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Things are going relatively well for the Avengers these days. Their personal and professional relationships are flourishing; their work as a team during missions and on the battlefield is almost on par with their dynamics as a family living together.
Or at least that’s the case for all the members that live at the compound. Even the heroes that didn’t get along not too long ago are starting to warm up to each other. One such example is the rocky relationship between Tony Stark and Bucky Barnes, who were basically enemies until Stark’s resentment began to dwindle bit by bit.
Despite their ups and downs as coworkers, the former Winter Soldier and Iron Man have been working on making peace, even if only for everyone else’s sake. So far so good, yet both men can’t help but find some pleasure in the other’s mild misfortune whenever something harmless but annoying happens.
And so it happened that after a particularly difficult mission, Barnes showed up at Stark’s lab, asking him to recalibrate his metal arm so that it would be a bit stronger. As it turned out, he didn’t have the strength necessary to open a latch aboard a ship, which resulted in the criminals almost escaping. If it weren’t for Sam’s quick reflexes and Red Wing’s lookout job, they would have ultimately failed in apprehending the perpetrators.
Understanding the problem and the need to solve it, Tony agreed to help the other man, telling him to sit on a chair near one of his worktables so he could have a look at the internal mechanism. Since the arm is one that he designed and built, he knows it as well as the back of his hand. However, given that Stark was getting sick of being asked for the same thing over and over again every time Barnes forces his arm, he decided to just give the veteran a little more than what he asked for, hoping that the extra power would stop the veteran from asking again.
But what the engineer couldn’t foresee, is that such a “nice gesture” on his part would come back to bite him in the ass, in a way. Because the incremented strength ends up leading Buck to struggle for a while with the need to adjust the amount of force he employs when using his cybernetic arm. That, in consequence, has the result of the man unintentionally breaking things around the compound. Some of the objects that suffer under the Sergeant’s new power are mugs, plates, training equipment, and a few too many doors.
That last one is a particular mishap that becomes recurring, which consists of Bucky walking in or out of rooms and unwillingly tearing the doors off their hinges when opening them with more force than they can withstand. And because the man’s too embarrassed of his lack of control and restraint over his newfound strength, one that he thought would be a fraction of what ended up being (and that he suspects might be the intentional fault of Tony), he keeps silent about it all. Instead, he chooses to put back the doors on their places as inconspicuously as possible, so that nobody notices right away that they are broken. He just figures out that, eventually, someone else will find out and get them fixed.
Now, what was barely an issue soon became a problem. Because even if most of the Avengers have superpowers themselves or are trained soldiers/assassins (and even some of them either figure or find out that Bucky’s responsible for the broken doors) and don’t think much about it, that’s not the case with all of them. Most, upon noticing, move on with their lives, either repairing the doors or telling someone else about them. But Stark doesn’t have the same luck.
While everyone else is aware of what’s going on, Tony ends up being the only one left out of the loop, yet at the same time, he’s the only one that is freaked out about the whole thing. As doors keep being torn from their hinges and falling on him without apparent reason or cause, his paranoia leads him to believe that he might have developed super strength (and, coincidentally enough, right when he’s working with a serum formula similar to the one used on Steve and Bucky).
“F.R.I.D.A.Y., run some tests, I need to see if I’m experiencing some kind of physical abnormality that might have increased my usual strength without my knowledge,” ordered Tony as soon as he entered his lab.
He sounded frantic and looked a bit worse for wear. It was obvious to the AI, who had been keeping track of all the broken doors, that the situation was stressing the billionaire.
“But boss, that’s not–” F.R.I.D.A.Y. tried to interrupt to clarify Stark’s misunderstanding, yet the man wasn’t having any of it.
Despite the AI’s best intentions to reassure Tony that he wasn’t indeed developing any enhanced abilities, there was so much she could do out of her limited “free will”.
“Not now, I need to find out first if I have superpowers or not,” dismisses Stark immediately, sounding annoyed at being interrupted by his AI.
I should stop making them such snarky backtalkers. Then again, it would be extremely dull with no one to keep up with my banter, thinks Tony, with unregistered arrogance.
