Pound of Flesh

Days start to pass slowly as people observe her like an insect under a microscope. Or like a surly tiger at the zoo. Everyone’s far too expectant. It’s a lot of pressure.

DJ doesn’t really know how to exist like a normal person. She’s forgotten. But it seems like she should go out and do something now that she’s a free woman. Unfortunately, even before her brief stint as a captive she never went out all that much. Socialization wasn’t very conducive for leaving everything she knew and loved behind.

But now she knew new things, and liked new people an awful lot. Maybe someday that would turn into love, if they’d have her.

It’s no longer a matter of allowing herself to love. She doesn’t know when that happened, but it did. It’s not as scary as she thought, and it’s also not surprising. DJ couldn’t resist the ever-present pull to belong if her life depended on it.

Then again, it’s not her life that depends on it.

She’s selfish now. It’s not the worst of her flaws.

It’s Steve that watches her the most, and not in the way she’d like him too. There’s always a crinkle of worry between his brows and she just wants to shout that she’s obviously not fragile. She knows Steve doesn’t mean to upset her so she keeps her mouth shut. Every word she doesn’t say makes her withdraw into herself.

Sometimes it’s hard for her to get out of bed. She’ll lay there and laugh at the fact that she was more easy-going when she was a hostage. It’s harder now because these people know her secret and they’re all waiting with bated breath to watch her let them down.

It’s Steve that bursts into her room during her gradual descent into self-hatred. He flicks on the lights and looks nervous, pained, and hopeful all at once. He tosses a pill bottle none too gently into her lap. “Tony pulled some string and got his hands on some.”

Xanax.

“You tiptoe around everyone like you can’t trust yourself, so here you go.” His voice holds a sharpness like she’s never heard from him before, and she understands why Tony can’t stand him sometimes. He’s so good that disappointing him seems like the lowest low. “Here’s your safety net. But I don’t think you need it.”

DJ stares down at the bottle to avoid meeting Steve’s eyes. “That’s easy for you to say.”

“Yes.” He replies simply. “It is.”

“As much as I appreciate your blind faith in me, I think you’re an idiot.”

Steve smiles at her in a way that makes the lights in the room unnecessary. “Do you know how often I used to hear that? I’m sort of famous from never running away from a fight, especially when it’s for a good cause. I don’t lose anymore.”

Why would she want a normal life when she could have this?
¬¬¬_______________________________________________

Redefining normalcy starts that afternoon when the bottle is reduced to a pile of dust.

DJ strolls into the living room with an extra bounce in her step and passes by Steve with only a brush of their lips. She stops in front of Bruce who’s a little cautious in the face of her wolfish grin. He follows her into the kitchen when she demands it, more out of curiosity than anything. Steve watches them from over the back of the couch as they poke and prod at a sad looking violet while they have an easy conversation.

If Steve feels a niggling sense of jealousy when they start spending time together brewing weird tasting teas and sitting in a dark room doing measured breathing, then it only lasts as long as it takes for Bruce to coax DJ into yoga.

He stands in the doorway of the gym a little breathless. He ignores Bruce attempting to balance and focuses all his attention on DJ resting her weight on her shoulders and elbows, ankles up by her ears.

Tony slithers up beside him and slaps him on the back. “Yoga pants are great, aren’t they?” He stares a little too long and snaps his eyes away when Steve catches him. “Good for you. She’s very limber.”
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Sometimes late at night when neither she nor Steve can sleep they find each other in one of Tony’s private media rooms. They make a point of trading histories. They watch old movies that Steve loves and DJ smiles warmly through. They watch movies from the last seventy years that DJ is crazy about and Steve is often horrified by.

One night he shows her an old reel of him prancing around in his old costume surrounded by USO girls and she laughs until her sides hurt and she hiccups. She settles down by the computer and clicks and clacks for a few minutes until Steve is staring at an old yearbook photo of her in her school uniform, surrounded by a dozen other identical girls brandishing signs about the environment and the humane treatment of God’s creatures.

“Everyone has a moment in their life no one should ever witness.”
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Tony is a jerk but Steve puts up with that because there’s an endearing glint in DJ’s eyes when they babble back and forth with sarcasm and obscure pop culture references. And sometimes when Tony makes a comment that intentionally stings Steve to the core he sees her swing her small fist against Tony’s shoulder and the insults that burn start to slowly fade away.

They seem to be quick and close friends, but Steve doesn’t understand what a middle-aged genius billionaire playboy philanthropist and a twenty-three year old mutant have to talk about.

Food. They talk about food a lot. Their favorite places to get it and the best they’ve ever had.

Steve has the sneaking suspicion that they talk about sex much in the same way. It’s the way that certain conversations stop when he walks into the room. The way Tony leers and wiggles his eyebrows and she buries her face in her hands like she’d like to atomize and sink through the floor.

But it’s food that gets DJ out of the tower for the first time. He drags her to some hole in the wall place that he swears has a cheeseburger delicious enough to make her cry.

Because it’s Tony Stark it doesn’t take long for pictures to show up in magazines. The quality is poor and blurry but Steve could map out her features if he was blind. She’s certainly not crying. She’s laughing. A lot. And they’re touching and it’s hard for him to remember that that’s just something she does.

