Chapter Text
If you happened to be a nosy person with access to a file containing the complete life story of Darcy Lewis, you would probably assume that the worst thing that had ever happened to her in twenty-eight years of life was the whole fake soulmate thing back in college. That’s if you leave aside getting attacked by dark elves and Asgardian murderbots; both of those things were scarybad, but they hadn’t just happened to her.
That’s not the way Darcy sees it, however. Before she goes to work at Stark Tower, whenever she tries to put her finger on the moment that things started going seriously wrong in her life, she always comes back to the Science Tragedy she suffered in high school.
Obviously, the soulmate thing was bad. Like, deeply traumatizing and whatever. But it was eight years ago, and she’s mostly over it by now. She never believed in all that destined-by-fate romantic crap anyway. Darcy is a strong independent singleton who don’t need no soulmate, and anyway, what did Disney know about about happily ever after: their theme parks are havens for serial killers, if the internet is to be believed.
Anyway, in the really good stories, you always fall in love with your soulmate before you even know they’re your soulmate. And if you’re already in love, who cares whose Words you were born with?
*
For the longest time, no one knew that, when Darcy was a kid, she wanted to be a scientist.
She blames TV for fostering her delusions of grandeur. Between Mr. Wizard and 3-2-1- Contact and that one weird show on her local public access station about time-traveling teenagers, she grew up with the idea that all you needed to break into STEM fields was a healthy curiosity and a plentiful supply of baking soda and aluminum foil.
In elementary school, science was all about turning celery sticks blue with food coloring and growing rock crystals from sugar water and building self-contained ecosystems in terrariums. In elementary school, science was accessible.
Everything changed in high school, and not for the reasons everyone assumes. Yes, sexism is a problem in math and science classes. Girls aren’t encouraged to do their best. They don’t raise their hands as often as the boys, and when they do, their teachers don’t call on them.
That is a real thing and a real problem. It just wasn’t Darcy’s problem.
The problem was that her ninth grade bio teacher was one year away from retirement and had basically lost the will to live, much less fight with the school board over the fact that his classroom didn’t have textbooks, or a single functioning microscope. The problem was that her school didn’t even have a chemistry teacher, just a rotating schedule of substitutes who passed out worksheets and didn’t even collect them at the end of class. The problem was that the only other science options at her shitty school were Animal Behavior (“Go home and teach your cat to come running when it hears the can opener.”) and Outdoor Science (“Here’s a hall pass. Go outside, pick some leaves, look ‘em up, try to figure out what kind of tree they came from.”)
Before Darcy starts working at Stark Tower, the only person she ever explains the full scope of the Science Tragedy to is Jane, and that’s because Darcy really, really wants that internship. It’s right after the whole fake soulmate debacle, and she’s starting to feel like she’s lost pieces of herself that she’s never going to get back. Maybe, she thinks, it will help if she can just live in the desert for a few months with a couple of astrophysicists, learning cool shit about stars and outer space.
Some people would probably say it was tacky of her to turn her interview with Jane into an episode of Sad Backstory Hour just to get a job, but Darcy’s thinking realistically: there is nothing in her coursework or on her resumé that makes her a viable candidate for an internship with an astrophysicist, and the fact is, she doesn’t really have a lot of shame when it comes to pursuing things she wants.
Anyway, it totally works. By the end of the interview, Jane’s eyes are huge and misty; she stands up, gives Darcy a tight, awkward hug, and starts teaching her how the equipment works.
Darcy never actually intended to make a complete career switch from political science to science-adjacent administrative support, but the thing was, Jane needed her. Jane didn’t seem to realize she needed her; Jane hardly seemed to notice that she was around most of the time. But Darcy didn’t mind that. She liked their relationship. She was more or less alone in the world by that point, her mom having died a few months after Darcy left for college, and besides, Jane’s work was legit changing the world. That was the kind of thing Darcy had always wanted to be a part of; that was why she’d wanted to be a scientist in the first place.
So after her internship is over, she finishes up her last nine credits long distance from London, and shortly after she graduates, Jane absentmindedly agrees that Darcy can come with her to Manhattan. Working for Stark Industries means never having to apply for a grant again, and as the person who has to copyedit Jane’s grant applications (which is a nice way of saying translate them from abstract scientific jargon to concrete language that actually matches the terms of the grant), Darcy is all about that. She’s also about getting paid a real salary, finally.
She is slightly less about the fact that shortly after they pick up and haul their crap to Manhattan, Jane goes on an extended sabbatical to Asgard with her hunk-of-burning-Nordic-deity, and Darcy is emphatically not invited. But, speaking of people who need her, by that point she’s met Bruce Banner, and expanding the terms of her job description from “assisting Jane” to “assisting needy scientists in the vicinity of Jane” just feels like the natural career move.