He wants nothing else than to get on with the testing and subsequent experimentation (in the instance his assumption is proven right) as soon as possible.
“As you say, boss,” replies F.R.I.D.A.Y., defeated.
Even though she should probably intervene and clear things up for her boss, she decides to entertain the man’s paranoia for the time being. After all, the test will be mostly harmless. All the damage they could cause would be to Stark’s inflated ego. Sooner or later, he’ll find out the disappointing truth.
Still, at the moment, Tony believes that what’s happening to him could be a side effect of his experiments. That’s why he insists on the test, as he wants to figure out if it’s really him causing all the trouble with the doors or if someone else is just fucking with him. And if the last case turns out to be the real one, it would imply that some of the other Avengers know about it as well yet they are keeping silent. After all, he hasn’t heard anything regarding the broken doors from anyone else.
What he doesn’t know for sure is that F.R.I.D.A.Y. does know that Barnes is responsible for the whole affair. And despite that important bit of information, she decides to not say anything and entertain the crazy idea of her boss. At least for a couple of hours. In the meantime, she’s also paying attention to an interesting conversation taking place on the lounge, being carried between none other than the perpetrator and his closest friends.
“Are you going to tell him that it was you breaking all those doors?”
Sam asks with amusement, imagining how stir-up crazy Stark must be going from thinking he’s the one tearing off doors. Nevertheless, he does feel some sympathy for the older man, and thus wouldn’t want him to be kept in the dark for much longer.
“Nah, he’ll figure it out on his own. Besides, it’s funny seeing him freak out for something so stupid,” Bucky replies with a smug smirk.
He’s enjoying Tony’s “suffering”, no matter how guilty a small part of him feels about it.
The Sarge is convinced that the strength miscalculation while recalibrating his arm wasn’t a mistake nor an accident, but rather on purpose. He imagines that Stark got fed up with being asked to fix and upgrade it, so he opted to pack a little more of a punch on the prosthetic limb.
And now I can’t even hold an orange to peel it without ending up making juice all over myself, thinks bitterly the former Soviet assassin.
“You know you’ll eventually need to get your arm fixed, right? Not sure you’ll want to deal with a pissed-off Tony when that time comes,” points out Wilson with expectant glee, knowing that Barnes can’t resist messing with Stark and that will ultimately lead the engineer to get revenge on the war veteran.
Naturally, he isn’t worried about it, but rather looking forward to seeing what the genius will come up with to get back at the Sergeant.
“Yeah. Also, it’s not nice letting him think he has suddenly developed super strength when in fact it’s just you breaking doors,” chimes in Steve with some concern, unable to keep silent about the issue they are dealing with.
The Captain’s moral compass, as always, makes an appearance to try and dissuade his best friend to do what’s right. That and he also doesn’t want Buck to get in trouble and start fighting with Tony. They already went through enough of that as it is.
“I’m sure he’ll survive it,” assures Barnes, shrugging off the others’ concerns. “He should have fixed my arm correctly the first time, anyway.”
Bucky’s nonchalant dismissal confirms his friends’ worry that he doesn’t plan on recognizing his mistake, which in turn guarantees a future dispute between the two of them. In any case, they are at least confident that whatever Tony does to retaliate, it won’t be too bad. Or at least that’s what they are hoping for.
“You really are a little shit when you want to be, Barnes,” comments Natasha, impressed and amused by Bucky’s determination to annoy Tony with the pettiest of things.
Since she mostly knew him as the Winter Soldier and his daunting reputation, the spy only has for reference all the stories Steve told her from his past with Barnes. But making the comparison between what she learned from the Captain and what she witnessed, she can conclude that her initial assessment after learning more about him had been right.
After the Black Widow’s slightly insulting comment, they all ended up laughing and changing the subject, although not without another reprimand from Rogers, who admonished his friend’s shenanigans one last time. And while Tony spent a few hours trying to figure out what was wrong with him, just to come up empty-handed and only then perusing the security cameras’ footage, the group of four on the lounge went on to prepare dinner for all the residents of the Avengers HQ. In the meantime, they all prepared themselves for what they knew would be a tense, yet entertaining meal once Stark found out the truth.