Payback
An Avengers fanfic by Aisling Yinyr Ngaio
In his line of work, he didn't have many friends outside the office. They almost never did.
After all, secret agencies were meant to be secret for a reason. So whenever he had contact with outsiders during the course of duty, he knew he would rarely see them again, or even that they would remember him, after the assignment was completed.
That was before 2008. Before the return from the dead of a certain weapons manufacturer from the depths of the Middle East. A self-styled genius, billionaire, playboy, philanthropist who was now a superhero, consultant, and part of the Avengers Initiative.
Though it was true that this man tried to project an air of arrogant aloofness about him, and usually fobbed him off to his lady (whom, he had to admit, he had a huge respect for, simply for being able to deal with her ofttimes irresponsible boss), he had grown as close as a man of his particular occupation could be to the couple who now ran the largest initiative on clean energy around the globe.
So when he "advised" his boss to use him to kickstart the Avengers team, he knew it could never have been a permanent solution. Aside from anything else, a man like him never retired, not even when he sustained a wound that could bring him to the brink of death, not unless there was a hell of an urgent reason or trauma like what happened with certain other Agents. He liked his job too much, and he believed in his country, and in SHIELD. That is, unless they insisted on maintaining the moronic idea of his staying dead to the Avengers team past the time when it was needed.
Of course he wasn't shocked when eventually, he accidentally ran into the billionaire during one of his field assignments. After all, he could have hardly skulked about forever when he returned to duty as a field agent, and there were places he had to be regardless of who else was available, due to his own special expertise and long experience. He was only surprised that it took so long for them to cross paths. He hadn't exactly been actively avoiding the other man.
He did enjoy the gobsmacked expression of the younger man immensely, the entire open-mouthed, frozen body, halfway-through-messaging stance production, because there were few, if any things, that stunned the superhero for longer than five seconds before he figured things out by his genius self. He allowed himself a smirk at the expense of the former bane of his existence, and was just about to greet him and explain things before the chatterbox took control of the conversation, as he was wont to do, when he did something even more terrifying.
He yelled, "HONEY!"
Quickly paling, only realising just now how deep a hole he had dug himself into by not correcting the deception earlier just because he was instructed not to by his higher ups, he - there was no other word for it - scarpered. He was wise enough to not stay for the execution squad to arrive, or to hear the couple exchanging terrifying words. He was lucky enough to not hear one extremely irritated male ask his companion whom she preferred "handling", nor hear one coldly furious female CEO replying her boyfriend with, "I'll call Natalie- I mean Natasha and have her hunt down Coulson for a word. You go tell Bruce and - well, I'll let you boys do whatever you want to Nick Fury, after you strangle him for me."
- Finis -