A/N: Companion fic to my 'Who Let the Dogs Out?' fic, explaining how exactly Tony managed to lose the dog.
(comes between ch9 and 10 of Who Let the Dogs Out?- Read that for context.)
Tony was bored.
He was really bored.
Fury was leading some meeting about God knew what, and for the most part was only addressing Baron and Romanoff anyway, so Tony had switched off about fifteen minutes into it.
He'd tried to be somewhat respectful to the other people in the room who seemed to be actually interested in this crap, by closing his eyes and doing complex mathematical equations in his head, but that had only kept him entertained for another twenty minutes. At that point he stopped caring about Rogers, Thor and Banner and decided he'd much rather sacrifice their involvement the meeting, by beating his own boredom.
Thirty-five minutes into the meeting, Tony began designing a new fleet of jets, constructed entirely out of Bruce's paperwork. Bruce had given him the 'I swear to god, Tony I will Hulk-out so hard on you' look, and he'd stopped.
Fifty-minutes in, and he found a super-bounce ball in his pocket, which he began ricocheting off the table, so that it would hit the ceiling and move the tiles. Fury had caught it out of the air and bitten it in half.
Fifty-two minutes in, and Tony began watching cat videos on YouTube using his cell phone. The sounds of the cats, even though he had turned the sound down to half, attracted Dain the dog to his side, and the puppy began whining while searching for the source of the noise.
"For fucks sake, Stark!" Fury rounded on him mid-sentence. "You are a world-renowned genius and you can't sit still for a couple of hours to listen to some very important information regarding the Avengers initiative?"
Tony looked up from his phone. "No."
Fury rubbed a hand over his face and turned to Barton and Romanoff.
"How do you live with this guy?"
"Honestly," Natasha shrugged, "we cope using a combination of expensive vodka and violent threats."
Clint nodded in agreement. "Plus, he's not around a whole lot. It's Bruce who has to put up with him most of the time."
"I tend to ignore him." Bruce sighed as he glanced down at the half-finished fleet of paper jets.
Fury turned back to Stark and shot a look at the dog by his feet, who continued to whine.
"What's wrong with the mutt? He asked.
"He thinks it's actual cats." Tony grinned. "Hey, Dain, look." He held the phone out to the dog and pointed to the paused cat on the screen. "It's not real, well I mean it is real but it's not like, physically in the room."
The dog stared at the screen for a second, then bored with the still image, began scratching at the door to the hallway. His briefly muted whining began again in full force and Fury groaned audibly.
"What is wrong with it now?"
Natasha craned to neck to see the dog pushing his paws under the gap at the bottom of the door.
"He might need to go out." Clint suggested next to her.
"Why?" Fury asked him.
Clint smirked. "Why do you think?"
"If that thing shits in this building I swear to God each and every one of you motherfuckers will be out of a job!"
"Hey, it's not my dog, what did I do?" Maria protested.
Fury glared at her. "You thought it was cute."
Maria rolled her eyes at her superior and turned to Natasha. "Maybe you should take him out, just in case he does pee on the carpet."
Clint grinned. "I thought Fury was better trained than that."
Natasha smirked and slapped Clint on the back of the head.
"Ow, Tasha." He grumbled.
Tony laughed and looked back at the dog who continued scratching at the door. "You guys, I think he does need to go…
Director Fury glared at Clint with one eye. "Fuck you, Barton."
Barton's grin slowly faded and he looked over to the dog, too.
"I do believe that wolf Dain requires the use of the outdoors." Thor observed from beside Steve.
"I'll take him out." Steve took the initiative and stood up, taking the leash from the back of his chair. Dain whipped around to the Captain at the sound of his leash clip and began jumping up at him excitedly. "Okay, okay, I'm taking you out!" He clipped the rope onto the dog's collar.
"No!" Tony leaped out of his chair and grabbed the end of the leader. "I'll take him out."
"Why?" Steve asked suspiciously.
