Trust Me
So maybe he hadn’t thought his words through all that well but come on, what the hell was Bucky going to do with the knowledge that Nat and Clint were in Russia that one time? And anyone with a half a brain could infer that Fitzsimmons went to school at some point, and Skye was on like seven different watch lists, they probably already knew who she was even if it was only through her hacker handle. Besides, he was an engineer not a spy, how was he supposed to know any of that was actually important, especially without a definitive timeline? Well, there was a timeline after him, but that was only because he was a public figure and everyone knew when he did anything because he was a very loud and noisy person. He wasn’t used to having to keep secrets, okay? But no, Nat had thrown him in the dog house, otherwise known as his lab, and forbade him from speaking to anyone without her there to stop him from saying something dumb.
Which, in his defense nothing he said was dumb, and at least half of it was common knowledge they all probably already gathered. Plus Clint had a fucking mental bond with Coulson, why wasn’t Nat freaking out about that? God knows what they’ve probably gleaned off Clint, probably at least ten embarrassing moments per person, minus Skye, who had a habit of not being embarrassing at all. She sucked.
Of course as soon as he was done thinking that Nat all but threw Clint into the lab so he figured Clint was on dog house arrest too. “What’d you do?” he asks as the door to his lab slides shut with Nat glaring at them on the other side with her arms crossed. “Also how did I end up the leader of this group when Natasha is clearly the most qualified?”
Clint stumbles but catches himself before he falls over and gives Nat an irritated look before turning to Tony. “I may or may not have left my phone unattended and Coulson may or may not have gotten ahold of it,” he says, “and I think you ended up the unofficial official leader because you gave us all a home, actually several, but still. No more homeless equals great.”
Tony stares at Clint, trying to determine whether or not he was joking about that phone thing because excuse him, that was way worse than revealing Nat was Black Widow. Admittedly he had thought that made her sound badass and dangerous, which she was, but apparently he gave away her entire skill set and really, it was hardly his fault he hadn’t thought of that. Okay so it was, and Loki had taken the opportunity to verbally insult him to the point that Nat got offended on his behalf, but still.
“What?” Clint finally says, eyeing Tony suspiciously when he doesn’t say anything to his revealing that he had practically given Coulson his phone.
“You have got to be fucking kidding me? If we are this disorganized all the time it is a wonder we haven’t all died yet,” he says, rubbing his temples.
“Oh come on,” Clint says, “he only had the phone for like two minutes, what’s the worst that could happen?”
“It takes thirty seconds to trace a phone call, Clint! What the hell?” he says, throwing his hands up. And Nat thought he was a problem, Clint basically gave their location away!
“In the movies it takes like five minutes!” Clint protests, flapping his hands around.
“For fucks sakes, Clint, this is not a movie! We’ve traced calls, how did you not know that?”
“How did you not know you were giving all our secrets away? I don’t know this shit, this isn’t my skill set, my skill set is finding extremely convoluted ways to escape imminent death and capture and also eating an inhuman amount of tacos. I don’t do the tech thing,” he says.
Fine, so he had a point, but going off what movies depicted, really? He would have thought with the amount of times Clint and Nat bitched about improper gun use, unrealistic fight scenes, and women never putting their hair up during a fight he would know that movies got pretty much nothing right. Hell, he got annoyed with improper gun use and he only built them. “Clinton Barton, you fucking dumbass, you know movies don’t get anything right!” he says, throwing a pen at Clint, which he expertly dodges.
“Okay, fine, but what’s done is done, how do we get out of this?” he asks. Tony opens his mouth to say the fuck if he knows but then he remembers why they were all alive despite at least one of them fucking up the plans.
They were damn geniuses at creating on the fly solutions to dumb ass problems that they accidentally created, well, usually that Tony created. “We were planning on getting rid of the alphas, but what if we left and just sort of… ditched them here. It would take them awhile to find their way back to a city anyways and by then we could be on another continent,” he says. That could work, plus he hasn’t travelled in a while, he could do with a kind of vacation while America deals with the whole HYDRA thing.
Clint considers it for a minute or so, “sure, and maybe if we ditch Thor here too we won’t have to listen to Loki bitch about him so much,” he says. They consider it for a second before they start laughing; Loki wasn’t going to stop complaining about Thor whether he was around or not.
*
“You I get, but you? You’re a trained damn spy, Clint, what the hell could have encouraged you to fuck up that badly?” Natasha asks, hands on her hips and tapping her foot impatiently.
