[oneshot] the helicarrier
Title: the helicarrier
Pairing: team ot6 (ft. snatches of steve/tony and clint/natasha)
Rating: pg13
Genre: crack, humor, slice-of-life, gen
Warnings: swearing
Author: gdgdbaby
Notes: avengers mockumentary fic. set half a year or so after the events of the movie. 99% of this is smaugma's fault, that asshole. 3,230 words. also on ao3. now with podfic by the lovely huntsmonsters and another podfic by the wonderful greedy_dancer!
"Let's try this again," Fury says, glaring off-screen. "Sorry about that," he tells you stiffly. "The agents here aren't really used to having cameras around. We can reimburse you for the broken equipment."
"We're a covert defense association," comes an angry voice, and then Maria Hill's dipping into frame, gun still in hand. The remains of the first camera smolder on the floor of the bridge next to her feet. "Getting caught on video is something we're supposed to avoid."
"They're just here to conduct a little internal review on the Council's behalf. There's no need for alarm. Just let everyone know to be on their best behavior. Business as usual."
Maria sends the camera another suspicious look.
"So, you're here to root out all our dirty little secrets?" Tony loosens his tie and tosses his sneakers on the table. "What do you need to know that isn't already in our Wikipedia articles?"
"No need to be so formal. Just call me Steve." He peers into the lens so closely that his face blurs a little. "Oh, sorry. Anyway-yes, I'd say I'm acclimating well to the future. Everyone's been very helpful and understanding. The other day Clint told me about inception." He looks excited. "Apparently you can go into people's heads while they're asleep and build them specific dreams. Amazing!"
"Cap believes a lot of things," Clint says, idly polishing an arrowhead with his thumb. "He hasn't learned Google yet."
"My room's through here," Steve says, gesturing down one of the hallways. "And this is an armory of sorts, where-oh my God."
The glass case that holds Captain America's uniform and shield is filled to the brim with what looks like a bright orange gelatin.
"Not again," he groans. He cradles his head in his hands. "This is the third time someone's put my things in Jello."
"It honestly wasn't me," Tony says, raising his hands and looking innocent. "Why do people always jump to these conclusions? It's insulting."
"I have no comment on the matter," Bruce tells you. He kicks a thick pumping device further underneath his desk. "I will say that it may or may not have been Clint's idea."
Clint and Tony are boxing in one of the workout rooms on Level 2. "Most of us-spar with each other-when we need to-blow off some steam," Tony explains, punctuating every couple of words with another punch as Clint weaves and bobs around him.
"Except Bruce," says Clint. "Bruce does like, hot yoga or something. It's intense. The only other person I've seen who can bend that way-besides me-is Natasha."
"I bet you and Natasha-have really sweaty, athletic sex," Tony says, a blow glancing off Clint's shoulder.
"Red light, Stark," Clint warns, but the corner of his mouth pulls up.
Bruce squints up from his monitor. "Yeah, Fury's forced us into a bunch of seminars since we started running regular missions for SHIELD: sexual harassment, cultural sensitivity, et cetera. I'm not sure any of them have taken, though. I think the workplace violence one actually made things worse." He shrugs. "We're living in close quarters on an airship that floats in the middle of the ocean. Most of these people probably know twenty different ways to kill each other with their pinky toes or a couple of well-placed chemicals. They get antsy."
"Oh, no," Natasha says dispassionately. She holds the door open and you follow her into the canteen. "Not again."
"Who drank the last of the coffee?" Tony's now dressed in a worn black undershirt and a pair of old slacks. He's covered in grease, brandishing a wrench in one hand and an empty mug in the other, hair a wild mess around his head. Almost everyone else in the room is giving him a wide berth.
"Calm down," Steve says, reaching for his shoulder.
Tony shrugs it off, a hysterical look in his eyes. "Please tell me someone has coffee."
"Caffeine dependency? Did Bruce tell you that?" Tony scoffs. His hands are shaking a little. "He has no idea what he's talking about."
"To be honest, I'm surprised his blood isn't a lethal combination of coffee and alcohol by now," Bruce says, adjusting the focus on his microscope. "He pours about four shots of Baileys into every cup of coffee he drinks."
"Fury's hiding something from us again." Steve keeps sneaking glances at you in the corner of the lab. "I aim to find out what it is."
Tony rolls his eyes. "We've been over this, Cap. Fury hides a lot of things from us. Any information he chooses to reveal is on a strictly need-to-know basis."
