Chapter Text
Steve
Tony slapped Steve hard on the back and spilled his coffee. “You dog, you! I saw the Black Russian sneaking out of your room last night. Go the US!” He high fived into empty air.
Steve shrugged and kept reading his newspaper. His friendship with Natasha had been… tentative at first, but somewhere along the way she seemed to have decided that he was alright, and somewhere else along the way that he was something of a safe space. Very occasionally – not often, but occasionally – he would wake in the middle of the night and find her curled up against his back. They were friends not lovers, but it was its own kind of amusing to let Tony think otherwise.
Tony kept his un-high fived hand in the air for a long moment. “Take her as your date to that thing in Washington! Come on – East-West relations for the win. Plus,” he said, “she’s hot.”
When Natasha sleeps, she curls her hands into fists and lies very still, except when she twitches. His mother’s cat had been like that. He’d always wondered what it dreamed of.
***
There was something tickling his bottom. He looked over his shoulder, and a small child with a paintbrush looked up and giggled. He craned his neck further – she’d painted a flower on his backside. He laughed and ruffled her cornrowed hair.
The flock of reporters clustered around them and snapped off flashes into her eyes. He made his face stay smiling, but he felt sick – that one personal moment turned into currency. He bent down and turned her away from the cameras, asked her to point out the bit of the mural she was painting, talked just too softly for the reporters to hear. She smiled shyly, and he patted her on the shoulder before moving on.
Public appearances like this were one of his new (old) duties. The general public needed to know him, the PR people had said. They needed to know that he (the Avengers!) could be trusted. So Steve capered and smiled his toothy white honest!Steve smile, and felt like a fool. He’d flat refused to wear his fighting costume. The PR people had compromised with a t-shirt the same solid deep blue of his uniform.
After the tour of the new school, and the mural was finished - smile/nod at each child who’d worked on it, genuine comment for each - he was ambushed by a small pack of reporters. He spent a few minutes answering bland questions about art and education and inner city poverty, and then the knives came out.
“Captain America – would you comment on allegations that the Avengers Initiative is employing known war criminals?”
They were going after Natasha. He kept his teeth carefully ungritted.
“I think there are a lot of people in the world with something on their slate they want to wipe clean. We all have different ways of doing that.”
“So you approve of the ‘rehabilitation’ and recruitment of Nazi scientists following World War II? Wernher von Braun and Operation Paperclip?”
“I think you should consult with the architects of Paperclip on that one – I was in Greenland at the time.” He cut off the lady reporter before she could ask another question. “Seriously, folks, this is an event about children and hope for the future. Do we have any more questions about the new school? No? Then I think we’re done here.”
***
One night, Steve woke up, and there was blood on his sheets.
He rolled over, looking for Natasha, and heard muffled swearing in Russian, and a light under the bathroom door. He pushed the door open a little, and there was Natasha, cursing her partner for not going to Medical. Hawkeye’s faded blue eyes were the picture of true exhaustion, but when he saw Steve his seamed face shuttered. Steve nodded at him, and held his eyes in a long steady gaze as he reached for the first aid kit under the counter.
In his bedroom, he phoned Bruce to come and, while he waited, stripped the sheets off his bed, remade the smooth linen with military precision and pin tight corners.
“The hell, Rogers?” Bruce was standing in his doorway in jeans, bare feet, a medical bag in his hand. He looked around the room, taking in the bloodied sheets and Natasha’s back in the bathroom doorway. “Seriously, what the hell?”
Steve jerked his head at the bathroom. “Hawkeye. Looks like he skipped the mandatory post mission checkup.”
When they’d finished cleaning Hawkeye up, Steve put him straight to bed in the new made sheets, Natasha curled up against him, and followed Bruce out into the common area.
“I’m sure there’s a story behind that, but I don’t really want to know,” Bruce said.
Steve nodded. Then a thought came to him, and he reached for the phone: “We’ve got your hawk,” he said. “He’s beat up, but we think he’ll be fine.”
“Understood,” he heard back.
He hung up the phone. “Good night, Bruce.”