“Have you considered that the mental bond Clint has with Coulson allowed Coulson to mind fuck Clint into handing the phone over? Just a thought,” Tony says because he was not going down for screwing them all over alone, thanks. Clint shoots him a betrayed look but doesn’t say anything about it.
Natasha considers his theory for a moment before frowning, “Clint’s been bit before and nothing like that has ever happened, he’s always had to strong of a will, so why would this time be any different?” she asks. It was a logical train of thought but they could all see that the way Clint interacted with Coulson was vastly different than how he interacted with literally everyone else who’s succeeded in laying a claim bite in his ass. Literally that one time.
“Because I actually like Coulson,” he says, “I’ve never been anything but outright disgusted with the people who bit me but Coulson, as ridiculous as it sounds, bit me by accident, not because he wanted to control me.”
Natasha’s brows draw together, “should that actually make a difference though?” she asks.
“In theory,” Tony says, “the point of the bond is to even out the power an alpha has over an omega with the Command, which obviously doesn’t require a bond to work. It’s supposed to give the omega more agency by allowing them access to their alpha’s mind, therefore giving them more ability to resist the Command if needed, and the alpha has access to the omega’s mind to know when they need to apply more pressure or release it. But that’s only in a perfect world scenario; usually the bond only allows people to feel one another’s emotions, sense when their partner is in danger, that kind of thing.”
Clint makes a face, “then why do people keep biting us if we’re supposed to get more agency instead of less? That’s fucking dumb,” he says.
“Because, in theory, if the alpha is particularly strong and the omega particularly weak it’s possible to override that agency and essentially trap the omega inside their own heads, basically making them a slave to whomever is in control,” he says, “but the chances of that happening are crazy rare, most people aren’t that strong and even less people are that weak. The bond works both ways, so most people are able to resist in one way or another, making it next to impossible to achieve total control. Doesn’t stop people from trying, obviously.”
“Great, so if Steve bit any of us we’d be fucked?” Natasha says, sighing and pinching her nose, shaking her head as she tries to find some sort of solution.
“No, we wouldn’t, we would essentially have to be as weak as Steve is strong for that to happen. I mean even if he did seem inclined to bite any of us all of us except maybe Fitzsimmons and Skye have a long history of being able to resist even the strongest of Commands, hell, both you and Wanda were genetically engineered to resist Commands. But even Fitzsimmons and Skye can resist, it’s just harder for them to, none of us would be so weak we couldn’t find some way to disobey. Besides, like I said before, bond works both ways, it’s just as possible for a particularly strong omega to overtake an alpha; people just don’t consider that because alphas are associated with strength and omegas weakness.”
Natasha nods, processing the information fast, “so what changes in regards to the bond by Clint liking Coulson?” she asks.
“When people bit me before their intentions were to gain access to my mind and control my thoughts, but with a two way bond I could feel those intentions and resist harder than I could before they bit me. Coulson has no such intentions and I mean I wouldn’t really want to follow any Commands he laid out but I wouldn’t feel unsafe if I did, without the distinct need to fight for control of myself I probably let my guard down,” Clint says, “Sound right?” he asks Tony.
Tony nods, “exactly,” he says, “Bruce could give you a lot more on the biological fundamentals and all that, and a way more detailed explanation on how and why things work the way they do but I don’t think a genetics lesson is really necessary presently.”
Nat runs her hands through her hair, mumbling in Russian, which Tony had totally been meaning to learn so he could understand her when she was talking shit but for now he only understood a few words. ‘Sloppy’ and ‘stupid’ were in there, and some variation of fuck, he thinks, but she runs off before he can ask what she was mumbling about.
Clint watches her go for a minute before turning to Tony, “Bruce just did laundry, we should get all the sweaters out and see how many we can put on before we can’t move our arms,” he says, grinning.
“Hell yeah,” Tony says, getting out of his chair, leaving it spinning while he and Clint ran off to get the laundry.
*
“I know a guy,” Tony says, “trust me, he’s great.”
Natasha is looking at him like he’s grown a second head, are you fucking kidding me? Trust you? You decided to give all our secrets away because you couldn’t use your brain for five minutes!” she tells him.
“Ever heard the name ‘Gamora’?” he asks, “he works with her. Well, for her, but you get the point,” he says.
