Work Text:
Rum Cake
Clint was no stranger to Tony’s idiosyncrasies. He was well aware of the genius’s tendency to lock himself away in his workshop and locking everyone else out in the process. That was fine, because Tony typically forgot about the vents unless he really wanted to be alone, in which case Skitter guarded them. They let Clint in, sometimes, if it had been too long and he was bearing food for the brunet.
He was also aware of Tony’s inability to show friendship without grand gestures or pretending he was doing people a favor. If you didn’t know him, it would be aggravating. However, Clint did know Tony, and he mostly just thought it was adorable. For a genius, he really could be an idiot. It was difficult not to pinch his cheeks and coo at him when he did things like that.
Natasha didn’t share the same feelings, unfortunately. “Your child just handed me a baton and told me to figure out how it works,” she said, as if he’d do something about it.
“You are also my child,” Clint reminded her. “Remember? When you first defected and had trouble adjusting?”
She glared at him, hissing, “Don’t you ever tell him that I didn’t know how to use a coffee maker.”
“You could use a percolator just fine,” the blond reasoned. He held out his hand for the baton.
He screamed when he was met with an electric shock.
Natasha raised her eyebrows in surprise as she looked the baton over, pleased when she saw the two tiny prongs at the end, unnoticed until she looked for them. “Hmm. Long-distance taser. Nice.”
“You just zapped me and you don’t even care!” Clint yelled, clutching his hand to his chest.
“This is the most wonderful gift I have ever been given.” She stabbed it in his direction again.
The blond yowled and fled into a vent, slamming it shut behind him.
Natasha smiled and turned on her heel to tell Tony that she loved it.
.-.-.-.-.-.
“What’s that?” Steve asked curiously when he saw the baton.
Clint thought about telling him to run, then went back to his punching bag. He wasn’t going to ruin her fun.
He heard Steve let out a yelp and then yell at her asking why she’d do that. It kind of made him happy that Natasha liked the baton that Tony had given her that much. Even though he could have done without getting shocked himself.
Steve appeared next to him, holding a punching bag and looking wounded. “Why would she do that?”
“Because she just pretends being a jerk is beneath her.” Clint shrugged, watching from the corner of his eye as the super soldier hung his punching bag.
He turned his attention toward Natasha and perked up a little when he saw Tony next to her, wearing sweatpants and a large t-shirt. It was so rare to see him in the gym with everyone else. He supposed that the older man got self-conscious when he compared himself to his younger, fitter teammates. Not to say that he wasn’t strong, of course—he’d seen Tony heft around the Iron Man armor by himself, and that shit had to be heavy. He just might not be as toned as… say… Steve and Thor.
He could understand. He was sometimes intimidated by Thor’s and Steve’s physiques, too.
“Whatcha doin’, Stark?” he asked, raising an eyebrow when the brunet jumped and looked around like some shifty creep.
“…Just hanging out until Bruce gets here.”
Clint narrowed his eyes at him, skeptical. “Bruce doesn’t typically come to the gym with us. Because of that time that I accidentally punched him. And he turned into the Hulk.”
Natasha’s face went taut with remembered horror. That had been a tense few minutes. Tony had convinced the Hulk to not turn Clint into Hawkeye paste, but only because he said he had a gallon of ice-cream and a two-liter of root beer, if Hulk wanted a root beer float. Luckily, Hulk did. There were pictures on Tony’s private Instagram of the Hulk with foam around his mouth as he held a spoon much too small for him between two of his giant fingers.
“You’re lying,” he finally decided.
“No!” Tony exclaimed, expression going mulish. He was digging in his metaphorical heels. “We’re going to meet here with Thor!”
Even Steve paused in beating up his punching bag to look at him. Natasha raised an eyebrow, one hand on her hip as the end of her taser baton trailed the ground. Clint raised both of his eyebrows, expectant, because Tony was very bad at keeping secrets sometimes.
Thor came sweeping in before the brunet broke under the pressure, chatting with Bruce. Bruce was holding a clipboard. Thor was dressed in sweatpants and a tank top that did nothing to hide his muscles. Tony scuttled over to them, looking relieved.
“…I have a terrible feeling about this,” Steve admitted, not turning back to his punching bag.
Clint nodded, agreeing. “Yeah, pretty weird.” He turned and lifted the bag off of the hook, taking it back to the equipment room. Steve was hot on his heels, and even helped him stack it so that it wouldn’t take him as long to get back outside.
When they got back, Natasha was helping Tony placed electrodes on the god’s body.
“What the fuck,” Clint said.
“We’re testing the physiological differences between Thor and Midgardians, starting with endurance,” Bruce said, and somehow he’d switched pants with Tony in the short time the two blonds were gone.