Bruce tilts his head. "So you don't think it's weird he called us here when there doesn't seem to be any sort of impending global disaster?"
Tony sighs. "I didn't say that. I just meant-maybe we should be used to it by now."
"Maybe it has something to do with the new camera crew following us around," Clint points out, rubbing the tip of an arrow again with a distinctly ominous air.
"Sorry about him," Natasha says. In the background, Clint slouches mulishly on one of the stools as Thor looks after his confiscated quiver. A pile of gooey plastic oozing into the floor is all that remains of the tripod. "He's been a bit sensitive ever since Awake and Best Friends Forever were cancelled."
"NBC ruins lives," Clint says stonily.
"Today is the date of Darcy's expulsion from her mother's womb," Thor tells you conversationally. "Jane has bestowed upon the inestimable Natasha and myself the honor of setting up a surprise celebration for her. We shall feast!"
"So, do you have any ideas?" Natasha asks.
"We shall feast!" Thor repeats.
"Right," says Natasha.
"Why did Jane ask me to help with planning?" Natasha raises a delicate eyebrow. "If Thor had his way, we'd be eating roast pig all day and jousting for the hand of the fair maiden. By the end of it, half the people on this ship would be dead of alcohol poisoning. That's why." She flicks her hair back. "Not that I think an abundance of alcohol is a bad idea. That we do agree on."
"Natasha asked me to make a banner for Darcy's birthday party," Steve says, gesturing at a long strip of heavy poster paper. "She said it would put my artistic skills to good use." He picks up a tablet. "This is a list of some of Thor's ideas: it is your birthday; you are one year older; let us feast; drink and be merry; congratulations; this is a party; let us feast." Steve looks up. "He's pretty consistent."
"Seriously?" Clint says, exasperated. "Why put me in charge of party music if you're just going to veto everything I suggest?"
"Korean pop? LMFAO? Skrillex? Clint, you've got to be shitting me."
"You said you wanted mindless music people could dance to! Plus, Darcy really enjoys SNSD." Clint sees the look on her face and backtracks hastily. "Alright, alright, I'll try to come up with another playlist."
"Since I started tinkering around with the equipment," Tony says smugly through the gap in the shower curtain, "living conditions and general productivity on the helicarrier have drastically improved. JARVIS ran some numbers for me." He counts off on his fingers. "Water pressure is up twenty percent across the board, and Levels 3 through 5 have much better lighting now that I've fiddled with the circuitry. I upgraded all the antivirus software on the bridge-building in loopholes for myself, of course."
He pauses and rubs at his chin. A shirtless agent with a towel slung over his shoulders walks into the locker room.
"Hey, Galaga," Tony says, waving a careless hand.
"If you ask me, the Avengers are incredibly overrated," the agent snaps, arms crossed over his bare chest. "Traipsing around like they own the place. It's unbearable." He scowls. "Also, my name is George, not Galaga!"
"Oh, I know his name is George," Tony says. He rubs shampoo into his hair. "I'm just waiting to see how long it'll take him to snap."
There are bright streamers hung up all around the mess hall. Steve and Natasha stand in a corner, bent over the poster paper. Bruce, Thor and Tony are gathered around a table admiring the cake that Clint's just wheeled out.
"Did you get Darcy a present?" Clint asks, wiping his hands on an apron.
Tony taps his cheek. "Does alcohol count?"
"I was told cutting a hole in a box and placing my hammer inside it would be an appropriate gift," Thor says, looking confused. "I do not understand. She would not be able to lift the package either way."
"Uh," Clint says, struggling hard to keep a straight face. "Don't mention that around Jane."
Tony whips his cell phone out and starts tapping away.
"I run a Twitter account called Shit Thor Says." Tony holds the phone up to the camera. "It has over two hundred thousand followers."
Maria Hill walks in, a big cardboard container in her arms. "Captain Rogers?"
Steve looks up and smiles. "Agent Hill. How are you?"
"Fine," she says, blinking, and holds the box out. "We were finally able to locate the rest of your belongings. They were in a warehouse SHIELD stop using back in the 80's."
Steve takes it from her and sets it on the table. "Thanks. I wonder if there's anything in here-" He pries the flaps open and peers inside, a sort of distant look in his eyes. Maria slips back out, listening intently to something on her earpiece.
