Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Steve pauses in the doorway. He’s not watching Tony, because that would be creepy, as Tony would say - but the man has left the door wide open and he’s distracted, fussing with his cuffs and tie and posing in front of the mirror and, though they fight together flawlessly as allies, he still has no idea what to say to get his attention in private. Tony jumps when he turns and sees Steve standing there, before raising a brow and trying for nonchalance with a smirk. “Didn’t realise you were one of my devoted fans, Cap. I hope you arrived after I was dressed.”

“I hope you had the door shut before you were dressed,” Steve shoots back, relief totally disproportionate to the moment filling him when Tony doesn’t look taken aback or uncertain at the censure, but merely grins. It’s an empty media grin, but it’s better than nothing. “I just came up to find out if you’re ready. The car’s here.”

“You think taking the suit would be too much?”

Tony’s just as armoured in this suit as he is in his Iron Man costume, and this is much more appropriate to today’s battlefield. “Perhaps a little,” he says dryly.

“Yeah, there’s nothing worse than being overdressed,” Tony muses. “How come I have to go in SHIELD’s car? Can’t I take one of my own cool cars?”

Steve isn’t certain if Tony is being annoying because he’s nervous, or if he’s being deliberately obstructive. His mouth pinches slightly at the corners and, instead of responding to the question directly, he says, “You don’t have to do this, Tony. No one’s forcing you into anything. If you still don’t feel… safe around him, or-”

Tony hisses like a startled cat. “No. Barton needs this. He was much less annoying when he was drinking too much and stealing zoo animals and making bad choices with live weaponry during simulations than he is now cooped up with nothing to do but hide out and shoot modified nerf weaponry at people. You do realise Pep somehow thinks it’s my fault he got yellow paint in her hair? I mean, okay, yes, I bought him the paint, but I didn’t know what he wanted it for or I’d have made sure it was washable, or had JARVIS make sure it was washable, or something.”

Steve still isn’t convinced, and now he’s also confused, as he often is at the end of one of Tony’s monologues. Tony must see this, because he sighs. “He’s doing better,” he says, tone turning serious and eyes flitting away from Steve’s, as though to minimise the intensity of the moment. But Tony is right – Clint has been going to counselling, and he’s back on rotation – on probation, pending assessment.

Tony’s still talking. “The only reason he isn’t already back on the team is because the WSC are being dicks. Again. They’ve tried to have me kept off the team and that, mostly,” Steve looks away, even though Tony isn’t looking at him, “mostly didn’t work. They’ve tried having Bruce handed over and that didn’t work either. And now they’re after Clint for his involvement with Loki. Considering I’m one of the people he supposedly hurt my testimony counts. And we need him. You know we do.”

“Still,” Steve knows he looks awkward, “he did hurt you. And I don’t want you to feel that you have to-”

“I don’t. I promise.”

Steve gives him a searching look, and nods. “All right then. Thank you for doing this.”

“Anytime, Cap,” Tony says flippantly, but Steve’s used to him by now and doesn’t even acknowledge the tone.

*

Tony looks around the room, a feral edge to his smile and an undeniable crackle of energy to his step. Steve doesn’t blame him for the fury he’s radiating, he’s barely leashing his own, and beside him, Agent Coulson is as tense as one of Clint’s bow-strings, jaw clenched tight, though otherwise his expression betrays nothing.

There is no denying that, in the aftermath of Loki’s control, Clint had been less than the perfect soldier. But they had been assured that this was a review; Clint’s psychiatrist and Fury just wanted to talk to Tony, to have it on record his opinion that the matter was behind them.

Instead, the windowless conference room they have been packed into is full, screens at the far side display the watching WSC members and a fair amount of agents – observers, Steve has been told – are crowded against one wall. In the middle of the room, Clint is standing. He’s not alone; Natasha had refused to be moved from his side. Not that Fury had tried that hard, in fact, if Steve didn’t know better, he’d say the man was pleased. He’d like to be up there himself, but Agent Coulson had held him back, whispering, “Natasha is an expert at looking nonthreatening, Captain, they will tolerate her, and mentally think of her as nothing but the overly clingy girlfriend. Your obvious support can do nothing but make this unpleasant situation worse.”