Steve frowned, confused. “Why are you wearing Tony’s pants?”
Bruce shrugged, unruffled as only a scientist could be. “Admittedly, I’m a little nervous, but Natasha pointed out that making Tony run wouldn’t give us the results we wanted. Tony’s going to hit the emergency release if I start turning green.”
Clint investigated the treadmill Thor would be running on before he turned back to them, offended on Tony’s behalf. “Why can’t Tony do it?!”
Tony turned from putting an electrode on Thor’s tongue and made a fist, knocking his knuckles against the glowing blue light in his chest. Bruce and Natasha nodded in agreement.
Clint wasn’t entirely sure what that meant. He’d known that Tony had an arc reactor in his chest, but he didn’t understand why that would keep him from participating in a run.
“Is something wrong with it?” Steve asked, earnestly, as if he’d be able to help if there was. Unlikely, but a nice thought.
It was obvious that Tony was struggling not to give him a bitch face. He was trying to be civil with Steve. It was hard. “The arc reactor has limited how much air I can get into my lungs. I can’t take a full breath like I used to. Although to be fair, with all the past drug and alcohol abuse, I would probably not be the ideal candidate to be opposite Thor anyway.”
Steve looked about as horrified as Clint felt. It was nice to have someone he could relate to, because this appeared not to be news to Natasha and Bruce, and Thor was looking at Tony with some concern, but not a lot, because he had no idea what was normal for regular people.
“I’d offer to do it, but I hate running,” Natasha supplied, shrugging.
“I know,” Steve muttered, voice small. It was hard to tell whether it was because he was still shocked by Tony, scared of Natasha, or both. “You threw a knife at me when I asked if you wanted to come with me for a morning run.”
Ah. So it was both. Clint clapped a hand onto the super soldier’s shoulder. “It’s okay, Steve. I once asked her to come sparring with me while she was taking a nap and the knife actually shaved off some of my hair.”
Steve squeaked, horrified. Tony just looked intrigued.
Clint despaired. Why was this man so interested in dangerous things?
.-.-.-.-.-.
They eventually roped in Steve, to compare super soldiers to Asgardians. A few hours later, Tony was staring at two burnt out treadmills with dismay.
“Sorry,” Thor and Steve told him, looking contrite.
“How?” he asked, fluttering around the two broken machines. “I built these from scratch. They should have been able to handle it. Why? What went wrong?”
“Tony,” Clint began, reaching out to him to comfort him.
Tony pulled a handful of small wrenches and some screwdrivers from the pockets of his borrowed pants and threw himself on the ground, yanking off the casing of the motor of the machine Thor had used.
Bruce gaped, part horrified, but mostly impressed. “How did you fit all those things in there? I didn’t even see you pull them out of your pockets.”
“Mary Poppins pockets,” Natasha whispered, looking a little more amazed than she usually allowed.
Clint didn’t blame her, though. Those were an awful lot of wrenches.
.-.-.-.-.-.
Clint jumped as he heard a scream, grabbing his fork and bolting out of the kitchen. Steve was in trouble.
“I’m not in trouble!” Steve yelped when he came rushing into the common room, Natasha and Thor appearing from the other door. “Sorry!”
“…Why are you standing on the couch?” Natasha asked suspiciously.
Steve looked at the window, as if he was thinking about jumping out of it, then sighed, shoulders sagging in defeat. “…I was… startled… by one of Tony’s robots.”
Natasha took a surreptitious look around, unwilling to admit that she loved seeing Tony’s robots. (She had started naming each Skitter with names like ‘Skitter-Belle’ and ‘Rita-Skitter’ and ‘Clive-no-Clint-her-name-is-just-Clive.’ Skitter adored her.) Thor had no such problem looking around the room, because he thought Tony’s robots were ‘quaint.’ Steve had had to grab Tony before he could attempt to punch Thor’s teeth in.
Steve took a handful of popcorn from the bowl he was white-knuckling and dropped it on the floor. A robot that looked quite like a snake slithered out from under the couch, hovered over the popcorn, then disappeared back under it.
“…Gregory Snek,” Natasha whispered to herself.
Sometimes Clint wanted to pinch her cheeks, too.
“Why is Steve on the couch?” Tony asked, squeezing in between Thor and Natasha to head for the kitchen. He was carrying a mug that more resembled a bowl in size. “What are we looking at?”
“Your popcorn-eating snake,” Clint supplied.
Tony frowned at him confusion. “…You mean my Roomba?”
Thor frowned back at him. “I have seen such a creature at Lady Jane’s home. This… this creature does not look like Lady Darcy’s Roomba.”