Clint and Natasha meander over. Clint looks curious; Natasha concerned. "You okay, Cap?" she says.
"Yeah," he breathes, and starts lifting things out: some tattered brochures from the 1943 World Expo, a beige coat that's several sizes too small for him, a set of stubby charcoals and dried oil paints.
"No American flags?" Tony calls. He's arranging champagne bottles in a bucket of ice on the other side of the canteen. "I'm disappointed. Where's your patriotism?"
Steve rolls his eyes. He reaches in and dusts off an old Brooklyn Dodgers baseball cap, his face lighting up. "Hey, I could still wear this!"
Clint starts laughing. Tony glances over again, and a look of abject horror crosses his face. He waves his hands to catch Clint's attention, to no avail. "It's too bad," Clint says. Tony makes vicious cutting motions across his neck, but it's too late.
"What's too bad?" Steve asks.
"The Dodgers moved to Los Angeles in '58," Clint says slowly.
Steve clears his throat. "Excuse me?"
"Cap-" Natasha starts.
Steve lets out a small chuckle. "Oh, very funny, Clint. Thought you could pull a fast one on the guy who missed seventy years of baseball, huh? Come on, how gullible do you think I am?" He turns around in time to see Tony make another silent threatening gesture in Clint's direction and falters. "Tony?"
"What kind of dumb asshole just drops that shit on a person without warning?" Tony hisses. "Are you insane?"
"He was going to find out eventually," Clint yells back, waving his hands around. "What was your genius plan, just not telling him for the rest of his life?"
Steve sits in the corner and stares sadly at the baseball cap in his hands. Thor tries to go over to him but Natasha just shakes her head.
Tony's hair is a bit singed from where a flame-tipped arrow grazed it earlier, but otherwise, he looks fine. "Man, Steve's kind of a wreck. I'd offer to buy the team back for him, but he's kind of weird about money. Something about growing up in the Depression."
"The Yankees?" Steve shouts at you, eyes snapping. "What kind of person do you think I am?"
"This too shall pass, Steven," Thor says wisely, patting his shoulder. Steve grunts noncommittally and bends over the banner again. "You know, my brother once turned into a mare and slept with the mightiest horse in all the land."
"Your brother, Loki," Steve says, gloomy. "The crazy one who killed eighty people in two days."
"Yes," Thor says. "He then gave birth to an eight-legged steed named Sleipnir."
"I-what?" Steve stares at him. "Is that supposed to make me feel better?"
"I think I might projectile vomit," Tony says cheerfully, and pulls his phone out again.
Darcy looks delighted when Jane and Bruce maneuver her into the canteen and everyone jumps up, yelling, "Happy birthday!"
"Thanks," she says, grinning so hard her face looks like it's about to split open. "This is a much better surprise than the usual explosions and apocalyptic shit. I hope there's alcohol." She looks up at the big banner hanging above the cake. "Congratulations, life is futile," she reads drily. "Sort of bleak for a birthday party, isn't it?"
Bruce shakes his head. "Steve had a bit of a meltdown."
Steve glares morosely at the flute of buttery champagne Tony hands him. "Can't even drown my sorrows in alcohol."
A loud We No Speak Americano dubstep remix booms in the background. Darcy slides onto the teeming dance floor and splashes half a glass of sangria down her shirt. Even Steve is bobbing his head a little, though that may just be from the force of the bass beat shaking the belly of the ship. Bruce, Thor, and Natasha cruise around the edges of the room and act as impromptu crowd control.
Despite Natasha's earlier misgivings, Clint seems to be doing well on DJ duty. Tony's mixing drinks and flirting outrageously with everyone in hearing range at the refreshment tables. Some time later, Darcy convinces him to put the suit on and do a series of increasingly elaborate keg stands, to uproarious approval.
"Sickest party ever," Darcy slurs, sloshing her beer at the camera before promptly passing out.
Natasha is picking her way through unconscious SHIELD agents, trash-bagging garbage and tossing it down the chute outside the kitchen. Half the streamers have detached from the ceiling and flutter limply on the ground.
"If you want something done right, do it yourself," she explains, tearing the large banner into precise pieces and shoving them in a bag. "Even cleanup."
She pats her hands on her uniform after she's done and surveys the people sleeping in varying states of disarray with a visible degree of warmth. Clint's slumped over in a chair, very still. Natasha walks over and shakes him a little.
