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gitsyp · 28 days ago

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cupcake.

Do I have time to be doing this right now? No.

Do I have 5 million other WIPs that are crying for my attention: Yes.

Did I choose to ignore them and all the other items shrieking at my from my to-do list to write this instead? Also yes.

Look. My life is kind of a suck salad right now. Please be kind.

I still haven't seen F4 yet, but I have it on good authority that my fledgling ship of Johnny/Darcy (as explored here) is still totally viable.

cupcake.

Darcy had always liked the rooftop of Avengers Tower. It lacked the flashy flair of the observation deck off the penthouse, and with three other, better-decorated balconies to choose from only a few floors down, it tended to be empty.

Back when it had been the first Avengers tower—back when Thor lived here and Jane split her time between New York and Oslo with Darcy breathlessly trying to keep up—it had been home to the greenhouses. Some full of standard variety vegetables and fruits, others a little more alien, and one specific greenhouse that was full of what Bruce liked to call “Murder Greens”.

But that was a long time ago, and any trace of greens—murderous or otherwise—had been dismantled and swept away with the rest of the greenhouse infrastructure. Now all that remained of the old roof was the water tower and a few of the stone benches where she remembered sitting to turn her face to the sun on warm summer days.

Darcy had known the greenhouses were gone long before she decided to take the elevator up. She’d known that sitting there would not feel any better or different than sitting anywhere else because the whole reason she thought to go up there had been erased years ago. She knew that. And yet, when she pushed open the door and saw the empty lot, the shock and pain that rushed through her was almost enough to send her right back down to her apartment and forget the whole, stupid idea.

But she didn’t turn around. She didn’t go back downstairs. She walked toward the eastern corner of the roof—where once upon a time, a row of magnolia trees had littered the gravel deck with their fragrant purple petals—and unfolded her blanket.

The ground was hard and colder than she had expected for the middle of September. Every spot her body connected with it—her tailbone, her shoulder blades, the back of her head—drew a quiet wince as she struggled to get comfortable. It took a minute, but she managed to settle into her position with a deep breath as she folded her hands over her diaphragm and opened her eyes to stare up at the sky.

Her mother had loved to stargaze. When Darcy was little, she remembered on a few occasions being bundled up in a heavy coat and gloves and loaded into the car in what felt like the middle of the night. Boots pulled on over her pajama pants. A knit hat pushed over her unruly hair. Her mother would put her in the backseat and then clamber into the passenger side while her father started up the car.

They’d drive for what felt like forever. Over the bridge and out of the city. Out where the stretches of dark space grew wider and wider between houses and businesses. Out, finally, where the long fingers of New York’s light pollution could not stretch and the sky opened up like an ocean of inky black, speckled with glittering stars.

She lay there for what felt like a long time, thinking about those nights. About how her parents would point out the constellations for her and tell her stories to accompany each one. About how everyone always assumed she fell in love with astrophysics after working with Jane. And it was true, Jane had taught her how beautiful the science could be. But she’d always loved the stars.

…too truly to be fearful of the night, she thought without meaning to. Immediately, she pushed away the memory of those words, lest it bring with it the avalanche of pain that waited to crush her each time anything reminded her of Jane.

She had not come up there to think about Jane, she reminded herself. She had come up there to try and feel some semblance of connection with her mother.

And if she couldn’t sit by a garden and remember her talent for making things grow, Darcy had to admit that taking a few minutes to stare up at the night sky was an equally appropriate way to honor her.

Even if she couldn’t see the stars, she knew they were there.

Just like so many other things.

Just like her mother.

Just like Jane.

Just like—

The sound of scraping gravel interrupted her thoughts like a record scratch and had her bolting to sit upright, heart racing as she turned in the direction from which it had come—

“Sorry!” Johnny exclaimed, holding up both hands. His glowing red and orange flames dissipated quickly as he took a few cautious steps toward her. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to interrupt but—”

“What are you doing up here?” Darcy demanded, realizing too late how harsh she sounded. She coughed. “I mean. Uh. What are you…”

What are you doing up here?