The genius scoffed. “Well of course not. I made him.” He overturned his mug so a few drops of coffee fell to the floor.
The snake slithered out from under the couch, hovered over the coffee, then went back to its lair. The carpet was pristine.
“Why have we not seen him before?” Thor asked.
“Because they usually wait until night to come out. They’re shy.” Tony yawned and shuffled toward the kitchen. “There’s one on each of our floors. Except for Natasha’s, because I’m always afraid she’s going to stab my robots because she’s always ready for a fight.”
“I want one,” she said immediately, looking put out that she didn’t already have one.
Tony nodded. “Okay.” He glanced at Steve, then raised an eyebrow. “You can sit down. He doesn’t actually have a mouth to bite you with.”
Steve flushed and dropped back onto the couch. Thor sat beside him to drop a kernel of popcorn every few minutes, just so he could examine it.
Clint followed the genius into the kitchen and watched him make a huge cup of coffee with all the fixings. “Why don’t you name them something besides Roomba?” He could imagine the snake-like vacuum/carpet cleaner to be a huge hit in homes, especially with children.
Tony sighed and tapped a little nutmeg into his coffee. “Because it’s literally a souped-up Roomba. iRobot already has a patent on them. I’d have to change too much and then it wouldn’t be cost effective.”
Clint leaned his chin on his hands, smiling. “You really care about your customers, don’t you?”
Tony gave him his best bitch face. “Of course I do.”
The blond grinned. It was so cute to watch the genius get offended on his customers’ behalves.
“Also I still hate Steve Jobs even though he’s dead and if I can get more customers than Apple, I’m winning.”
Clint snorted on a bite of pancake.
.-.-.-.-.-.
Natasha slipped something into his pocket at breakfast. He waited until he’d gotten to the archery range to pull it out. He couldn’t help but smile when he saw it.
The sight she had given him was small, but he could tell that it was powerful. She’d probably had it custom-made. It was a metallic purple, just dark enough that it could be mistaken for black if you couldn’t see it properly, and had the name ‘Hawkeye’ engraved in it.
He clutched it in his hand and put his hand over his heart, touched. She knew he didn’t like making a big deal out of his birthday, because he’d rarely (if ever) had a good one. So she hadn’t made it a big deal. She’d probably show up in the nest later that night, whisper a congratulations on another year alive in Russian, then sneak off, because she was a heathen and wasn’t a fan of sleeping in vents unless she really had to.
She was a nerd who liked the movie War Games. What the hell did she know about comfortable sleeping spots.
Clint started to fasten the sight she’d given him to his bow, then paused. He liked the Avengers and he was pretty sure everyone liked him, and they’d had a great time celebrating Steve’s birthday. Thor had even gotten Steve drunk. Maybe they would have liked to celebrate with him. Maybe he would have had a nice birthday, for once.
Well, it was too late now. Everyone probably had plans already.
.-.-.-.-.-.
Steve made lasagna for dinner. Everyone was there, and there were no casualties, so it was nice.
He couldn’t think of a better birthday, Clint decided, beginning to stand from the table.
“Wait,” Tony said, looking confused.
Thor frowned. “Is something wrong, Tony?”
“What about—I made a cake,” the brunet said, getting up and going to the refrigerator. He pulled out a beautiful white cake, with chocolate stripes on top, and sliced almonds all around the sides.
There was a single candle in the center of it.
Clint saw Natasha’s mouth drop open out of the corner of his eye.
Tony set it down in front of him and lit the candle. “Happy birthday, bird brain.”
Clint swallowed thickly, eyes burning a little. He would not cry though.
Tony, who had been smiling, noticed the silence at the table and looked around. He looked dismayed when he saw everyone staring at him. His shoulders hunched, and he seemed to shrink into himself. “…Was… was I not supposed to?”
Clint reached out to grab his arm, squeezing perhaps a little too tightly when he saw the other man wince. “No, Tony. This… this is perfect. Thank you.” He leaned in to blow out the candle, then turned, tugging the brunet into a hug.
Tony made a quiet sound of confusion and patted his back awkwardly.
“…Happy birthday, Clint!” Bruce exclaimed after a moment.
Steve and Thor jumped, seeming to remember where they were. “Happy birthday, Clint!”
“Many felicitations!”
Clint smiled, giving Tony a slap on the back before he released him. Tony scuttled away, as if afraid he would be pulled into another hug. “Thanks, guys. This is the best birthday I’ve ever had.” He turned back to the cake, eyes bright (but not because of tears, he decided stubbornly). “What kind of cake is this?”
