AN1: I went "Darcy poking Bucky and saying, "dude, cool robot arm" and Karla made the best face ever and shrieked "I SHIP IT". So here we go.

Dedication: For Karla, my roommate.

Disclaimer: I don't own anything.

"Oh my god," Darcy said aloud. "This is the worst day ever."

The bartender hardly even glanced at her. It would have been annoying, except that bartenders probably heard that statement way, way too often, so Darcy could forgive his dismissal of her for now. She was a little annoyed that only a few of the bar patrons turned to look at her, dripping in the doorway as she was. She huffed a little bit before flouncy further into the little bum-fuck nowhere bar that she had ended up at, hoisting herself up onto a empty bar stool next to a man in a dark colored baseball cap and jacket of the same color. The man didn't even bat an eye at her bedraggled, soaking wet appearance.

The bartender was distracted, which meant Darcy was left to slump against the bar's top and snatched a handful of napkins from the dispenser down the way. She then went about wringing her hair dry and wiping her face off with the napkins, giving very little thought to the people around her. She hoped the bartender would come over, ask her what she'd like to drink so that she could go ahead and put the complaints/inquiries for help into high gear, but the man seemed to be deep in conversation with a balding bearded man with a potbelly the size of an 8 month pregnant woman. She sighed loudly, but she was absolutely ignored.

"Rude," she said, slumping down so that both of her elbows where on the bar's countertop. Her pile of used up, soaking napkins were stacked messily between her elbows, next to her chin. She considered throwing some of the wet wrinkly napkins at the terrible bartender who was rudely ignoring her, but her car was more than a mile away in the pouring rain, completely and utterly broken. She wasn't in the kind of position where she could throw tantrums in little shitty bars.

"I wish Jane had let me drag Thor along," she pouted quietly to herself. "Sure could'a used some muscles or flying-ness today. But nooooo, Mister Space Muscles and Little Miss Science are too busy being cute and happy to part for even a minute. Ugh."

The man next to her in the baseball cap and the ugly coat shifted about. She ignored him, pulling her phone out of her back pocket out of habit, only to realize once it was in front of her face that it was dead. She groaned loudly, completely flopping forward across the bar's countertop, but still the bartender ignored her.

"I am in the beginning of a horror movie. This bar is probably full of hillbilly hicks who eat people. I am going to die. I am going to die and Jane is going to starve and it's going to be all her own fault because she wouldn't let me borrow her dumb boyfriend for my cousins' stupid wedding."

There was a soft snorting noise to her left. Curious Darcy peeked up, catching a small glimpse of the man's face under the bill of his baseball cap. He was dark haired, dark eyed, and scruffy as hell, but despite the scruff and the bags under his eyes that told of too many nights spent tossing and turning instead of actually sleeping… He was pretty hot.

Unfortunately he found her misery funny and therefore had to die.

"Oi," she said, narrowing her eyes at him and straightening up to her full height. She wasn't one of those small dainty women like Jane who weren't really taken seriously when they snapped at someone; she was curvy and loud and owned a tazer, goddammit. She was dangerous. "Find something amusing, mister stranger man?"

The man stilled suddenly and ducked his head down in an attempt to hide his face. "No ma'am," he said. What a fucking liar.

"Whatever, dude, you're full of shit," she said. "I heard you laugh, don't even."

The corner of the man's mouth quirked upward a bit before he pressed them into a tight, straight line. His lips were about all Darcy could see of his face, which was alright, because they were kind of pretty lips. She narrowed her eyes at him again before propping one hand under her chin, absently playing with the napkins. The bartender was so deep in his conversation she could have pulled off her top and he wouldn't have noticed.

"Fine," Darcy said. "Be that way. I don't care." She watched avidly as the man's mouth twitched again against his will. A little thrill arched down her spine, because even though the jacket was ugly it did nothing to hide the muscles this guy had. This debatably attractive hugely muscled man found her funny. And it was great.

Too bad her car was still broken. And she had no date for the wedding, and therefore was likely to get saddled with some nasty asshat who would stare at her tits and grope her when they danced.

She sighed again abruptly, amusement leaving her in a flash. She slumped against the bar's countertop once more, eyes falling to the ground. Miserable, wet, and tired, she resigned herself to her fate; she'd ask the bartender for a phone, call her mother, and suffer the hours upon hours of lecture that were sure to come for insisting she could get to the wedding without anyone's help.

The man next to her, Mister Bicep Baseball Cap, swore suddenly under his breath. Then, a split second later, there was a tap on her shoulder.

