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-> If you get an email from my yahoo account with no subject and a link, don't open! I, like many other yahoo mail users in the last day, got spam bombed. Luckily I'm pretty bad at copying people's addresses into my address book. I... may have had the same password since I was 14 so I was proooooobably overdue for a reset.
-> I wrote Teen Wolf fic. Yeah, I'm not sure what happened either but it was very fun and a good break from too-many-challenges.
-> I have been lax in recs that I was promising so here, have the fic that eased me into Teen Wolf by being a crossover with Atlantis. Show You What All That Howl Is For by![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
skoosiepants. Teen Wolf guys are an Atlantis team and it's absolutely amazing and I have listened to the podfic a bunch of times while driving to work because it is ADORABLE. Don't stop there though, read everything else she's written because skoosie was the first author I loved in Atlantis fandom and I'm completely jazzed that I get to read her stuff again.
-> So, here is 3k of Clint/Darcy Bourne Identity fusion that was my original![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
goingonfacebook idea and I'm preeeeetty sure I'm never going to finish.
--
Really, there's no explanation for why she's in an apartment she doesn't own in monster feet slippers and an oversized hockey jersey, eating a bowl of froot loops. Darcy tries to think of one, she does but there's nothing coming to her as she watches the front door ease open and a guy slide through the smallest crack possible and then slump against the wall for a moment.
Darcy's frozen, cereal bowl in her hand gripped so hard she's glad it's plastic because she probably would have broken it. There's a suspended moment, before the yelling and calling of police, where the guy just kind of half folds in on himself and Darcy doesn't dare move because he hasn't seen her yet.
He hasn't seen her yet.
Darcy thinks maybe she can retreat, maybe this still won't end in handcuffs, not the fun, fuzzy kind. This hope is dashed when she takes a breath, doesn't even get one step backwards and the guy's head snaps up and then so does his hand and he's holding a gun.
"I'm sorry!" Darcy squeaks, throws her hands up to show she's, unlike him, unarmed and manages to throw her bowl, froot loops and discolored milk against the opposite wall. She winces because that's the kind of thing that stains and this guy would already have enough of a reason to be unimpressed with her. "Just give me like... five minutes to pack up and get out of here and you'll never see me again."
The guy slowly, slowly lowers the gun and without it pointing at her, she's able to see the man behind it. He'd be handsome if his face wasn't grey with fatigue. Darcy never liked the phrase rode hard and put away wet but she can see how it can apply to a person with this guy. "Do you live here?" he asks, voice a little rough. He's either a smoker or hasn't had to talk in a while.
"I'm kind of... squatting?" There's no real nicer way to put it. "Not in the bad, trash the place way. Totally the really reliable and neat tenant way. I even painted the kitchen."
"You're a squatter?" the guy repeats, looking confused. "You don't... this isn't your place," he adds after a pause, a statement rather than a question and he sounds almost disappointed.
"Noooo..." Darcy says, then frowns. "It's not yours?"
The guy pushes off the wall finally, tucks the gun unto the back of worn jeans. It's snowing outside but he's only got on a threadbare sweater with holes in the elbows on top. "I'm not sure."
"You're not sure?" Darcy asks, incredulous.
"It's a whole... I'm not really..." The guy makes a gesture with his hands. The movement is kind of helpless and frustrated. "I'm not really..."
"Look, this has been swell and all, but how about I just get out of your space. You look like you need a little space. I can definitely use some space." Darcy flicks a thumb behind her, back towards where her stuff is piled in the room she's set up as her bedroom.
"No, wait," the guy says and Darcy sighs.
"You look like you've had a rough day. I'm obviously just another hassle you don't need so I'm going to-"
"You don't know who lives here? Anything about the owner?" There's a little desperation on the guy's face, the kind Darcy naturally responds to. She's the kind of person that gets asked for directions in the street, finds lost little kids. She attracts that kind of energy or something.
"What's going on?" Darcy asks, unsettled. The guy looks just plain exhausted, he's underdressed for the weather and he has a gun. She's not sure what it's all adding up to but it doesn't seem to be anything good.