Natasha seems to reconsider her stance on trusting him then, “and you think he’d be skilled enough to get this stuff?” she asks, shaking Coulson’s stolen S.H.I.E.L.D files. Apparently they weren’t the only ones who were sloppy, why else would he pack a bunch of files from a super-secret government agency in a damn duffle bag? He would have thought Coulson would have hid them at the very least, but he had left them sitting in the bottom of his duffle bag and Clint had snatched them on their way out. Tony assumed that, like Clint, Coulson had grown too comfortable with another person in his head and let his guard down. On the plus side there was enough there that they could pay Quill with some cool alien artifact.
“If he isn’t the rest of his team is,” Tony says, “plus we get cool shit!” Bruce had been excited about the ‘084’s’ as they were labeled in Coulson’s meticulously written, over organized, color coded files because they had all been labeled that way due to an inherent misunderstanding of how they worked. He was excited too, and hanging out in the lab with Bruce was great, throw Fitzsimmons in there and it’s a party.
Peter Quill was an absolute asshole and that was why he was one of Tony’s favorites. He was a spunky beta Tony had met on a solo mission shortly after he had been found by Nat and Clint and they had both been after his weapons. Unfortunately a third contender had gotten in the mix and Peter and Tony figured fuck that guy and teamed up, removing Ronan from the equation only to have him replaced shortly thereafter with Gamora, who was much more badass than legend had led him to believe.
Gamora had kicked his ass and Quill’s all over the place but by sheer miracle Tony had managed to do what he had intended and destroyed the damn weapons. Gamora had been some pissed and Tony had taken off before he could get his ass beat by her again, leaving Quill to fend for himself. He had exchanged numbers with Peter though and when he got a call a few months later for some help on how to avoid detection from security systems he had built Tony was happy to help. It had turned out that Gamora had decided Peter wasn’t completely useless and had recruited him to her team of misfits, also dedicated to fucking HYDRA up.
Natasha was still skeptical of his ability to not fuck up but she goes with it, probably prepared to beat him and run should the situation call for it. But Tony wasn’t about to let her down again, Quill might be an asshole and a bit of a moron but he did know how to get shit done. “084’s” Peter says, scanning the papers Tony had handed over, which had gotten him an irritated look from Nat but she kept her mouth shut. “And what do I get out of it?” he asks, just like Tony figured he would, the selfish bastard.
“You can keep a trinket or two,” he says, “don’t give me that look, this shit is from aliens, Quill, literal fucking aliens. That’s a good trade off.”
Peter considers it, “a hundred grand and a small trinket,” he says.
“I’m not a moron,” he says and Natasha gives him a skeptical look, “at least not a complete moron. You obviously have something specific in mind that you want. If Nat says its fine you can have it,” he says because Nat would know what to do, also she’d consult with him, Bruce, and Fitzsimmons first so technically it wasn’t as if she’d accidentally give something particular valuable or dangerous away.
Peter looks over his shoulder at her for a second before turning back, “half a million no trinkets,” he counters.
Tony grins, “deal,” he says and holds out his hand for Peter to shake, which he does.
“Hey Gamora!” Peter calls out towards the hallway, “order pizza, we can afford it now!” He looks stupid excited about this, which reminds Tony of Clint, before something else occurs to him and his excitement spikes again, “do I get to use your cool ass super suit!” he asks, whipping his head back to Tony, looking like an over enthusiastic puppy who was just handed a treat.
“Absolutely fucking not,” Tony says, crushing Quill’s spirits and earning an offended look from him.
*
He’s had some nasty headaches in his time but something about this one was particularly horrible. Coulson sits up and shudders, groaning when someone makes noise and it reverberates through his head, “what happened?” he grumbles.
Steve, who had been the one moving things around, looks over at him and lets out a sigh of relieve, “thank god, we thought you were dead but you still had a pulse so…” he trails off and shrugs.
“That tells me nothing,” he says and looks around when he realizes that he wasn’t blinking against the light, “why are all the lights off?” he asks.
“Because we’ve been ditched here and when Bucky tried to break into that room we figured the files were in he set off some other security measure and now even more of this place is closed off to us,” Steve tells him, “your bond with Clint telling you anything?” he asks.
Coulson frowns, trying to concentrate with little success, “umm. I’m not getting much, like he’s managed to close himself off or something but I think he’s… amused?” That didn’t make much sense to him but then Clint hadn’t just been ditched in some unknown facility with no knowledge of where they were, what they were doing, or how the hell to get out.
“Great. Also I hope you didn’t have anything particularly valuable in that bag you brought because they ransacked the thing,” he says.
“Shit!” he yells and stumbles to his feet, “please tell me none of those files were missing!”
Steve frowns, “what files? Please tell me there was nothing important in those files, Phil, because they definitely aren’t here.”