That was still the question she wanted to ask—she just didn’t need to sound so hostile when she asked it.

“How long have you been there?” she asked instead.

“Not long,” Johnny assured her, and waited a moment before he motioned to the sky behind him. “I was just—uh—up there,” he said hesitantly. “And I was kinda,” his hand swooped like a plane on a collision course. “Comin’ in…”

“Hot?” Darcy heard herself guess before she could stop herself.

The edge of his mouth twitched into the briefest of smiles. “I was trying to find a different way to say it,” he admitted. “But yeah. And I saw you, but it was too late to reroute, and I was going to say something, but you seemed sort of—focused,” he said, seeming to stumble over the word he wanted to use. “And I didn’t want to say anything. But then I didn’t want to…not say anything. Because that seemed…” he shook his head. “So, I just ended up standing here and not moving and that’s…” His lips tightened in a small grimace. “Not…better.”

Darcy looked at him for what felt like a long time before she closed her eyes and let out a heavy breath. “It’s fine,” she said, shaking her head. “It’s fine. Don’t worry about it. I was just going in anyway.”

She made a move to get up but stopped at the sound of Johnny’s sigh. ��Don’t,” he said as his shoulders dropped. “You weren’t just going in. You were—” he shrugged. “I don’t know. You were up here for a reason, and I interrupted, and I’m sorry. I’ll go; you stay.”

He was right, of course. She was up there for a reason. And he had interrupted. And it would be incredibly easy to let him go inside and return to her contemplation. All she had to do was nod. Or say nothing.

“You don’t have to go.” The words took her by such surprise that Darcy almost didn’t believe they’d come from her mouth.

Johnny looked like he didn’t believe it either. He recovered a little quicker, though, and raised his eyebrows in a look that was mostly cautiously hopeful and, regrettably, kind of adorable. “…Yeah?”

She wanted to smack herself just a little. Now that she’d said it, she couldn’t very well take it back. “Yeah,” she echoed. “It’s fine. Ben…mentioned you like coming up here, too, so…” she coughed, wondering why she’d felt the need to admit that. To admit that she’d talked to Ben about him at all. “There’s plenty of roof to go around.”

Johnny’s expression warmed further as he nodded and took another few steps toward her. “It’s a good roof,” he said, giving the space an appreciative look. “Lotta runway to land if I need it.”

Darcy shuffled in place and folded her legs in front of her. “See anything good?” she asked before the silence could become uncomfortable. “When you were—” she mimicked the way he’d motioned to the sky behind him. “Out?”

He moved his head back and forth for a moment like he was weighing her question. “There’s a nest of Peregrine falcons in one of the Os in the Roxxon sign.”

“Really?” she asked, her voice lifting in interest.

“Yeah,” he smiled. “I caught sight of two or three chicks before their mother got a little irritated with the attention.”

Darcy smiled. “Anything else?”

“Guy in Jersey City tried to propose with a skywriter,” he said. “But the pilot spelled it wrong.”

“No!” she let out an unnecessarily dramatic gasp. “He spelled her name wrong?”

“No,” Johnny laughed. “He spelled ‘marry’ wrong.”

“Get out.”

“One ‘r’.”

“Poor girl,” Darcy mused. “Hopefully, she has a sense of humor.”

“Nah, she hadn’t seen it yet,” he said, shaking his head. “I was right there; I fixed it for him.”

She watched as he sat down on one of the benches closest to where she’d laid out her blanket. He sat slowly, like he was waiting for her to tell him not to. “You did?”

He moved a shoulder. “I crossed it out and rewrote it.”

Darcy couldn’t help but laugh. “You crossed it out.”

“Yeah,” he smiled again. “I got a little dizzy, but it was worth it.”

She hummed in amusement. “I’m sure it was appreciated.”

The next wave of silence that lapped over them didn’t feel quite so awkward. Johnny was the one to break it this time with a quiet clearing of his throat. “Can I ask why you’re up here by yourself?”