The guy straightens, eyes her for a second like he's trying to decide whether to level with her and must decide that monster slippers and sleepwear equals trustworthy. "I woke up on a fishing trawler about six days ago, no idea who I was or why I was just floating around in the middle of the ocean attached to a parachute. All I had on me was this address, and you don't really want to know where I was keeping it."
"Are you talking about amnesia?" Darcy asks after the guy spreads his hands in a my life story up to now, tada kind of way. The guy's face squishes down but then he nods. "Wow, that's very daytime drama of you."
"Do you want me to call the police and report an intruder or do you want to tell me everything you know about this place?"
"Hey Mr. Forgetful. You don't even know if this is yours. You could be intruding as well," Darcy says, eyes narrowed.
"The name on the mailbox is Clint Harrison. I look more like a Clint that you do."
"Does anyone really look like a Clint?" When the guy's mouth firms down to an annoyed little line, Darcy holds her hands up again, this time palms forward. "You're right, who am I to judge? My name's Darcy."
Clint looks like he wants to smirk for a second, his lips twitching before he reigns it in. "Okay Darcy then. Perhaps neither of us want to get the police involved, huh?"
Darcy vacillates for a second before she finally huffs. "Yes, alright, fine. What do you want to know?"
"Why are you here?"
"That's not really going to tell you who you are."
"It's part of the rich tapestry," Clint says, half-shrugging.
"I've been here for the last three weeks after my boyfriend left me, and by left me I mean he left me with the bills, three months of unpaid rent and a raging case of crabs." Darcy winces. "Er, forget I said that last part. There was shampoo and anger and I'm fine now."
"How'd you know the place was empty?"
"A friend of mine moved out of the building a few weeks before I was unceremoniously marched into homelessness. She was living here for a little over a year and swore black and blue that she'd never seen anyone in this apartment. The whole lack of much furniture or anything really personal kind of backed up her theory. We figured it was some kind of investment property."
"There was nothing here?" Clint's got his disappointed face on again and Darcy finds she's kind of jazzed that she's got some good news to remove it.
"I said much furniture. There's one room that had some stuff. Looks like a study. I stayed out of it because it looked like the only room anyone actually cared about."
Clint makes a go on gesture and Darcy turns, leads him down the hall to the second door on the right, the room she'd banned herself from even though it had a nice bay window and the morning sun. She pushes the door open, waves Clint through. He hesitates, takes a breath and then enters.
It's not exactly lived in, but the study has a desk, a filing cabinet next to the window and telephone. "The phone's connected. Obviously someone out there is paying a bill," Darcy supplies when Clint crosses to the desk. He checks the drawers, finds them locked like Darcy did her first day.
Clint sweeps hands over the desk surface, scatters a few pens and pieces of paper, nudges aside what looks like a leather-bound ledger and picks up a letter opener. He tosses it for a second, gentle arcs into the air that Darcy's a little impressed by before he ducks down, uses it to pry open the top desk drawer.
"Hey, don't break stuff."
"It's not yours, what do you care?"
Darcy doesn't really have a good explanation, just, "I'm kinda attached to the place, attached to looking after it."
"You're a weird girl."
"I've been called worse."
Clint gets the drawer open, yanks it free of the desk and upends it over the desk surface. There's another couple of the generic, cheap plastic biros, some paperclips and rubber bands but nothing else. Clint tosses the draw aside with a clatter that makes Darcy jump and belatedly realize that she's still just hanging around the guy with amnesia and a gun when she should be escaping.
"I'm just gonna... bathroom," Darcy says, backing up through the door. Clint's distracted, prying the middle drawer out and he kind of waves at her, dismissive. As soon as Darcy's out of the study she's darting down the hall, into her makeshift bedroom and stuffing clothes in her backpack as fast as she can while she wiggles into jeans and steps into her boots.