Tony shrugged. "Because I love the dog dearly and don't like to see him suffer?"
"Why really?" Natasha frowned.
"Because I'm super fucking bored and would do anything to get out of this goddamn meeting."
"Thought so." She replied. "Tony, you've never walked him once."
"Yeah, Stark." Clint frowned. "I'm genuinely concerned for our dog's welfare."
The billionaire scoffed. "It's a dog. We've had him for months now and I haven't caused him too much damage."
"I guess…" Clint looked to Natasha, the true authority on the topic.
She huffed and folded her arms. "Fine. Take him out, but please do not lose our dog, Tony."
"I won't!" He held up his hands in defence.
"You better not or I'll murder you with nothing more than my middle finger and quarter." As if to demonstrate her point, Natasha flipped him the bird, then flicked her finger slightly, and the coin in her hand seemed to vanish. Thor's glass, on the other side of the room, smashed and the remnants of his water inside spilled onto the table, the coin spinning in the puddle.
"Holy fuck, Romanoff." Tony breathed.
"You know what?" Fury stepped in front of Natasha, cutting off her threatening glare to Tony. "Let Stark take the mutt outside." He turned to Tony. "You've been nothing but a nuisance since I walked in the door. Maybe you'll get lost on the way back, too."
Tony winked at the Director. "Love you, too, Nicky!" He ducked out of the room, dragging Dain the dog along with him.
Having apparently realised that Tony was taking him out, Dain turned the tables and began pulling him along the SHIELD corridors, panting excitedly.
"Hey, dog. You don't even know the way." Tony said as Dain began pulling him towards an open-roomed office full of agents. "Come on, dude, we've got to go in the elevator."
Man and dog made it down to the ground floor of SHIELD's New York headquarters, and Tony headed out of a guarded side-exit by signing the guarding agent's iPhone and allowing him to pet Dain. He was only mildly offended that the dude had asked him to sign the phone from a rival company; he was extremely offended that the dude seemed more taken with the dog than with him.
"Okay, dude." Tony said to the dog once they were outside. "Do you stuff, take your time though because the longer both of us get to stay away from that snooze fest, the happier we'll both be."
Dain sniffed around the area Tony had led him too. SHIELD HQ wasn't exactly in the middle of rural New York, so he'd walked over to a small patch of grass at the edge of a parking lot. While Dain got acquainted with the grass, Tony looked around the area and grimaced. The parking lot was a glorified patch of cement, cadged in with a barrier at one end. The guy in the barrier's control room poked his head out of the window.
"Hey!" the guy called. "You Tony Stark?"
Tony saluted to him. "Yep," he grinned, "just old Iron Man taking his dog out for a dump!"
The guy frowned and ducked back inside his booth.
"Whoops, guess I freaked him out." Tony turned back to Dain who was kicking the grass behind him in the direction of his 'business'. "Oh, you're finished. Gross."
Dain looked up at Tony expectantly and sat down on the grass.
"What?" Tony asked him. "What do you want from me?"
The dog didn't answer, instead leaping forward at a pigeon that had decided to land in the parking lot. Tony was pulled to the side with the strength of Dain and had to add and extra had to the leash to hold him.
"Hey you stupid dog, it's just a bird. You see them all the time!"
Tony yanked the lead enough than Dain eventually left the bird alone, and pulled him in the direction of the side door.
"You'll hurt that dog!" The guy in the barrier booth called.
"He's fine." Tony shouted back with irritation. "Iron Man can take care of a dog without your advice!"
"Well, you didn't even pick up its crap."
Tony paused in his walk back to the door.
"I'll send someone out!" he shouted, and the barrier guy huffed something that Tony thought was 'jackass' and ducked back into the room.
The agent who had been guarding the side-door when Tony left was no longer there, so when he pushed open what was meant to be a locked entrance to SHILED's foyer, the new agent stared at him confusedly.