“They were files for the various 084’s I’ve found over the last couple months, I thought I was on to something so I took them with me… shit. But they’re with S.H.I.E.L.D… HYDRA, whatever, there’s no way they could get to them,” he says logically.
Bucky snorts, “Skye apparently managed to break into the CIA, Fitzsimmons got into S.H.I.E.L.D, we all know what Stark’s capable of, apparently Natasha is Black Widow, Clint took out a HYDRA base by himself and took out a bunch of S.H.I.E.L.D agents while he was at it. I don’t think it would be wise to underestimate what they can do, plus they have to have connections all over the place to pull this off so even if they aren’t capable that doesn’t mean they don’t know someone who is,” he points out.
“God damnit,” he mumbles, “I fucked up. Does anyone remember yesterday or have we all forgotten an entire day?” he asks.
“I remember bits and pieces,” Bucky says, “but I think Wanda mind fucked us all.” Well that explained a lot, especially his splitting headache.
He leans against the desk he must have been knocked out beside, “so does anyone know what to do here?” he asks because he was a little lost.
Steve sighs, “well, seems how you haven’t seen the news, and thanks to Bucky triggering the damn alarm system we don’t have the full story, you don’t know that now we’re wanted terrorists. Like the three of us were specifically mentioned and pictured in the damn news report. We don’t have much choice but to find a few actual S.H.I.E.L.D agents and… I don’t fucking know, avoid being arrested?”
He rubs his temples and curses Clint’s ass, why did he have to bite him? Why couldn’t he have done something else to try and prevent his escape? “Well that’s just great,” he mumbles.
“Oh,” Bucky says, “and Clint vandalized all your S.H.I.E.L.D stuff, and he drew a mustache on your Captain America bobble head,” Bucky tells him.
“It isn’t a bobble head, it’s a pop vinyl and it’s a collectable! I can’t believe that bastard drew on it!” he says, perhaps more pissed off at Clint for that than for abandoning him here. He needed to get his damn priorities straight.
“For god’s sakes, Coulson, it’s a god damn bobble head of a fictional character, get over it.”
*
Peter hadn’t been overly pleased with having to be monitored when he went in, neither had Gamora, but they had been assured that it was for their own safety and that everyone who went on missions was monitored. Gamora hadn’t looked like she believed them at first but her and Nat did some eye talking and without moving a single muscle on their faces they seemed to communicate something to each other and she had gone along with it. Groot, Rocket, and Drax were currently elsewhere but Gamora had assured him Peter was all she needed to get in and out undetected.
Tony had figured something quick, in and out, but as per usual things took a different turn though, to be fair, that was at least half because Peter decided a fucking dance number was in order. Gamora covers his ass as he dances through the basement level of the building, already having gotten past the other security measures via hacking and Gamora shooting people, possibly to kill, Tony didn’t know what was in her gun and he didn’t feel compelled to ask. It was hard to feel bad for neo-Nazis getting shot.
Gamora decides she’s had enough of Peter acting like a twit when he snatches a rat off a filing cabinet and starts using it as a microphone and tells him to cut it out. Like a smart man he frees the rat and lets the rest of his dance number go, “so I’m curious about the whole heat thing. Do you all take care of each other, or like… what goes on there?” he asks, poking around at things.
“For gods sakes Quill, focus,” Gamora hisses at him, “and that’s a very rude question,” she chides, moving further into the basement.
“Nah,” Tony says, watching them through Skye’s laptop screen with everyone gathered around, “s’not that bad, he kind of has a point. Fitzsimmons made some suppressor, but instead of making us feel less like where going to overheat and dye once a month it eliminates having a heat in general. Only catch is that you have to get a damn needle of it once a month, and when you stop taking it you get a super heat, which, not fun. We’ve made good money selling it black market style, actually,” he says.
“See,” Peter says to Gamora, “he wasn’t offended.” Gamora makes an irritated noise and chooses not to comment on Peter being an asshole.
“No wonder you like him so much,” Natasha comments, “he’s basically you. Watching you two communicate is like watching the two of you jerk each other off.”
“Not really into dudes,” Peter says, “but for Tony I’d make an exception.”
Tony snorts, “duh, I’m me, who wouldn’t want to go there? Besides like asexuals or people who don’t like sex, you get the point,” he says.
“There are people who don’t like sex?” Peter asks, stuffing things into his bag.
“People who’ve had sex with you,” Gamora quips, appearing back at Peter’s side, “what else do we need?”