"Bzwuh?" says Clint.
"Come on, idiot," she says fondly, and tucks his arm over her shoulders, helps him up.
He's snoring into her neck by the time they make it to the door.
"Speak of this to anyone," she tells you pleasantly, "and I will personally ensure that you meet a quick and dirty end."
There's a murmur of noise from a storage closet off the main hallway. The door's ajar.
Inside, Steve and Tony are sitting very close together and conversing in low voices. Tony's shirt lies forgotten on the floor and Steve's fingers tap out an idle rhythm on his arc reactor.
"It's not what it looks like," Steve says immediately when he sees you. "He was just, uh-comforting me about the Dodgers?"
"You're a terrible liar," Tony says, shaking his head. "We need to work on that."
"I can neither confirm nor deny that Captain America and I are having secret sex," Tony says in a dull monotone, before grinning. "See how good I am?"
The next morning, they're gathered in Bruce's lab again. Tony glowers at you blearily over a cup of coffee. Clint's nursing water and two Advil. Thor looks chipper and Steve seems to have recovered relatively well from the previous day's revelations.
Fury strides in with a no-nonsense expression on his face, jaw set. "Good. You're all here."
Steve straightens up. "Director Fury." Tony and Clint make half-hearted attempts to pull themselves together.
"There's something I've been meaning to tell you. Now seemed as good a time as any, considering he's finally healed from his wounds."
"Of whom do you speak?" Thor asks.
Fury turns back to the door. It slides open. Coulson, very much alive, steps into the lab.
For a moment, everyone in the lab freezes.
Then: Natasha continues polishing her guns, Bruce keeps feeding equations into his computers, and Steve sits back down. "Oh, is that what you were trying to hide from us?"
Tony picks his coffee up again. "Okay."
"Welcome back, Son of Coul," Thor booms.
"Thank you," Coulson says.
A few more seconds pass in silence.
"Well, that was anticlimactic," Coulson remarks.
"What the hell?" Fury blinks his one good eye, clearly taken aback at the non-reaction. "Is that it?"
"We realized he was alive months ago," Tony says to you, throat raspy. He takes a long sip of his coffee and coughs. "There's only one IP address that checks and updates the Captain America Wikipedia page so religiously. Finding him was easy."
"Yeah, we were pretty mad when we figured it out," Bruce admits. "SHIELD manipulation at its finest, really, and we all fell for it." He shrugs. "But it's better that he's alive, which is what matters in the end."
"How's Belize this time of year?" Tony asks.
"Lovely," Coulson says, voice wry.
Fury frowns. "Why didn't you say that you already knew?"
"We were waiting for you to tell us on your own," says Bruce.
"You owe us big time for this," Tony points out brightly. "We could sue for emotional trauma, you know."
Fury pinches the bridge of his nose. "You needed a push. I took the opportunity to give you one. Coulson agreed with me."
"Yes, I did," Coulson tells you. "It seemed like the best course of action at the time." His face goes a little dark. "The director and I will definitely be having words about the vintage set of trading cards he ruined, though."
"It's good to see you again, regardless," Clint says, shaking Coulson's hand.
"Verily," says Thor, clapping Coulson's back in a way that makes his knees buckle a little.
"The next time you try to pull something like this-" Natasha begins.
"I know," Coulson cuts in, sounding amused. "You'll kill me."
"Damn straight," Steve says.
Tony perks up. "Cough up, kids."
"Shit," Clint mutters, and digs around in his pocket. He hands Tony ten dollars. Natasha and Bruce both give him fives. Fury sighs heavily and forks over a fifty.
"There was a running pool on how long it would take Steve to swear," Tony says, tucking the money in his wallet. He looks pleased. "Fury bet never, the poor guy."
"For a moment, I did think you were a ghost come back from Valhalla to haunt us," Thor admits to Coulson later. "But I recalled Anthony's reasoning and was reassured."
"Good," Tony says, rolling his eyes. "Saved you from sending Mjölnir through a wall."
"Or pulling some Asgardian magic shit to try and banish him or something," Clint adds.
Bruce chuckles. "It's too bad the Ghostbusters aren't real."
"What do you mean, the Ghostbusters aren't real?" Steve asks quickly, head snapping up. "Clint, who have I been calling this whole time?"
Tony tugs his phone out.
