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Clint Barton had many skills.
He could shoot down a fly from the other end of a soccer pitch. He knew sixteen types of martial arts. He’d once taken down a burglar whilst sleepwalking. And he made a pretty mean chicken korma.
Unfortunately, most of his skills were useless outside the battlefield (except maybe that last one). And now nearly a month had passed since the whole Chitauri invasion thing, and he was getting bored. There were a lot of egos bumping around in Stark Tower, and a guy could only take so much snark before even Clint’s resolve began to crack.
Clint had a hidden talent, one so secret it wasn’t even on his file. And he was itching to use it.
‘I know that look,’ said Natasha one morning as they waited by the toaster. ‘What are you planning?’
‘Don’t know what you’re talking about,’ he said innocently, studying a jar of peanut butter with assassin-level concentration.
‘It’s been three weeks since we had a mission. You’re getting restless.’ She folded her arms and tapped her foot. ‘Barton...’
‘Ooh, toast!’ He snatched it from the toaster the second it popped up and whirled away to join the others at the table. Natasha sighed behind him.
Clint was an assassin. He was trained to observe others, spot exploitable weaknesses.
Coincidentally, that made him really, really good at fucking with people.
He started with Tony.
The guy was chaotic in his daily routine, but there were always patterns. For example, he always took his coffee from the same machine in the kitchen, and he kept a pair of stylish sunglasses in every suit jacket he wore. It was easy enough to switch all his sunglasses with googly eye glasses and switch the coffee to decaf.
The end result: Tony slumped in the kitchen chair, three cups of coffee down, and looking very grumpy despite his giant googly eyes (he’d insisted on wearing the glasses, and would probably continue to wear them for the rest of the day).
Natasha cornered him later that day. ‘What are you doing?’ she asked in a dangerous undertone.
‘Just establishing my dominance,’ Clint said cheerfully. ‘Keeping everyone on their toes.’
‘Just so we’re clear,’ she said with dangerous sweetness, ‘if you ever prank me again I’ll break your legs.’ She’d never quite forgiven him for the frog-in-the-underwear-drawer incident.
Clint swallowed hard. ‘Yes, ma’am.’
It was nothing personal, of course. But Clint couldn’t ignore that he was on a team of literal superhumans; everyone’s ego could use a little deflating. The fact that he was on this team without any magic powers or a giant brain was proof enough that he deserved to be here.
But a little reminder wouldn’t hurt.
Steve was easy. All Clint had to do was wait until he left his phone unattended (the passcode was 1943, really original, Cap) and download some new ringtones. Namely, the filthiest rap songs he could find.
The following week was one of the best of Clint’s life.
‘You’re an ass,’ Natasha muttered as the SHIELD meeting room was suddenly regaled with Slob on my Knob, and Steve groaned and sprinted from the room like his ass was on fire.
Tony turned to watch him go. ‘Hey, we’ve all got our guilty pleasures, Cap! No judgement here!’
Fury glared at them all with his one remaining eye. ‘Anyone else got somewhere they need to be?’ Clint kept his expression serious as his gaze flicked over him. As the meeting resumed, he subtly returned his phone to his pocket.
The movement wasn’t lost on Bruce however, who raised an eyebrow at him in question.
Clint winked at him.
A faint smile graced the scientist’s features before he returned his attention to what Fury was saying.
‘Two down, two to go,’ he whispered.
Natasha kicked him under the table.
Thor was another easy target. He was always leaving his hammer in weird places, confident that no one would be able to move it, so Clint took some simple revenge. Namely, he glued a plastic spider to the handle.
The undignified squeak of terror from Thor was almost worth it – except that it also caused a bolt of electricity to zap through the tower and take out the whole power supply. Clint spent most of that evening up in the vents, hiding from Natasha's wrath. At least the wi-fi still worked, somehow.
Lastly, there was Bruce. He was a little harder to read than the others, but he did have a routine. Clint spent a few days observing his movements, wondering what he could get away with. Nothing that would piss him off too much; he didn’t want to get the green guy involved.
The first thing Bruce did every morning was pour himself a glass of orange juice.
Clint wandered into the kitchen at 9:08, made the necessary preparations, then settled himself on the kitchen counter and tucked into his sugar-loaded cornflakes. At 9:14, Bruce padded in. His curly hair was still sleep-ruffled but he was fully dressed, glasses perched on his nose as he poked at his tablet. ‘Mornin Doc,’ Clint said brightly.
‘Morning.’ Still staring at his tablet, he rummaged through the fridge with his free hand and dug out the carton of juice. Apparently, he was too sleepy to notice that the juice was a little thicker than usual as it plopped into the glass.
‘Whatcha readin?’ Clint asked through a mouthful of cereal. ‘Cheeky romance novel?’
