Under Pressure

Bucky sits curled under Tony’s arm- a little awkward considering the height difference- but he makes it work. “You sure this is a good idea?” he asks softly. Natasha ran for a reason and he wasn’t so sure looking for her was a good idea. When Steve decided to chase after Yasha- and most of the time it was Yasha- he didn’t react so well to it. It was just that Steve was lucky in having run into Bucky when he finally found him minding his own business trying to buy plums. It was even luckier that he happened to have found the apartment he had been squatting in too otherwise he would have made a clean escape.

Point was if Natasha didn’t want to be found and she was things weren’t going to go in Tony’s favor. Tony shifts, looking down at him softly, “if she didn’t want to be found she wouldn’t have shown up on that camera. The only people who rival her spy skills are you and T’Challa’s guard and we both know how thoroughly you can disappear and how thoroughly the Dora Milaje can track people. She’s just not stupid enough to make a mistake like that,” Tony points out.

Maybe, but its more likely that she slipped up. ATM cameras were the worst and they’re hard to avoid- he’d know. It’s just as likely that she slipped up accidentally one time, its not like he hadn’t had his own slipups. He’d been lucky that Steve didn’t find his few slipups earlier. “I guess, but you might want to be careful. She’s pissed off and extremely dangerous.” The last thing he needed at the moment was Tony being hurt or worse, he’s enjoying his time with Tony on what he’s decided to view as a vacation. Kind of a forced one but a vacation still. Plus Tony said it was probably a good idea to lay low until all that ‘Captain America being arrested’ stuff rolled over because everyone was going to want his take on it.

“Nat and I have a history,” Tony tells him softly, “trust me if she wanted to hurt me she would have in that bunker. She just wanted me out of the way though, I analyzed the suit’s stats three times myself and had Shuri go over them twice without telling her what she was looking for for good measure.” Science, Tony and Shuri assured him, was a complicated process. He suspects that its complicated because they spent most of their time trying to one up each other but that’s just him.

“Just be careful, okay?” he asks, smiling up at Tony.

He smiles back, “I’m sure I’ll be fine. Okoye lost her bet with me so she gets stuck taking me to Natasha.”

*

Okoye looks hilariously unimpressed with her situation but Tony finds the whole thing hilarious. “I warned you not to bet against me,” he sing songs, earning an even dirtier look from Okoye.

“I win bets with Shuri and T’Challa all the time,” she mumbles more to herself than Tony.

“They don’t bet with stats, that’s why you win,” he says. “And I’m so going to enjoy one favor from a king.” He couldn’t even believe T’Challa would bet something that stupid though he had already taken vibranium off the table. Tony’s fine with that, he had more exotic plans anyways. And he’s already cashed in his favor with Shuri because someone had to consider the trigger words in Bucky’s head. Turns out vibranium did all sorts of cool shit and within a week Shuri found a way to break the conditioning permanently.

“I can’t believe he was so stupid,” Okoye says, shaking her head.

“I mean in his defense he doesn’t know me that well so when he gets a random call at four a.m to come bail me out of a prison in some random country because I’ve caused shenanigans again he’ll be surprised. Bonus points if its my own country that’s jailed me. He and Rhodey can bond about it when it happens,” he says. Rhodey has plenty of stories and he’ll never tell any of them to anyone Tony doesn’t want him to because Tony has videos of him screaming about bugs. The man could handle literal war zones but if a spider came his way he literally ran screaming away.

Okoye sighs and mumbles something in her native language under her breath, shaking her head. “Get my king to get you out of jail and I will ensure you experience some very unpleasant things,” she tells him. “Now lets get this over with. Natasha may have already realized her mistake and moved on.”

He nods because that’s a good point and sounds like something Natasha would do. “Alright, lead the way General,” he says, grinning when he earns yet another dirty look. Its not like it was his fault that she lost the bets and he’s looking forward to all the other cash ins he was going to get from her too. He’s fairly certain that she could sneak into Hammer’s house and help him torment the guy a little, just for fun.

Okoye is good with a plane, which Tony finds more impressive than normal because he had no idea how these planes worked. He and Rhodey were bonding over the details of T’Challa’s designs but both of them were confused on the details- rare for both him and Rhodey. Rhodey has been an expert in all things aviation for years and Tony has kind of always been the technology whisperer so the fact that they were lost spoke to how well T’Challa’s designs were constructed. When they get to Natasha’s small rural area its faster than Tony has every flown before outside of the suit and now its appreciated. “Alright Stark, get this over with,” Okoye tells him but when she turns he sees just a hint of a smile on the woman’s face. So she’s secretly fond, hmm? He doesn’t blame her because he’s totally adorable.

