Another AIM Attack
“I didn’t finish the peanut butter!” Clint screamed, manly, as Hulk chased him down the halls of Avenger’s mansion.
“HAWKEYE!” Hulk roared. The big green lug refused to listen to reason. Why would Clint have eaten all the peanut butter when Thor had drunk all the milk? You don’t eat peanut butter without milk! That’s just wrong.
Finally, Clint reached the door he was looking for.
“Stark! Buckethead! One of you open up!” Clint pounded on the door as Hulk thundered down the hall. “C’mon guys, please, Hulk’s going to kill me!”
Suddenly, the door opened and Clint tumbled into the high tech lab. Clint looked up to see a very familiar red and gold suit.
“Iron Man, hey! Listen, Hulk thinks I ate the peanut butter and now-”
“Gonna smash you!” Hulk yelled from the doorway. Clint shrieked and hid behind the armor
“C’mon Shelly, don’t let him get me!” Iron Man just stood there, probably with a stupidly judgy look under that faceplate.
Suddenly, the Avengers alarm went off.
“Avengers, there’s an AIM attack at some Stark Industries warehouses.” Tony Stark said over the comms.
“Oh, well, look at that gotta bust some beekeepers! Let’s go guys!” Clint sprinted under the Hulk’s arms and out the door.
“We’re talking about this later.” Hulk grunted pushing Clint into a wall, and walking off.
“Owwwwwww…..” Clint moaned. He’d be feeling that in the morning.
“C’mon let’s go protect your boss’s stuff.” Clint said to Iron Man, who hadn’t moved at all.
“Iron Man?” Clint tugged on his arm, but the armored Avenger remained silent and didn’t budge.
“Hawkeye?!” A voice rang from down the hall. “W-what are you doing in my lab?”
Tony Stark was at the door, in one of his well-tailored business suits.
“Hulk was chasing me so I ducked in here to hide.” Clint explained quickly.
“What? Why’d the doors open?”
“Iron Man let me in.” Stark looked confused for second before he sighed.
“J, see to it that Iron Man doesn’t let anyone into the lab when I’m not there in the future.”
“Oh, of course sir. My apologies.” If Clint didn’t know any better, he’d say the AI sounded sarcastic.
“You still here, Hawkeye? Get going.” Stark waved a hand to shoo him out of the lab.
“Wait, but what about Iron Man?” Clint tried to ask, but Stark simply shove him out of the lab and slammed the door shut behind him.
Clint just stared at the lab door debating whether to go or wait for Iron Man when the door opened and the man himself walked out.
“Birdbrain, what are you standing around here for, let’s go!”
“Oh, um, I just-”
“C’mon” Iron Man sighed and picked up Clint and flew them down the hall.
“Can you tell what they were after, Iron Man?” Cap asked. They’d wiped the floor with AIM and Hulk had gone chasing after the stragglers, which meant he couldn’t smash Clint for the peanut butter
“Nothing was stolen, as far as I can tell, but the security footage makes it clear that they were definitely looking for something.” Iron Man replied.
“If they didn’t find what they were looking for here, then AIM will probably be going after other Stark warehouses.” Cap mused.
“Or Stark himself.” Natasha added.
Iron Man facepalmed hard at that
"Can'tthat asshole go a week without an attempted kidnapping?"
“Nay, Man of Iron. Nothing shall happen to your ward. By the power of Mjolnir, I swear it.” Thor boomed.
“It’s fine guys." Iron Man sighed. "You go check out some of the other SI buildings and see if AIM tries any of those. I’ll head back to Avengers Mansion and watch Mr. Stark while he hacks into AIM’s computers to see what they’re after.”
“Are you sure you two want to be alone together?” Cap asked gingerly, “One of us could keep an eye on him.”
“I’m his bodyguard. I should probably go guard his body.”
“But, y’know, you’re also an employee of SI, you can tell us which warehouses might be a priority! Or how to work with security or-”
“Cap, this is what I get paid to do. Let me do my job.” With that, Iron Man took off back in the direction of the mansion.
The Avengers shared a look. Even though Tony hired Iron Man to be his bodyguard, it was clear they hated each other. A lot. So much so they could barely stand to be in the same room together most of the time. In fact, Clint wasn’t sure he’d ever even seen them have a conversation.