Bruce shook his head, leaning against the fridge. ‘Just catching up on the latest in the physics world. I’ve been out of the loop for a while.’ His brow furrowed in concentration as he read, and then he reached for his glass and took a large gulp.
The interesting thing about egg yolks is that, when sufficiently stirred up, they look an awful lot like juice.
Bruce’s eyes went wide and he gagged, setting the glass down hard. He pressed his hand to his mouth and did a full-body shiver so violent that Clint was worried he might transform then and there.
‘You okay, man?’ he asked innocently, as Bruce coughed and spluttered. When he recovered himself, Bruce finally eyed him suspiciously. ‘You don’t look so good.’
Bruce looked down at his glass, lips smeared with yellow goo. Then he looked back up at him in incredulous disbelief.
Clint allowed the corner of his mouth to turn up in a smirk.
‘Hm,’ said Bruce, and held the glass up to the light. ‘Guess Tony got the kind with bits in.’
And he downed the rest of the glass in a single swallow.
Clint could only look on in awe as Bruce calmly wiped his mouth on the back of his hand and continued reading the news on his tablet with apparent concentration. There was no tell in his body language to suggest anything was amiss.
Eighteen seconds later, he looked up to meet his eyes unwaveringly. ‘Did you need something, Barton?’ he asked, the faintest hint of sharpness at the edges of his voice.
Clint shook his head. ‘All good, Doc.’ And he sauntered from the room, unsure whether to be amused or disappointed.
That evening, there was a crunch as he got into bed.
He leapt up with a yelp, cold wetness sliding down his thigh. A now-broken egg lay innocently under the blanket. It didn’t take a genius with seven PhDs to guess who put it there.
The prank game only had one rule: you did not prank back in retaliation. To do so was an act of war.
Slowly, a grin stretched across his face. ‘Oh, it’s on, motherfucker.’
He started off small. Just a simple switcheroo: overnight, he emptied all the liquid soap containers in the lab and replaced them with extra-slippery lube. Then he settled down in the vents above to watch the show.
Bruce was a meticulous hand-washer, so he didn’t have to wait long. He picked up a glass beaker and it immediately slipped from his hands and shattered on the floor. ‘Huh,’ he said thoughtfully, then looked up at Clint.
He froze. No way could Bruce see him, but his gaze was only a few feet to the left of where he was hiding.
Bruce smiled, then wandered off and bent down to rummage in a cupboard (coincidentally, giving Clint a great view of his ass) and straightened up with some latex gloves.
Dammit. This guy was good.
‘My hands are tingling,’ said Tony, breezing into the room. ‘Must be something in the soap - are your hands tingly?’
Clint may have bought extra-sensation lube. Accidentally, of course.
But Bruce was already concentrating on his next experiment. ‘No, they feel fine.’
Sneaking a glance up at the vents, Bruce slid a hand under one glove to itch the skin.
Clint smirked.
That evening, he opened the communal fridge to find a Tupperware box labelled "CLINT’S: DO NOT TOUCH". Inside was a cold tube of rectal cream and a cucumber.
And he knew that he’d finally found a worthy adversary.
The following few weeks made Clint extra happy he’d joined the Avengers. He switched all of Bruce's pens with crayons, Bruce covered his archery targets with sticky notes, and so it went on. The only apparent rule was that they took it in turns. Sometimes Bruce would take several days, just long enough for Clint to let his guard down before striking when he wasn’t expecting it.
It was glorious.
When Clint first met Bruce, he’d expected him to be a dick; PhDs out of his ears, capable of smashing anyone in the room, of course he’d be an arrogant jerk. He certainly seemed reluctant to interact socially, and would always respond to Clint’s "mornin"s with a curt nod. It turned out he just needed coaxing out of his big green shell.
Bruce swapped his mouthwash for pickle juice. Clint changed all the shortcuts on Bruce’s laptop desktop to hardcore porn sites. Bruce's resulting blush – at the breakfast table, no less – was nothing short of adorable. Poor Steve, who happened to glance over, choked on his toast.
Their antics were not lost on the rest of the Avengers.
‘Banner seems much happier of late,’ Thor noted one afternoon. ‘Can you think why that is?’
‘Beats me,’ said Clint, busily drawing dicks on sheets of paper before feeding them back into the lab printer’s paper tray.
Retaliation was swift; that evening, Clint crawled through the vents to find a cardboard cut-out of Bruce Willis from Die Hard scowling back at him. Once he’d figured out how to get it down, it became a game of Where’s Bruce Willis? Clint left it in the men’s bathroom. Bruce put it in the gym where it gazed upon Clint’s archery training. Clint attached it to the back of the lab door. For two weeks, Clint was always on alert, never quite knowing when Bruce Willis would appear.