***
The next morning, Tony was bouncing at breakfast. “I wronged you, man. I just want you to know that I wronged you. Virgin Steve, I thought. Vanilla, missionary Steve, I thought. But no! You showed me the error of your ways… You are a dude.”
Steve rubbed his eyes blearily. He’d ended up staying awake in an armchair, counting Hawkeye’s breaths – he needed more coffee than this to keep track of Tony’s free ranging conversation…
Tony slapped him on the back again. “Mystery assassin three ways… Blood on the sheets. Secret visits in the night from trained professionals… medical professionals… You’ve got Kink, man. Kink with a Capital K.”
Bruce squinted at him through his glasses. “Tony, you have some really funny ideas.”
“No, no, don’t try to pretend nothing happened – JARVIS Sees All.”
From the end of the table where Pepper was reading board papers, one long finger tapped against her coffee mug, as if idly, but Tony’s face fell as if the weight of a hundred earlier conversations had crashed around him: “Except for personal quarters! Because that would be a gross-intrusion-of-privacy…”
Steve shook his head and gathered up his breakfast things. As he was leaving, he heard one final wail from Tony: “But seriously! What does a man have to do to get propositioned around here!”
***
Their regular daily briefing was at 10. And it was routine, the people who are there joking around the table, Coulson running through intel that they were supposed to be aware of. Until the last bit:
“And on a final note,” he went on, “as of 0700, Specialist Barton became officially absent without leave. Unofficially, he’s been off S.H.I.E.L.D’s radar for close to 48 hours. Anyone want to tell me anything?”
Steve shared a long look with Bruce and Natasha. Finally: “Last night, he was in full possession of his faculties…”
Coulson sighed. “Let me know if he checks in.”
Bruce asked: “Has he… ever gone missing like this before?”
Natasha’s eyes dropped to the table. “One time.”
***
Poker night:
Darcy’s eyes gleamed. She slapped a DVD in a white paper envelope on the table. “To open the ante, I have video footage of that time Coulson’s daughter kicked Tony in the crotch. Anyone want to see me?”
Bruce dug around in his pocket and produced a memory stick. “I’ll raise you. That time Tony read the article Coulson’s daughter published refuting his theory about Einerson string theory. He goes purple,” he added helpfully.
“Oh, enough about me.” Tony waved airily. He flicked a memory stick of his own on the table. “I have semi-naked Bruce, Spider Lady in her nightie, and Robin Hood, jointly and separately converging on Captain Carrot’s quarters. In the middle of the night. Now why could that be?”
“Alas,” Thor boomed. “The Son of Odin has not the card-treasure to join battle, this hand.”
“Well, well, well,” Tony said. “It’s Steve’s turn to bet. What has he got? Don’t worry, Rogers, if you’re a little short of the ante, I’m happy to take Truth or Dare.” He drummed his fingers on the table. “Like, for instance, why exactly was Hawkeye bleeding when he walked into your room?”
Steve peeked at his cards. “I fold,” he smiled.
***
Steve dreamed that he was on a tropical island in a palm frond hut, heavy rains pounding around him, and the surf crashing on the beach. Above him, the roof was leaking slightly, and he kept brushing the dripping water from his forehead.
“Steve. Wake up. Come on! Wakeupwakeupwakeupwakeup.”
He blinked his eyes open. Hawkeye was crouched by his bed, a glass in one hand, flicking droplets of warm water at his face.
He turned his bedside light on and looked Barton up and down for more injuries. “You’re AWOL, and Coulson’s worried about you.”
Hill had been right when she’d said that Hawkeye had miserable eyebrows. His face was blank as a blank thing – but his eyebrows were miserable. “No time for that. Need your help with something.”
“You… didn’t ask Natasha.”
“Can’t. Coulson knows to watch her.”
***
The room – garret – that Hawkeye led him to was filthy and freezing. On a corner of the bare floor, a foam mattress held a body, ragged, beaten, curled in on itself. The greasy head lolled over towards him, and the mouth bared in a bloodied grin.
“Hey, Mr What-ya-call-em!”