pads were sticky.”
“Uh huh.” Bucky touched her hair, but no further, because he was a mensch like that. “My sisters saved up and bought pads though – I remember the old Kotex boxes, even though they tried to hide them.”
“No tampons?” Darcy asked.
“Not that I knew of,” Bucky admitted. “Ask Steve, his mom was a nurse, she'd know more.”
Perfectly on cue, they heard the front door open, and Steve appeared a few minutes later, having already shed his jacket and shoes. He kissed them each hello, and settled on the floor by Darcy's waist, leaning in to give her side a little kiss. It was far more charming than it had any right to be.
“Speak of the devil,” Bucky said. “She was asking about period stuff, back when we were young. Were tampons around?”
“Uh huh. Not popular, though,” Steve confirmed. “Mom once brought some home for a neighbor girl. You having a rough time, honey?”
Darcy shrugged. The Advil was starting to work, although she still felt pretty gross.
“Yeah, it blows. I remember Edith, Bucky's little sister. Every month, just absolutely miserable,” Steve reminisced.
Bucky's smile could light a room. “Edith, yeah. Hey, I remembered right.”
Darcy head-butted his belly. “'Course you did.” She gave a cautious stretch. “Sorry I'm sucky, guys.”
“Whatever, this one's always sucky,” Steve advised her, nodding towards Bucky.
“He wishes.”
Darcy giggled, and settled back to listen to them bitch each other out, happy to rest in Bucky's lap, even happy when he forgot and draped an arm over her chest. It was a nice weight, anyway, and she felt...a part of things.
Yeah, she could deal with that.
