Chapter Text
(takes place sometime between avengers 1 and ultron in an alternate universe)
The mission in Wisconsin had gone well.
Technically.
No one had died, which put it comfortably above several of the Avengers’ previous outings.
The fire had been contained before it reached the neighboring blocks, the chemical agent had been recovered, and the man responsible was currently in federal custody instead of actively attempting to turn Madison into a very large bonfire.
There had been injuries.
There were always injuries.
There was also the small matter of the twenty-three-year-old perpetrator leaving the scene with a spinal injury that doctors weren't yet sure would heal.
Nobody had mentioned that part on the flight home.
Which was why, Tony assumed, Steve had decided they needed a debrief.
Tony had personally been hoping for a shower, six uninterrupted hours in the lab, and approximately zero conversations about anyone's feelings regarding the afternoon.
Instead, he was sitting in the common room.
Wonderful.
Steve stood near the end of the table with his arms folded, looking irritatingly put-together for a man who had been thrown through a burning wall three hours ago.
Natasha had claimed one of the chairs and was repairing a torn wrist guard with the sort of meticulous concentration that suggested she had no intention of volunteering conversation.
Clint was on the couch.
Sam had taken up residence near the kitchen island.
Thor was eating something.
Tony had elected not to investigate what.
Bruce was sitting off to the side with a tablet balanced against one knee, occasionally tapping something into it.
Tony himself was occupying an armchair with one ankle over his knee, half-listening while mentally rearranging the molecular structure of the compound they'd recovered.
The current model wouldn't work.
Too unstable at body temperature.
If he substituted-
“I think,”
Steve began, and Tony reluctantly redirected approximately fifteen percent of his attention toward him,
“we need to reconsider how we handled the fire.”
Nobody answered.
Steve continued anyway.
“When something spreads that quickly, containment has to become the priority. We lost time evacuating the eastern block when we could've-”
“It was unethical.”
Steve stopped.
Tony looked up.
Clint was leaning forward now, elbows against his knees.
There it was.
Apparently they were doing this.
Natasha didn't stop sewing.
“What was?”
Clint stared at her.
“You know what.”
“I'd rather hear you say it.”
“The kid.”
Natasha finally glanced up.
“He wasn't a kid.”
“He was twenty-three.”
“Yes.”
“And now he might never walk again.”
Natasha pulled the thread through the leather and examined the stitch.
“He was attempting to ignite a chemical stockpile in the middle of a populated city.”
“That doesn't mean we get to cripple him.”
“We didn't cripple him intentionally.”
Clint stood.
“No, we just knocked him off a platform thirty feet in the air.”
“He was holding the detonator.”
“We could've found another way.”
“We had approximately four seconds.”
“Then we should've used the four seconds better.”
Natasha's eyes sharpened.
“And if we'd spent five looking for a cleaner solution?”
Clint's jaw tightened.
“That's not what I'm saying.”
“It sounds remarkably similar.”
Tony looked between them.
This was going nowhere.
He checked the time.
Seven minutes.
They had managed seven minutes before the debrief became an ethics seminar.
Honestly, better than expected.
Clint dragged a hand over his face.
“He was young, Nat. That's what I'm saying. Twenty-three. He had his whole life ahead of him.”
Tony frowned.
That was a strange argument.
Not the concern itself.
The age.
“He still has his whole life ahead of him,”
Natasha said.
“Possibly in prison.”
“You know what I mean.”
“I do. I disagree.”
“How do you think this is going to affect him?”
Clint demanded.
“You think he's going to come out of this thinking the system treated him fairly? You think he's going to want to turn his life around after the Avengers put him in a wheelchair?”
Tony sighed.
“He burned down half a government complex, Legolas.”
Clint turned.
Tony immediately regretted becoming involved.
Too late now.
“He was twenty-three,”
Tony continued.
“Not thirteen.”
“That doesn't make what happened okay.”
“Didn't say it did.”
“You're acting like it doesn't matter.”
“No, I'm acting like his age is irrelevant.”
Clint stared at him.
Tony stared back.
Apparently this required elaboration.
“He knew what he was doing,”
Tony said.