Darcy and Bruce get along like a house on fire, which is not necessarily something that anyone would have predicted happening, but that’s because very few people get over themselves long enough to actually talk to Bruce. Otherwise, they would know that under the shy, self-effacing exterior, he has a sly, sarcastic sense of humor that complements hers so perfectly that if it weren’t for the little matter of their Words, Darcy would have assumed they were destined by fate to be together.
Even before Jane leaves, Bruce divides his time between her physics lab and Tony Stark’s workshop. He works alongside Jane because their fields actually overlap a bit; he works with Tony, whom Darcy has yet to meet, because Tony is his best friend, and weirdly needy, and also really possessive of Bruce’s time.
Bruce could totally have his own lab, but here’s another thing most people don’t bother to find out about him: he actually hates being alone. He’s gotten used to it over the years, but now that he has the option of human company, he really prefers it. Darcy is just grateful, because otherwise, he probably wouldn’t be so amenable to keeping her on as an assistant after Jane takes off; she’s not under any illusions that she actually has a lot to contribute to his work otherwise, although the look of astonished wonder on Bruce’s face when she overhauls his filing system does a lot for her self-worth.
By the time Darcy has been working at Stark Tower for two months, she and Bruce are legit friends, which is how he ends up being the second person who gets to hear the epic tale of Darcy’s Science Tragedy. He’s not really the type to chat while he’s working, but there’s always downtime in the lab while the machines are doing their thing, and one day he admits to being really curious about how Darcy had ended up…doing what she does.
Bruce kind of has a doctorate in Sad Backstory, which makes it pretty easy to talk to him about this kind of thing, so Darcy tells him the whole story. She tells him about her parents, and about the kind of school she went to. She skips the fake soulmate thing (Bruce’s soulmate is somewhere in Virginia having babies with another man, and she doesn’t want to make him broody), but she goes into dramatic detail about the moment in ninth grade when realized that reading all the free articles on the Scientific American website was never going to make up for her school not having a single properly outfitted lab, but that she could totally download Das Kapital and Wealth of Nations for free online.
A kid from a shitty school can get themselves up to speed in the humanities on their own, if they’re dedicated, she explains, while Bruce looks at her with his sad, serious little face. But it just doesn’t work like that in the sciences. You need stuff to do science, and there’s a limit to how much you can do with baking soda.
Yet another thing about Bruce Banner that most people don’t know is that he gets really worked up about stuff like the state of the American school system, and all children having the right to an equal education. And he is exactly the kind of massive nerd who thinks it’s incredibly heartwarming that little Darcy read her library’s one tattered copy of Pale Blue Dot so many times that an exasperated librarian finally told her not to bother returning it.
(Darcy still has that copy. The cover is held on with rubber bands, and it is one of her most cherished possessions.)
The way Bruce seems to see it, the one thing he’d had going for him as a kid was access to an excellent education. Apparently, when your father has a Ph.D., going to college is something you can take for granted—even if your father is, in every other way, a massive jackhole.
Afterwards, Bruce starts taking the time to explain his projects to her at a level of detail Darcy can mostly understand. It’s incredibly sweet, and it makes Darcy feel a little like, maybe, Science Tragedy or not, her life hasn’t taken such a wrong turn after all.
Then she meets Tony Stark.
*
It was inevitable that Darcy would meet Tony Stark eventually. She works in his Tower, in one of his labs, with his best friend. She hasn’t tried seeking him out—the man has a reputation, and she’s seen what Bruce looks like when he staggers into the lab after a few hours under Tony’s thumb; Stark is a hot mess, and he spreads it around—but she’s more than a little curious what he’s like in real life. He’s hot, after all, and a superhero, and he is responsible for the fact that Darcy earns a real paycheck now, so all things considered, she’s pre-disposed to like him.
But then their first encounter goes something like this:
It’s month two of Jane’s Asgardian not-honeymoon, and Darcy is looking forward to a quiet day of hanging with Bruce, doing his paperwork, fielding the requests he gets for interviews and appearances, filling orders for replacement equipment, and sorting through emails from the many, many scientists around the world who are either hot to work with him, hot to get their hands on the Hulk, or hot to disprove his theories. She’s even brought him coffee. Bruce gets a little uncomfortable when she does that, because he’s not used to people being nice to him and he’s afraid she’ll feel demeaned or whatever, but Darcy likes coffee; Darcy stops at the Starbucks in the lobby on her way in every morning to get coffee for herself; getting coffee for Bruce at the same time isn’t a problem. Unlike Jane, Bruce doesn’t abuse his caffeine privileges.