He does exit the plane though, ignoring Okoye’s concerned shout that he has no parachute because with the suit he doesn’t need one. As planned he’s caught long before he becomes pavement paint and he ruins Natasha’s grass but it’s a small price to pay for hopefully getting her back to… somewhere- Wakanda or one of his houses he’s not really choosy. Mostly he wants her safe and at the moment she’s skating on thin ice.

Natasha opens the door just before he gets to it and he squints, “where did your eyebrows go?” he asks before he can think of anything else.

“Really?” she asks, rolling her eyes at him.

“Better hope Thor doesn’t come back any time soon- you kind of look like that elf dude he beat the shit out of in London a couple years back because it looks like you’re cosplaying him. seriously Nat, your eyebrows are just gone, like they up and ran away when you went blonde. Did they disagree with the hair color change? Get offended by the bleach? Fall off from stress? Or may-” Natasha cuts him off.

“You’re here for a reason, Stark, and its not my eyebrows so get to it,” she tells him.

He considers saying something else but he sighs, “I uh… Natasha, I got all the records back- I didn’t read them obviously but they’re not anywhere people can read them. I came to make sure that you’re safe and that you’re okay, or as okay as you can be given the circumstances. Looks like you’re eyebrows were what I needed to worry about though, were they scared off or something?” he asks, unable to keep the serious tone.

When they first met Natasha would have thought he was being an asshole intentionally but she knows better now having spent more time with him. Ironically not examining his every move made her more enlightened to why he acted the way he did. So she sighs and steps back a little, letting him in. “Thank you,” she says softly. “I… can you do me a favor?”

“What do you need?” he asks softly.

“Destroy the records,” she says and he winces.

“Nat, those records might have useful information in them. I’m not saying I personally need to keep them, but maybe we could compromise. I can encrypt them and hand them over to you- no one gets access to your past, but the information in the records isn’t gone. Sound fair?” he asks. He fucking hopes so because those records really could contain some valuable information but if pressed he would eradicate them for Natasha and she probably knows it too.

But she considers his offer, letting it sink in for a few moments before she sighs. “Fine. And I’m not going back with you. I know you want me to but I can’t. Not right now,” she says softly.

He raises an eyebrow, “figured showing up on the ATM camera would be some kind of sign to come get you but that’s okay. I get it, needing time. Probably more than you know,” he says softly. He needed time too, after finding out about his parents and Natasha has always been sensitive about her past. Whatever happened there, and he was certain what she suffered was horrific, he knows needs time to sink in and settle before the anger went away. And the hurt both with Bucky and especially with Steve.

Truth be told he was still pissed off at Steve for hiding crucial information from him especially after riding his ass about lies and especially because he chose to reveal that information as a way to hurt him and Bucky so he could get Bucky back. Thankfully for Tony Bucky had been more forgiving to his asshole motivations for starting a relationship with him when he dropped that bomb and he was happy to ride the ‘Steve sucks more than Tony’ train for as long as he could.

Natasha swears under her breath. “I thought I missed that camera. Guess not,” she mumbles. “Just… give me time, Tony. Besides, with Steve and the Accords I think its best to lay low for awhile anyways. Speaking of how come you’re not in the headlines with Rhodey?” she asks, frowning like she just thought of that.

“T’Challa,” he explains. “Felt a touch bad about invading my house and bugging it without my knowing and then complaining about my sex life like he had a right to. So he’s hiding us in Wakanda, which, FYI, is so not what people think it is. As far as everyone else knows it’s a third world textile making nation but its actually a highly self sufficient technological marvel far beyond anything I can produce and that’s pretty impressive. You have to see it,” he tells her.

She smiles softly, “maybe some day. But for now I’ll stay here, or somewhere else. We’ll see.”

He nods, “alright. Stay safe,” he says and she nods back.

“Same to you. and take poor Rhodey on vacation with you to Wakanda when he’s done dealing with the press. Poor guy looks like he’s aged ten years in the past three weeks,” she says, smiling a little. Tony laughs because yeah, he kind of did.

“I’ll send you the files the usual way,” he says, purposefully cryptic but she knew what he meant. She nods her affirmative and with that he leaves, hoping she actually would be okay.

Deleted Scenes

Shuri stares at her lab while Tony cackles off to the side. “What the hell is this?” she asks, gesturing wildly at her screens. “And what is my sand table doing?” she asks, giving it an offended look.