"Are you Iron Man?" the agent looked down at Dain. "…is, is that a dog?'
"Yeah, kid." Tony strode past him. "And he just shat on the grass out there so get a bag and get scooping."
The look the agent gave Tony would be the screensaver in his mind for years to come. Step aside Pepper in Victoria Secret's best. Okay, so perhaps Pepper in satin still won, but the horrified expression on that agent's face was definitely a second.
Having been allowed to go outside and play with the pigeons, Dain seemed less inclined to enter the elevator this time around, and it took a few tugs on his collar and a "Иди сюда!" he'd learnt from Natasha, to get the dog to willingly enter the metal box.
It was once the doors closed that Tony realised he had no idea what floor the meeting room the rest of the Avengers were in, was on. He looked to Dain, finger hovering over the keypad.
"Any ideas?"
"Woof." Dain barked.
"Woof? No they're not on the roof. Get it? Because 'woof' kind of sounds like 'roof'." Tony grinned at his own joke, a little bit devastated there were no other humans there to appreciate its hilarity. "I guess I'll just have to tell Bruce how funny it was." He mumbled.
Looking back at the keypad on the wall of the elevator, Tony scanned his eyes over all of the options. SHIELD had fifteen available floors, and that wasn't counting the basements. Speaking of which.
Tony bent down and frowned at the buttons at the bottom of the pad. The first one, a blue glowing one, had 'BG' stamped on it; what Tony knew to represent 'Basement Garage', where his car was currently parked. The second read 'APO' and glowed red; that was 'Authorised Personnel Only' and led to the bunkers under the garage. He had believed until five seconds ago, that that was the lowest level of SHIELD.
What Tony found to be extremely strange, was the fact that there was another button below that, indicating another level.
"What are you, then, huh?" he said the button. Dain lay down at his side, bored.
The button did not glow like any of the others and at first he thought it featured no letters, but on closer inspection, the letters 'WC' could be seen, etched into the metal.
"Somehow I don't think Fury has a secret bathroom hidden under the bunkers. What do you think?" He asked Dain. The dog looked at him and blinked. "Want to do a little investigating?" Again, the dog just blinked at him. "Come on! We could be like Scooby-Doo and Shaggy, solving mysteries together." Tony stopped himself and stood up straight.
"Actually, you can be Scooby but I want to be Fred." He said decidedly. "He had a way better fashion sense and he was totally banging Daphne." Tony winked at the dog. "And you know I got a think for the red heads…well, except Natasha, but that's mostly down to her violent nature more than anything else."
Dain watched as Tony spoke, and apparently deciding he would like to be Scooby-Doo, stood up and looked towards the elevator doors.
"That's the spirit!"
The dog also could have simply been expressing to Tony that he wanted to leave the tiny metal box, but Tony liked to think he'd stood because he liked the idea of being his mystery-solving companion.
"Okay, let's go." Tony pushed the unlit 'WC' button and watched as it glowed the same blue as most of the others.
"Authorisation needed." The same female voice that informed the elevator passengers what floor they were arriving on, told him.
A panel on the wall, around Tony's chest height, slid open, and a red light glowed next to a screen. There was a touchscreen keypad to the other side of the red light.
"Authorisation needed." The voice reminded him.
"Yeah, yeah." Tony mumbled and inspected the panel closer. "Access code I can get around, but retinal scanner…." He whistled, "Could take a second to bypass that one."
As Tony bent down to get a better look at the retinal scanner, the red light switched to white and grazed down his face.
"Retinal scan complete." The voice said, and the light changed again, this time to green. "Doctor Tony Stark. Confirmed."
"Huh." Tony looked down at Dain who seemed to be overly concerned by the disembodied voice. "At least they got the 'doctor' part right."
"Confirm access code."
"Right, access code." Tony rubbed his goatee. "Let's see, if I was Nick Fury and I wanted to make up a," he looked at the amount of indicated number spaces on the screen, "six number code, what would it be?"