They go over their list, mumbling what they already got, “so only these two,” Peter says, “but this one kills people who touch it so I’m going to nope the hell out of that one because I like living, so the hammer then.”
Gamora makes another irritated noise, “we will get them all,” she says, “just don’t touch it, moron. And we need three, neither of us have gotten that staff either.” They two split up in order to find the proper 084’s.
“So how did you guys get the blue prints to this place? Something tells me neo-Nazi organizations aren’t handing out free maps to all who enter,” Peter says, getting to the hammer. He takes hold of the handle and pulls, nothing happens, he tries again, this time putting more effort into it and the thing doesn’t budge. “What the fuck?” he mumbles and tries again with the same failed attempts.
“Skye hacked HYDRA about a week ago, little less, she isn’t done with the coding quite yet but she managed to find this place pretty fast so who cares? Try and hold the hammer a different way,” Tony suggests.
Gamora comes back and sighs deeply when she finds Peter trying desperately to pull the hammer off the shelf it was on. She sets the long case she had been holding down and walks towards the hammer, “if you want something done right,” she mumbles and picks up the hammer, no resistance. That’s about when backup shows up to kill them in the basement and the two take-off, running for the already planned out escape route. It was pretty clear the two were seasoned when it came to out running people trying to kill them because they only have minimal problems escaping, they only lose one 084 that had just been something Peter thought looked cool, and Gamora gets grazed with a bullet but not shot.
“Well shit,” Peter says as they peel off in their car, “that was exciting. What the hell do you want with this shit anyways?” he asks as Gamora goes back over the list.
“Clint’s ex thought he was on to something with these specific 084’s, we wanted to know what it was, but if nothing else they’re out of HYDRA hands and that’s good enough for me,” Tony says.
“He isn’t my ex,” Clint mumbles, kicking Tony’s chair.
“You dumbass,” Gamora snaps, “you didn’t get the deadly one!”
Peter snorts, “who cares, we got a bunch of other stuff, and we got everything else, including the gender biased hammer, which is totally sexist,” he says.
Gamora looks at him like he’s particularly stupid, “if you seriously think that hammer is sexist towards men pull over so I can fight you. With the hammer.”
“Jeeze, Gamora, chill, I know reverse sexism isn’t a thing, it was a joke. Also I’ve already fought you and I would not like a repeat experience, thank you, you kicked me in the head like seven times.”
“Clearly it did nothing for your intelligence,” she grumbles, smacking Peter in the arm with a small smile.
*
Peter Quill was a slippery bastard and Tony knew it so when he tries his damndest to try and double cross them he isn’t really surprised. “We got the reports on these little bastards too, which you didn’t ask for so technically we’re owed more compensation. Pick of the litter on the cute little trinkets we picked up,” he says, raising an eyebrow at Tony. Gamora doesn’t look at all surprised, which either meant that this was planned, this sort of thing happened all the time, or her face just didn’t move ever. Tony figured all three were true.
He and Nat exchange a look, “alright, but my previous condition still applies, only if Nat clears it,” he says.
Peter considers it, “fine, but she chooses right now, no time alone with you, Bruce, or the Wonder Twins,” he counters and Tony agrees.
Natasha walks over to the neatly stacked reports and Peter scrambles to shoo her away, “oh no no, that’s cheating!” he protests, snatching the report Nat had grabbed out of her hand.
She snatches it back, “well you don’t mind cheating now do you?” she says sweetly, “now don’t mind if I take a page from your book.” She picks over the reports, matching them with the collected objects before turning to Peter, “what is it you want bad enough to try and half fuck us?” she asks.
Gamora and Peter exchange looks and she nods. Peter sighs, “the destroyer stone,” he says, gesturing to a glowing purple ball and not looking very happy about it.
Natasha goes back to her reports and reads it over, “if you’re so keen on dying who am I to stop you?” she says and tosses the stone to Gamora, who catches it out of muscle memory, too distracted to have caught it because she was paying attention to it. they leave shortly with their money, probably trying to avoid any changes of heart on Natasha’s behalf.
“Destroyer stone?” Tony asks, “that doesn’t sound very good.” Not that he was questioning Nat’s decision, but he was questioning her motives.
She shrugs, “they open that ball our planet as we know it goes bye-bye, whatever their plans for it it’s better than whatever HYDRA might have had in store. In my opinion I think they’re going to bury it somewhere it can’t be found, they’re too smart to do anything else with it.”
Tony snorts, “god damn slippery bastard,” he says, “let’s get pizza, Clint will be a particularly happy duck if we bring food back.”