Dr. Darcy Lewis (drlewis) wrote in noexits, @ 2021-03-22 17:14:00 |
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Entry tags: | !log/thread/narrative, ₴ inactive: darcy lewis, → week 009 (rest) |
Who: Clint Barton & Darcy Lewis
What: New roomies
Where: Room 505, Butler Hall
When: Week 9, Monday morning
Warnings: nudity and inappropriate comments
Status: complete
Clint was glad to wake up as himself again on Monday morning. A small thing to be thankful for, but apparently something that could no longer be taken for granted- as he was pretty sure he’d just spent a week as a trust-fund frat boy in a different timeline. It was odd to him at how quickly he’d accepted timeline travel as his new normal, but he’d always been one to roll with the punches.
His eyes fluttered open to a sight that was… slightly off. He couldn’t quite put his finger on it, but there was something subtly different about the room. This was not good. Cautiously he reached one hand out, hoping to feel the reassuring texture of sheets or a comforter…
Oh no. If previous Mondays were anything to go by, he’d have been returned to his original state of arrival- which meant he was once again pantless, and this time without even the saving grace of a sheet between him and…
Oh No. Did he have a roommate? It stood to reason that if he’d switched rooms that he might once again be sharing the room with someone else. This was going to get real awkward real quick. He groaned and rolled over to face the wall, providing whoever was in the room with him a lovely view of his ass. Better than the alternative?
----
When Darcy woke, it took her a good minute or two to figure out why she was so hot. Apparently, she was in her dorm room and back in the same clothing she’d first arrived wearing, which meant she was bundled up in her coat, scarf, and hat, on top of her regular clothes. She heard a groan and assumed it was Ron, so didn’t really pay attention as she stood up and started stripping off her outer layers.
“Okay, is this going to be a weekly thing, because it’s going to be really annoying if it is,” she said, tossing her discarded garments on her bed and turning to look at the person in the other bed. Who was most definitely not Ron. “Huh. The view is worth it though.”
No, she had no idea whose backside she was looking at. It didn’t matter. She recognized a nice one when she saw it.
***
If it had been possible to wither up and die from shame, Clint would have done so. The moment the other voice started speaking, he realized two very important things:
He was sharing the room with a very unfortunate woman.
There was no longer any hope of sneakily hunting down clothes and dressing before she noticed.
Damn.
“Err, hello.” He said awkwardly, addressing the wall and blushing furiously. “I don’t suppose you’ve seen my pants, have you?”
----
“There’s a pair of jeans tossed over the desk chair,” Darcy said, glancing around for a moment at the question. “So assuming those are yours, yes, I have.”
She knew perfectly well that he would want her to grab them and give them to him and that she should do that and also step out of the room to give him time to put them on. She didn’t really want to though because if she had to wake up in an uncomfortable dorm room bundled up for a New Jersey winter, then she deserved a treat.
Still, they were going to be stuck living together for however long, so she figured she should be nice. “I can grab them for you,” she offered. “Or I can just step out and let you get dressed.”
***
Oh thank God, his pants hadn’t mysteriously vanished like his former dorm room. There was that going for him at least. Whatever mysterious force was manipulating his life these days had been kind in providing him pants, yet unspeakably cruel in putting them far enough out of reach that he’d have to flash his poor roommate.
“If you’d just gimme a sex-”
Dammit.
“...sec, I’ll be fit for human company shortly.” Fantastic introduction Clint, real Tony Stark caliber level wittiness there.
***
Darcy didn’t even try to hold back the peals of laughter at his verbal slip. “Hey, I’d be happy to give you either. Or both. Though I’d like to know your name first,” she said. “I’m Darcy.” His voice sounded vaguely familiar, but she wasn’t sure why. It was entirely possible this was someone she’d met during her short time here and just didn’t recognize from the bare ass.
“I’ll go peek in the hall and see if there’s anything interesting going on,” she said.
***
“Appreciated.” Clint mumbled, risking a glance over his shoulder at Darcy’s retreating form. She looked familiar, but he couldn’t place her. Maybe he’d run into her on campus during that weird parallel week, or maybe she was from New York and his previous life before all this timeline-hopping nonsense. It was difficult to tell when his brain just kept blaring the words idiot, idiot like a very unhelpful fire alarm.
Once he heard the door close, he hopped out of bed and made a beeline for his pants which were, as Darcy said, draped over the desk chair. He located underwear a moment later and slipped them on, then wiggled into his jeans. He took a moment to take a deep, cleansing breath, then walked over to the door to let Darcy back in.
“Hi.” He said as he opened the door. “I’m Clint. Nice to officially meet you.”