"Jesus, Mary and Joseph Gordon-Levitt," Darcy huffs as she tosses through the pile of goodwill blankets that she'd been using as a bed and finally finds her purse. She's zipping up her bag and shoving her arms through the handles when she finally notices that Clint is standing in the doorway, watching her with an amused expression.
"Going somewhere?"
Darcy deflates, the flight adrenalin that was dumping through her body rapidly receding. "I guess not," she grumbles and he seems to look even more asmused at her peeved tone.
"I'm not holding you hostage, you know."
"Could've fooled me with the gun and everything."
"Am I pointing it at you?"
Darcy pauses, because apart from the initial shock of finding her just there in front of him when he wasn't expecting it, he hasn't. "Um, no?"
"Will this make you feel better?" Clint takes the gun out from the back of his pants and holds it out to her. Darcy raises an eyebrow, before she reaches a hand out. Clint snorts and takes it back, tucking it away again. "Wow, no. I am not giving you a gun. I have no idea who you are."
"I'm getting mixed signals here," Darcy says.
"I'm not going to hurt you. If you want to leave you can. You obviously don't know anything that's going to help me." Clint turns at that, disappears back down the hall and into the study. Darcy chews on her lip for a moment before she drops her bag and follows.
"You really don't remember anything?" Darcy asks, hovering just inside the study again, watching Clint use the letter opener to force open the file cabinet draws like he did with the desk.
"I know how to tie my shoes, read, terminal ballistics." Darcy must pull a face at the last one because Clint grunts. "Weird stuff. Specific stuff. Who I am, what I was doing, anything about me specifically is just gone."
"That must be strange."
"I don't really remember it being any different." There's a beat, then Clint cracks a grin and Darcy rolls her eyes.
"So I see you're at the making amnesia jokes part of your recovery," she says, charmed despite herself. She's not sure why because it all sounds totally made up, but she believes him. Maybe it's because of how tired he still looks.
Finding nothing in the filing cabinet, Clint crosses to the bookshelf, touches gentle fingers to the one book sitting on the otherwise empty space. "War and Peace. That's pretty heavy reading."
"Not mine," Darcy says, watches as Clint tugs at the top edge of the spine of the book and there's a barely audible click. "Oh no way. That's so Get Smart," she enthuses as Clint hunkers down and pulls free a panel of wall underneath the shelves that has opened. Clint stands, turns back around and he's got a box, a black metal one that looks like a safety deposit box from a bank.
Clint is about to open it when he freezes, head snapping up and nostrils flaring, looking like a hound scenting the air in a hunt. Gooseflesh breaks out on Darcy's skin in response because the flat, blankness that Clint's face closes down into is unsettling to say the least.
"What-?" she starts to ask but bites down on the question when Clint's hand cuts through the air, a quick motion. He moves around the desk, pulling the gun from the back of his pants and reaching out an automatic arm to sweep Darcy behind himself so he's bodily between her and the door.
She's very glad he did, because the next moment something rushes in the door in a blur of motion. Clint grabs Darcy's hockey jersey by the shoulder and shoves her, sending her sprawling to the ground and skidding across the floor until she's half behind the desk. She pulls herself the rest of the way as Clint darts sideways and then out of the room, barrelling the figure back out.
There's a meaty thud, flesh on flesh and then Clint and another man are back in the study, locked together. Darcy ducks back behind the desk as they hit it together and it skids backwards until she's jammed between the bookshelves and the desk. The bit of wall panel that was removed scrapes against her back and Darcy rolls over, sees that the space under the bookshelves is not large, but she could probably fit into it if she squishes.
As Clint, she's not sure how she knows it's Clint but she does, makes a quick, pained noise, she shoves the wall panel out of the way, scrambles inside the wall cavity and tugs the panel behind her. It's not perfect, but if the guy hasn't seen her, doesn't know about the hidden cavity, she might just have more of a chance than if she tries for the doorway.