‘Oh, for the love of – ‘ Tony groaned as he opened a kitchen cupboard and jumped. ‘Can you stop trying to jumpscare each other? I fell through a wormhole. I’ve had a car battery put into my chest. None of that compares to this. None. Bruce Willis is giving me fucking PTSD.’
Bruce and Clint dutifully peeled it off the door. It was looking a little crumpled by now. They walked down the corridor together, Bruce carrying it under his arm. ‘So whose turn is it to have custody? I forget.’
Clint shrugged. ‘I’ll have him on the weekends.’
‘You’re paying child support.’
They got into the elevator, attracting a few concerned looks from some visiting SHIELD agents.
‘Love Die Hard, man. That guy created vent culture.’
Bruce grinned. ‘I could see you in the white vest.’
‘Just need me an Alan Rickman to kick off the tower. By the way, how did you get him in the vents in the first place? It’s not the easiest place to get into. Lots of tight turns in that sector.’
‘I didn’t get Hulk to do it, if you were wondering.’ Clint stared, and he shrugged and turned slightly pink. ‘I um. Do a lot of yoga and stuff so I’m pretty… flexible.’
That was a very interesting thought. So interesting that Clint just said, ‘Huh.’
One of the agents in their very-not-empty elevator coughed, and they both looked away guiltily.
Bruce Willis just glared at them both.
Living at Stark Tower had become fun.
Clint was now satisfied that the other egos in the tower took him seriously, though he still played the odd prank now and then. The exception was Bruce of course, who returned his pranks with calculated awesomeness.
They started hanging out together, not just to prank each other of course, although sometimes they teamed up to prank someone else.
‘Okay, who did it?’ Tony stormed into the lab, where Bruce and Clint were hanging out on the lab couch eating lunch.
‘Did what?’ said Clint, trying to remember what their latest scheme had been.
Tony pointed to the ceiling. ‘Who messed with JARVIS? I know it was one of you.’
‘No entiendo el problema, señor Stark.’
Bruce laughed. ‘Why is he speaking Spanish?’
‘Yeah, that’s what I wanna know!’
‘Only joking, sir. I thought it would be good for morale.’
Tony sighed and hid his face in his hands. ‘You’ll be the death of me, J.’
‘I’m flattered you think we’re capable of that.’ Clint grinned, elbowing Bruce playfully.
Bruce grinned back, and Clint had to look away as his heart fluttered.
A few days later, Steve came to find him in the archery range.
Clint didn’t acknowledge the quiet footsteps behind him. He knew it was Steve by the weight and pace of his steps, the measured silence as he waited to be acknowledged.
‘Something on your mind, Cap?’ He finished firing off his last round of arrows, all of which found their targets, then turned around.
Steve was still sweaty from a morning workout, his grey top sporting a dark trianglular stain. ‘Clint, this has to stop.’ He held up a water flask. It was covered in tiny Hulk stickers; Clint had spent hours ensuring each one had some superglue help so they wouldn’t be picked off in a hurry. ‘Why did you put these on my flask?’
‘Ah, shit. I thought it was Bruce’s! It’s green anyway - ‘
‘This… prank war, or whatever it is, is disrupting the work we’re doing here. It’s childish.’ Steve stepped closer. ‘It also puts the rest of the team in danger,’ he added quietly.
‘Oh, so Bruce is a threat now?’ Clint marched off to collect his arrows. Steve followed him. ‘I don’t think putting food colouring in his toothpaste is going to make him lose his shit. He can take it.’ He wrenched one out and pointed it at him. ‘In case you forgot, we saved the world together. I think the guy deserves a little more trust, don’t you?’
Steve sighed and hung his head. ‘It’s not Bruce I don’t trust. Just... if there’s a chance to avoid risk, we should take it.’
He twirled the arrow through his fingers. ‘I’ll think about it.’
‘Don’t make me bring Fury into this,’ he murmured.
They stared each other down. Just as Clint was about to tell him to fuck off, Steve’s phone rang. His already-pink cheeks flushed scarlet as Nicki Minaj’s Anaconda echoed through the shooting range. ‘And this isn’t funny either,’ he snapped, snatching it out of his pocket. ‘Hello? Oh, Bruce, hey. Yeah, sure. Be right there.’ With a final disapproving glance at Clint, Steve left.
Heart still pounding with indignation, Clint wrenched out all the arrows and strode back to the shooting area.
Where Bruce stood waiting for him.
‘Uh, didn’t you just call Steve?’ Clint scooped up his bow and slung it over his shoulder.
‘I did.’ He looked thoughtful, hands clasped in front of him in that unassuming scientist way.
‘To say that you needed him for something?’ he prompted, wondering how the two could have missed each other.
He shook his head. ‘Tony needs him. To show him how to change his ringtone.’
Clint smiled, then frowned. ‘You heard?’
