Chapter Text
Both of them were silent on the walk back, an awkward tension hanging in the air between them the whole time. Darcy shot occasional glances at him in the elevator ride up to the floor of R&D that Jane's lab was on, but Steve kept his gaze forward. By the time they walked through the doors Darcy was all but a nervous wreck, hands fiddling with the frayed edge of her sweater as she shuffled into the room.
Jane glanced up at them from her desk, where she was finishing off the last of the three coffees Steve had walked in with earlier. Once Darcy caught her eye, she made a beeline for the scientist as Jane grinned guiltily at her.
"Jane," Darcy whispered fiercely once she reached her. "Really? Why?"
"What do you mean?" Jane started, but gave up when she saw the look Darcy gave her. "I'm sorry! He just asked where you were and I was kind of distracted and I just... It was an accident! I was busy with... with science and, and stuff," she finished.
"Oh you were busy with science and stuff? Really, Jane?" She opened her mouth to speak, but they were both cut off by Steve, who impatiently cleared his throat. He stood by the entrance with his arms crossed, watching the two women expectantly.
"So, does someone want to explain all this?" he asked. "Darcy?" She looked away and he sighed, rubbing a hand tiredly across his face. "Are you a SHIELD agent?" he asked, sounding a bit... hurt by the thought that she could have been working for them and lying about it this whole time. "Were those some kind of aliens? Like the Chitauri?"
Darcy glanced up at him, surprised. "What? Okay no, first of all. Me? Working for SHIELD? I'm not with those Men in Black wannabes. And no," she continued. "Those weren't aliens."
"They were vampires!" Jane cut in excitedly.
"Jane!" Darcy said sharply, glaring at her boss.
"What? It's not like you're not going to tell him everything now, right?" she said defensively.
"Tell me what?" Steve asked, looking between them. "Vampires? Like Count Dracula vampires?"
"Ugh, now that guy was an asshole," Darcy muttered under her breath. "Vampire Lord my ass." She cleared her throat before speaking up to answer him. "Yeah, well not exactly. I mean they don't turn into bats and they usually don't speak in overly heavy accents, but yes, that is the general idea. Fangs, bloodsucking, stakes to the heart and all that."
He looked at her skeptically, but kept his mouth shut, waiting for her to go on.
Darcy huffed, looking distinctly uncomfortable. "It's like this. I mean, I'm kinda... I do..."
Jane rolled her eyes. "Darcy's the Slayer," she told him.
Darcy threw her hands into the air. "Please, why don't you just tell him," Darcy said, exasperated.
"You were taking too long. Just explain like you did to me."
Steve took a step toward her, bemused. "The Slayer? Is that a codename?” He frowned. “And how can vampires even be real? I thought that vampires at least were just stories, even if nothing else turned out to be."
Darcy looked at him. "After everything you've seen, is it really so hard to believe? And it's not just vampires, there are demons, witches, all kinds of spooky stuff. I'm, well, I'm called the Slayer. The Vampire Slayer. It's kind of this whole Chosen One deal. One girl in all the world yada yada, forces of darkness, etc. I basically kill the scary monsters and all the stuff that goes bump in the night," she finished in a rush.
"So you're this Chosen One," Steve said. "Like a superhero."
Darcy scoffed. "Says Captain America. I'm totally not a superhero. I'll leave the tights and capes to you and your crew. I just, uh, fight evil and stuff, but more... casually?"
"She has increased senses and abilities like nothing I'd ever seen before, well until I ran into Thor, I guess. And she has super strength," Jane added.
Steve turned to Darcy, raising an eyebrow. "So that time when you had me move around all that heavy lab equipment for you?" He asked.
"She was just being lazy," Jane said helpfully.
"Well I had to keep up appearances! Plus, it gave me a prettttty nice view," she added under her breath. Jane rolled her eyes.
"Does SHIELD know?"
"Not officially? If they do than they haven't said anything to me or the Watchers Council about it, but personally I kinda think Son of Coul suspects," she told him. "Oh and the Watchers Council is just a bunch of old English dudes who are always trying to tell me what to do."
Steve raised his brows. "So have you always been this Slayer?"
She sighed. "No, I got chosen when I was sixteen. I didn't know vampires existed either until the Council came and found me."
"That's when she got her powers," Jane said.
Steve looked over at Jane curiously. "Seems like you're pretty familiar with all this. You weren't a bit... startled when you found out?"
Darcy laughed. "Are you kidding? Jane was super happy. She immediately started bugging me about getting her a sample of vampire dust to analyze."
"Which you still haven't done, by the way."
The three of them sat around the small table towards the back of the lab, sitting on the comfy old chairs Darcy had dragged into the tower. Steve kept the questions coming for a while, and Darcy did her best to explain everything. She was a bit embarrassed by how ridiculous it all sounded out loud, but she started to look more and more relieved just to have someone else to share her secret with. It hadn't been easy for her to do so from the moment she found out. Darcy had always been very open as a child, and to suddenly take on a new life while being unable to tell a soul had been hard, sometimes unbearable. They sipped freshly made coffee out of the slightly chipped cat mugs Darcy and Jane kept in the lab, talking throughout the night.
"So?" Darcy asked, looking at Steve nervously as she fidgeted in her seat. "What do you think about... all this?"
Steve shook his head. "I think you're amazing. It's all pretty incredible really, and I don't get surprised all that much these days. 'M just glad you told me, even if you weren't planning on it in the first place."
"I'm really not supposed to tell anyone," Darcy said, shrugging her shoulders helplessly. She pointed dramatically at the scientist across the table. "Jane wasn't even supposed to know, but there was this vampire motorcycle gang that came through Puente Antiguo, and well, it kinda all came out then." Darcy shook her head at the memory. "Now that's an interesting story. But anyways, Jane and Eric are really the only people who know. And now you."
Darcy set her cat mug down, expression suddenly serious. Darcy did her best to cover everything with a joke or smile, but this wasn’t something she could just smooth over and forget about with the help of a lame one-liner. "You can't tell anyone, Steve," she said, looking at him with wide brown eyes. "Please tell me you won't tell anyone."
He met her gaze evenly. "You can trust me, Darcy."
The smile they shared then was fond, and somehow a bit more meaningful than Darcy had expected. "I know," she told him.