“He planned the attack, built the delivery system, acquired the chemicals, bypassed security, and then attempted to trigger the second-stage ignition while several hundred civilians were still inside the projected blast radius. We didn't aim for his spine. We knocked him off the platform because the alternative was letting him finish pressing the button.”
Clint shook his head.
“He was young enough to be my son.”
Tony considered that.
“Technically, so am I.”
Silence.
Tony barely noticed it.
“I don't see how that changes anything,”
he continued.
“We had a tactical decision to make. We made it. Unless somebody has invented a time machine since lunch, I'm not seeing the productivity in pretending we had fifteen minutes to workshop alternatives.”
Clint's expression shifted.
“Did you just call me old?”
Tony blinked.
“What?”
“You said you're young enough to be my son.”
“Yes.”
“Are you calling me old?”
Tony stared at him for a moment.
That was what he'd gotten from that?
“I don't know how old you are.”
Clint folded his arms.
“Take a guess.”
Tony looked him over.
“Forty-five?”
Clint's indignation disappeared.
A beat.
“Yeah.”
Tony nodded.
“Good guess.”
Clint's eyebrows pulled together.
“How old are you?”
Steve exhaled heavily.
“Can we not do this right now?”
Tony glanced toward him.
Steve was pinching the bridge of his nose.
“We're supposed to be reviewing the mission,”
Steve continued.
“Not taking shots at each other. Tony, the comments aren't helping, and if you can't take this seriously for-”
“Twenty-four.”
Steve stopped.
Tony looked back at Clint.
“I'm twenty-four.”
Nobody said anything.
Tony waited.
Clint stared.
Sam stopped halfway through lifting his glass.
Thor looked over from whatever he'd been eating.
Bruce's attention had left his tablet entirely.
Natasha was the only person who didn't visibly react, although the needle in her hand stopped moving.
Tony frowned.
“The guy was twenty-three,”
he said, because apparently they needed help connecting the dots.
“He's younger than you. He's not meaningfully younger than me. That's my point.”
Still nothing.
Tony's irritation began giving way to something less comfortable.
He looked around.
“What?”
Bruce pushed his glasses slightly higher.
Tony looked at him.
Bruce looked back.
There was a peculiar calculation happening behind his eyes.
Tony lifted his eyebrows.
What?
Bruce's expression somehow became more incredulous.
That was unhelpful.
Natasha broke the silence.
“That wasn't in your assessment.”
Tony turned toward her.
She had lowered the wrist guard.
Her expression was controlled, because Natasha's expression was almost always controlled, but Tony had spent enough time around her to recognize when the machinery behind it had changed gears.
“You read my assessment?”
“I wrote part of your assessment.”
“Right. Forgot about the espionage.”
“I wasn't made aware you were twenty-four.”
Tony shrugged.
“Didn't realize it was classified information.”
Across the room, Thor frowned.
“Is twenty-four unusually young?”
Tony pointed at him.
“Thank you.”
Thor looked pleased.
“A child does not reach manhood in Asgard until roughly three thousand years.”
Bruce blinked.
Then, because Bruce was Bruce, his face took on the distant look of someone who had been presented with an unnecessary calculation and was constitutionally incapable of leaving it alone.
“Well,” he said slowly, “if we're treating the relative age of maturity as the comparison point, three thousand Asgardian years corresponding roughly to twenty-eight human years would put Tony at…”
His eyes flicked briefly upward.
“About twenty-five hundred seventy-two years.”
Tony did the arithmetic automatically.
“Seventy-one.”
Bruce looked at him.
“What?”
“Two thousand five hundred seventy-one. You rounded up.”
A tiny hint of amusement appeared around Bruce's mouth.
“I assumed you wouldn't appreciate being rounded younger.”
Tony stared at him.
“Who rounds forty-three hundredths of a decimal-”
“Two thousand?” Thor interrupted.
Tony closed his eyes.
Thor pointed at him with renewed astonishment.
“He is but a boy.”
“Oh, for God's sake.”
Thor laughed.
Tony sat forward.
“No, we're not doing this. Also, twenty-eight is an absurd threshold for adulthood.”