Suddenly a roar ripped through the battlefield.
“HAWKEYE! PEANUT BUTTER!”
“WowlookatthatI’mgoingtogobackwithShellheadhavefunguysbye!” Clint, grabbed a skycycle from one of the Shield clean up guys and zoomed off away from the angry green Gamma monster.
Clint managed to reach the mansion un-smashed, and knocked on the door to Tony’s lab. It opened up with a whooooooooshhhhh and Clint found the inventor and his bodyguard sitting in tense silence as Stark typed away at the computer.
Clint cleared his throat and could barely contain his laughter as Tony screamed and fell out of his chair.
“Hawkeye! How’d you even get in here?”
Clint pointed behind him. “The door.”
“But it shouldn’t- JARVIS!” The inventor glared at the ceiling.
“You said not to let anyone in when you weren’t present, sir” the cool British voice replied. Tony rubbed his temples and sighed.
“Why do my robot children have so much sass?” he muttered.
“Tony, are you wearing a crop top?” Clint asked. Tony had a thick black sleeveless turtleneck covering the upper half of his chest, letting his- admitably impressive- core show. The genius looked up at him like he’d forgotten Clint was there.
“Yeah… I-uh like to wear crop tops when I’m just hanging around my lab working. You gonna judge side boob?”
“Hey!” Clint put an offended hand to his chest. “I look good!”
“And I don’t?”
“I never said that! You look great, you’re abs are amazing.”
“Thanks, I play tennis. You look good too.”
“Sirs, there appear to be intruders attempting to access the mansion.” JARVIS interrupted.
“Oh thank god,” Tony sighed, “I didn’t know where that conversation was going.”
“Oh good, me neither.” Clint turned to Iron Man who had been sitting on the bench silently the entire time. “C’mon Shellhead, let’s send AIM packing.”
“Umm, you go on ahead, the armor needs some calibrations first” Tony said.
“But-”
“No ‘but’s.’ I’ll call the other Avengers Iron Man will be out in a minute. Make sure they don’t wreck the petunias, my mother loved those” And with that, Clint found himself shoved out of the lab again.
Alright, time for some Hawkeye action.
Clint was on the roof of the mansion and had several beekeepers knocked out on the ground and one hanging in a tree in the three minutes it took Iron Man to arrive, but there were still a dozen or so more of them.
“Hey Shellhead! Just in time.” With that, Clint leaped off the roof.
“GIVE ME MORE WARNING!” Iron Man yelled into his comm as he caught Clint and brought him to the ground.
“Why would I need to do that? I know you’ll always catch me.” Clint batted his eyelashes, and Iron Man tilted his head in a way that meant he was probably rolling his eyes.
“Let’s just get rid of these guys.”
Between the two of them, the mooks were all out cold and Clint and Tony were in the middle of organizing them into a nice pile when the heavy footsteps of a not-so-jolly green giant came thundering towards them.
“HAWKEYE!”
“I DIDN’T EAT THE PEANUT BUTTER!” Clint yelled as he sprinted back into the mansion.
This was it. Clint was dead.
Hulk had finally managed to corner Clint in the living room, and still refused to believe he hadn’t eaten the peanut butter.
“Um, can we debrief, at least before you smash him?” Cap asked. Hulk growled, but nodded and held onto Clint’s arm so he couldn’t slip away.
“Did you figure out what they were looking for, Tony?” Natasha asked
“Yeah, some experimental tech I was working on that could disguise the user and bypass any type of voice or facial recognition software, but it didn’t even work. I scrapped the project months ago. I really hate AIM.”
“Now that that’s settled,” Hulk growled and made a fist. So long cruel world, this is the end for the Archest of Archers.
“Oh Hulk, by the way, I finished the peanut butter, sorry. I’ll get more tomorrow”” Tony said while looking at his phone.
“Ok.” Hulk said, dropping Clint’s arm.
“Are you kidding me? You spent all day trying to smash me even though I told you I didn’t eat it, but Tony gets a free pass? Why, just because he’s the Avenger’s sugar daddy?”
“Yeah.” Hulks shrugged, “If I smash him, we don’t get more peanut butter.”
“Unbelievable.” Clint muttered.