I think this is the first Avengers/Scorpion crossover!

It's something about all that genius in one place. It would just be SO MUCH IMPROVED by the addition of some Stark snark.

Anyway, this came about while I was watching Scorpion (my new favourite TV show – geniuses and totally implausible plots, yay!) and I thought: well, who IS Ralph's father, then? Because perhaps the boy got his brains from his dad. (and I'm disregarding the fact that since I started writing this, his baseball-player dad entered the picture. No. Just no.)

Voilà! Plot.

And fluff.

You don't really need to have watched Scorpion to get it, though maybe taking in one episode would help. Or reading a Wiki summary. Put simply, Paige is a waitress who gets suckered into working for a team of geniuses, let by Walter O'Brien, who have difficulty relating to the real world. In exchange, they teach her how to relate better to her genius son, Ralph.

Chapter One.

Avengers Tower

Bruce rarely watched the news. It was just so damned depressing. Too often there were stories about injustice and suffering and humanity just generally being rotten. It brought the Other Guy way too close to the surface. He relied on the other members of the team – mainly Clint, who liked to hang out in his lab, for no reason Bruce had ever been able to fathom – to keep him vaguely up to date on anything happening in the world that he might need to know about.

So it was purely a fluke that, one evening as he went into Tony's lab to ask if Tony had a part he needed, that he happened to catch a glimpse of a face he remembered all too well on the TV screen.

"Whoa!" Bruce lunged towards the screen. "Back that up! Tony, can you make JARVIS rewind that footage?"

"What? Yeah, yeah," Tony looked up from the Iron Man suit he was tinkering with. The footage was already running backwards.

"Stop. There." Bruce stared. It was unmistakably her. Shorter hair than he remembered, a little older, but that gentle smile was still the same.

"What's the problem, Bruce?" Tony finally noticed that Bruce was standing stock-still, staring at the TV. "Oh, them," he cast one glance at the screen and snorted scornfully. "Amateurs."

"You know her?"

Tony looked up finally. "What her? I was talking about Walter and his team."

"Right, we're talking at cross purposes. I mean her." Bruce walked close to the screen and pointed. JARVIS helpfully put up a white circle around the woman's figure.

"No. Huh. Don't know her, she must be a new recruit." Tony narrowed his eyes at the screen. "I know him." He pointed at one of the two men in the centre of the picture, the younger of the pair. The older one looked like a government agent – FBI, SHIELD, some alphabet soup agency. The younger man, probably early thirties, was handsome in the same kind of way as Tony, dark and intense-looking, moving his hands as he spoke, although right now he was frozen on the screen. The woman Bruce had pointed out was in the background, looking on, watching the two men with that gentle smile he remembered so well.

"So who is he?" Bruce prompted when Tony appeared about to get lost in his work again.

"His name's Walter. Walter O'Brien," deciding Bruce obviously didn't plan to leave without some answers, Tony sat down on his lab stool with a huff. "He's a fucking smartass."

"Ah," Bruce sat down uninvited on another stool. "He's smarter than you. No wonder you don't like him."

"He is not smarter than me. So maybe his IQ is technically higher, but seriously?" Tony pointed a finger at himself. "Built the first Iron Man suit IN A CAVE out of SCRAP while being held hostage by TERRORISTS. Him?" he pointed at the screen, letting out another disgusted huff. "We're the A-Team, right?" Tony didn't wait for Bruce's response. "Walter and his little crew of so-called super-geniuses – they're the fucking F team. They get called in when the rest of us are just too fucking busy or can't be bothered because, you know, alien invasions and trying not to let the world get blown up."

"So – he's an amateur?" Bruce frowned. "Because it looked to me like that news story was about his company preventing a nuclear reactor meltdown that could have caused the city of LA to become Chernobyl, the US version."

Tony just shrugged. "He's just fixing bullshit that was someone else's responsibility. Told you. They don't even bother calling us in for that kind of shit. Walter's cheap in comparison."

