Darcy's never been too excited about being born on the Fourth of July.

Steve is not ninety-four years old; he's barely twenty-seven and he has no idea what he's doing. It's a good thing he's not the only one.

Darcy instructs Steve in the finer points of safer sex. The conversation doesn't go exactly the way she expected.

"Actually, you know, I get it. Rogers would be an excellent MARRY choice. You know that he'd never leave the toilet seat up, would never drink the last of the milk, and would clean the rain gutters without prompting," Darcy says. She's never really considered Steve as anything other than Captain America who is impossibly unapproachable; weirdly enough, the things she finds intimidating about him as a person oddly work for her in a domestic setting. "Ugh, plus you just KNOW Barton would be the type of fucker that would eat the last oreo and then shove the empty box back into the cupboard." "So what's your list then, Darcy?" Jane asks, turning back to look at the mold, which has done exactly fuck all in the last half-hour. "Don't rush me! I need to make an informed, calculated choice." Darcy looks down at her pad, then back up at Natasha. She purses her lips in thought. "You've fucked Barnes, right? How dexterous is that metal hand?" -- The ladies of SHIELD play a mass game of MARRY FUCK KILL, Avengers edition. Wherein everyone marries Steve, kills Tony, Jane betrays science and Darcy hypothetically turns Thor into a llama.

Natasha becomes an internet phenomenon. It's nothing that she was ever trained for.

They’re nursing the first round of beers when Clint says, “Whoa,” in an awed tone. When Steve turns to face him, Clint’s got almost comically large eyes which seem to be darting between Steve, Natasha, and something over Steve’s shoulder. “Is that Lewis with Henry from Accounting?” Sure enough, when Steve darts a look, trying for casual enough that if Darcy catches him looking it won’t appear like he’s creepily staring at her, she is, indeed, sitting next to Henry, her eyes focused on his face as he tells her a story that involves a lot of hand gestures. Darcy laughs suddenly and brings her bottle of beer to lips. Steve tries not to stare at her mouth and fails miserably. He and Darcy haven’t crossed paths many times over the last few months that she’s been working at the tower on various projects with Stark or SHIELD, but she reminds him a bit of the girls that used to run the show in his old neighbourhood, used to wear bright red lipstick and let the wind toss their skirts up high enough that the married, church-going women would toss them a dirty, judgemental look before corralling their children or husbands into their homes. -- Darcy has a type, and it's more Steve 1942 than Steve 2014.

The further from the ice, from waking up sixty-seven years in the future he gets, the stronger the cold black burn of drowning in the Antarctic waters preys on his mind.

"In which Darcy gets Steve's number and proceeds to drag him into the modern world via text messaging and their friends start to ship it."

Natasha becomes an internet phenomenon. It's nothing that she was ever trained for.