Tony grins, “looks like its doing the wave and as for your lab, well, and they say you can’t teach an old dog new tricks but you can teach a young puppy how to code by fucking every single computer in her lab up,” he says, laughing when Shuri gives her systems another horrified look. Its funnier because he knows she knows how to fix it all. The problem Shuri had with coding and software had nothing to do with coding or software- it was her overthinking how easily it came to her that was the problem.

When he was a kid he had the same problem with simple math- for six years he was a fucking dunce at math and when he built his first circuit board at six complete with all the confusing equations he used to build the more complicated bits everyone was damn confused. As far as they know he was a total dud, but thankfully his nanny noticed what went wrong. As it turned out he wasn’t stupid at all, he was just confused as to why simple math was so… simple so he overthought it so hard he screwed every single question. That was what Shuri was doing here and because he’s a total asshole he figured the best way to teach her was to force her to fight for her lab space.

“Oh my Bast I’m going to murder you there are important files on these systems! Things that will literally make or break my country you ass!” she hisses at him.

“Shuri your stuff is fine, you just need to get past my traps,” he says. “Also watching you flounder is kind of fun,” he tells her, snickering.

Shuri glares at him, “when I fix this I am going to kick your ass! And then I am going to change every single record of your name on every single document, article, and website I can find to Tony Stank. Fear me,” she hisses at him before turning and stomping over to her nearest computer. It takes her about five minutes flat to start literally screaming at the computer and Tony just laughs because it’s funny when its not him yelling at things he doesn’t understand. Sometimes when he was around Shuri he was sure that’s what normal people felt like around him. Its not a pleasant feeling either, being average sucks. Watching Shuri yell at computers and swear at them in Wakandan, however, was good entertainment and when Okoye shows up to find Shuri running around her lab screaming at the code Tony grins at her.

She gives him an offended look and hands over the money he bet in favor of himself. In Okoye’s defense betting in favor of Shuri would have gone her way in any other situation but this one so it almost wasn’t her fault she lost.

*

Bucky grins and pulls Tony into his lap because this was a surprise of a lifetime and he really wanted to savor it with him. “So I saw this ridiculous video online a while ago,” he says, “with this parrot that says ‘nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition’ and I thought it was hilarious. So I bought twelve birds, trained them all to say that, and then released them in Hammer’s house for our entertainment and hacked his systems so we don’t have to like… sully ourseved with his presence being close to us,” he says and he gets the delight w=of watching Tony squeal in glee.

“Oh my god this is going to be good. Has he caught any yet?” he asks, leaning into the computer to watch Hammer chasing after a bird.

“No, but one did shit on his shoulder while yelling ‘no one expects the Spanish Inquisition’, which is much funnier than the original video,” he says, smiling as Tony claps in glee as Hammer continues to chase the birds around.

His legs get tired pretty fast but Tony remains glued to the screen, cackling as Hammer continues to get slipped by the birds and its worth it to see him so happy. Plus the five minutes Bucky had to spend in Hammer’s presence did little but convince him Tony’s hatred was warranted and that releasing twelve yelling birds on him was what he deserved.

*

When Tony comes home the first thing he hears is a puppy yapping and absolutely not. He is not nor has he ever been a dog person and he was not going to start liking puppies now. He didn’t even love Rhodey that much let alone Bucky. Or Yasha. “Where is the dog, get rid of it!” he yells as he makes his way towards the noise. He locates Yasha and the puppy in the bathroom but frowns at the woman sitting on the counter. “Yasha, you know she’s a prostitute, right?” he asks.

“Oh trust me honey he knows, he’s very loyal to you. Too bad,” she mumbles under her breath, eyeing Yasha up in an unmistakable way.

Tony gives her an offended look and then turns to Yasha, who is completely oblivious in a way he didn’t think was possible for someone so observant. “What, prostitutes can’t have friends, she’s nice. And we found this puppy,” he says, gesturing to the small Rottweiler in his tub.

He shakes his head, “no, get that out. Give it to your prostitute friend I don’t like those,” he says, making a shooing motion at the dog.

“First of all I have a name and its Nikki, second, what kind of monster doesn’t like dogs?” she asks, eyeing Tony like he’s just revealed he actually killed people for a living. That wasn’t really far off from his original occupation but still, the look was unwarranted at the moment.

“The kind of monster who nearly got eaten by one when he was five and read Cujo when he was thirteen. Man’s best friend my ass, more like waiting until man lets his guard down until he can eat him,” he says, giving the puppy a suspicious glare.