"Shit Captain America Says," Tony says, fingers flying over his keypad. "Five hundred thousand followers and rising, natch."
fin
Pairing: team ot6 (ft. snatches of steve/tony and clint/natasha)
Rating: pg13
Genre: crack, humor, slice-of-life, gen
Warnings: swearing
Author: gdgdbaby
Notes: avengers mockumentary fic. set half a year or so after the events of the movie. 99% of this is smaugma's fault, that asshole. 3,230 words. also on ao3. now with podfic by the lovely huntsmonsters and another podfic by the wonderful greedy_dancer!
"Let's try this again," Fury says, glaring off-screen. "Sorry about that," he tells you stiffly. "The agents here aren't really used to having cameras around. We can reimburse you for the broken equipment."
"We're a covert defense association," comes an angry voice, and then Maria Hill's dipping into frame, gun still in hand. The remains of the first camera smolder on the floor of the bridge next to her feet. "Getting caught on video is something we're supposed to avoid."
"They're just here to conduct a little internal review on the Council's behalf. There's no need for alarm. Just let everyone know to be on their best behavior. Business as usual."
Maria sends the camera another suspicious look.
"So, you're here to root out all our dirty little secrets?" Tony loosens his tie and tosses his sneakers on the table. "What do you need to know that isn't already in our Wikipedia articles?"
"No need to be so formal. Just call me Steve." He peers into the lens so closely that his face blurs a little. "Oh, sorry. Anyway-yes, I'd say I'm acclimating well to the future. Everyone's been very helpful and understanding. The other day Clint told me about inception." He looks excited. "Apparently you can go into people's heads while they're asleep and build them specific dreams. Amazing!"
"Cap believes a lot of things," Clint says, idly polishing an arrowhead with his thumb. "He hasn't learned Google yet."
"My room's through here," Steve says, gesturing down one of the hallways. "And this is an armory of sorts, where-oh my God."
The glass case that holds Captain America's uniform and shield is filled to the brim with what looks like a bright orange gelatin.
"Not again," he groans. He cradles his head in his hands. "This is the third time someone's put my things in Jello."
"It honestly wasn't me," Tony says, raising his hands and looking innocent. "Why do people always jump to these conclusions? It's insulting."
"I have no comment on the matter," Bruce tells you. He kicks a thick pumping device further underneath his desk. "I will say that it may or may not have been Clint's idea."
Clint and Tony are boxing in one of the workout rooms on Level 2. "Most of us-spar with each other-when we need to-blow off some steam," Tony explains, punctuating every couple of words with another punch as Clint weaves and bobs around him.
"Except Bruce," says Clint. "Bruce does like, hot yoga or something. It's intense. The only other person I've seen who can bend that way-besides me-is Natasha."
"I bet you and Natasha-have really sweaty, athletic sex," Tony says, a blow glancing off Clint's shoulder.
"Red light, Stark," Clint warns, but the corner of his mouth pulls up.
Bruce squints up from his monitor. "Yeah, Fury's forced us into a bunch of seminars since we started running regular missions for SHIELD: sexual harassment, cultural sensitivity, et cetera. I'm not sure any of them have taken, though. I think the workplace violence one actually made things worse." He shrugs. "We're living in close quarters on an airship that floats in the middle of the ocean. Most of these people probably know twenty different ways to kill each other with their pinky toes or a couple of well-placed chemicals. They get antsy."
"Oh, no," Natasha says dispassionately. She holds the door open and you follow her into the canteen. "Not again."
"Who drank the last of the coffee?" Tony's now dressed in a worn black undershirt and a pair of old slacks. He's covered in grease, brandishing a wrench in one hand and an empty mug in the other, hair a wild mess around his head. Almost everyone else in the room is giving him a wide berth.
"Calm down," Steve says, reaching for his shoulder.
Tony shrugs it off, a hysterical look in his eyes. "Please tell me someone has coffee."
"Caffeine dependency? Did Bruce tell you that?" Tony scoffs. His hands are shaking a little. "He has no idea what he's talking about."
"To be honest, I'm surprised his blood isn't a lethal combination of coffee and alcohol by now," Bruce says, adjusting the focus on his microscope. "He pours about four shots of Baileys into every cup of coffee he drinks."
"Fury's hiding something from us again." Steve keeps sneaking glances at you in the corner of the lab. "I aim to find out what it is."
Tony rolls his eyes. "We've been over this, Cap. Fury hides a lot of things from us. Any information he chooses to reveal is on a strictly need-to-know basis."