Tony eyed him suspiciously, then pulled out an alarmingly large knife. “It’s rum cake. My mother always made it for my birthday, and I always made it for hers.”
“Aw,” Clint cooed. He wanted to hug him again.
The brunet held the knife in front of him threateningly.
Natasha snatched it from him so he didn’t have to go near the archer and cut the cake herself, looking pleasantly surprised when she saw the fluffy white cake and the silky brown pastry cream. “Wow, Tony, this is great. I was kind of worried after the story Pepper told me about the omelet. Steve, will you grab some plates?”
Tony stood awkwardly by the table before he slid back into his seat, shoulders still hunched like he was trying to be unobtrusive. “It’s no big deal. It’s just a cake.”
Clint reached out to pinch his cheek.
Tony slapped his hand away.
.-.-.-.-.-.
“I didn’t know it was supposed to be a secret,” Tony mumbled later, when they were cuddled together in the nest under his hideously scratchy blanket.
Clint patted his stomach, making the brunet grumble and attempt to squirm away. “It wasn’t a secret. Not really.”
The genius was silent for a few minutes before he asked, “Why were Natasha and I the only ones that knew, then?”
“I wasn’t lying when I said this was the best birthday I’ve ever had,” the blond admitted quietly. “I try not to make a big deal of it. I liked this low-key party, with the team and cake. It was nice.” He snuggled a little closer. “Thanks. You’re the best bird-son.”
Tony’s face went through waves of annoyance, outrage, and resignation. “What do I have to do to get you to stop calling me that?”
“You’re stuck with it, buddy,” the archer cooed. “Now, about that cake—when are you making another one?”
Tony glared up at the ceiling. “The next time someone has a birthday.”
“So, mine?” Natasha asked as she approached.
Tony yelped.
“That was a good cake, Tony,” she continued, climbing into the nest and snuggling up behind Clint so he was in a bird-child sandwich. “Why didn’t you make one for Steve’s birthday?”
“And miss the chance to get him a red, white, and blue penis cake?” The brunet scoffed. “Please. …Maybe for his next birthday.”
She grabbed a pillow to put under her head to get more comfortable. “It was good cake,” she repeated.
Tony grumbled and ducked under the blanket, embarrassed.
Clint clutched his chest. He felt Natasha doing the same behind him.
“What did you get Clint for his birthday?” Natasha asked, taking pity on him and giving him an out.
Clint frowned. “He made me a cake.”
“I made special concussion arrows,” Tony said, still under the blankets. “I left them at the archery range for him to try out but he didn’t notice.”
Clint squawked. “Those were for me?!”
The brunet peeked from under the blanket, glaring at him. “Who else uses a bow and arrow on this team?”
“There’s a girl from R&D that comes up sometimes to practice,” the archer muttered, shoulders hunching.
“Mariah goes home to Kentucky every year to hunt deer,” Tony exclaimed, looking annoyed. “She does not need concussion arrows!”
Natasha snorted. “Not unless she wants her deer already butchered.”
Clint sighed when she giggled quietly, muffling the noise in his shirt. “Why do you know her name and hunting habits?”
“I know the names of all the employees that use the archery and gun ranges. Insurance purposes.” Tony scoffed, as if he was an idiot. “Also Mariah always brings back this amazing venison chili for the company potluck.”
Natasha snorted again. “It’s amazing no one has tried to get to you just by cooking.”
“They have,” Tony said, sounding confused. “Do you know how many times people have tried to give me drugged food?”
Clint flinched, and he felt Natasha stiffen against his back. He gathered the brunet into his arms.
“Why,” the genius whined, but had no choice because his arms were pinned to his sides.
“Ow!” Clint exclaimed when Natasha crawled over him, all pointy elbows and knees. “Nat!”
Natasha curled up on Tony’s other side, wrapping her arms around him as well. She muttered some colorful words in Russian before beginning to stroke the brunet’s hair. “I swear every time I learn something new about you, I want to put my fist through someone’s head.”
Tony was silent for a while before he quietly asked, “Mine?”
“No, Котёнок,” Natasha said, surprisingly kind. “Other people’s heads.”
Tony looked immensely pleased.
Clint couldn’t help but coo. Look at his bird-children getting along.
“But seriously, you have to make that cake for my birthday,” Natasha added.
Tony shot her an unimpressed look. “It’s birthday cake. Of course I’ll make it for your birthday.” He didn’t say it aloud, but the ‘idiot’ was implied.
“Don’t think I won’t stab you, Котёнок,” she hissed.
Clint frowned. “No maiming each other on my birthday.”
Natasha and Tony both grumbled, but they did stop glaring at each other.
He knew Natasha was just putting up a front, though. Otherwise she would have let Tony go.