The sounds of two men really laying into each other seems to go for hours but is probably only really a few minutes and then there's a final low grunt and a louder thump which is a body hitting the floor. Darcy gasps in the dark space, eyes squeezed shut, just waiting for the intruder to yank back the wall panel and pull her out to finish her off too when there's a small noise.
Darcy holds her breath and the noise repeats, her name. "Darcy?"
"Here, I'm here," Darcy says, pushing her way out of the wall cavity, getting her shirt hung up on a protruding nail about halfway and cursing. Clint's just there in front of her, bloodied hands untangling her gently before he crab walks backwards to let her get all the way out.
"Lucky for us, I remember how to disarm an assailant and kill with a letter opener." Clint's mouth twists, wry.
"He's de...dead?" Darcy manages to get out before the terror of the last few minutes catches up with her and she throws up.
It's not her finest hour but she's also not having the best day.
*
"Us or him, right?"
Clint has stolen one of her socks to act as a washcloth as Darcy has been relying on the kindness of neighbours and friends for showers since there's no hot water in the apartment and therefore she hasn't bothered to invest in towels. He's wiping down her face and it feels heavenly.
"Us or him," Clint agrees and while Darcy knows she is in no way okay with what's just happened, it's a little easier to reconcile with Clint's assurance. Clint sits back on his heels, balancing in front of where she's seated on the side of the bath tub. He looks like he wants to say something but doesn't know how.
"I'm just going to go," Darcy says, moves to stand but Clint's hands on her knees stop her.
"You can't."
"I thought this wasn't a hostage situation."
"No it's... I can't explain why but I just know guys like that don't work alone, don't move without some kind of orders. They might have even been sitting on this place for days, waiting for me. They might think we know each other, that they can get to me through you."
"Was he a bad guy?"
Clint's hands, still on her knees, squeeze for a moment. "I don't know."
"Are you?"
Clint ducks his face. "I don't know."
"Will they know who I am? Whoever this guy was taking orders from?"
"Maybe. You could leave, pack your stuff and go but... until I figure out what the hell is going on, I think it would be safer if we stuck together."
"That couldn't have been a good guy, right? He didn't identify himself, didn't order us to drop our weapons. He didn't do any of the cop show crap."
"You had unpaid bills, no money to pay rent, right?"
"Yeah?"
"Before I followed you in here, I checked the box we found. There's money, a lot of it. Passports as well. Enough maybe to start over somewhere. Just, can you stick with me until we know what's going on? Let me make sure you're safe?"
Darcy puts her hands down on top of Clint's, knows at this point that she really doesn't have a choice.
*
Clint sits her down on a folded sweater in the corner by the apartment's front door and then Darcy watches him wipe down every surface she could've possibly touched in the last few weeks. He disappears in the study, comes back with her least favorite t-shirt balled in his hands and she knows he's used it to clean up her mess.
If he's going to keep pilfering her clothes she's really going to have to hit a walmart.
He'd found a stack of clothes underneath the seat of the bay window in the study and along with her backpack, Darcy's holding a navy peacoat for him and a bright red woolen jacket for her, nicer than anything she's ever owned. He's changed out of what he was wearing into better fitting jeans and a crew-neck sweater that really emphasises how sharp his jaw line is.
He drops a plastic trash bag that has his old clothes, her soiled shirt and sock and any other detritus she'd had sitting around, empty takeout containers and the like. "Do you want me to throw that in the garbage chute?" Darcy offers, feeling a little useless being set aside like she's in time-out.
"No, we'll get rid of it down a few blocks," he says and she watches him scan the apartment once more with his eyes, looking for something he's missed, some evidence of them. Seemingly satisfied, he nods and Darcy accepts his hand up.
"Do you have a hat?" he asks her.
"Um, yes?" Darcy unloads the jackets over his arm then digs in her backpack, past the second plastic bag with the contents of the box and a few sparse items of her clothing and tugs a beanie free. Clint hooks the jackets over his shoulder, takes the hat off her and reaches for her, hesitates a second until she nods.
He pulls her hair into a rough ponytail and then twists it around itself and up, piling it on top of her head, then pulling the hat over the whole thing.
