Deliberation
Fitzsimmons was excited over some science thing they had done with Clint and Coulson, “Fitzsimmons, you know I love you both, but I could care less about Clint and Coulson’s bonding brains, how do you unbond them?” Natasha asks, raising an eyebrow.
They exchange a worried look, “well,” Jemma says.
“We don’t,” Fitz finishes.
“Technically we could, but that would require killing one of them and even that would have a drastic effect on the other,” Jemma says, looking apologetic.
Natasha sighs and rubs her temples, “great. And since you’re still around I assume there’s more,” she says and gestures for them to continue.
The two exchange a glance, “well… Phil would like to make contact with his team,” Jemma says and stops there.
Natasha raises an eyebrow, “and this matters to me because…?” Fitzsimmons exchanges a look, “the two of you can’t seriously think this is a good idea,” she tells them, looking back and forth between the two, “seriously?” she asks.
“We only have research on ourselves, it would be beneficial to have research on alphas,” Jemma says and she’s beginning to wonder if the two planned this out. They weren’t very good at it if so.
She rolls her eyes, “almost all research on A/B/O scores are done on alphas,” she says, “don’t tell me the research isn’t there,” she says, giving the two looks. They wilt, expectedly, and exchange looks like they both had more to add but weren’t intent on speaking against her. She really wished they wouldn’t do that, she’d listen, but that didn’t mean she’d agree.
“Actually it isn’t,” a voice says from behind her and she sighs.
“For gods sakes Tony, get back to bed, you shouldn’t be walking around,” she says, giving him a glare that would send Fitzsimmons running for the hills. Tony though, he doesn’t even flinch, he just senses a challenge and goes with it because that’s how he works no matter how much everyone else wished he didn’t.
“I’m fine, just a little warm, and honestly it isn’t even that bad now, Fitzsimmons knows what they’re doing,” he says, “now. Research, it’s all done by alphas, for alphas, reviewed by alphas, and published by more alphas-”
“Which is why the research is there-“
“No. It’s why the research isn’t, Nat. These people don’t ask the same questions we do; half the time they fabricate evidence to subjugate entire groups of people. I’m sure you’ve heard of that famous study that said that women, people of colour, and omegas were all lesser than white male alphas because of brain size, or more accurately a lack thereof. The entirety of nineteenth century psychiatry, guessing who’s a criminal or not based on skull bumps, blatant racism and misogyny. A lack or representation in research means a lack of representation of what is researched. Fitzsimmons, I’m sure, has done their research and obviously the questions they have weren’t answered. Besides, they don’t seem to be particularly… dangerous,” he says, winching when he gets a particularly nasty look from her.
“I’ll talk to Clint,” she says and walks off.
*
Loki was being annoying, more so than usual, and he kept trying to make sure he stayed in bed but if there was one thing he loathed it was staying still. And no one would let him do anything in bed, so he had to get out of bed to do things. What was that saying? Ain’t no rest for the wicked, yes, that was him. He was the wicked and he was not resting, he hated staying still and he was not going to do so. But Loki was not having any of this and he refused to leave Tony to be Tony. “Would you get back to bed, you’ve been through a traumatic experience,” he says, trying to shoo him back to bed.
He was not going though, no matter what everyone else thought he should do. He was his own man; he could do what he wanted. “I’m aware that dating you was a traumatic experience, but that was over months ago and I think I’m okay now, thanks,” he says, waving Loki off.
“Oh as if dating you was any less traumatic,” Loki says, “now get your ass back to bed.” Loki thinks he’s being authoritative, really, but Tony has never done well with authority and he wasn’t about to start because Loki wanted him to.
“No, I will do things, I don’t know what things but the things will be done,” he says, waving Loki off so he can go elsewhere to waste his time. Loki is not so easily persuaded though and he blocks Tony’s path, hands on his hips and irritated look on his face. They do this for a few more minutes, try to out run or capture one another before Tony gives up and heads back towards his bedroom, mostly because Fitzsimmons’ lab was on the way and he had every intention of ducking into it so he could do things. Loki thinks he’s won though and that was all that mattered to him, it would let his guard down and he could flee in peace.
When he gets to the lab and ducks in Loki doesn’t react fast enough to catch him and he locks the door immediately and hits a few buttons on the key pad, overriding Loki’s security codes and therefore locking him out completely. Loki looks pissed but he grins and runs off, figuring he only had a limited time before Natasha comes to get him and throw him back in bed, probably literally. His limited time, it turned out, was way more limited than he thought because god damn Nat was in the lab talking to Clint, who was outlining everything he’d felt in Coulson’s head thus far.
“Are you really gunna take the word of the guy who thought another person in his head was a taco craving?” he asks Nat because come on, even he wasn’t that dumb and he was pretty dumb.
