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Tony strode into the Helicarrier conference room, Rhodey at his heels looking a lot less sanguine about this, and dropped his damaged helmet on the desk partially in explanation and partially in challenge. Rhodey, behind him, winced.
"Hey, Nick," Tony opened, dropping casually into a chair while Fury glared down at the metal on his table. "Since we're here for a debrief, you mind if we use your lab space for repairs while we're at it?"
Fury raised a slow eyebrow at him, the kind of casually intimidating look that Tony really loved defying, just because. Judging by Rhodey's expression as he sat down gingerly, everybody here knew it, too. Which, Fury being Fury, sort of implied that Fury did as well, and by inference also implied that Fury was doing it to make Tony defy it, which implied recursive levels of trolling going on, which was half the fun, or else no fun at all, Tony wasn't sure yet.
Also? Possibly Tony needed a break. He had a suspicion he was getting slightly loopy, forty-eight hours and six actions on.
"Sure, Stark," Fury answered, with a smile that implied daydreams of evisceration rather strongly. "Make yourself at home. Mi casa es su casa."
... Yeah. Definitely needing a break. Tony wasn't completely sure that last part hadn't been a hallucination. Or a particularly vicious level of trolling on Fury's part. Seriously. Did the man actually say that?
"We'll get out of your way as soon as possible," Rhodey cut in, while Tony was gearing himself up to respond. Shooting Tony a warning look, and Fury a half-asking, half-telling look that Tony would pay money to be able to replicate. "The Iron Man needed a lift to get this far. We actually do need the repairs, sir."
Fury calmed down a bit, the edge visibly coming off his bristling. Because Rhodey, like Pepper, could do that 'I am being rational and responsible, wouldn't you like to do the same' thing that made people respond to him, while Tony mostly just annoyed people until they snapped and yelled at him, or did what he wanted mostly just to get rid of him. Whatever. His way worked just as well. Sometimes faster, too, if he put the effort in.
Good Lord, he was tired. And he needed to put his left boot repulsor back together. And go home to Pepper, and shower, and bed. Possibly not in that order.
"Take your time, then," Fury said, talking mostly to Rhodey. "We've got most of the outbreak under control, and Rogers' team got the last of the droids down in Mombasa forty minutes ago. Looks like we're into clean up now. So ... Get some food first, maybe a shower. Get Stark somewhere where he can stop vibrating for a half-hour or so. Then get your shit together, and go bother someone who actually employs you for a while, clear?"
... Tony heard Rhodey give an amused, exhausted agreement, somewhere off to the side, but he was too busy staring at Fury to care. Staring, and feeling just a little bit put out.
"That's what I was asking for," he interrupted, peevishly. "How come he gets the 'sure son, come on in', and I get the 'get your dirty boots the hell off my table, Stark'?"
They blinked at him. Well, winked, in Fury's case, which was actually mildly disconcerting. Tony hadn't been joking about that, way back when. They looked at him for a long, long second, before shooting a tiny look sideways at each other.
Then Rhodey said, gently enough despite the typical bald honesty: "Because you're a dick, Tony, and you never ask for anything. You demand." He was sort of smiling as he said it, though. So Tony probably didn't need to worry too much.
"And," Fury added, with bizarre bonhomie, "because you've been engaged in a dick-waving contest with me ever since I broke into Malibu, and while SHIELD don't start fights, it's also not our policy to back down before we're sure the other guy knows we've got the biggest everything."
... What? No, seriously. What?
"... I could swear I'm hallucinating this conversation," Tony told them, gravely and honestly, as he looked between them. "I'm not kidding. Because Nick Fury just told me we're in a dick-waving contest, and I'm almost positive that doesn't actually happen in the real world."
"Depends on when you catch him," Natasha said, materialising out of thin fucking air to sit down beside Tony, and charitably ignoring him as he leapt five feet in the air. "It mostly means he likes you, though. We don't say that sort of thing to outsiders."
She smirked faintly at him, as Tony landed back on his chair and tried to remember what heartbeats were for again. But there was a weird edge to it, a soft sort of thing, and Tony got slightly distracted for a moment when he noted that someone had apparently tried to set fire to her hair sometime in the recent past.
Right. Yes. The ground droids had flamethrowers. Plagarising sons of bitches.
"... Hello, Natasha?" he tried, and snuck a look sideways at the Iron Man helmet. Looking surreptitiously for dents, something that might mean he should maybe take a trip down to medical to see if he actually was hallucinating, over here.
"Romanov," Fury nodded, inclining his head towards her. So she was probably real, then. "Barton and Thor?"