No, she almost said reflexively. But she stopped herself, pressing her teeth into her bottom lip. “I—um—” A series of perfectly good lies perched on the tip of her tongue. I needed some air. There was an abnormal reading I wanted to check out. The AC in my apartment is broken, and there’s a nice breeze up here. “It’s my mom’s birthday today.”

Johnny blinked in surprise. “It is?”

She nodded and fought down an embarrassing lump in her throat. “Yeah,” she said, her voice suddenly hoarse. “She, um—” She coughed lightly. “She would’ve been sixty-seven.”

She looked up in time to see Johnny’s smile dim just slightly before he nodded. He waited another beat, just long enough to make her wonder if she should have just lied and saved them both from whatever awkward condolences he was about to offer. “What was she like?”

It was her turn to blink as she raised her eyes from where she’d just dropped them to the hands she was clasping uselessly in her lap. “My mom?” she asked dumbly. He nodded again. She didn’t know why it surprised her so much that he had asked, but it did. Maybe because no one ever asked that. No one ever seemed to say anything more than those banal sympathies Darcy had grown sick of even before the funeral was over. No one seemed to want to know what she was like before she was someone’s dead mother. Mostly, everyone met this news with a tight smile and a look that clearly said they wished the topic had never come up. “She was—” she had to cough again before she allowed a quiet smile to steal over her face again. “She was the best.”

“Well, she’d have to be,” Johnny said after another moment. “If you two are anything alike.”

She let the compliment settle over her like a jacket draped around her shoulders. “We were too much alike,” she agreed finally with a dry chuckle. “We used to drive each other crazy.”

“Was she a scientist too?”

“No,” she shook her head. “She was a professor. An English professor,” she added. “She worked at Cornell.”

"So, she’s where you got that big brain from?”

Darcy smiled again. “Big brain,” she agreed. “Big hair. Big attitude…”

“Big mouth.”

She opened her mouth and let out a shocked laugh. “Excuse me?”

“I’m kidding,” Johnny assured her with one of those smiles that deepened the dimples in both of his cheeks.

“No you’re not,” she muttered, shaking her head.

“No,” he agreed quietly, still smiling. “I’m not.” He waited until she’d laughed again before he asked, “What else do you usually do to celebrate her birthday?”

Darcy’s smile slipped into a thoughtful pout. “I don’t know,” she admitted. “I don’t really know why I wanted to come up here tonight. It’s not like she’d ever been here, or…” she trailed off with a shrug. “I didn’t think about it early enough to go somewhere that had any real significance. I just…”

She trailed off, not sure how she could describe the way it felt as though someone had kicked her squarely in the chest when she’d scribbled down the date on a report and realized its significance. And even if she could describe it, she wasn’t sure she wanted to. Already, the guilt from forgetting was churning her stomach. And the shock of discovering that she’d been able to forget at all felt like she’d missed a step on the way up the stairs.

Johnny’s expression had turned pensive in the moment before he held up one finger. “Can you give me…ten minutes? Fifteen at the most?”

She eyed him warily. “Why…?”

“Just...trust me,” he said as he stood up. “I’ll be right back. Don’t go anywhere,” he turned to hurry toward the door, but stopped again when he was only a few feet away and turned back with a smile. “Please.”

Darcy couldn’t help but smile back. “Okay. Ten—fifteen minutes,” she echoed, even though she was almost certain she’d wait up to thirty, if only because she was relatively comfortable, and the early fall air was smelling unexpectedly sweet.

To her surprise, Johnny returned in twelve minutes—a pillar of flames that landed a few yards from her blanket. It wasn’t until he’d extinguished himself that she saw he had not returned empty-handed.

She looked up with lifted eyebrows as he held out a white box tied with red and white striped string. “What is this?”

“Open it,” he urged, giving it a little shake before she accepted it.

Darcy set the box in front of her folded legs and pulled gently on the string until it came loose. Johnny sat down across from her as she opened the cardboard lid. She stared at the contents of the box for a long moment before she looked up. “You brought me cupcakes?”