Bruce leaned back slightly.
“Neurologically, it's not entirely absurd.”
Tony slowly turned toward him.
Bruce immediately looked like he knew what he'd done.
Tony narrowed his eyes.
“Are you about to bring up prefrontal cortex development?”
“I was going to say that maturation continues through the twenties.”
“So you're volunteering to classify every twenty-four-year-old in the United States as a legal minor?”
Bruce's mouth twitched.
“That sentence contains several logical problems.”
“Coward.”
Clint hadn't laughed.
Tony noticed because Clint usually laughed when Tony and Bruce started doing this.
Instead, he was still staring.
Tony's shoulders tightened.
“What?”
Clint shook his head once.
“Nothing. I'm just-”
He stopped.
“During New York. Loki, the portal, all of that. You were what, twenty? Twenty-one?”
Tony felt his patience begin to fray.
Bruce glanced between them.
Then he stood.
Tony looked over.
Bruce tucked the tablet under one arm and walked toward the hall.
“Where are you going?”
“I'll be back.”
That answered absolutely nothing.
Bruce left the common room, disappearing into the corridor.
Tony watched him go.
Fantastic.
Abandoned by the only other reasonable person in the building.
He turned back.
Everyone was still looking at him.
“Okay.”
Tony dropped his foot from his knee and leaned forward.
“Yes. I'm twenty-four. We've established this. Can someone explain why we're behaving like I just announced I'm secretly three raccoons in a trench coat?”
Sam found his voice first.
“You said you went to MIT ten years ago.”
Tony looked at him.
“Yes.”
He waved a hand.
“Child prodigy.”
Sam's eyebrows rose.
“You were fourteen?”
“Earlier, technically. Fifteen when I finished.”
“That is not what I asked.”
“It's the relevant information.”
Natasha had gone very still.
Tony noticed her doing something behind her eyes again.
Calculating.
Timeline.
He knew the exact moment she reached Afghanistan.
“You were eighteen,” she said.
Tony looked at her.
“In Afghanistan.”
Not a question.
Tony felt something in his chest pull tight.
He ignored it.
“Seventeen initially.”
Natasha's expression changed.
Barely.
Tony continued before she could.
“Birthday's in May. Very memorable year. Terrible cake.”
Clint stood so abruptly the couch cushion shifted behind him.
Tony looked over.
Clint's face had gone slightly pale.
“I think I'm going to be sick.”
Tony frowned.
“What?”
Clint didn't answer.
He walked out.
Tony watched him disappear through the same doorway Bruce had used.
“What is happening?”
No one answered.
Tony looked around.
Steve's expression was different now.
Less irritated.
More confused.
“Afghanistan?”
Tony's attention settled on him.
Steve frowned.
“What happened in Afghanistan?”
Oh.
Right.
Frozen for seventy years.
Tony leaned back again.
“Kidnapping. Ransom. Hazard of being offensively wealthy.”
Natasha made a quiet sound of disbelief.
Tony looked at her.
“What?”
“You were held for three months.”
Steve's eyes snapped toward her.
Natasha didn't look away from Tony.
“And tortured.”
Tony's jaw tightened.
“Details.”
“You were waterboarded.”
Tony sucked in a breath through his nose.
There were several possible responses to that.
None of the sincere ones were acceptable.
So.
“I’m sorry,”
he said, tapping one ear.
“Am I losing my hearing, or did Natasha Romanoff just express concern for my wellbeing?”
Her eyes narrowed.
“I take it back.”
“Nope.”
Tony pointed at her.
“No takebacks. Witnesses present. JARVIS, archive that.”
“I would advise against antagonizing Agent Romanoff, sir.”
“Cowardice everywhere.”
Natasha rolled her eyes.
Tony grinned.
It was easier when she was irritated.
Irritation he knew what to do with.
“Whatever you want, Stark.”
Tony paused.
Slowly turned back toward her.
“I'm sorry.”
Natasha's expression remained blank.
“Did you just agree with me?”
She looked down at her wrist guard again.
“Trying positive reinforcement.”
Sam made a choking sound into his glass.
Natasha sighed theatrically.
