#longcatislong

That, coupled with this weird thing she had with Pietro. Which, now that the ocean air was clearing her mind, was starting to look like nothing other than an innocent flirtation on his part. She was probably reading too much into it. They joked back and forth in the mornings. Just because he was the only person in her life who bothered to talk about things that weren’t work-related didn’t make him a romantic prospect. It made her a sad pathetic human in need of a Tinder profile for no other reason than to break up the monotony of being PR Director for Earth’s Mightiest Dumbasses.

Hell, she wasn’t even sure if she actually thought about Pietro like that.

Rolling her eyes at herself, it was kind of obvious that she did. She’d be blind not to. Dude was a fox. In every outdated use of the word.

Her hands fidgeted in the cold. She’d purposefully left her phone at the bottom of her hastily packed bag. And her laptop was still in her office. Not even properly shut down. She really was addicted to work. Her fingers itched for something to do.

Darcy sat down in the sand, wrapping her arms around her body and wishing she’d thought to bring a throw blanket with her. She certainly was lacking in the external body heat department.

Maybe there was some hot dude in town here who wouldn’t mind getting frisky with an out-of-towner. She’d been reading too many romance novels lately. She was pretty sure that particular scenario was the central plot in at least a few.

Sighing, she closed her eyes and listened to the waves crashing on the beach below her. It was soothing. Moreso in person than on her ocean sounds playlist she tried to play at home to make her sleepy.

She tried to time her breaths with the sounds of the ocean. So much so that she didn’t feel the shift in the air, the breeze that blew past her, only to return and stand in front of her.

“There you are.”

She jumped a mile, catching herself with a hand splayed behind her, the other covering her now-rapidly beating heart. “Dude!” she chastised the man standing in front of her.

With his Avengers embroidered tracksuit and silver and blue trainers, she’d recognize him from a mile away.  His superspeed helped a little on that endeavor.

“Sorry,” Pietro said, squatting in front of her. “Are you alright?”

“Yeah, I’m fine. Taking a vacation… I just got here, wanted to come out to the ocean. It was soothing and peaceful. You know, until you took it upon yourself to scare me shitless.”

“I said I was sorry…” he repeated, shifting so he could sit in front of her. “This is peaceful.”

“Yeah, well, it was…” she griped, moving to her feet so she could dust the sand off her jeans and turn to go back to her beach house.

Pietro was beside her almost instantly. “I got worried when you just left… you’re coming back, aren’t you?”

Sighing, she nodded. “Yeah, I’m just taking a break. I needed a break, you guys are a lot. So, if you don’t mind, I’d like to pretend I don’t have Avengers problems for right now… whatever you did, tell my assistant and she’ll email it to me. I’ll type up a release and it’ll be like I’m there. Except when I finish typing, I’m going to go take a walk on the beach, and gather seashells, and go buy a bunch of cheesy romances on my Kindle… I’m going to pretend I’m not some weird surrogate mother for a bunch of assholes who jump out of planes without parachutes.”

“I didn’t do anything,” he began.  “And I’m sorry if we don’t seem grateful…”

“Pietro, don’t worry about it, I’m compensated very well for what I do. I just needed something different, I was turning into some kind of PR machine. I didn’t feel human anymore.”

He was quiet for a long moment. “I didn’t know that.”

“Yeah…” she chuckled. “I even kind of misconstrued our little… coffee thing as something more than what it was… I’m sorry about that. Hopefully, I can reset on this vacation and come back and set up a Tinder account or something.”

“Misconstrued how?” Pietro asked.

“You know, I put too much into it. I was using you.”

“I don’t mind if you use me. I would like it if you used me more,” he replied.

She huffed out a laugh, glancing over at his earnest expression and realizing that he was dead serious. “Oh… I--”

“If you want, I mean. If that is something that--”

“Use you how?”

He shrugged, jamming both hands in his pockets. “For conversation… for dinner… for sex… it does not bother me.”

“Sex doesn’t bother you,” she deadpanned, arching an eyebrow in mock-incredulity.

“Sex with you would not bother me,” he clarified, arching a brow of his own.

She laughed again. “You’re joking.”

“No, for once, I am not. It is why I followed you…”

“For sex?” she asked, smirking a little.

He immediately backtracked. “No! Not for-- I followed you because I like you.  And I missed you the second you left. And I like spending time with you. If you want me to go, I will--”

She had to grin at him. He was cute when he was flustered. Hell, he was cute when he wasn’t. Dude was just cute.  A helluva lot cuter than he had any right to be.

“So you want a piece of my vacation,” she teased, folding her arms over her chest.

“Only if you are willing to share,” Pietro replied.

“Funny, sharing isn’t one of my strong points, but for you? I’d share it with you.”

“Really?”

“Really. Turns out I like spending time with you too. Just make sure Steve knows. I don’t want the rest of the team storming my peaceful vacation looking for you.” Darcy tossed her hair and unfolded her arms, only to refold them again. Putting herself out there wasn’t one of her strong points either.

He beamed down at her. “I will notify them as soon as possible.”

“Cool.”  Darcy turned to walk back up to the beach house, with Pietro keeping up right beside her.

“Um, there is one little thing…” he began.

“What’s that?”

“I didn’t bring anything with me? I don’t have any other clothes.”

Darcy laughed. “So you saw that I left, and you just kind of ran down here?”

“More or less,” he shrugged, the picture of nonchalance. Quite a feat when he only had the clothes on his back.

“Wow you really are a super speedy dork, aren’t you?”

“That depends…” he mused.

“On what?”

“Upon whether you find that to be an attractive quality or not.”

She grinned, feeling her cheeks begin to warm. “I do find super speedy dorks attractive.”