“I was kind of hoping so. He’d probably make a good guard dog,” Yasha reasons, petting the puppy’s head. The dog appears to enjoy it but Tony knows that’s a ploy to get everyone to let their guard down.

“If you want a guard pet we can get a cat or like a spider or something. Get rid of it,” he says, making another shooing motion at the dog. The dog, because its some kind of killing machine or something, decides this is a good opportunity to hop out of the tub and come at Tony, who quickly hops onto the counter and nearly into Nikki’s lap.

“Excuse me, if you want to crawl into my lap that comes with a price,” she says, sounding like she was only half joking.

“Get that thing away from me and I’ll pay you whatever you want,” he says.

“Fifty grand?” she asks.

“Done, remove it,” he says, curling his legs close to his chest as the puppy tries to climb the damn counter.

Nikki hops off the counter and picks the puppy up, moving away from him thank god. “Look at that puppy, I just paid for school because this billionaire thinks you’re Cujo,” she says in a coing tone. Soothing something that was likely to take her face off but whatever, it wasn’t his pretty face wasted and that’s all that matters to him.

Yasha frowns, “you once single handedly took out a terrorist ring and you’re scared of dogs?” he asks. “You make no sense.” Tony is inclined to agree but at the moment he also doesn’t care.

“Fine, I’ll admit that. And by the way befriending the local prostitute is probably the Yasha thing you’ve ever done. Get the dog out of the house,” he says.

*

Yasha glares at the computer and Tony really has to wonder how the hell he got away with hiding for so long. He must have been drawing on Bucky’s knowledge of computer systems by accident because Yasha was just embarrassingly bad at computers. Finally he throws up his hands and sighs, “I don’t want to fuck busty Russian singles, I want to watch Netflix!” he yells. “Please help,” he adds to Tony.

Taking pity on him mostly because he made Yasha get rid of the dog he was inexplicably attracted to he walks over and groans. “How did you do this?” he asks, looking at the computer screen. “Is this Windows XP? How the fuck- no why the fuck did you download this? Do you understand this computer is state of the art? This is… this is nothing short of computer oppression and you owe this machine an apology for what you’ve done to it. And for downloading all these viruses,” he adds.

Yasha looks at the computer and back to Tony. “In my defense I don’t know what I’m doing and just clicked on stuff,” he says.

“Apologize to the computer,” Tony tells him.

“That thing has no feelings, I’m not apologizing to it,” Yasha says.

“I am offended for that computer and I will happily take an apology,” FRIDAY says and Yasha gives the ceiling a suspicious look.

“I hope you don’t take over the world,” he tells the AI.

Tony rolls his eyes, “oh give it up, robots aren’t going to kill us all. Apologize to this poor computer,” he says.

“Um, Ultron?” Yasha asks, squinting at him.

Tony rolls his eyes again, “that was one time. if we cancelled humanity every time some dumbass tried to take over the world or killed a bunch of people we would have been dead a long time ago. Ultron was a fluke, humans are naturally assholes so shush it and apologize to this innocent and abused machine who has done nothing but try and provide you Netflix only for you to flog it with Windows XP.” He gives the poor computer a pitying glance because Yasha should not be unleashed on technology until he knew that downloading extremely out of date software onto it was a horrific act of cruelty.

*

Shuri lifts the device into the air, “behold,” she says dramatically, “our success.”

Tony stares at their abomination in horror- a look mirrored by both Bucky and Okoye. “You two were so preoccupied with whether you could that you never stopped to ask if you should,” he says, giving their latest invention a look of disgust.

“You should destroy it,” Okoye agrees.

“Its worse than Ultron,” Tony throws in.

“Is that a floppy disk?” T’Challa asks, walking into the lab and frowning at Shuri’s latest success.

“A floppy disk with one terabyte of memory,” she says, holding it out to T’Challa, who immediately gives it an offended look.

“Why would you make such an abomination?” he asks.

Shuri shrugs, “same reason I build anything. Because I wanted to see if I could do it and also when Tony dared me to I had to or I would be admitting defeat,” she says.

T’Challa gives the floppy disk a disgusted look. “As your king I order you to drown it,” he says.

“Aww, I just made it!” Shuri says in defense of her monster baby.

“I decreed it, it must be drown,” he tells her. She sighs and walks over to Tony’s cup of water, frowning when she can’t fit the floppy disk in the glass.

“I’ll drown it later,” she tells T’Challa.