Darcy hears an unfamiliar voice in the lab when she stops in the doorway to hang up her hat and coat, and when she turns around, she sees Bruce huddled behind his desk, his shoulders up around his ears, while Tony Stark perches on the table facing him, flipping a stylus from hand to hand.
The bits of conversation she overhears as she approaches, coffee in hand, go a long way towards explaining why Bruce looks so hunted.
“I’m just saying, this torch you’re carrying, it’s gonna burn you, my friend.” Tony jabs Bruce’s arm with the stylus. “Live a little. You gotta put yourself out there, meet new people.”
One of Darcy’s expert skills includes running interference for friends who are trapped in awkward social situations, so she walks right up to Bruce with a big smile that pointedly excludes the man next to him.
“What’s the story, morning glory,” she says lightly. “Cinnamon latte today. Don’t make that face, it’s delish.”
Bruce looks relieved to see her, and he’s just opening his mouth to thank her when Tony interrupts.
“Now that is what I’m talking about.” Darcy turns, just in time to see Tony hop down from the table and walk around her in a circle. His eyes wander from her neckline (which is not that low) to her ass (which is—it’s just her ass, okay, she’s wearing jeans. Normal ones, they’re not even that tight.)
Tony ends up standing behind her, so he can’t see the look on her face, but Bruce does, and his expression of relief turns a little frozen.
“She’s totally your type too, right?” says Tony—and his hand comes to settle on Darcy’s shoulder, like he’s presenting her to Bruce. “With the eyes and the…”
Darcy can’t see what sort of gesture he’s making, but she doesn’t have to; she can guess.
Bruce’s frozen expression converts to one of intense suffering, which is the only reason Darcy doesn’t start looking for ways to set the lab on fire. Instead, she turns around until she’s looking Tony in the eye. He’s beaming so hard that it distorts the line of his goatee, and if it weren’t for the fact that she really likes cinnamon lattes, he would be wearing hers right now.
“Bruce,” she says, not taking her eyes off Tony. “Coffee.” She thrusts the cup behind her.
The cup is removed from her hands. She holds Tony’s gaze a second longer; his eyes have gone a little wide, like he’s confused what he’s done to merit the palpable waves of hostility she’s radiating. Then she turns, deliberately giving him her back.
Bruce’s eyes are soft and apologetic, and she gives him a small smile before stalking over to the desk she’s appropriated on the other side of the lab.
The thing is, they could have been fine after that. Darcy is, unfortunately, used to having her body appraised by men she’s just met; it’s a douchetastic move, but under normal circumstances she would just wait for the opportune moment to replace Tony’s beard wax with Nair or something, and they’d be even. Problem solved.
Except that the situation quickly escalates past the point where Nair-related reparations are possible, because Tony just. Keeps. Talking.
“See, Bruce?” Tony’s voice isn’t nearly as low-pitched as he seems to think it is; she can hear him even over the work-appropriate volume level of her email-sorting playlist. “She smiled at you, brought you caffeine. She’s clearly into you.”
Darcy wonders exactly what kind of dating experience Tony Stark has had that he thinks coffee and smiling are unequivocal signs of interest. He’s not wrong that she likes Bruce, of course, but there are steps between liking someone and wanting them to jump your bones.
She suspects that Bruce is trying to explain this very thing to him, based on the terse, muttered replies he’s making. Darcy can’t hear those, because Bruce actually knows how to keep a private conversation private.
“Well, you obviously like her,” Tony snorts. “You’d never let some random intern put her hands all over your research if she didn’t look like that.”
Darcy has shoved back from her desk and is on her feet before she’s even conscious of having moved. A heavy silence settles over the lab, but she doesn’t turn around. Summoning every scrap of dignity and composure she possesses, she picks up her purse, pivots on the heel of her boot, and stalks out of the lab, because at that point, the only alternative is to set Tony Stark on fire.
She ends up crying in the stairwell for half an hour before texting Bruce about a fake plumbing emergency back at the walk-in closet she rents from two lawyers and a busker, and going home early.
*
The problem, Darcy explains to herself, fuming in her seat on the city bus, isn’t that Tony was teasing Bruce about her. There is nothing insulting about the suggestion that Bruce might be into her or vice versa. Hell, she would totally have asked Bruce out by now, if it weren’t for…reasons that definitely have nothing to do with her Words being an illegible stain on her inner forearm.
It’s not even about Tony’s gross, objectifying comments. It’s about the fact that Tony as good as said that the only reason a serious scientist would let her work for them was because she had a nice pair of tits.