Steve had acquiesced, though he wasn’t happy about it. Tony had not. He’d been standing next to Steve and he’d taken time from his contemptuous survey of the room to shoot Coulson a hard look. “This is not the informal review I was promised.”

Agent Coulson had – almost – smiled. “They are attempting to disconcert you.”

Steve had inhaled a laugh and ended up choking. Of all the things which might possibly disconcert Tony Stark, a larger than expected audience was not one of them. The two had shared a glance, in tune as they rarely were anywhere other than the battlefield. “Tony,” Steve had warned in an apologetic undertone, “don’t deliberately piss them off. We can’t-”

Tony had waved an airy hand, “We can’t risk them going after someone else. I know. You worry too much, Cap.”

“Just,” there had been so many things he wanted to say, but there were still too many unhealed wounds between them to risk it. “Just be careful.”

Tony nodded briskly, once, and strode into the centre of the room. Not next to Clint, almost in front of him, taking every eye (even the distrustful looks of the agents on the far side, even Natasha’s watchful gaze) off the archer. “You wanted to speak to me?” he had questioned brightly, masked in smug arrogance.

That had been over an hour ago.

The interrogation, because that’s what this is, has only gone downhill since then and Tony is obviously losing patience. Natasha, under the serene patience pasted onto her face, looks ready to draw blood.

“All right,” Tony bites out, irritation in every syllable. Taking his eyes from the WSC members on the screens in front of him, he turns instead to the watching crowd. “Let’s see how reasonable Agent Barton’s actions were. Hands up who here has ever wanted to punch me in the mouth.”

There’s utter silence and stillness in the room. Agent Coulson snorts very quietly.

Tony continues, dark annoyance threading his tone now. “C’mon! I know SHIELD agents are trained to lie, but this is ridiculous. I know some of you must. What about you? Yeah, you, with the picture of the hot wife? Daughter? Sister? On your desk. You didn’t want to smack me when you saw me looking? Or you, Agent? When I made you use your hero’s shield to prop up a pipe just to piss you off?” Still nobody moves… then slowly, Agent Sitwell raises a hand.

“I kind of want to punch you now?” he offers.

“Good,” Tony beams, “That’s exactly my point. I’m annoying.”

“Mr Stark, that is hardly the point of this hearing.”

Tony’s face darkens at the word hearing, because this should not be trial, but he doesn’t allow himself to be distracted. “That’s exactly the point. The aim here is to find out if Clint acted outside of tolerable parameters, or if his actions are forgivable.” Tony shrugs. “Personally, since it’s my face that got bruised, I don’t see what any of you have to do with it. I never had a problem with his actions, but whatever. However, we have now proven that whilst Clint was rash in actually going through with it, the impulse to bash my face in is not an abnormal one.” He pauses, and raises his eyebrow at the scowling woman onscreen. “Or, if it is, it’s a normal impulse with which you are familiar.”

Steve stifles a chuckle, and doesn’t miss Natasha half turning to share a smirk with Coulson.

The room goes quiet for a second, before a different council member speaks up. “That may be so, Stark, but we are all capable of keeping that impulse under control. If Agent Barton is not, he has no place in a highly sensitive elite force such as the Avengers.”

Tony smiles, coldly, and walks over to where Steve is sitting. He bends down to pick up Coulson’s briefcase before striding back across the floor. He stands directly in front of Clint, angled in such a way that both his own face and Clint’s are hidden from most of the room. “All right, Agent Barton,” he says, voice pitched to carry, but intense in a way Steve can’t name. “This is a normal briefcase. High quality, leather, no steel or lead lining and, judging by the weight, full of paper.”

“Ooooookay,” Clint says uncertainly.

“Punch it.”

“What?”

“As hard as you can, Agent Barton. Punch it.” Tony holds the case up at chest height.

Beside him, Coulson moves slightly, and this time, understanding where Tony is going with this, it is Steve who moves to keep him in his seat. Steve leans close to whisper, “A few broken fingers we can fix, even for an archer. But Clint pulled his punches that night. This will prove it.”