***
The hall was empty, so Darcy was glad it didn’t take him long to open the door. When he did, she grinned. “The one and only Hawkeye,” she said. “The photos in your SHIELD file did not do you justice.” She had no idea if he actually knew who she was, though he suspected he’d at least heard her name from Thor once or twice. Back before Thor totally ditched them.
She walked back into the room and went to her bed, shoving her discarded coat and accessories to the foot of the bed so she could sit down. “Darcy Lewis,” she said. “Not sure if you’ve heard of me.”
***
Clint thought for a moment, racking his brain for the name until it clicked into place. “Please don’t taser me, the nudity was unplanned.” he promised, holding up his hands in what he hoped was a please-do-not-taser fashion. “Thor seemed to think pretty highly of you.”
He crossed the small room and sat down on his own bed, looking over at Darcy. “So… is it just me, or did we just spend a week in an oddly similar but not quite version of this campus?” He really hoped it wasn’t just him.
“I’ve been here for about two months, and while we’ve visited different worlds somehow” he punctuated this with a shrug, “this is the first time I feel like I was different.”
***
“Why would I taser you? I told you I enjoyed the view,” Darcy said. She was pleased that Thor had spoken highly of her though, despite their inauspicious meeting. “It’s been a long time since I saw Thor. I actually got my own PhD and was doing some consulting work for SWORD when I ended up here. Did you go through the blip?”
She knew that Bruce and Tony hadn’t and the whole timeline thing gave her a headache if she thought about it too much.
“And no, not just you. I was a professor who was sleeping with a student so, that really sucked,” she said, scrunching her nose in distaste. “I only got here a few days before that though. When everyone’s reflections were talking to them.” Luckily, she’d been spared that particular bit of insanity.
***
“Regardless, it’s not the first impression I like to have on people.” Clint said. He generally tried not to make flashing his roommates a habit- but apparently that was a thing he did now. Gross.
“I don’t remember going through a blip.” He said, choosing to answer her question instead of further dwelling on his unintentional pervitude. There hadn’t been anything strange about the day he’d ended up at the university, except for the moment when he was no longer in his New York City brownstone about to take a shower and was instead naked in a dorm room in some sort of weird void-thingy.
“Oh yeah, the mirrors.” He’d almost forgotten that he’d spent several days trapped on the wrong side of his reflection. “That was a fun time.” He looked over at Darcy. “Did you have a chance to talk to any of the more science-y types before the campus… uh, exploded?”
***
Darcy cocked her head slightly to one side when he said he didn’t remember the blip. “Huh, so, what’s the last big thing you do remember happening? The Sokovia Accords? Uh… actually, what year was it? That’s probably an easier question. For me, it was 2023.”
In response to his question, she shook her head. “No, I didn’t really get to talk to too many people,” she said. “Though I have a few people I’d like to reach out to.” Mainly, all the ones who’d been working on that space time project in the other Derleth.
“And, yeah, uh, the campus did explode. In fact, I was pretty sure I was a goner. So how is that possible?” The more she thought about any of this, the bigger her headache got. “Please tell me there is coffee somewhere.”
***
Clint nodded, looking thoughtful. “Last I remember, everyone was returning after the snap.” He pursed his lips. “Was that 2023? Time is a little fuzzy.”
He scratched his head and considered her next question. “Well. The way it happens for me is that every week, I wake up again in the same exact condition I was in when I first arrived. Awkwardly, that means that I’ll probably be sans pants quite frequently, so apologies for that. But whatever weird anomaly we’re in now resets us completely- even if we die.”
Instead of responding to her question about coffee, he visibly brightened. “Oh, we’re going to get along just fine. I usually end up making coffee for the whole campus in the mornings- they’ve got a few of the industrial sized coffeemakers in the cafeteria. Come on, I’ll fix you up.”
***
So he did remember the blip, he just called it something different. Darcy supposed that made sense. “Yeah, okay, so we’re from roughly the same point in time then,” she said. “That’s good. I know Tony and Bruce are both way behind so I have to be careful what I say around them.” She didn’t want to accidentally tell them their futures. Especially Tony.
She grinned when he offered coffee. “So every week I get to wake up to a great view and you make coffee? Oh, this is going to be fantastic.”
***
Clint nodded in acknowledgement. “Yeah, they’re definitely from either earlier in my timeline, or a different timeline completely.” He shrugged. He was not a Science Guy, and he knew it. “And it’s a pity, because I think we could really use their brains to figure this nonsense out.”
He pondered this for a moment more as he got up and started looking for a shirt. He found one that passed the sniff test and pulled it on before turning back to Darcy. “But first, caffeine.”
***