Bruce tilts his head. "So you don't think it's weird he called us here when there doesn't seem to be any sort of impending global disaster?"
Tony sighs. "I didn't say that. I just meant-maybe we should be used to it by now."
"Maybe it has something to do with the new camera crew following us around," Clint points out, rubbing the tip of an arrow again with a distinctly ominous air.
"Sorry about him," Natasha says. In the background, Clint slouches mulishly on one of the stools as Thor looks after his confiscated quiver. A pile of gooey plastic oozing into the floor is all that remains of the tripod. "He's been a bit sensitive ever since Awake and Best Friends Forever were cancelled."
"NBC ruins lives," Clint says stonily.
"Today is the date of Darcy's expulsion from her mother's womb," Thor tells you conversationally. "Jane has bestowed upon the inestimable Natasha and myself the honor of setting up a surprise celebration for her. We shall feast!"
"So, do you have any ideas?" Natasha asks.
"We shall feast!" Thor repeats.
"Right," says Natasha.
"Why did Jane ask me to help with planning?" Natasha raises a delicate eyebrow. "If Thor had his way, we'd be eating roast pig all day and jousting for the hand of the fair maiden. By the end of it, half the people on this ship would be dead of alcohol poisoning. That's why." She flicks her hair back. "Not that I think an abundance of alcohol is a bad idea. That we do agree on."
"Natasha asked me to make a banner for Darcy's birthday party," Steve says, gesturing at a long strip of heavy poster paper. "She said it would put my artistic skills to good use." He picks up a tablet. "This is a list of some of Thor's ideas: it is your birthday; you are one year older; let us feast; drink and be merry; congratulations; this is a party; let us feast." Steve looks up. "He's pretty consistent."
"Seriously?" Clint says, exasperated. "Why put me in charge of party music if you're just going to veto everything I suggest?"
"Korean pop? LMFAO? Skrillex? Clint, you've got to be shitting me."
"You said you wanted mindless music people could dance to! Plus, Darcy really enjoys SNSD." Clint sees the look on her face and backtracks hastily. "Alright, alright, I'll try to come up with another playlist."
"Since I started tinkering around with the equipment," Tony says smugly through the gap in the shower curtain, "living conditions and general productivity on the helicarrier have drastically improved. JARVIS ran some numbers for me." He counts off on his fingers. "Water pressure is up twenty percent across the board, and Levels 3 through 5 have much better lighting now that I've fiddled with the circuitry. I upgraded all the antivirus software on the bridge-building in loopholes for myself, of course."
He pauses and rubs at his chin. A shirtless agent with a towel slung over his shoulders walks into the locker room.
"Hey, Galaga," Tony says, waving a careless hand.
"If you ask me, the Avengers are incredibly overrated," the agent snaps, arms crossed over his bare chest. "Traipsing around like they own the place. It's unbearable." He scowls. "Also, my name is George, not Galaga!"
"Oh, I know his name is George," Tony says. He rubs shampoo into his hair. "I'm just waiting to see how long it'll take him to snap."
There are bright streamers hung up all around the mess hall. Steve and Natasha stand in a corner, bent over the poster paper. Bruce, Thor and Tony are gathered around a table admiring the cake that Clint's just wheeled out.
"Did you get Darcy a present?" Clint asks, wiping his hands on an apron.
Tony taps his cheek. "Does alcohol count?"
"I was told cutting a hole in a box and placing my hammer inside it would be an appropriate gift," Thor says, looking confused. "I do not understand. She would not be able to lift the package either way."
"Uh," Clint says, struggling hard to keep a straight face. "Don't mention that around Jane."
Tony whips his cell phone out and starts tapping away.
"I run a Twitter account called Shit Thor Says." Tony holds the phone up to the camera. "It has over two hundred thousand followers."
Maria Hill walks in, a big cardboard container in her arms. "Captain Rogers?"
Steve looks up and smiles. "Agent Hill. How are you?"
"Fine," she says, blinking, and holds the box out. "We were finally able to locate the rest of your belongings. They were in a warehouse SHIELD stop using back in the 80's."
Steve takes it from her and sets it on the table. "Thanks. I wonder if there's anything in here-" He pries the flaps open and peers inside, a sort of distant look in his eyes. Maria slips back out, listening intently to something on her earpiece.
