Work Text:
Darcy huffed as she sat on the common room couch. “Look at this, Jane, they’re calling me the most useless person at the Avengers tower!” She threw her handful of gossip magazines down on the coffee table.
A voice that was decidedly not Jane’s responded to her. “Why are you reading things written by idiots?”
She looked up to see Bucky Barnes, ex-assassin supersoldier extraordinaire, peering curiously at the magazines.
Bucky had become a familiar face around the tower in recent months, having returned from Wakanda with his brain de-HYDRAed a while ago. He was incredibly introverted and often grumpy, but Darcy had decided they were buddies now, and so they were.
“You’re not Jane,” She said blankly.
“Not last I checked,” He agreed. “Why did you think I was?”
“No one else ever uses this common room except Thor.”
“Steve had something he wanted to talk to Thor about. They went out for a bit.”
Extremely attractive surprise guest or no, Darcy was on a crusade against slander and she would not be diverted for long. She needed to inform Bucky Barnes of this injustice. “Look at this one! They said there’s no point to me except for comic relief. Who the hell expects every human being they come across to have a point to them?!”’
Bucky tilted his head at her. The motion made his hair brush his shoulder. She wanted to run her fingers through it so bad.
“Comic relief’s not nothing, doll, lord knows we haven’t got much to laugh about these days.” He said.
“Thanks,” She muttered.
“You keep your cool in crazy situations, too. I guess these people-” He waved a hand at the magazines, “-don’t notice it because they’re comparing you to a bunch of trained fighters, politicians, soldiers and spies, but you were a young, civilian, political science graduate intern minding your business when you got sucked into the craziness, and from what I’ve heard you more than kept your head, and you’ve been keeping it since. That’s not nothing, either.” He flipped open one of the magazines and grinned. “Hey, look, they’re defending your honour,” He said, passing it to her.
The article started off with the opinion of someone who thought she was useless. What is the point of Darcy Lewis? it read. Then, about halfway through, someone else came in with a No matter what, no one in Avengers tower can be more useless than Bucky Barnes. He’s seriously only there to make Cap look good and propel his emotional development. I’ve never seen a more useless person.
“What the hell!” Darcy exclaimed. “That is so rude! What’s with these people feeling like everyone needs to have a point to them anyway? And you’re your own person. You had your youth stolen from you by a war that ended for you decades after it ended for everyone else. You have your own recovery journey to deal with, your own emotional development-”
Bucky was starting to look a little flustered, and evidently decided the solution was to turn the focus back on to Darcy.
“Oh, okay, I’m allowed to have a valid emotional depth to me but you’re not allowed to hold value because you’re cool, calm and intelligent but not constantly in the spotlight? Competence is a flaw now?”
“Speaking of competence, I’d like to see Captain America shoot a rifle like you!” A blush was rising on Bucky’s cheeks. “And between a super soldier with a shield and one with a whole metal arm, I know which one I’d rather fight, and it’s not you - not that I’d last 5 seconds in either case, but it’s the principle of the matter.”
They had both seemingly decided that the solution to accepting compliments about themselves was to pretend it wasn’t happening.
“As if I’d last 5 seconds in an astrophysics lab,” Bucky interjected, “And you’re planning to study that shit. All I can do is hit things.”
“Hey! You can strategise like it’s nobody’s business, and even when you don’t, you can follow a plan to the letter. The second half of the Avengers decide they don’t like a plan, they lose the capacity for calmness or rationality and spontaneously become the pushiest people alive, usually for the sole purpose of diving headfirst into a plan that will get them killed.”
Bucky snorted at that. “That does remind me of someone I know.”
“Yup! Just because they were out and about being flashy headless chickens while you were getting medical treatment for the mind control that the Nazis buried in your literal brain doesn’t make you lesser somehow-”
“And just because you’re funny, perky, extroverted and outgoing doesn’t mean you should be reduced to just ‘comic relief’,” Bucky said, “We’ve got a whole tower full of weirdos and freaks, there’s a lot more value than you might think in a dame who’ll include everyone and draw everyone out of their shell. People appreciate it. And I’ve seen how supportive you are to Jane. A dame like her needs someone like you around, I think she could use a little support. And if those magazines are judging you purely based on wow factor, they’re blind if they’re overlooking the fact that you’re not half bad to look at, either.” He grinned at her.
Finally too flustered to think properly at the deluge of compliments, Darcy was not to be outdone.
“Yeah? Well you’re insanely good to look at, so by that metric you should be more popular than any of the Avengers!” She said.
Bucky’s grin widened.
“I’m telling Nat you said that.”
Darcy groaned in a combination of mortification at herself and fear of Natasha and the revenge she’d exact if she were unseated as the hottest Avenger.
“Please don’t. She might kill me in my sleep.”
“How about spending your final moments among the living having dinner with me tomorrow night? You know, since I’m so nice to look at.”’
“Thought I was only ‘not half bad to look at’?” Darcy teased.
“Maybe a great deal better than not half bad.” Bucky said, looking her up and down.
“Dinner sounds great,” Darcy said, “What a pair we make. Two members of the supporting cast, daring to live our own lives.”