“Apparently you're young enough that we should encourage good behavior.”
Tony stared.
Sam lost the fight and laughed.
“Oh, absolutely not.”
Tony pointed at Natasha.
“I am not a child, and you are not one to talk. You can't be older than-”
Hands landed on his shoulders.
Tony jerked so hard he was halfway out of the chair before his brain caught up.
He spun.
Clint.
Tony's pulse slammed once against his ribs.
Clint immediately let go.
“Whoa. Sorry.”
Tony straightened his shirt.
He had not been startled.
There had been a rapid tactical reassessment.
Completely different.
Clint looked genuinely apologetic.
“I didn't mean to sneak up on you.”
“You didn't.”
Sam made another suspicious noise.
Tony ignored him.
Clint's face had not recovered from whatever revelation had sent him out of the room.
Tony disliked that.
He disliked it more when Clint looked at him.
Not at him, exactly.
Over him.
Like he was searching for something.
Tony cleared his throat.
“Did you need something, Barton, or have we transitioned into silent portraiture?”
Clint blinked.
“Right. Sorry. I just…”
His hand lifted vaguely toward Tony.
“You really are young enough to be my son.”
Tony stared.
“Yes.”
Clint kept staring.
Tony's patience dropped another measurable percentage.
“We've covered this.”
“No, you don't understand.”
“That phrase has never once improved a conversation.”
“Tony, you're a kid.”
There it was.
Tony's expression went flat.
“A kid.”
Clint apparently failed to hear the warning.
“You're twenty-four.”
“I am familiar with my own birthday.”
“That's young.”
“So was Alexander the Great. He seemed busy.”
“That's not the point.”
“Then I eagerly await the point.”
“Tony.”
Steve's voice.
Tony turned.
Steve was watching him carefully now.
Too carefully.
“Why didn't you tell us?”
Tony frowned.
“Tell you what?”
Steve hesitated.
“That you were…”
He trailed off.
Tony waited.
Steve made a vague gesture.
Tony stared.
“Twenty-four?”
“Yes.”
“Because it didn't come up.”
Tony looked around the room again.
His irritation sharpened.
“Why would it come up? Do we exchange birth certificates before missions now? Should I have JARVIS add age, height and astrological sign to the HUD?”
“That's not what Steve means,” Clint said.
“Then someone should start meaning things more precisely.”
“Tony-”
“Seriously.”
Tony stood.
He looked from Clint to Steve, then Sam, then Natasha.
“Are you actually doing this?”
No one answered.
Tony laughed once.
There wasn't much humor in it.
“I'm not even unusually young for half the things you're suddenly horrified by. Rogers was fighting a world war in his twenties. Romanoff was already an assassin. Wilson was Air Force Pararescue. Barton, I'm reasonably confident you weren't sitting at home waiting for your frontal lobe to finish installing.”
Sam's mouth twitched.
Clint did not look amused.
“That isn't the same.”
“Why?”
“Because-”
“Because what?”
Clint stopped.
Tony could see him trying to find an answer that didn't sound patronizing.
He wasn't succeeding.
And Tony was suddenly tired of waiting.
“You know what?” Tony said. “Don't.”
Natasha's attention sharpened immediately.
Tony barely noticed.
“The number changes nothing. I did the work. I built the company. I built the armor. I fought the same battles you did. You trusted me perfectly well this morning when you thought I was like thirty-five.”
“We still trust you,” Steve said.
“Great. Then we're done.”
“Tony-”
“No.”
The word came out harder than he'd intended.
Tony exhaled.
Fine.
They wanted context?
He could give them context.
“You think twenty-four means I need to be handled differently?” he asked. “Fine. First kidnapping, five.”
Clint's face changed.
Tony continued.
“First time somebody decided hurting me was a useful negotiating strategy, eight. By ten I knew how interrogation worked. By twelve I knew enough escape techniques to make most security contractors cry.”
He shrugged.
It was deliberately casual.
“Childhood wasn't exactly a major component of the Stark educational program.”
Tony's mouth felt dry.