He’d brought her good cupcakes, from the looks of it. An assortment of four flavors—red velvet stacked with white cream cheese frosting, a sinful pile of chocolate-on-chocolate, another chocolate cake with what she guessed was peanut butter frosting, and one pristine white vanilla. These cupcakes were not messing around.

Johnny smiled gently. “When I was little, Sue always used to bake a cake on our mom’s birthday,” he said quietly. “She’d light candles and say we didn’t have to sing, but we could still make a wish. She used to tell me that Mom would’ve wanted us to each have an extra wish every year.”

Darcy swallowed hard and tore her eyes away from the edible glitter clinging to the white frosting of the vanilla cupcake. “How old were you?” she asked. “When you lost your mom?”

He let out a breath that pursed his lips and puffed his cheeks slightly. “Five?” he guessed. “Maybe six? I don’t know,” he confessed after a moment. “I don’t remember that much before the accident. But people have told me that, uh,” he cleared his throat once. “That Sue’s a lot like her, so. I think I got pretty lucky, as far as big sisters go.”

Darcy smiled again and nodded. “Sue’s pretty great,” she agreed. “And I like this extra birthday cake tradition of hers.”

“Yeah?” Johnny checked with another hopeful lift of his expression.

“Yeah,” she nodded again and pushed the lid of the box open farther. “Which do you want?” When he hesitated, she let out a quiet laugh. “I’m not eating four cupcakes by myself, Johnny. That’s just sad.”

Grinning, he made a move to reach into the box before he pulled his hand back and motioned to her. “Ladies first.”

Carefully, she reached in and extracted the red velvet before she watched as he confirmed her suspicions and plucked out the double chocolate for himself.

Johnny’s blue eyes held hers for a moment longer after she’d set the box aside. “What was your mom’s name?”

She swallowed again. “Lilah.”

His smile was soft as he held his cupcake up like a glass he was using to make a toast. “Happy birthday, Lilah Lewis.”

Darcy felt another lump in her throat as she gently tapped the side of her frosted peak to his. “Happy birthday, Mom,” she echoed before she went to peel away the paper baking cup. “Wait,” she stopped. “Did you bring candles?”

Johnny’s face went blank for a second before he winced. “I knew I forgot something.”

She snorted quietly and shook her head. “It’s okay—”

“No, no,” he insisted, waving her words away. “That’s the whole point. Two cakes, two wishes.”

“I’m good with just cake,” she assured him.

“Alright, here,” he held up his right hand and let all of his fingers but his index curl loosely toward his palm. Darcy watched, unable to help but be delighted as just the very tip of his finger caught fire. A makeshift birthday candle. “It’s a little informal,” he acknowledged with a shrug. “But I promise, the wish still counts.”

She eyed him as she laughed again and tucked her hair behind her ears. “Well,” she leaned in slightly. “So long as it still counts.” Before she could talk herself out of it, Darcy closed her eyes, conjured a cosmic request, and pursed her lips to blow out the flame with one swift burst of air.

When she opened her eyes, Johnny was looking at her. His expression was a soft mix of fondness and amusement. “You make a wish?” She nodded, surprised to find that her mouth had gone slightly dry. “I hope it comes true.”

Darcy cleared her throat and sat up straight again, putting what she considered a safe distance between them. “Thank you, Johnny,” she said after a moment. “For…all this.”

“You’re welcome.”

She dropped her gaze again, choosing to focus on unwrapping her cupcake—and then on demonstrating the proper way to consume said cupcake (by tearing off the bottom and making it a sandwich with the frosting in the middle, thank you very much)—instead of Johnny’s distracting dimples.

She was glad he hadn’t asked her what she’d wished for. She wasn’t sure she’d be able to put it into words. But laughing while he argued the benefits of unhinging one’s jaw and devouring a cupcake in as few bites as possible, like a python with a stolen egg, Darcy had to admit, if only to herself, that part of her extra birthday wish had been for something that felt just a little like this.

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