It seems Clint has grasped what Stark is trying to prove as well. He straightens and braces himself, before pulling his hand back and socking it straight into the centre of the target. There is an unpleasant crunching sound and a few of the junior agents collectively wince. Neither Clint nor Natasha so much as flicker.

Tony turns around to display the now cracked and dented briefcase to the council, Fury, and an all-but-salivating audience. “He barely touched me. I had a little surface bruising, nothing like this sort of damage. Okay, he was less in control than Agent Sitwell is now, but that’s a personality thing. I think we can all agree that, for example, I’m a little less controlled than Captain Rogers. It’s just one of my many charms.”

The council members are all scowling now. Tony’s expression can only be described as gleeful. The most terrifying thing is how well it matches the gleam in Fury’s eye. One of them leans forward and says coldly, “That still doesn’t excuse the incident which brought down a building and nearly killed both yourself and Captain Rogers.”

“The building was scheduled for demolition anyway,” Tony points out, hand coming up to casually cover the blue glow in his chest. “And I have maintained since I was discharged from Medical that if I were permitted to review the weapon’s stats there will certainly be an underlying technical issue exacerbating Barton’s actions. Justin Hammer’s weaponry isn’t known for its reliability.”

The council member opens his mouth to retort, but is cut off as a buzz of static sounds and all the screens blink off as one. Tony blinks at the now empty air. “What?” he says blankly.

Fury is poking at a control panel at the front of the room and makes a soft noise that could mean anything from ‘I’ve found the problem, give me a second,’ to ‘this is completely destroyed and will never work again.’ Tony elbows him out of the way and peers at the panel himself, apparently oblivious to the look of mingled rage, exasperation and amusement Fury is levelling at his back.

“This is…” he says caustically, before breaking off and looking awkwardly around for a moment.

“Problem, Stark?” Fury growls and Tony abruptly seems to remember that he just shoved past one of the most dangerous men in the world.

“He…I…” Tony uncharacteristically prevaricates.

It’s Natasha who speaks up, her cool voice cutting cleanly across the chatter that had broken out in the wake of Tony’s uncharacteristic hesitance. “It’s Hammer tech, sir. I don’t know what you were expecting other than wide spread system failure.”

Tony brightens. “Thus proving my earlier point,” he says, to the room at large.

Fury scowls, quieting the few chuckles with his glare. “Can you fix it?” he asks the engineer.

Tony shrugs carelessly. “Sure. But I don’t see why I should. You didn’t want my interface before now.”

Fury rolls his eye, “I’m sorry,” he says, sarcasm dripping from every syllable, “How could I possibly malign your technological brilliance. Nothing anybody else makes could even be on par with the ideas you reject as too inefficient. May we please have Starktech?”

Tony beams sunnily. “Well, since you put it like that. Let me try and deal with this cascade problem before we have any more system failures and I’ll see about installing something that actually works next week.”

Which is, of course, when all the lights go out.

“Stark…” Fury begins.

There is the distinct sound of a hand hitting a control panel. “Hey, it’s not me. I didn’t do this. I can’t be blamed for Hammer’s substandard workmanship,” says Tony’s distracted voice, before it tails off into a mumble of swearing and half articulated possibilities.

Steve moves in tandem with Agent Coulson, threading his way through the room of muttering agents to Clint and Natasha’s side. He doesn’t push nearer to Tony, not wanting to distract him. Bruce has no such compunctions; his dark shape is already hunched next to Tony’s. There’s a moment of rustling then then the pair are illuminated in an eerie blue light as Tony opens his shirt.

In the pitiful glow from the Arc reactor, Steve glances around the room. Everyone in it is battle ready, still and wary. Many have their weapons drawn. He, Natasha and Coulson have instinctively formed a three pointed triangle surrounding the weaponless Clint.

Even so, it takes a second for them to see and recognise the intruder. Silence spreads through the room like ripples in a pond. Clint makes a choked low sound that in anyone else would be a whimper of fear.

The look on Loki’s face can only be described as amused, as he regards them all calmly.