Clint and Natasha meander over. Clint looks curious; Natasha concerned. "You okay, Cap?" she says.
"Yeah," he breathes, and starts lifting things out: some tattered brochures from the 1943 World Expo, a beige coat that's several sizes too small for him, a set of stubby charcoals and dried oil paints.
"No American flags?" Tony calls. He's arranging champagne bottles in a bucket of ice on the other side of the canteen. "I'm disappointed. Where's your patriotism?"
Steve rolls his eyes. He reaches in and dusts off an old Brooklyn Dodgers baseball cap, his face lighting up. "Hey, I could still wear this!"
Clint starts laughing. Tony glances over again, and a look of abject horror crosses his face. He waves his hands to catch Clint's attention, to no avail. "It's too bad," Clint says. Tony makes vicious cutting motions across his neck, but it's too late.
"What's too bad?" Steve asks.
"The Dodgers moved to Los Angeles in '58," Clint says slowly.
Steve clears his throat. "Excuse me?"
"Cap-" Natasha starts.
Steve lets out a small chuckle. "Oh, very funny, Clint. Thought you could pull a fast one on the guy who missed seventy years of baseball, huh? Come on, how gullible do you think I am?" He turns around in time to see Tony make another silent threatening gesture in Clint's direction and falters. "Tony?"
"What kind of dumb asshole just drops that shit on a person without warning?" Tony hisses. "Are you insane?"
"He was going to find out eventually," Clint yells back, waving his hands around. "What was your genius plan, just not telling him for the rest of his life?"
Steve sits in the corner and stares sadly at the baseball cap in his hands. Thor tries to go over to him but Natasha just shakes her head.
Tony's hair is a bit singed from where a flame-tipped arrow grazed it earlier, but otherwise, he looks fine. "Man, Steve's kind of a wreck. I'd offer to buy the team back for him, but he's kind of weird about money. Something about growing up in the Depression."
"The Yankees?" Steve shouts at you, eyes snapping. "What kind of person do you think I am?"
"This too shall pass, Steven," Thor says wisely, patting his shoulder. Steve grunts noncommittally and bends over the banner again. "You know, my brother once turned into a mare and slept with the mightiest horse in all the land."
"Your brother, Loki," Steve says, gloomy. "The crazy one who killed eighty people in two days."
"Yes," Thor says. "He then gave birth to an eight-legged steed named Sleipnir."
"I-what?" Steve stares at him. "Is that supposed to make me feel better?"
"I think I might projectile vomit," Tony says cheerfully, and pulls his phone out again.
Darcy looks delighted when Jane and Bruce maneuver her into the canteen and everyone jumps up, yelling, "Happy birthday!"
"Thanks," she says, grinning so hard her face looks like it's about to split open. "This is a much better surprise than the usual explosions and apocalyptic shit. I hope there's alcohol." She looks up at the big banner hanging above the cake. "Congratulations, life is futile," she reads drily. "Sort of bleak for a birthday party, isn't it?"
Bruce shakes his head. "Steve had a bit of a meltdown."
Steve glares morosely at the flute of buttery champagne Tony hands him. "Can't even drown my sorrows in alcohol."
A loud We No Speak Americano dubstep remix booms in the background. Darcy slides onto the teeming dance floor and splashes half a glass of sangria down her shirt. Even Steve is bobbing his head a little, though that may just be from the force of the bass beat shaking the belly of the ship. Bruce, Thor, and Natasha cruise around the edges of the room and act as impromptu crowd control.
Despite Natasha's earlier misgivings, Clint seems to be doing well on DJ duty. Tony's mixing drinks and flirting outrageously with everyone in hearing range at the refreshment tables. Some time later, Darcy convinces him to put the suit on and do a series of increasingly elaborate keg stands, to uproarious approval.
"Sickest party ever," Darcy slurs, sloshing her beer at the camera before promptly passing out.
Natasha is picking her way through unconscious SHIELD agents, trash-bagging garbage and tossing it down the chute outside the kitchen. Half the streamers have detached from the ceiling and flutter limply on the ground.
"If you want something done right, do it yourself," she explains, tearing the large banner into precise pieces and shoving them in a bag. "Even cleanup."
She pats her hands on her uniform after she's done and surveys the people sleeping in varying states of disarray with a visible degree of warmth. Clint's slumped over in a chair, very still. Natasha walks over and shakes him a little.
"Bzwuh?" says Clint.