“I don't need anyone deciding I'm suddenly less competent because you did arithmetic badly. I'm exactly as capable as I was yesterday. If that's a problem for anyone, elevators are functional.”
Clint stared at him.
Then his expression crumpled into something Tony absolutely did not want to examine.
“No, Tony.”
Tony looked away.
“Don't.”
“That's not what I'm saying.”
“Sounded remarkably similar.”
“I don't have a problem with you.”
“Wonderful.”
“I have a problem with the fact that you're so damn young and apparently nobody-”
“Clint.”
Natasha's voice cut cleanly through his.
Everyone stopped.
Tony looked at her.
Natasha had put the wrist guard down.
“Drop it.”
Clint turned toward her.
“Nat-”
“I said drop it.”
“He's-”
“An adult.”
Clint stared at her.
Natasha's gaze didn't move.
“He's right about one thing. None of us would have appreciated being treated like children at twenty-four.”
Tony blinked.
That was-
Unexpected.
Natasha continued.
“You can dislike what happened to him. You can wish someone had protected him better. Neither gives you permission to decide he's incapable now.”
Something in Tony's chest caught strangely.
He immediately disliked that.
Clint shook his head.
“That's not what I'm trying to do.”
“I know.”
Natasha's voice softened by perhaps half a degree.
“He doesn't.”
Clint looked at Tony.
Tony very deliberately looked somewhere else.
Sam leaned against the island.
“For what it's worth, she's right.”
Tony glanced at him.
Sam shrugged.
“I was serving at twenty-four. Would've punched somebody if they called me a kid.”
“Thank you.”
Sam smiled.
“Don't get comfortable. I'm still processing the fact that you're basically a fetus.”
Tony's gratitude died instantly.
“There it is.”
Clint sighed.
“Fine.”
Tony narrowed his eyes.
“Fine?”
“Fine. I'm dropping it.”
“Excellent.”
Clint pointed at him.
“I am not forgetting it.”
Sam nodded solemnly.
“Absolutely not.”
Tony looked between them.
A horrible realization began forming.
“No.”
Sam's smile widened.
Tony pointed at him.
“Whatever you're thinking, don't.”
“I didn't say anything.”
“You have a face.”
“Do I?”
“Yes.”
Sam glanced toward Clint.
Clint's mouth twitched.
Tony's eyes narrowed.
“Don't you dare.”
Sam straightened.
“Hush. The grown-ups are talking.”
Natasha looked down.
Her shoulders moved.
Tony stared at her.
“Are you laughing?”
“No.”
“You're laughing.”
“I'm sewing.”
“You put the sewing down two minutes ago.”
She picked it back up.
“I'm sewing again.”
Tony turned toward Sam.
“You.”
Sam grinned.
Tony pointed at him.
“I liked you better before you developed confidence.”
“That's rough, kid.”
“I am going to throw you through a window.”
Clint reached over and ruffled Tony's hair.
Tony recoiled like he'd been electrocuted.
His hand slapped Clint's away.
“Barton.”
Clint was openly smiling now.
“If you ever touch my hair again, I will introduce your face to a repulsor.”
“Someone's grumpy.”
Tony froze.
Oh, no.
He turned.
Bruce was standing in the doorway.
Tony stared at him.
Bruce looked entirely too amused.
“You too?”
Bruce's mouth twitched.
“I didn't say anything.”
“You said it with your tone.”
“I have a tone now?”
“You've been spending too much time with them.”
Bruce glanced around the room.
Then at Tony.
Then, mercifully, whatever amusement he'd been indulging faded into something more useful.
“Actually, I came back because we still have work to do.”
Tony could have kissed him.
Metaphorically.
Bruce lifted his tablet.
“The compound from Wisconsin. If we're going to have an antidote ready before the medical team starts trials, we need to finish modeling the binding mechanism.”
Tony was already moving.
“Yes.”
He crossed the room toward Bruce.
“Correct. Science. Important. Productive. Adult.”
Sam called after him.
“Make sure you ask permission before using the Bunsen burner.”
Tony turned while still walking backward.
“I hope your wings get caught in a ceiling fan.”
“Tony,” Steve said.
“Metaphorically.”
“That doesn't make it better.”