The ugly twist in his gut soothes when he watches her tack an article to the fridge. One line is highlighted in obnoxious neon yellow. Isn’t she a little young for him?
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DJ’s just finished regaling Steve with the story of an incredibly awkward slow dance in the seventh grade when Steve tells her that he doesn’t know how to dance. She’s properly appalled and he’s properly embarrassed.

“I’ll teach you then!” She’s already tugging him into the center of the room, pushing plush couches out of the way with an effortless jerk of her head. “If you’ve got the right partner it’s really not all that hard to learn.”

Steve hesitantly places a hand on the small of her back, grasping one of hers with the other. His mind flickers from past and present and he’s not sure who he’s betraying at the moment. “There’s not any music.”

“We don’t need any,” she tells him like he’s ridiculous for even thinking so. “Not really. We can make our own rhythm. Just move like we feel.”

They sway achingly slow, the only sound in the room their own breathing. He doesn’t know if he’s imagining it or not, but hers is a little uneven. And they’re pressed so close that he can feel her heart fluttering like a hummingbird against his chest.

If he manages to mention Peggy once or twice (Four. DJ counted.) then she doesn’t hold it against him. She just smiles tightly and silences him with sad little kisses that don’t hold a fraction of the spark that that very first one did.

Her hand tightens around his and her heart doesn’t calm.
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Clint likes to push DJ’s limits. He likes popping out of his hiding spots and nearly giving her a heart attack. He likes sending a shower of rubber darts at her body every time she walks into a room. She’s starting to develop a nervous tick.

She comes out of her bathroom one day- hair damp, body wrapped in a towel- and is greeted by the jarring thunk of a dart bouncing off her forehead. She nearly drops her towel in surprise. He drops to the ground and she makes an inhuman sound of distress. Hurling his own darts at him she swears that he’s going to be very sorry.

Despite his team’s wide range of expertise, Natasha was always the only one who managed to sneak up on him. The woman was like a cat- stealthy, cunning, and chronically unimpressed. But she couldn’t go through walls.

DJ can go through walls. And she does. Quite often lately. When Clint makes his own way out of the shower (She only did that once, because she was traumatized after learning that he doesn’t usually stroll around his room in a towel.), when Clint gets around to picking up a woman (Also only once, because he doesn’t care if she watches or not.), when Clint just wants to be alone because Natasha kicked his ass, or he’s hung over, or he runs out of pain medication because he choked them down after being thrown through a mall by the villain of the week. She does this more than once, because it seems to cause him the most emotional turmoil.

Not that Clint has many more emotions than Natasha. There’s just the grumpy, cocky, and I’m-a-sixteen-year-old-boy settings.

A dart lands in DJ’s lap one afternoon with a note attached. Tag, you’re it.

Their last game lasted six days.
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They’re curled up outside on the balcony watching the city glitter. There’s a sharp chill to the air as December slowly approaches, but Steve is always warm and used to much colder, while DJ is bundled up in Steve’s brown leather jacket.

DJ rests her head on Steve’s shoulder and a yawn turns into a purr as his fingers massage against her scalp. “Maybe you and Clint should lay off for a while. It’s not good to always be so tired.”

“We take it a little far sometimes,” she concedes easily. “But it’s nice to feel like… Doing what I do is okay. He was testing me at first. I know that. But I think I passed.”

“You’re the only one who’s surprised.”

She twists so that she’s looking up at him with her head in his lap. “Liar. But you’re the only one who matters.”

Steve smiles and looks off somewhere far away, but DJ doesn’t think he’s seeing the scenery. When he speaks low and rough and utters a complete non sequitur her suspicions are confirmed. “If you could be anywhere right now, where would you want to be?”

“I don’t know.” She’s not going to ask him the same question. Her heart couldn’t take it. “Wherever I’m wanted, I guess.”

“With your family? Your parents?”

She lets her eyes fall on the cityscape. “No. I couldn’t. Too much has changed. And they’re not something I’m willing to put in danger.”

“Back with Max?”

“Of course not.” The night around them isn’t silent, but the whir of traffic fills in the awkward spaces and gives them courage. “I hate him.”

“Then why are you always so worried about what you could do to him? Why feel guilty?”

DJ wants to get defensive. Wants to yell and tell him that he doesn’t have to make up reasons not to be with her if he just doesn’t want to. But he’s looking at her again in a way that he does sometimes- like he’s afraid, which she can never understand- and the angry words die on her tongue. “Because I don’t care how much he’s hurt me, he doesn’t deserve to die. I think you understand that better than anyone.”

He huffs a humorless laugh. “I didn’t say he should die. A few bruises wouldn’t be uncalled for, though.”

“He’s had his fair share.” There’s still something off about Steve’s expression, but he’s not being forthcoming, so she continues. “And there’s a fine line between bruises and dying when it comes to me. It’ll happen eventually. It’s just a matter of putting it off. Hence, I run.”

Steve pulls her back into a sitting position and cups her cheeks in his large hands. His lips fit over hers desperate and scared and unshakably lonely. When he pulls away the look in his eyes could convince her of anything. “You don’t have to run from me, Daisy. You can’t hurt me.”