"Uh," the man said. His lips were still pressed together, too tight, and now his jaw was clenched. Darcy arched an eyebrow at him and waited, semi-patiently. "Do you, uh… Do you need help, ma'am?"

Beginning of a horror movie, she thought distantly. And then, sharply, fuck it. "That depends," she answered, pushing her hair behind her ears in the same motion she used to shove her glasses further up the bridge of her nose. "Do you know anything about cars?"

The guy faltered. He tipped his face back enough that Darcy could see more than just his chapped, pretty lips. His eyes were dark and warm, like she had noticed before. It seemed unfair; pretty lips and pretty eyes? Mixed together with the arms he was barely hiding under that jacket? She hadn't seen anyone this good looking since Captain America had tumbled off the grid and out of the media's sight.

"That would depend on whether it's a later model or a newer one."

A small little snort escaped Darcy's lips. "Oh boy," she said. "It's fucking ancient."

And that was how she ended up back in the rain next to a handsome stranger on a back road highway just outside of Virginia the day before her cousin's wedding.

"Beginning of a horror movie," she muttered to herself again. The man had given her his hat and jacket and tried to insist she stay in his truck, but sitting in some stranger's truck was awkward to the max. At least out in the rain with him she could pester him about what he was doing.

"Why do you keep saying that," he asked. He was bent over her engine and his voice was only just recognizable through the steadily pouring rain. She huddled tighter under his jacket, pulling the bill of his too big cap down lower over her face.

"What," she said. He had a very, very nice ass. And like she had suspected beautiful, wonderful arms. It definitely wasn't fair. The only people this attractive were Asguardians and super soldiers. There was no way this man was human. He glanced at her from between the wet dark strands of his hair.

"The thing about being in the beginning of a horror movie. Why do you keep saying that?"

"Dude, have you ever seen a horror movie? Like, nine times out of ten they start with shit like this."

"Oh," he said. "Wouldn't know, then. I've never seen one."

"Dude." Darcy said. Even Jane had seen a horror movie. Only a single one though; she was kind of a sissy about those things. Also Thor had broken the coffee table in a fit of fright at a jump scare, so that had kind of killed off the idea of a horror movie night thing.

"So," she continued a few minutes later, once the silence had become too much. "Are you, like, scared of them?"

"Of what?"

"Horror movies. Are you, like, terrified to watch them because of ghosts and shit? Or do you just find the basis of them too stupid to consider?"

He shrugged his really, really, really massive shoulders. Darcy kind of wondered how strong this guy was exactly. Like could he hold up her weight? Definitely. Could he hold her weight up against a wall? Probably. And what a nice thought that was, Darcy mused to herself, smiling a little bit in the corner of her mouth. Too bad he was so ridiculously out of her league.

"To be honest, I haven't had much time for things like movies in the past couple of years."

"That sucks."

"Yeah… Yeah it does."

They were quiet for a little while. The car her great uncle had left in her name was a piece of shit, to be honest, with chipped paint and power steering that went out half the time when you turned left. It wasn't her favorite thing in the world, but she had liked the idea of driving across a few states, summer road-trip style to her cousin's dumb perfect wedding. Which was why she had specifically flown in from London and landed in Indiana instead of just catching a flight to Virigina and being done with this whole mess.

The part they didn't tell you about road trips in those dumb chick flicks was that apparently cars break when driven hundreds of miles at high speeds. Goddamn Hollywood and their goddamn lies.

The man muttered a few things into the car's engine that might have been Russian swear words (or possibly nice things in Russian? Darcy wasn't sure, because she didn't speak Russian, but the situation was more likely to merit swears instead of nice things, so) and spent a few more minutes mucking around. He pulled back briefly, seemingly to be completely lost in thought. There was grease smeared across the line of his jaw like it needed the emphasis to how perfect it was and his hair stuck to his neck where it had escaped his hair band, the color almost black in the rain. He shifted about against the edge of the car, lent further over the engine, and then pushed up the sleeves on his shirt to the elbows so that grease wouldn't get on his clothes too much.

"Oh whoa," Darcy said, eyes blinking double time to make sure she wasn't seeing thing. "Cool robo-metal arm, dude."

She could have thrown herself off a cliff the second she said it. Everything about the man went from loose and gorgeous and coiled tight and scared looking, his shoulders broad and tense. He didn't immediately bolt, but he looked like he was definitely considering it. Way to go, Lewis, she thought angrily. You know better.

"Sorry," she said, when he hadn't moved for more than thirty seconds. Her words were muffled by the clap of thunder that sounded, but she knew he had to have heard it.