"Are we sneaking out the back?"
"We're going to wait until we hear one of the neighbours on the stairs and then we're going to leave with them."
-> I wrote Teen Wolf fic. Yeah, I'm not sure what happened either but it was very fun and a good break from too-many-challenges.
-> I have been lax in recs that I was promising so here, have the fic that eased me into Teen Wolf by being a crossover with Atlantis. Show You What All That Howl Is For by
skoosiepants. Teen Wolf guys are an Atlantis team and it's absolutely amazing and I have listened to the podfic a bunch of times while driving to work because it is ADORABLE. Don't stop there though, read everything else she's written because skoosie was the first author I loved in Atlantis fandom and I'm completely jazzed that I get to read her stuff again.-> So, here is 3k of Clint/Darcy Bourne Identity fusion that was my original
goingonfacebook idea and I'm preeeeetty sure I'm never going to finish.--
Really, there's no explanation for why she's in an apartment she doesn't own in monster feet slippers and an oversized hockey jersey, eating a bowl of froot loops. Darcy tries to think of one, she does but there's nothing coming to her as she watches the front door ease open and a guy slide through the smallest crack possible and then slump against the wall for a moment.
Darcy's frozen, cereal bowl in her hand gripped so hard she's glad it's plastic because she probably would have broken it. There's a suspended moment, before the yelling and calling of police, where the guy just kind of half folds in on himself and Darcy doesn't dare move because he hasn't seen her yet.
He hasn't seen her yet.
Darcy thinks maybe she can retreat, maybe this still won't end in handcuffs, not the fun, fuzzy kind. This hope is dashed when she takes a breath, doesn't even get one step backwards and the guy's head snaps up and then so does his hand and he's holding a gun.
"I'm sorry!" Darcy squeaks, throws her hands up to show she's, unlike him, unarmed and manages to throw her bowl, froot loops and discolored milk against the opposite wall. She winces because that's the kind of thing that stains and this guy would already have enough of a reason to be unimpressed with her. "Just give me like... five minutes to pack up and get out of here and you'll never see me again."
The guy slowly, slowly lowers the gun and without it pointing at her, she's able to see the man behind it. He'd be handsome if his face wasn't grey with fatigue. Darcy never liked the phrase rode hard and put away wet but she can see how it can apply to a person with this guy. "Do you live here?" he asks, voice a little rough. He's either a smoker or hasn't had to talk in a while.
"I'm kind of... squatting?" There's no real nicer way to put it. "Not in the bad, trash the place way. Totally the really reliable and neat tenant way. I even painted the kitchen."
"You're a squatter?" the guy repeats, looking confused. "You don't... this isn't your place," he adds after a pause, a statement rather than a question and he sounds almost disappointed.
"Noooo..." Darcy says, then frowns. "It's not yours?"
The guy pushes off the wall finally, tucks the gun unto the back of worn jeans. It's snowing outside but he's only got on a threadbare sweater with holes in the elbows on top. "I'm not sure."
"You're not sure?" Darcy asks, incredulous.
"It's a whole... I'm not really..." The guy makes a gesture with his hands. The movement is kind of helpless and frustrated. "I'm not really..."
"Look, this has been swell and all, but how about I just get out of your space. You look like you need a little space. I can definitely use some space." Darcy flicks a thumb behind her, back towards where her stuff is piled in the room she's set up as her bedroom.
"No, wait," the guy says and Darcy sighs.
"You look like you've had a rough day. I'm obviously just another hassle you don't need so I'm going to-"
"You don't know who lives here? Anything about the owner?" There's a little desperation on the guy's face, the kind Darcy naturally responds to. She's the kind of person that gets asked for directions in the street, finds lost little kids. She attracts that kind of energy or something.
"What's going on?" Darcy asks, unsettled. The guy looks just plain exhausted, he's underdressed for the weather and he has a gun. She's not sure what it's all adding up to but it doesn't seem to be anything good.