She gives him the look, the one that meant ‘shut up now or suffer the consequences’ and he decides to cut his losses and stop questioning her. Besides, she was kind of the authority on this kind of thing anyways, he was better with the ‘blow shit up and get people un-kidnapped’ thing. Not that she wasn’t good at that too, she was, she was kind of like a jack-of-all-trades and she was a master at most. Nat continues to question Clint and he wanders off to find Fitzsimmons, who happened to be in the office section of their lab observing Clint and Nat, “do you think she’ll say yes?” they ask him excitedly.
He shrugs, “who knows? I mean realistically Coulson could have at least attempted to take us out and considering he managed to take out an entire precinct of armed cops with a bag of flower and a whole lot of determination a good portion of us would have went down. That isn’t really considering Steve or Bucky and the two are no doubt just as well trained as Coulson is and neither of them tried anything. Bucky helped me out the last time we ran into each other, seems pretty obvious to me that they don’t have much intent to fuck us over or otherwise harm us but I’m not a spy, I don’t see what Nat and Clint see.”
“Well we hope she says yes because we have about a million questions and all that research done on alphas has done nothing to answer them. I can’t believe nearly two centuries of scientific studies has turned up nothing useful, we basically had to throw out the first century because it was so offensive it couldn’t possibly hold any scientific value,” Fitz says, looking generally uncomfortable.
“But you should see this,” Jemma says, beckoning him to follow her further into the office to the computers, “look at this,” she says and plays back some brain scans she must have done, presumably on Clint and Coulson.
He frowns, “are their brains… interacting with one another?” he asks.
Jemma nods, “we were asking them questions about each other and they automatically mentally reached out to the other person, and they both let each other. You remember shortly after we found you and we ran those scans on you, well we still have them around and upon comparison you’re brains reacted completely differently to the bond. When you were given a Command, or at least we presume you were considering we didn’t have access to the alpha that had given the Command, the structures in your brain that lit up signified aggression. You fought back, but these two don’t seem to feel the need to fight one another off, we think this is why the bond didn’t break, on some level these two have a bond based off trust though we don’t think either one of them knows this. We need more brains for comparison.”
Tony shakes his head, only Fitzsimmons would be so excited about brains of all things. “That kind of looks like the scans you guys took of Wanda making mental connections with us, actually,” he says.
Fitz smiles, “funny you mention that,” he says, “because we thought the same thing, except the scan only seems to resemble the one of Wanda and Clint, which is unsurprising because those two in particular have the closest bond. That’s what gave us the idea of mutual trust, though we aren’t really sure what that trust is built off of,” he says.
“Huh, that’s interesting.” He wasn’t overly fond of the idea of having a bunch of alphas lingering around but he did want some answers. Lesser of two evils, he supposed.
“Well I’m sure you have about a million and one questions,” Jemma says and hands him a notebook, “write them down.”
*
Clint had life ambitions, okay; he was definitely going to eat a lot of tacos. And pizza, probably a lot of pasta, he was kind of going for world’s most unhealthy diet. Point was he was most definitely not going to end up bonded to some random alpha who was probably so vanilla he made vanilla ice cream look exotic. “Seriously, just answer the question,” Clint says, poking Coulson in the side.
Coulson bats his hand away, “I am not telling you about my sexual experiences, and it’s creepy that you asked, you wouldn’t tell me about-”
“Oh hell yeah I would, we can start with Natasha,” he says and as if she heard him, which she couldn’t have because she was across a busy room, she turns to glare him down. “Never mind, we can start with that threesome with Loki and Tony, which, much more pleasant than I thought it would be.”
Coulson looks down right scandalized, “what?” he asks, eyes bugging.
“I am so right, you’re totally vanilla!” Clint says, grinning gleefully, clapping.
“I… you… my sex life in none of your business,” Coulson says, looking anywhere but at Clint.
“Oh it so is if we’re going to be bonded for life, don’t look at me like that, I get flashes of what you’re doing every time your emotions are running high so if you ever have sex again I will be in the know whether or not I’m the other party in the sexual encounter, sorry,” Clint says, not sounding sorry whatsoever.
“You will keep yourself out of my potential sex life, and I will do the same for you,” Coulson says primly, flattening his already flat tie.
“That is what you get when you bite strangers; you end up bonded to someone who is going to make it their life’s mission to make you as deeply uncomfortable with their sex life as possible. And my diet, don’t think I can’t feel your disgust at my pizza, which I take personal offense to by the way. You’re just going to have to deal with me,” he says, grinning at Coulson.
And Coulson, the sorry sucker, looks so upset with this development, “why the hell did I bite you?” he grumbles, giving Clint upset looks.
“You love me,” Clint says and Coulson snorts.