"You should get in the car," he said, ignoring her apology like a dick. "I think the rain's getting heavier."

She squared her shoulders, tipped her chin up so that the brim of his hat didn't cover her eyes. "I mean it," she said, taking a step closer so that she too was huddled under the hood of her great uncle's dumb car. She didn't look at him, staring at the engine bits like they made sense to her. "I am sorry."

The man sighed heavily, his shoulders rising and falling like the tides. "It's fine," he said tightly. But Darcy shook her head, wet hair smacking against her cheek as she moved. His hat slipped and slid on her head like crazy as she moved too and she reached up to straighten it irritably, wondering why she had to be such a dunce and blurt out things like she had.

"My great uncle gave me this car," she said quietly. "He had been a mechanic, before."

The man almost turned to look at her, like a cat twitching toward its prey. "Before," he echoed, just as quietly. Rain beat down on the metal hood of her car and she had to peek at the way his mouth moved from the corner of her eyes to make sure he had spoken.

"Before the war," she said. "He was in Vietnam. After he… He found it hard to work on cars when he was stuck in a wheelchair. He used to say that at least the grenade had taken out his right leg, so that he could still work the pedals just fine." She swallowed and purposefully didn't look at the man's reaction. "Auntie Carrie hated that he still drove, wanted to get his license taken away, but he loved this car. Said… Said he felt like he still had two legs, driving around like everyone else in town."

The man's shoulders were tense and terrifying for another minute after she finished speaking. She stared at the engine, heart in her throat as she remembered her great uncle, his warm, bouncing laugh, his dimples, his green eyes. She'd never known him as anything other than the man in the wheelchair he had been in his old age, but she'd seen pictures of him before he'd been drafted, with shoulders that were almost as broad as the stranger's next to her, grease constantly smeared along his knuckles and clothes. He would have hated to see her like this, cold, stuck in the rain next to the defeated shell of his old car. Tears pricked at the corners of her eyes, welling hotly until the stranger suddenly sighed, going loose once more beside her.

"I'm sorry," he said.

She smiled with a little bit of dark humor. "It's fine," she said, echoing his earlier words. Out of the corner of her eye she watched him smile at the engine, just as she was. He twisted to face her, having to duck so that his head wouldn't hit the hood of the car.

"I've got good news and bad news, dame," he said, meeting her eyes for the first time since they'd left the bar.

"Bad news," she said immediately. She could guess what it was, but the hope of being wrong was strong within her.

"Its toast. Nothing to be done but to haul it off to the pasture and let it rot in peace."

Her heart clenched. Her great uncle had been dead six years, but losing his car was like losing him all over. She took a deep breath and let it out slowly, ignoring how the man's eyes studied her carefully, his warm eyes stuck to her face. At least he wasn't watching her tits bounce as she breathed. She would have punched him if he had been staring at her breasts while her heart broke like this.

"Good news," she prodded quietly.

"Wherever you're going, dame," the man said, 'I'd be more than happy to take you."

Every lesson she'd been taught at the age of five said not to accept rides from strange men. Every horror movie she'd ever watched had attempted to teach her not to get into cars with any strangers, ever, especially in the middle of nowhere, especially in the rain. But her phone was a Stark model, Iron Man personalized as a birthday present (technically it was supposed to be Jane's phone, but Jane didn't use it, so Darcy had commandeered it almost immediately after opening it for Jane) and she was sure if she didn't show up at the wedding someone would call Jane, who would use Thor to get to Tony, who could track her through the phone. And if not, well…

At least he was a handsome killer, right?

"I'd like that," she said. She stepped back and he took her cue, reaching up to slam the hood of her great uncle's car shut tight. It was like the bang of the rifles at his funeral all over again, jolting down her bones and restarting the beating of her heart. When he stepped back she held out her hand, the tips of her fingers just barely peeking out from beneath the cuff of his jacket.

"I'm Darcy," she said, tipping her head back to meet his eyes.

He smiled, the edges of his chapped, pretty lips curling up slightly. Something haunted and tired lurked in his eyes, hinted at by the faint dark circles around his eyes, but there was something warm in his gaze, peaceful and calm. He took her hand carefully with his neat-o robot arm, the ice-cold metal fingers curling against her flesh slowly.

"Nice 'ta meet 'cha, miss Darcy," he said. Her nerves danced when he said her name. "My name's James."

"James," she echoed. "I like it."

His smile was worth the two hour lecture she received for appearing, rain-soaked and wrinkled, to her cousin's reception dinner three hours late. The kiss he gave her cheek when she hopped out of the car?

Even fucking better.