The guy straightens, eyes her for a second like he's trying to decide whether to level with her and must decide that monster slippers and sleepwear equals trustworthy. "I woke up on a fishing trawler about six days ago, no idea who I was or why I was just floating around in the middle of the ocean attached to a parachute. All I had on me was this address, and you don't really want to know where I was keeping it."
"Are you talking about amnesia?" Darcy asks after the guy spreads his hands in a my life story up to now, tada kind of way. The guy's face squishes down but then he nods. "Wow, that's very daytime drama of you."
"Do you want me to call the police and report an intruder or do you want to tell me everything you know about this place?"
"Hey Mr. Forgetful. You don't even know if this is yours. You could be intruding as well," Darcy says, eyes narrowed.
"The name on the mailbox is Clint Harrison. I look more like a Clint that you do."
"Does anyone really look like a Clint?" When the guy's mouth firms down to an annoyed little line, Darcy holds her hands up again, this time palms forward. "You're right, who am I to judge? My name's Darcy."
Clint looks like he wants to smirk for a second, his lips twitching before he reigns it in. "Okay Darcy then. Perhaps neither of us want to get the police involved, huh?"
Darcy vacillates for a second before she finally huffs. "Yes, alright, fine. What do you want to know?"
"Why are you here?"
"That's not really going to tell you who you are."
"It's part of the rich tapestry," Clint says, half-shrugging.
"I've been here for the last three weeks after my boyfriend left me, and by left me I mean he left me with the bills, three months of unpaid rent and a raging case of crabs." Darcy winces. "Er, forget I said that last part. There was shampoo and anger and I'm fine now."
"How'd you know the place was empty?"
"A friend of mine moved out of the building a few weeks before I was unceremoniously marched into homelessness. She was living here for a little over a year and swore black and blue that she'd never seen anyone in this apartment. The whole lack of much furniture or anything really personal kind of backed up her theory. We figured it was some kind of investment property."
"There was nothing here?" Clint's got his disappointed face on again and Darcy finds she's kind of jazzed that she's got some good news to remove it.
"I said much furniture. There's one room that had some stuff. Looks like a study. I stayed out of it because it looked like the only room anyone actually cared about."
Clint makes a go on gesture and Darcy turns, leads him down the hall to the second door on the right, the room she'd banned herself from even though it had a nice bay window and the morning sun. She pushes the door open, waves Clint through. He hesitates, takes a breath and then enters.
It's not exactly lived in, but the study has a desk, a filing cabinet next to the window and telephone. "The phone's connected. Obviously someone out there is paying a bill," Darcy supplies when Clint crosses to the desk. He checks the drawers, finds them locked like Darcy did her first day.
Clint sweeps hands over the desk surface, scatters a few pens and pieces of paper, nudges aside what looks like a leather-bound ledger and picks up a letter opener. He tosses it for a second, gentle arcs into the air that Darcy's a little impressed by before he ducks down, uses it to pry open the top desk drawer.
"Hey, don't break stuff."
"It's not yours, what do you care?"
Darcy doesn't really have a good explanation, just, "I'm kinda attached to the place, attached to looking after it."
"You're a weird girl."
"I've been called worse."
Clint gets the drawer open, yanks it free of the desk and upends it over the desk surface. There's another couple of the generic, cheap plastic biros, some paperclips and rubber bands but nothing else. Clint tosses the draw aside with a clatter that makes Darcy jump and belatedly realize that she's still just hanging around the guy with amnesia and a gun when she should be escaping.
"I'm just gonna... bathroom," Darcy says, backing up through the door. Clint's distracted, prying the middle drawer out and he kind of waves at her, dismissive. As soon as Darcy's out of the study she's darting down the hall, into her makeshift bedroom and stuffing clothes in her backpack as fast as she can while she wiggles into jeans and steps into her boots.
"Jesus, Mary and Joseph Gordon-Levitt," Darcy huffs as she tosses through the pile of goodwill blankets that she'd been using as a bed and finally finds her purse. She's zipping up her bag and shoving her arms through the handles when she finally notices that Clint is standing in the doorway, watching her with an amused expression.