"Got sidetracked," she explained, with little to no preamble, propping her left wrist up on the table to start pulling off the remains of one of her taser-bracelets. Tony twitched, a little, fingers itching towards it on autopilot. Partially melted casing, looked like. Not too deep, didn't seem to have gone through the undersuit to the skin, but definitely nonfunctional. And ugly, something he didn't like seeing against her arm, for some not-really-explainable reason. "Thor mentioned something about mead, Clint took him up on it. I got tapped to report."
"Got tapped?" Rhodey asked, while Tony did his best to convince himself that bumping her hand forcibly out of the way and fixing it himself was out of the question. "Or volunteered?"
Natasha grinned over at him. Reaching up in the process to brush some slightly singed hair out of her eye, and Tony broke, reaching over to catch the damaged arm while she was distracted. She didn't immediately kill him for it, so he considered that one a win.
"Thor has an immortal liver, and doesn't usually break his drinking partners," she said to Rhodey, while blinking down at Tony and trading a vaguely amused look with Fury. Which Tony caught, yes, thank you. Still not caring, over here. "They didn't need a babysitter, and I wanted to shower the gasoline out of my hair before someone got creative at the wrong moment." She tilted her head. "If there's no further assignment, that is?"
Fury shook his head, watching Tony carefully peel the melted copper and plastic away from her arm. Something funky in his expression that Tony wasn't going to think about too closely. "We're clear so far," he said, quietly. "I was just telling Stark and Rhodes to head down to the commissary while they're here. Rogers and Banner should be back within the hour, and Hill has the conn."
"I need to fix the armour," Tony piped up, finally getting the last of the plastic stripped back, and absently accepting a small, very sharp ceramic knife from her to cut the fused wire connections. "My left boot's shot, I'll need that to fly out of here."
"I'll carry you, Tony," Rhodey said, grinning faintly over at him. "Don't worry about it. I can piggy-back you home, and we can explain to Pepper when we get there." He shook his head. "You probably qualify for flying while impaired right now, anyway. A shower and something to eat won't hurt."
"And before you ask, Stark," Fury cut in, looking far too amused. "Aside from the decon showers off the labs, all the carrier's showers are segregated. Unless you'd like to ask Agent Romanov if she'd like to share."
Tony flipped him the bird without looking over, carefully lifting her sleeve to check nothing had burned through, patting her arm absently when he was satisfied nothing had. "Okay, firstly, Pepper? Think you met her once? So no. And secondly, I can't go having dick-waving contests with you, Nick, if I don't have a dick anymore. So, again, no." He looked up, finally, blinking a little at the knife in his hand before handing it back to Natasha in bemusement, and turned to shoot Fury a shit-eating grin. "Besides. If I want to ogle someone in the shower, I'll just ogle Rhodey. It's much safer, and he's used to it."
Fury raised an eyebrow at him, a tiny smile quirking the corner of his mouth, and Tony belatedly recognised the lines of fatigue and stress creasing the other man's face, too. Belatedly tallied up all the shit SHIELD had gone through in the past forty-eight hours, right alongside them, and came out feeling slightly sheepish, and weirdly warmed. Huh. Go figure.
"Is that so?" Fury asked, with something that was very close to a grin as he looked sideways at Rhodey, sitting much more relaxedly across the table, and putting on a very convincing martyred expression.
"You get used to it," Rhodey agreed, sighing gustily and hiding his faint grin. "To be fair, he lets me ogle his machinery in turn. The closest thing you'll get to a raptor while still on the ground."
Tony sighed, dropping Natasha's melted bracelet alongside his helmet and drooping disconsolately. "I knew it," he said. "You only love me for my toys." Okay. Overplaying it just a touch, maybe, but he was tired. Subtlety could wait until he had something in his head besides mush and absent admiration for too many people.
Rhodey just grinned faintly at him, his expression softening a little into something ... else. "Nah," he said, softly and a lot more seriously than Tony expected. "They just make a good excuse, you know?"
... Tony blinked, rapidly. Shit. No, okay. Too tired for this, too. Shit.
"Romanov," Fury interrupted, still weirdly gentle and friendly and ... and person-like, it was weird. "Get these two lovebirds off my bridge, will you? Some of us still have work to do."
And Tony was still trying to decide, as she stood up and held out her now-bare hand to pull him gently to his feet, which answering smile was the scariest. Hers, Rhodey's, or the one he could feel creeping slowly across his own face.
Ah well. He let her help him to his feet, waited until Rhodey came around into range to throw one arm around his shoulders, and flashed Fury his best genuinely-friendly grin on the way out.
If you were going to have post-adrenalin induced hallucinations of this calibre, you might as well go with the flow, you know?