“You must be using that word very loosely, and don’t tell me you’re not, because you regularly tell pasta that you love it,” he says. Clint can feel the confusion there, Coulson, like pretty much everyone else in his life, didn’t understand his love of all things edible. Well, most things edible.
“I do love pasta, it’s my favorite thing next to sleeping and sandwiches,” he says, “you’re just going to have to deal with it because it’s just who I am.”
Coulson frowns, “Clint you aren’t sandwiches and pasta, you’re love, and protection, and sweetness, and-”
“And I’m leaving before you confess that you actually love me,” Clint says and runs off before Coulson decides it’s a good idea to say something stupid that he can’t take back.
Natasha knows he’s coming before he gets there, as always, “what did he say?” she asks without looking up. She always knew, it was kind of creepy, but he had grown considerably used to it over the years and her creepy knowledge of all was useful when he needed advice.
“First of all you’re ability to know all, very disturbing, and he said I was sweet,” he tells her, awkwardly shifting some papers around.
Natasha gives him a look but when he doesn’t expand on that she rolls her eyes, “so what? You’re having a mental freak out because Coulson said you were sweet?”
Okay so when she put it like that it sounded stupid, “it wasn’t what he said, it was how he said it. I don’t do commitment, Nat, and unless he spontaneously turns into a pizza I will not love him unconditionally.”
“You don’t love pizza unconditionally; if it has pineapples or anchovies you won’t eat it. And calling you sweet no matter how he said it is hardly a proposal Clint, it’s the truth, stop focusing on every move Coulson makes as if he makes it specifically as some sort of clue to you about how he feels, we both know how irresponsible and ridiculous that is. So have you managed to gather the information?” she asks, raising an eyebrow.
“Coulson trusts his team almost completely, he has enough skepticism to not be a moron, but he seems to think that they’re all trustable people. Plus he thinks this would be a convenient hiding place from HYDRA,” Clint tells her. Coulson hadn’t even put up a fight when he picked his brain; he had no clue how to be subtle about it, and even offered up some memories to demonstrate his point. Clint had ignored those and focused on the things Coulson found suspicious about his team. Bobbi and Hunter always fighting, Mack’s apparent inability to connect with anyone around him, Steve and Bucky being far more loyal to each other than anyone else, some mission that had made May cold to all, his missing Ward being HYDRA for so long. He didn’t seem to identify anything particularly off about Peggy but he wondered about her relationship with Steve, and therefore to Bucky, and not knowing irritated him.
“And what do you think?” she asks, tilting her head to the side.
“I think Bobbi and Hunter are too wrapped up in their own drama to cause much with us, Steve and Bucky are heavily associated with the word ‘experiment’ and Coulson didn’t seem fond of letting me know why but I think that’s more for their privacy. Mack just doesn’t like anyone so he doesn’t bother to connect, May is only dangerous when motivated, Peggy has a weird relationship to Steve and kind of Bucky but that doesn’t seem to be a problem. In short I don’t think they’d have much motivation to do any harm and even if they did they don’t have literal superpowers. Well, there’s the questionability of Steve and Bucky, but Wanda alone could fuck us all over with just a few thoughts, then there’s Skye, Tony’s suit, Loki’s apparent ice powers, Thor would never let anyone hurt Loki and frankly their relationship is weird. Fitzsimmons could science their way out of a tight situation, we’ve been through worse,” he shrugs.
“So you don’t think this is a bad idea?” she asks.
“Nah, this is a horrible idea, but the extra bodies make great ‘sacrifice em’ to HYDRA and run’ type deals, we could always use disposable people,” he says. He can feel Coulson’s vast offense to that but he can also sense that Coulson knows he’s being practical. Besides, it wasn’t like they didn’t know how to deal with being caught by the wrong organization, it happened all the damn time. They’d help out if they were motivated to do so.
“And Coulson? How’s he?” she asks.
Clint sighs, “fine I guess, we get along well, really well actually. He doesn’t get my love for food but no one does, and I don’t get his love for suits. Like seriously, why so stuffy? But he god damn loves those suits, oh, and we both love animals. Which is good because I don’t trust people who don’t love animals, it just isn’t natural to love the cute and furry,” he says.
Natasha rolls her eyes, “you trust Tony and he’s a cat person.”
“But he likes dogs; he just doesn’t want to own one. That’s different,” he says.
Nat looks over at Fitzsimmons, who were crowded around a tablet with what was bound to be some sort of science on it, “you’d think they’d be excited about Loki, not a bunch of alphas. It’s weird and unusual,” she says, wrinkling her nose.
“Would you want to spend an abundance of time with Loki in a lab?” he asks, making a face at the thought.
Natasha shrugs, “well I suppose you have a point there, only Tony ever really could stand to be around the guy for more than ten seconds and I swear that’s only because Tony likes a challenge.”