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"First things first. Raise your hand if you thought there was no fucking way this could ever fucking happen." Tony Stark raised one hand and counted off with the other. "Nope, nope, nope, nope, showoff."
"Russian." Natasha smirked. At least she was speaking English again.
Steve restrained himself from facepalming. He was the one who'd called this meeting, last night when the writing was on the wall, too big to ignore, and here Tony was trying to take over, as usual. "You're sure we won't be interrupted?"
"I sent the space Vikings over to Starbucks with my corporate card and a challenge to see which one could spend more on a single beverage. We've got all day."
Clint did facepalm then. "The hell were you thinking, Tony. There are not two other people in New York City I would less want to see under the effects of an overcaffeinated sugar high. Why didn't you just get them drunk?"
"Because it’s Shieldbucks." The Starbucks across the street from Avengers Tower being a SHIELD plant was an open secret. "At least if they get out of hand there they’ll be supervised by trained professionals. And when I say 'supervised' I mean 'tased.'"
"However much they spend, you better call over there tomorrow and tip them 200%." Bruce glared for emphasis. "And no more encouraging Loki, we don’t need the Secret Service showing up."
"What are you talking about, I don't encourage Loki…"
"You got him a honey badger hoodie!"
Steve cleared his throat. "Enough stalling. We need to talk about last night."
Clint groaned. "Let’s don't and say we did."
"I'm serious. We're basically a paramilitary government agency and we're about to have a new Commander in Chief who has…"
"Publicly feuded with at least half of us?"
"Attacked every minority group in America?"
"Never read the First Amendment?"
"Fucked a goat?"
Steve gritted his teeth. "Tony, that is not helpful."
"Well, can you prove it didn't happen?" Tony smirked while Steve stared at him, speechless. "I didn't think so. In fact, I have just as much evidence for that as Trump has for anything he tweets." Tony stood and reached for the Starkphone clipped to his belt with a flourish only to find the holster empty. "Where's my phone?"
"You'll get it back after class," Natasha said.
"Well played," Bruce said, rising to clink coffee cups with Natasha, and the room murmured assent, except Tony. Tony pouted.
"See, Natasha is planning ahead. We should follow her example." Steve was determined to get this meeting under control… but now he was the distracted one. He turned to Natasha. "You are taking this a lot better than I expected."
Natasha raised her chin to match his gaze, and gave him a tight-lipped smile that didn't reach her eyes. "There’s a sort of cold comfort that comes in knowing that in the end your instincts were right and the worst has actually come to pass." She shrugged. "I don't do well with uncertainty."
"You are one cold operator, Romanov."
Natasha gave Tony another smirk. "Again, Russian."
"So what do we do now? Do we make a statement?" Steve ran a hand through his hair. "I don’t know what we're supposed to do. We didn't cover this in the Army."
"I hear you, Steve." Bruce leaned forward. "It's much easier when we can just smash. Give me an alien invasion any day."
"Worse than an alien invasion? Are we maybe overreacting a little?" Tony gesticulated with his mug. "His speech last night sounded pretty sane. Maybe this won’t be so bad."
Natasha moved so fast that Steve heard her before he saw her; her coffee cup (empty, luckily) clattered on the floor as she went from seated to looming over Tony, hands on hips. "When the autocrat tells you who he is, you believe him!"
"Does the devil really need any more advocates, Tony? Didn't he have enough last night?" Clint moved in to back up Natasha, one hand on her shoulder, the other grabbing Tony's coffee cup as Tony whimpered and grabbed at it ineffectually. Clint's lip curled in disgust as he sniffed it. "Might have known. Check this out, Cap."
If Steve were physically capable of getting drunk, he was pretty sure one whiff from Tony's mug would have done it. It appeared to be a mug of scotch with a little coffee for color. "Tony! It's not even noon!"
"Nu-uh, that rule only applies if you start drinking. I never stopped, so it's fine. Now give it. You're all just jealous anyway because you're hung over. And anyway, you all need to chill because we don’t really live in a democracy, we live in an oligarchy, and I'm an oligarch so you all will be fine."
"The hell is wrong with you, Tony!" Bruce was now standing, vibrating with anger. "You think this is a joke? You think that because this won't affect you, everything will be fine? You even think that this won't affect you? For a genius, you sure are an idiot!" His eyes glinted green.
"Xanax! Now!" Natasha barked at Clint and dashed to Bruce, rubbing his temples and murmuring soothing nothings in his ear while Clint shook out a generous handful of pills into Bruce's open mouth. He swallowed them dry and collapsed onto the couch, head in his hands. Natasha and Clint joined him, one on each side, and wrapped him in a group hug.
Bruce finally lifted his head. "If it comes to the worst… I won't let them take me. I’m not telling any of you what to do, but then again none of you have an atomic bomb living in your brain. I won't be used as a weapon."
"You say the word, Bruce, we'll get you where you need to go," Clint said.
"We've got your back," Natasha echoed.
Tony stared at the three on the couch, and Steve thought he looked a little jealous. "What about you two?"
"You'll never know," Natasha said at the same moment that Clint said "What kind of secret agents would we be if we told you that?"
"Figures," Tony said. "What about you, Steve? I hear they're looking for a Captain Canada. I bet Clint will put in a good word for you."
Clint mouthed "what?" to Natasha. She shrugged.
"I won't say I didn’t think about it at three in the morning," Steve began. "But before I was a hero, I was a symbol. Before I was chasing Nazis, I was doing USO shows. And yeah, I hated it. But some people must have gotten something out of it, right? I still mean something to a lot of people in this country. Maybe I can use that for something. Look at Sam. He's given just as much of himself to this country as I have, but because of circumstances beyond our control, I'm Captain America and he’s not. And he’d probably be really good at it, but you think they would have picked a black guy in 1943? They probably still wouldn't now. I may have grown up poor, and Irish back when that was looked down on, but I still had an easier time than Peggy, because I was a man. We like to believe America's a fair place, but I know I’ve gotten some breaks I didn’t earn just because I'm a white guy. The least I can do is try to leverage that to help the people who haven't been so lucky. I've got a responsibility to them to speak for them -- no, to make room for them to speak themselves -- to do everything humanly in my power to defend them as Americans, not to cut and run. How could I ever look Sam in the eye again if I left?" He stared Tony dead in the eye. "Could you look Rhodey in the eye if you did?"
For once, Tony had no retort, and looked away. Steve would have counted it a victory under any other circumstances.
After a few tense moments of silence, Tony muttered, "When did you get woke?"
Steve raised his eyebrows. "Seven-thirty, but I don't see what that has to do with anything."
"It’s slang, Steve," Natasha explained. "It means socially aware."
"Sam sends me articles," Steve replied.
"Tony's just jealous because no one has ever accused him of being woke," Clint said.
"That was inspiring, Steve," Bruce said from the couch, sounding much more composed. "I needed that."
"Don't thank me. I haven't done anything yet," Steve said. "This isn't going to be easy. But we've got to do our best to stand by what we stand for, what we believe America stands for. And I can't do it alone. None of us can. We're going to need to take care of each other. Who's with me?"
Clint, Natasha, and Bruce stood as one. Steve smiled at them, and then all four turned to look at Tony, who was chugging the coffee he'd retrieved while no one was paying attention to him. He slammed the mug down and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.
"Oh, fine. I'm in. And if we can't protect the country, you can be damn well sure we’ll avenge it."
"I don’t think that’s exactly the attitude Cap was hoping for, Tony," Clint snarked.
Steve smiled despite himself. "It’s a start."