Bruce just sat. Chewing on his lip. Wondering what SHE was doing as part of that team. She'd been on the run from the government ever since they found out she'd helped him. They had to know who she was, that suit at the front was federal for sure. Had she told them the truth, that she hadn't laid eyes on him for over ten years? Would they assume she couldn't be used as leverage over him?

Tony, finally alerted to the fact that there was something going on with his Science Bro, as he liked to call Bruce, propped his chin on his hand and stared. "You'd better spit it out, Brucie. Who's the woman? She's pretty…"

"MINE," Hulk said through Bruce's mouth, and Tony fell off his stool with fright, scrabbling backwards towards the door.

Bruce closed his eyes and began mediative breathing. After a few long moments he felt able to open them again, and saw Tony sitting on the floor half in, half-out of the lab doorway.

"Would it be wise for me to leave?" Tony asked warily.

"No danger," another voice said, and both men jerked around to see Clint hanging by the knees from an air vent, a gun in each hand, both of them pointing at Bruce. Bruce recognised them as the tranquilliser guns he'd personally helped develop to control the Hulk and then given to Barton and Romanoff. Even a glancing hit from either gun would put the Other Guy to sleep if he got out.

"Will you get down from there, Barton? What is it with you and lurking in ceilings?" Tony barked.

Clint did an acrobatic little flip to land on his feet on the floor, guns never wavering from their target. "Actually, I was having a nice little sleep when you two started arguing and I heard a voice I'd rather not have."

"Sorry about that," Bruce said a bit sheepishly. "I, er…"

"I heard Tony describe a woman you appear to have some interest in as 'pretty' and I think right now Stark is composing an apology to Hulk which says he only meant to compliment your taste and has no interest in the woman himself, right, Tony?"

"What Legolas said," Tony agreed, getting up off the floor and returning to his stool. "Incidentally – why the fuck are you sleeping in my ceiling?"

Clint sheathed one gun, though he kept the other out. "I don't like it when people know where to find me."

It was a sad indictment of their lives that both Bruce and Tony understood exactly where Clint was coming from and immediately pretended nothing had been said.

"Okay," Tony turned back to Bruce, "I meant no offense or anything, you know that, right? You and the big fella? I appreciate women aesthetically but Pepper's got me well locked down, you have to know that by now."

Bruce nodded. "I know that, but Hulk's a bit possessive over Paige, apparently."

"That her name?" Clint sheathed the other gun, now it seemed apparent Bruce was well in control, and walked over to the screen. "Tony's correct, she is aesthetically pleasing, and you know I mean that in the purest form of artistic admiration, since Nat would cut my balls off if I did more than look at another woman."

Bruce grinned, as always amused by the strange relationship between the archer and the assassin. Tony just leapt in mouth first as always.

"Yeah, Katniss, we heard her threaten you that time you checked out Sue Storm's ass. She has got you so pussy-whipped."

Clint slowly turned to look at Tony. Arms folded, showing off his massive biceps, he raised one eyebrow and smirked. "You're just jealous she wasn't interested in turning you into her bitch."

"Fuck, I really hate the way he does that!" Tony let out a screech, and made to storm out of the lab. Then turned and pointed at Bruce. "So – what? What's with this Paige chick? Does Hulk want her? I can get her here. Offer her a cushy job with SI. Or Robin Hood here can go kidnap her for you."

Bruce hesitated. Pointed at the Fed still showing on the frozen screen. "I'd be interested in knowing what she's doing with O'Brien and his crew. And who this guy is. The last time I saw Paige, she was on the run from Ross's goons because she helped me. Helped Hulk, actually. If they know who she is – are they going to try and use her to flush me out?"

"Would it work?" Clint asked as Tony started talking to JARVIS, asking him to run the Fed through facial recognition and known association with Scorpion.

Bruce sighed, eyes still on Paige's gentle smile. "Probably. She was quite a woman. Even Betty Ross was afraid of Hulk, but Paige seemed to see right through him." He settled down to tell Clint the story while Tony worked.