Chapter Text
Bucky said Steve liked finding trouble. Steve maintained that trouble just enjoyed taking him out for a spin every once in a while, since all the girls they knew seemed disinclined to do so.
Too bad Steve wasn’t particularly good at dancing, even with a willing partner.
Steve’s most recent night out with trouble had resulted in a split lip, black eye, and bruised knuckles. Maybe even a dislocated shoulder. Oh, and he had a face full of Brooklyn alley muck.
She really swept the floor with me tonight.
The boot between Steve’s shoulder blades pushed down a little harder. Rather than the snarky quip he longed to spit out, Steve only managed a garbled, hacking whimper.
“Had enough yet, pixie?” Steve flinched as the second man ground a cigarette into the ground beside his head. The acrid smoke curdled his lungs.
She took my breath away, Buck.
A splatter of phlegm landed next to Steve’s hand, egg-yellow against the filthy ground. Steve hacked up as much breath as he could with 200lbs of thug pressing his body into the pavement.
He wheezed: “Could...d’...this all…”
The weight on his back increased sharply, forcing the breath from his lungs in a sharp burst. There was an awful crack somewhere around his heart. Steve bit down hard on his bloody lip to stifle a scream.
Really, Buck. It was aces.
At least, if he died, Bucky and Ma wouldn’t have to worry about him so much anymore.
Steve struggled to process that macabre Freudian slip while splotches of black wriggled at the edges of his vision (or maybe they were dancing, like Bucky did with girls in dancehalls, whirling and laughing and spinning and — )
Steve wondered, briefly, consciously, whether he was imagining the sound of a woman’s voice.
But no, that was definitely a dame. Or maybe loss of oxygen turned the rat-bastard’s voice a few octaves higher—
Heat seared at his back. The weight crushing Steve’s lungs vanished. Awful, putrid air, tainted with the iron bite of blood and grease of rotting fish hit his throat. He gasped down greedy gulps anyway. Steps scuffled by his head, shouts echoing around the alley. Steve’s ears were ringing too hard to make out much more than a few syllables.
“Don’t—!!” One of the thugs’ plea became a scream.
Another burst of heat, this time accompanied by a brilliant flash. Steve managed just enough energy to twist his head to one side… only to shut his eyes tight as a jet of flame shot towards his face.
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Seriously, Steve complained, batting away the towel Bucky was trying to dab against the side of his throat, so what if my girl likes to play a little rough? You come back from dancing looking twice as mauled as me, and half as happy.
Shut. Up. Punk. Bucky’s mouth was a grim line. Stop talking like ‘Trouble’ is anything like a dame and dancing. You’re gonna get yourself killed. And then I’ll bring you back to murder you for it.
You’d need to be less stupid to manage that, Jerk. Steve sassed him. But he let Bucky bring the antiseptic-soaked towel back up to his face.
That right, Punk? Maybe you oughta find enough brains for a real date, before yours end up splattered down some alleyway.
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Steve might have blacked out for a second or two. When he came back around, there was a warm hand pressed to his brow.
A girl knelt over him. She looked about his age: 17, 18, maybe a little older. It was hard to tell with one eye almost swollen shut. He tried to focus. Streaks of color swam back into clarity, revealing his knight in… patchwork armor.
The girl wore what looked like a trunk’s worth of layered shawls and blankets. A knit cap perched atop her mane of tangled brown hair. Her face, streaked with ashy dirt, still seemed just a touch blurred. That was probably just the swelling around his eye, though.
“Quite the shiner,” she grinned at him.
At first, Steve thought his inability to form words was due to a general unfamiliarity with being smiled at by pretty (albeit dirty) girls. But no, that wouldn’t account for his chest seizing, ribs a sudden vice around his breath. Asthma attack? Couldn’t be. The hand he stretched towards her shivered with irrepressible tremors. But he didn’t feel cold.
“Hey,” the girl was suddenly alert. Delicately, she took his tingling hand, gently levered him into a sitting position. “Just breathe. Breathe with me, see?
“I scared those goons off, okay? They’re gone. Poof. Vanished. Nothing to be afraid of, not after the scorching I gave ‘em. And I’m not gonna go anywhere. Just...keep...breathing…” She pressed his hand to her sternum. Let him feel her deep, steady inhale, and even slower exhale. She kept going, steadily, until Steve could match her pace.
Eventually, the tremors ceased. Steve panted, sweat trickling down to sting at his open cuts, his eyes blurred with tears.
The girl’s brow furrowed in concern. Steve realized his hand was still pressed to the bare (and surprisingly warm) skin of her chest and quickly withdrew.
“That better?” She asked.
Normally, Steve might have snapped at the sympathy in her tone. Pity made him want to crawl out of his skin. He was too tired for anger just then, though.
He nodded, and the girl rocked back on her heels, a little smile playing about her lips.
“Good to hear, Bruised Brooklyn Boy. Now, what’s a nice kid like you doing in a nasty alley like this?”
Steve would have laughed, if he had the breath. It was something Bucky might have said.
“There...was a kid—”
The girl’s eyes flickered behind him. “Oh. I see ‘em. You okay if I go coax ‘em out? My name’s Darcelle, by the way. Or I guess it was Darcelle. It’s Darcy now. Darcy, Savior of Brawling Bruised Brooklyn Boys and Fellow Alley Associates. But you can can me just Darcy. Who’re you?”
Steve managed a wheezy chuckle. Then, he passed out.