‘I got the gist.’ An amused smile creased the corners of his mouth. ’Anaconda, really? That’s my caller ringtone?’
Clint shrugged and winked. ‘Well, you got the buns, hun.’
He huffed, looking strangely pleased as he looked away. ‘Thanks. For - for that, I mean.’ He jerked his head in the direction of the door. ‘Sticking up for me.’
‘No prob, Doc.’
‘You don’t think he’s got a point?’ The question was casual but it drew taut lines around his mouth.
‘Hey. You’re not made of glass. If we’re working as a team we’ve gotta trust each other.’
Bruce blinked several times, as if surprised. He opened his mouth to say something, then closed it again. ‘Thanks,’ he said eventually.
Clint slung an arm over his shoulders. ‘Let’s go get lunch. You hungry?’
Despite Steve’s warnings, they continued their prank war but on quieter terms. For example, Clint thought it would be a devious idea to hide sticky notes with little hawk drawings amongst Bruce's belongings. Bruce started hiding candies up in the vents, sometimes in hard-to-reach spots.
So what if he maybe had a teeny-tiny crush? It was all harmless enough… and probably not very subtle, if Natasha's pointed looks were anything to go by.
They pranked her in the end, of course. Just a whoopee cushion under her preferred couch spot, but they hid up in the vents for hours afterwards with a stash of snacks. It was the most fun Clint had had in ages.
After a particularly long and nasty battle, Clint helped Bruce into the elevator and told the others to attend the debrief without them.
‘I’m okay,’ Bruce insisted, shivering in the oversized shirt someone had brought him.
‘Yeah yeah, you’re indestructible, we know.’ Still, Clint didn’t let go of Bruce's arm. Just because Bruce could take care of himself, that didn’t mean he had to. He hit the button for Bruce's floor. ‘By the way, I just ordered some glue and a ton of tiny blue and red crystals. I’m going to bedazzle Cap’s shield. It’s gonna be awesome.’
Despite his tiredness, a smile worked its way across Bruce's face. ‘Want me to run distraction?’
‘I knew you’d be game, my devious accomplice.’
That was when the elevator jolted to a stop. Bruce's smile vanished. ‘What was that?’
Clint hammered on the buttons. ‘Shit. Elevator’s broke.’
Bruce stumbled away to paw ineffectually at the doors. ‘The other guy’s not a fan of enclosed spaces.’
‘Hey, it’s okay.’ Without thinking, Clint stepped over and took his hand. ‘You go in the vents often enough, this is no different.’
‘Yes, but I could get out of the vents whenever I needed to.’ Bruce's eyes flicked nervously over Clint’s face. He chewed on his lower lip. ‘What if I change? What if I – ‘
‘Dude, it’s fine. We’re fine. I trust you.’ Bruce was biting hard enough to draw blood, so he reached up to gently run a thumb over his lips. ‘Relax. There’s worse people to be stuck in an elevator with, right?’
Those dark brown eyes finally met his, and Bruce stilled a little. He swallowed. Clint’s hand still hovered at his cheek. ‘Clint?’
‘Just focus on me, Bruce,’ he whispered. ‘We’ll be out of here before you know it.’
Bruce kissed him.
Clint wrapped his arms around him, the loose material of Bruce's oversized shirt bunching under his fingers. Bruce was warm and sleepy and soft, and he felt like home.
The elevator doors opened.
Four grinning Avengers stood outside.
‘Hey boys,’ said Natasha. ‘Good trip?’
‘I fixed the elevator,’ said Tony.
‘Technically, it was never broken, sir.’
‘You – you set us up?’ Clint spluttered.
‘Twas the Captain’s idea,’ Thor declared, clapping Steve on the shoulder.
Steve shrugged. ‘We thought you could use a little help.’
Bruce untangled himself from their embrace, but he didn’t let go of Clint’s hand. ‘I think we’ve been pranked,’ he said, smiling shyly.
Clint could only stare at their friends in disbelief. ‘I’m trying really hard to be mad right now.’ But really, he was touched. In only a few months, these people had come to feel like family.
Bruce's thumb stroked the back of his hand. ‘You guys do know that the pranking game has only one rule?’
‘Oh yeah?’ said Natasha, eyes glittering with dangerous promise. ‘And what’s that?’
Clint grinned. ‘If you prank back, it’s a prank war. That’s how it works.’
Steve groaned. ‘Oh, it’s never going to end, is it?’
Bruce started backing into the elevator, pulling Clint with him. ‘Truce until I can walk in a straight line?’
Tony nodded. ‘Rest up big guy!’
Clint was laughing as the doors slid closed again. ‘You do realise you just challenged four superheroes to a prank war?’
‘We can take them,’ Bruce murmured, leaning in for another kiss. ‘Tell me again about this shield prank…’