Darcy is aware that this is a sore spot for her in a way that Tony couldn’t possibly know about, and therefore he’s not completely responsible for how upset she is right now. But it was still a callous, sexist, misogynistic thing to say about anyone. Which is why she ignores the email Tony sends her, apologizing, about an hour after she leaves the Tower.
She ignores the next two as well. And the three after that. The man is dating Pepper Potts, right? Let her give Tony his much-needed crash course in Feminism 101. As for Darcy, she’ll accept Tony’s apology when he figures out what it is he should actually be apologizing for (right now he’s stuck on the Bruce thing. Which, again, Darcy doesn’t care about.)
Darcy doesn’t have much of a life outside of work. When she first got to Manhattan she kind of resented the fact that Jane got to live rent-free in Stark Tower, while Darcy was stuck trying to make a much smaller salary stretch to include the cost of rent, transportation, and student loan repayments. Now she’s grateful for it; if she didn’t have to trek to and from her closet every day, she would literally never see the sun. (Not that there’s ever sun in Manhattan anyway, with all the buildings.) Her roommates are never home, except for the busker, who is always home, and who Darcy suspects of going through her stuff in search of money or weed or maybe a sense of purpose in life. She doesn’t go out on the weekends, except to get groceries from the corner store. Once or twice a month she’ll make herself see a movie, but the fact is, when she thinks of relaxing on her own, she immediately thinks of lying on a comfortable flat surface with her phone or laptop, watching episodes of Cosmos, or reading Tumblr.
Jane was the same way, and if Bruce ever leaves the Tower, she has yet to catch him doing it. Darcy’s not the least social person she knows, but she kind of thinks she’s the one who minds her lack of social life the most.
Normally, she doesn’t even mind that badly. But sometimes—like when Tony Stark has just implied that her professional qualifications can be summarized by her dress measurements—she could really do with a distraction, or someone to talk to.
She’s used to being on her own, but she could strongly do without all this self-pitying loneliness.
*
When Darcy gets to work the next morning, Bruce is waiting for her.
No sooner has she walked through the door than he’s crossing the room to hug her, which nearly gives her a heart attack.
“Oh my god, are you dying?” she says, as best she can with her face pressed against his shoulder. “Wait—holy shit, is it Jane, did she—”
“No one’s dying,” Bruce tuts, and lets her go. His hand lingers on her shoulder. “I just wanted to do that. Honestly, I was a little afraid you might have quit.”
“Dude, no way. I told you, I had a plumbing emergency.” It wasn’t a lie; her eyes were leaking all day.
The corner of Bruce’s mouth tips up. “Right. Come sit down, I want to talk to you about something.”
Bruce leads her over to her desk, where there is a stack of books that weren’t there yesterday. All of them are brand new high school level science textbooks: biology, chemistry, and physics.
Darcy looks at Bruce, confused. His smile is shy and uncertain.
“I thought, if you wanted, we could get you caught up,” he says. “You’re more than smart enough to get a handle on the introductory level material just by reading these on your own, and I’ll help you with the lab components. When you’re done, we can move to more advanced material. By the end of the year, you could be sufficiently caught up to start an undergraduate degree, if you wanted. Or you could keep studying with me, and gradually you could take on a more active role here in the lab. With all the practical experience you have already, you could be a qualified lab tech in hardly any time.”
Darcy has never been this stunned in her life. (Well, once or twice maybe—getting attacked by an Asgardian murderbot had been pretty stunning—but never in a good way.)
Unable to look at Bruce directly, she runs a hand over the pristine cover and uncracked spine of the introductory physics textbook. “I don’t think I have enough math for this,” she says, because she rocked Algebra II, but then she graduated.
“Hmm.” Bruce frowns a little and makes a note on his tablet. “We’ll get to the math. Start with biology and chemistry. I mean…” he hesitates. “You don’t have to do any of this. This isn’t about the work you do here. You’re an excellent assistant already.”
He doesn’t mention Tony, but Darcy knows he’s thinking about it. You’d never let some random intern put her hands all over your research if she didn’t look like that.
“I want to. I do. This is…” Darcy swallows, hard, and to her horror, tears well up in her eyes.
This is easily the most generous, thoughtful thing anyone has ever done for her, and if she and Bruce are friends for the rest of their lives she doesn’t know how she’ll ever pay him back.
“How are you single, anyway?” she says, sort of accusingly.
Bruce laughs, surprised. “I think you’re overestimating how appealing most people find me when I’m offering to tutor them in science.”
“I’m not estimating that. I’m estimating your big, squishy heart.” She gives him a watery smile. “Thanks.”
She ends up hugging him again. It’s less startling the second time.