"Going somewhere?"
Darcy deflates, the flight adrenalin that was dumping through her body rapidly receding. "I guess not," she grumbles and he seems to look even more asmused at her peeved tone.
"I'm not holding you hostage, you know."
"Could've fooled me with the gun and everything."
"Am I pointing it at you?"
Darcy pauses, because apart from the initial shock of finding her just there in front of him when he wasn't expecting it, he hasn't. "Um, no?"
"Will this make you feel better?" Clint takes the gun out from the back of his pants and holds it out to her. Darcy raises an eyebrow, before she reaches a hand out. Clint snorts and takes it back, tucking it away again. "Wow, no. I am not giving you a gun. I have no idea who you are."
"I'm getting mixed signals here," Darcy says.
"I'm not going to hurt you. If you want to leave you can. You obviously don't know anything that's going to help me." Clint turns at that, disappears back down the hall and into the study. Darcy chews on her lip for a moment before she drops her bag and follows.
"You really don't remember anything?" Darcy asks, hovering just inside the study again, watching Clint use the letter opener to force open the file cabinet draws like he did with the desk.
"I know how to tie my shoes, read, terminal ballistics." Darcy must pull a face at the last one because Clint grunts. "Weird stuff. Specific stuff. Who I am, what I was doing, anything about me specifically is just gone."
"That must be strange."
"I don't really remember it being any different." There's a beat, then Clint cracks a grin and Darcy rolls her eyes.
"So I see you're at the making amnesia jokes part of your recovery," she says, charmed despite herself. She's not sure why because it all sounds totally made up, but she believes him. Maybe it's because of how tired he still looks.
Finding nothing in the filing cabinet, Clint crosses to the bookshelf, touches gentle fingers to the one book sitting on the otherwise empty space. "War and Peace. That's pretty heavy reading."
"Not mine," Darcy says, watches as Clint tugs at the top edge of the spine of the book and there's a barely audible click. "Oh no way. That's so Get Smart," she enthuses as Clint hunkers down and pulls free a panel of wall underneath the shelves that has opened. Clint stands, turns back around and he's got a box, a black metal one that looks like a safety deposit box from a bank.
Clint is about to open it when he freezes, head snapping up and nostrils flaring, looking like a hound scenting the air in a hunt. Gooseflesh breaks out on Darcy's skin in response because the flat, blankness that Clint's face closes down into is unsettling to say the least.
"What-?" she starts to ask but bites down on the question when Clint's hand cuts through the air, a quick motion. He moves around the desk, pulling the gun from the back of his pants and reaching out an automatic arm to sweep Darcy behind himself so he's bodily between her and the door.
She's very glad he did, because the next moment something rushes in the door in a blur of motion. Clint grabs Darcy's hockey jersey by the shoulder and shoves her, sending her sprawling to the ground and skidding across the floor until she's half behind the desk. She pulls herself the rest of the way as Clint darts sideways and then out of the room, barrelling the figure back out.
There's a meaty thud, flesh on flesh and then Clint and another man are back in the study, locked together. Darcy ducks back behind the desk as they hit it together and it skids backwards until she's jammed between the bookshelves and the desk. The bit of wall panel that was removed scrapes against her back and Darcy rolls over, sees that the space under the bookshelves is not large, but she could probably fit into it if she squishes.
As Clint, she's not sure how she knows it's Clint but she does, makes a quick, pained noise, she shoves the wall panel out of the way, scrambles inside the wall cavity and tugs the panel behind her. It's not perfect, but if the guy hasn't seen her, doesn't know about the hidden cavity, she might just have more of a chance than if she tries for the doorway.
The sounds of two men really laying into each other seems to go for hours but is probably only really a few minutes and then there's a final low grunt and a louder thump which is a body hitting the floor. Darcy gasps in the dark space, eyes squeezed shut, just waiting for the intruder to yank back the wall panel and pull her out to finish her off too when there's a small noise.