Dain pulled on the leash with his teeth, getting impatient.
"Hey, give it a rest, dog. You want to ride in the Mystery Machine, this is the kind of shit you have to put up with." Dain stopped pulling on the rope but began pacing. "Nick Fury, code. Fury, code." Something occurred to Tony and he quickly punched the six numbers into the keypad.
It glowed the same green as the retinal scanner.
"Access code correct." She said. "Access to the Weapons Cache granted."
"You are shitting me." Tony laughed. "Who knew Nick Fury was that predictable." He turned to Dain who stopped pacing at the feeling of the elevator moving. "His birthday. His birthday was the code? Ha! Best day eve- wait did that chick just say 'weapons cache'?"
Tony's ears began to pop as the pressure changed. "Must be pretty deep."
The elevator came to a halt.
"Basement three." The announcer said. "Doors opening."
Dain pressed himself into Tony legs, weary of the female voice again. The metal doors slid open, and Tony peered out into a dark corridor, lit only by some dim blue, overhead strip lighting.
"Well dog, this looks ominous." He grinned at the less than happy dog. "Come on then, Scooby!"
The dog followed reluctantly out of the elevator, and padded alongside Tony as he walked down the corridor. It was very similar to the other corridors in SHIELD HQ, in that it resembled them in length and width, but the similarities stopped there. It was dark, despite the blue lights, and as far as Tony could tell, there were no other rooms situated on the walls.
"Guess we only have one choice, then." Tony mumbled, and eyed the single metal door at the end of the corridor.
As they approached, it became evident that whatever was down here, Fury was not keen on anyone getting in. The door wasn't just made out of metal, it was built to keep stuff in, and to keep people out.
"Somehow, I think maybe I should not be approved to be down here." Tony looked down at the dog, who looked back worriedly. "And you certainly shouldn't be down here." He paused. "Let's go take a look!"
The door took Tony all of eight minutes, and three different gadgets, to get into.
"Fury really doesn't want people down here." He mused, pushing open the door. "Holy fuck." He breathed, and let go of the dog's leash, rushing inside the room.
Room. That wasn't the correct word for what Tony was seeing. It was more like a city, it was huge. He couldn't see far from his vantage point on the ground, and it was as dark inside as it was in the hall, but goddamnit it was massive. Shipping crates lined the walls for what seemed to be miles, and were piled up so high, that Tony had to revaluate just how deep under New York they really were.
The rest of the medal containers in the centre of the area, were organised in a way that made the whole thing look like a maze. Tony half ran towards the closest box to him and read over the information panel screwed onto the side.
"'M-18-TY-76'. I have literally no idea what that means." He moved on to the next box. "'M-19-EF-42'. No effing clue."
Tony continued his inspection of the boxes, reading the codes and attempting to figure out what they meant. He felt Dain brush past him as he studied a new code.
"'N-01-EF-36'. Huh. Any ideas, Scooby?" he asked. "Scooby?" Tony turned and glanced around himself. "Dain?" he called a little louder, panic beginning to set in. The dog was gone from his place by the door, and was nowhere around where Tony had been standing. "Oh fuck."
The dim, blue overhead lights turned red and a siren assaulted Tony's ears.
"Security breach. Security breach." The same female voice from the elevator announced over the siren.
"What?" Tony looked up where the lights had changed colour. "Red lights means bad news." He whined.
"Weapons Cache lockdown in 10, 9, 8-,"
"Fuck." Tony glanced around frantically as he became painfully aware that the door would lock him in any second. "Dain?! Dain?!" he shouted, but the siren and the voiceover drowned him out.
"4, 3,2-,"
Tony sprinted to the door and threw himself through it, falling into the hallway and landing hard on his side. The door slammed shut, and Tony watched in horror as a further shutter came down, blocking all access to the Weapons Cache.
He groaned and dropped his head to the ground.
"Natasha is going to kill me."