“It does legally.”
Bruce stepped aside to let Tony into the hall.
Tony passed him.
Behind them, Clint called,
“Bedtime at nine!”
Tony didn't turn around.
“JARVIS, revoke Barton's kitchen access.”
“I'm afraid Mr. Barton has not been assigned individual kitchen permissions, sir.”
“Then invent some and revoke them.”
“Yes, sir.”
Bruce followed him into the corridor.
The common-room doors slid shut behind them.
Tony kept walking.
Ten feet.
Fifteen.
Twenty.
Then he stopped.
Bruce stopped beside him.
Tony looked back at the closed doors.
Then at Bruce.
“Thank you.”
Bruce studied him.
Tony immediately regretted saying it.
“For the antidote,” Tony added.
“Obviously.”
“Very urgent.”
“Of course.”
“I was approximately thirty seconds away from committing a felony.”
Bruce started walking again.
Tony followed.
“I thought you said the others were being dramatic.”
“They were.”
“And yet you were going to assault one of them.”
“Two things can be true.”
Bruce hummed.
They reached the lab.
Bruce opened the door and went inside.
Tony followed him through, and the door slid closed behind them.
Quiet.
Actual quiet.
Tony exhaled.
Better.
Bruce moved toward the main workbench and set down his tablet.
Tony came up beside him.
“How do you know I didn't actually need you?” Bruce asked.
Tony glanced over.
Bruce was pulling up the molecular scan from Wisconsin.
Tony leaned against the edge of the bench.
“Because you left immediately after Barton started doing age arithmetic and returned exactly when the conversation became unbearable.”
Bruce adjusted his glasses.
“Coincidence.”
“You're a terrible liar.”
“So I've been told.”
Tony's mouth twitched.
He looked down at the molecular model.
For a few seconds, neither said anything.
Then Bruce spoke.
“You know…”
Tony groaned.
“No.”
“I haven't said anything.”
“I know that tone.”
“You just told me I had a different tone.”
“You do. It's gotten worse.”
Bruce ignored him.
“I may not be completely opposed to the science-bro thing.”
Tony looked at him.
Actually looked.
“Wait.”
Bruce continued studying the model.
Tony straightened.
“Really?”
A smile tugged faintly at Bruce's mouth.
“Sure.”
Tony grinned despite himself.
“See? Knew you'd come around. Branding is important. Science Bros. Could get jackets.”
“Absolutely not.”
“Matching lab coats.”
“No.”
“Mugs.”
“Tony.”
“I'm hearing maybe.”
Bruce finally looked over.
There was a glint in his eyes that Tony recognized approximately half a second too late.
“I've always wanted a little brother.”
Tony's smile disappeared.
Bruce's widened.
Tony stared.
“You-”
Bruce turned calmly back toward the tablet.
Tony looked down.
There was a wrench near his shoe.
Excellent.
He nudged it hard across the floor.
It struck Bruce lightly in the shin.
Bruce looked down.
Then back up.
“Violence,”
he said.
“Typical adolescent behavior.”
“Take it back.”
Bruce returned his attention to the molecular model.
“Did you hear something?”
“Bruce.”
“Could've sworn I heard a child's voice.”
“Bruce.”
“Strange.”
“You are one gamma-ray accident away from becoming my least favorite person.”
Bruce smiled.
Tony glared at him.
Then pulled the second chair over anyway.
He dropped into it beside Bruce, dragged the molecular model between them, and pointed toward the unstable bond.
“Your substitution here is wrong.”
Bruce looked at the model.
“No, it isn't.”
“It absolutely is.”
“You've been looking at it for three seconds.”
“Three very productive seconds.”
Bruce sighed.
Tony reached into the hologram and expanded the structure.
The argument shifted almost immediately from age to molecular stability, then from molecular stability to receptor binding, and within another minute Tony had almost managed to forget the entire common room.
Almost.
Because Bruce was still smiling.
Tony narrowed his eyes.
“If you call me little brother again, I'm poisoning your coffee.”
Bruce didn't look up.
“Sure thing, kid.”
Tony reached for the wrench.
He was never going to hear the end of this.