Darcy holds her breath and the noise repeats, her name. "Darcy?"
"Here, I'm here," Darcy says, pushing her way out of the wall cavity, getting her shirt hung up on a protruding nail about halfway and cursing. Clint's just there in front of her, bloodied hands untangling her gently before he crab walks backwards to let her get all the way out.
"Lucky for us, I remember how to disarm an assailant and kill with a letter opener." Clint's mouth twists, wry.
"He's de...dead?" Darcy manages to get out before the terror of the last few minutes catches up with her and she throws up.
It's not her finest hour but she's also not having the best day.
"Us or him, right?"
Clint has stolen one of her socks to act as a washcloth as Darcy has been relying on the kindness of neighbours and friends for showers since there's no hot water in the apartment and therefore she hasn't bothered to invest in towels. He's wiping down her face and it feels heavenly.
"Us or him," Clint agrees and while Darcy knows she is in no way okay with what's just happened, it's a little easier to reconcile with Clint's assurance. Clint sits back on his heels, balancing in front of where she's seated on the side of the bath tub. He looks like he wants to say something but doesn't know how.
"I'm just going to go," Darcy says, moves to stand but Clint's hands on her knees stop her.
"You can't."
"I thought this wasn't a hostage situation."
"No it's... I can't explain why but I just know guys like that don't work alone, don't move without some kind of orders. They might have even been sitting on this place for days, waiting for me. They might think we know each other, that they can get to me through you."
"Was he a bad guy?"
Clint's hands, still on her knees, squeeze for a moment. "I don't know."
"Are you?"
Clint ducks his face. "I don't know."
"Will they know who I am? Whoever this guy was taking orders from?"
"Maybe. You could leave, pack your stuff and go but... until I figure out what the hell is going on, I think it would be safer if we stuck together."
"That couldn't have been a good guy, right? He didn't identify himself, didn't order us to drop our weapons. He didn't do any of the cop show crap."
"You had unpaid bills, no money to pay rent, right?"
"Yeah?"
"Before I followed you in here, I checked the box we found. There's money, a lot of it. Passports as well. Enough maybe to start over somewhere. Just, can you stick with me until we know what's going on? Let me make sure you're safe?"
Darcy puts her hands down on top of Clint's, knows at this point that she really doesn't have a choice.
Clint sits her down on a folded sweater in the corner by the apartment's front door and then Darcy watches him wipe down every surface she could've possibly touched in the last few weeks. He disappears in the study, comes back with her least favorite t-shirt balled in his hands and she knows he's used it to clean up her mess.
If he's going to keep pilfering her clothes she's really going to have to hit a walmart.
He'd found a stack of clothes underneath the seat of the bay window in the study and along with her backpack, Darcy's holding a navy peacoat for him and a bright red woolen jacket for her, nicer than anything she's ever owned. He's changed out of what he was wearing into better fitting jeans and a crew-neck sweater that really emphasises how sharp his jaw line is.
He drops a plastic trash bag that has his old clothes, her soiled shirt and sock and any other detritus she'd had sitting around, empty takeout containers and the like. "Do you want me to throw that in the garbage chute?" Darcy offers, feeling a little useless being set aside like she's in time-out.
"No, we'll get rid of it down a few blocks," he says and she watches him scan the apartment once more with his eyes, looking for something he's missed, some evidence of them. Seemingly satisfied, he nods and Darcy accepts his hand up.
"Do you have a hat?" he asks her.
"Um, yes?" Darcy unloads the jackets over his arm then digs in her backpack, past the second plastic bag with the contents of the box and a few sparse items of her clothing and tugs a beanie free. Clint hooks the jackets over his shoulder, takes the hat off her and reaches for her, hesitates a second until she nods.
He pulls her hair into a rough ponytail and then twists it around itself and up, piling it on top of her head, then pulling the hat over the whole thing.
"Are we sneaking out the back?"
"We're going to wait until we hear one of the neighbours on the stairs and then we're going to leave with them."