Can I claim #17, Sam/Darcy pleaseeeeee?
Yes yes yes!! thanks to @bloomsoftly for the beta magic!!
17. ‘Just stay here where it’s safe, I’ll be right back.’
‘Are you insane?! Have you never seen a zombie movie before?!’
Pairing: Darcy/Sam Wilson
Rating: T for language, warning for low-key spooky grossness!
“Just stay here where it’s safe, I’ll be right back,” Sam whispered, as they both froze at the sound of a thunk and a scuttle outside the old cabin safehouse.
“Are you insane?!” Darcy hissed. “Have you never seen a zombie movie before?!”
“Darce, I think we can safely say it’s not a zombie,” Sam said, pausing in step. Darcy hand her hands fisted in the back of his t-shirt and he could feel her toes bumping up against his heels.
“Umm… before New Mexico I could safely say I was never going to see a killer robot from outer space,” Darcy said. “Now that’s something my college friends regularly use against me in Never Have I Ever.”
Sam sighed. She had a point. “Okay. You can check the perimeter with me. But you stay close, okay?”
“Yeah, yes, I will stay close. That was my idea, remember? Me, staying close to you.”
“Not like that,” she added and he hushed her.
He shouldered her back behind him as he readied to open the door, gun pointed down. She had her taser out at her side which Sam remembered Steve asking him to make sure was not packed before smuggling her out of the compromised science symposium. (‘She tends to create…incidents,’ Steve had warned him with a grimace. ‘And it’s better to keep her separated from Jane when they get in trouble or they’ll sneak out and try to deal with the situation on their own.’ Darcy had told him that ‘try’ was actually ‘would’, as in they had been successful several times much to SHIELD’s annoyance.) But in this case he didn’t mind so much the civilian on his six being armed. After they figured out that the noise was caused by a raccoon or rabbit? Well, then he’d have to figure out the fastest way to get it off her.
The door swung open and Sam edged around the corner, staring into the crooked shadows of trees and underbrush crowding the clearing around the cabin. Darcy was breathing softly against his back, one fist still squeezing the fabric of his shirt but she followed close and slow as he stepped out of the doorway. When he turned back to glance at her, and gesture to the north side of the building where they’d heard the noises, she kept her eyes focused on the darkness surrounding them but nodded at his lead.
Actually. As civilians went, she was pretty good. As teammates went he’d dealt with less cooperative. Regularly.
Steve. He’d dealt with Steve.
Darcy kept her grip at his waist but twisted to watch behind them as Sam moved silently forward. There was a bright shatter of glass breaking from the side of the house and a low groaning sound. Sam reached back to pull Darcy closer. For her sake. Not his.
“Sounds like a zombie,” she breathed, barely audible.
He opened his mouth to say ‘No. No it didn’t.’ Except that it did and there was an awful smell in the air, like the shit he used to pull out of the back of the fridge during college days.
“Headshot,” she said, very very softly.
He was really looking forward to proving to her that whatever was fucking shit up outside of the cabin was not in fact, a zombie. He really didn’t like the whole zombie trend. He didn’t have a survival plan. He didn’t watch the shows. He did know the headshot thing though.
They paused together at the corner of the house. Darcy took a long, last careful scan of the dark before nodding to him.
They rounded the edge just in time to see a human shape dragging itself up into the window ledge.
“Put your hands up, asshole,” Sam said.
“Kill it, oh my god, oh my god, oh my god,” Darcy said from his side, letting go of his t-shirt in favor of dragging her own up over her nose.
There was another groan, low and raspy, and the figure dropped down from the window sill, shuffling to face them. Sam raised his gun and then a brilliant, white, crackling thread crossed the space between them. For a moment all Sam really saw clearly was a necrotic white gaze, and a gruesomely unhinged jaw bone.
“Oh shit, oh shit,” Darcy screamed as the figure seized and trembled but staggered towards them. “Head shot!”
The gun fired twice, sharp and loud, and Darcy jumped with each shot but stayed close. The body crumpled to the ground with an angry hiss and a horrible cloud of decay.
“I fucking called it,” Darcy breathed in the answering quiet.
“You did,” he allowed. Because that was definitely a zombie at their feet. “How screwed are we, right now, in your opinion?”
“Umm…” Darcy was staring down at the pile of clothing and rotting flesh.
He holstered his gun and turned her in place forcing her to stare up at him. Her eyes were a little dilated and he could feel her shaking in her shoulders. He was shaking too though, so, fair.
“Gimme what you know here, Darce. I’m shit on zombies. You’re the expert,” he said.
“If there are more, the gunshot will have drawn them,” she said, blinking quickly behind her glasses.
“How likely is it that there are more?” he asked.
“How close are we to a government testing facility?” she asked.
“There’s definitely more. We should get to the car and move,” she said. Her hand slipped into his and they hurried to the back door. She paused and grabbed an axe down from over the wood pile. “Since my taser doesn’t work on them,” she said as explanation.
“Yeah, yeah,” he said. “I’m good with you arming yourself. So long as I don’t become fodder.”
“Don’t let me trip and fall on any tree roots and get dragged away by the undead hordes and you’ve got yourself a deal,” she said.
“You’re not so bad as a mission partner, Darcy,” Sam said as she wasted no time inside grabbing her go bag and then proceeded to dig out several of the guns and boxes of ammunition he thought he’d done a decent job of hiding from her.
She grinned at him and passed him a bag of weapons. “You’re catching on faster than the usual sunglasses-with-their-asshats they assign me, I’ll give you that. Now, let’s hit the road and call our current favorite flavor of shady government agencies, yeah?”
Somehow he always ended up with the bossy shit-stirrers, Sam thought with a sigh. At least this one was pretty and liked holding his hand while they ran to the car, eyes on the dangerous dark surrounding them.