"Come on, idiot," she says fondly, and tucks his arm over her shoulders, helps him up.
He's snoring into her neck by the time they make it to the door.
"Speak of this to anyone," she tells you pleasantly, "and I will personally ensure that you meet a quick and dirty end."
There's a murmur of noise from a storage closet off the main hallway. The door's ajar.
Inside, Steve and Tony are sitting very close together and conversing in low voices. Tony's shirt lies forgotten on the floor and Steve's fingers tap out an idle rhythm on his arc reactor.
"It's not what it looks like," Steve says immediately when he sees you. "He was just, uh-comforting me about the Dodgers?"
"You're a terrible liar," Tony says, shaking his head. "We need to work on that."
"I can neither confirm nor deny that Captain America and I are having secret sex," Tony says in a dull monotone, before grinning. "See how good I am?"
The next morning, they're gathered in Bruce's lab again. Tony glowers at you blearily over a cup of coffee. Clint's nursing water and two Advil. Thor looks chipper and Steve seems to have recovered relatively well from the previous day's revelations.
Fury strides in with a no-nonsense expression on his face, jaw set. "Good. You're all here."
Steve straightens up. "Director Fury." Tony and Clint make half-hearted attempts to pull themselves together.
"There's something I've been meaning to tell you. Now seemed as good a time as any, considering he's finally healed from his wounds."
"Of whom do you speak?" Thor asks.
Fury turns back to the door. It slides open. Coulson, very much alive, steps into the lab.
For a moment, everyone in the lab freezes.
Then: Natasha continues polishing her guns, Bruce keeps feeding equations into his computers, and Steve sits back down. "Oh, is that what you were trying to hide from us?"
Tony picks his coffee up again. "Okay."
"Welcome back, Son of Coul," Thor booms.
"Thank you," Coulson says.
A few more seconds pass in silence.
"Well, that was anticlimactic," Coulson remarks.
"What the hell?" Fury blinks his one good eye, clearly taken aback at the non-reaction. "Is that it?"
"We realized he was alive months ago," Tony says to you, throat raspy. He takes a long sip of his coffee and coughs. "There's only one IP address that checks and updates the Captain America Wikipedia page so religiously. Finding him was easy."
"Yeah, we were pretty mad when we figured it out," Bruce admits. "SHIELD manipulation at its finest, really, and we all fell for it." He shrugs. "But it's better that he's alive, which is what matters in the end."
"How's Belize this time of year?" Tony asks.
"Lovely," Coulson says, voice wry.
Fury frowns. "Why didn't you say that you already knew?"
"We were waiting for you to tell us on your own," says Bruce.
"You owe us big time for this," Tony points out brightly. "We could sue for emotional trauma, you know."
Fury pinches the bridge of his nose. "You needed a push. I took the opportunity to give you one. Coulson agreed with me."
"Yes, I did," Coulson tells you. "It seemed like the best course of action at the time." His face goes a little dark. "The director and I will definitely be having words about the vintage set of trading cards he ruined, though."
"It's good to see you again, regardless," Clint says, shaking Coulson's hand.
"Verily," says Thor, clapping Coulson's back in a way that makes his knees buckle a little.
"The next time you try to pull something like this-" Natasha begins.
"I know," Coulson cuts in, sounding amused. "You'll kill me."
"Damn straight," Steve says.
Tony perks up. "Cough up, kids."
"Shit," Clint mutters, and digs around in his pocket. He hands Tony ten dollars. Natasha and Bruce both give him fives. Fury sighs heavily and forks over a fifty.
"There was a running pool on how long it would take Steve to swear," Tony says, tucking the money in his wallet. He looks pleased. "Fury bet never, the poor guy."
"For a moment, I did think you were a ghost come back from Valhalla to haunt us," Thor admits to Coulson later. "But I recalled Anthony's reasoning and was reassured."
"Good," Tony says, rolling his eyes. "Saved you from sending Mjölnir through a wall."
"Or pulling some Asgardian magic shit to try and banish him or something," Clint adds.
Bruce chuckles. "It's too bad the Ghostbusters aren't real."
"What do you mean, the Ghostbusters aren't real?" Steve asks quickly, head snapping up. "Clint, who have I been calling this whole time?"
Tony tugs his phone out.
"Shit Captain America Says," Tony says, fingers flying over his keypad. "Five hundred thousand followers and rising, natch."
fin