Nick Fury hates his life.
Why, you ask? Because the Hulk and Tony Stark are friends. And now he's sitting at a table with them, watching them shoot identical thoughtful looks at the God of Crazy, wrapped in chains but still smiling serenely while Thor preaches on about why they should give his little brother a chance to be an Avenger.
"Probation. I said we could put him on probation," Fury cuts in, and Thor looks like a wounded puppy. "If he behaves, we'll see."
This only leads to Loki smirking. "Oh, Director," he purrs. "I'll be very, very good. You have my word." Stark raises an eyebrow, and then Loki and Stark are eye-fucking over the table, and Fury has never been happier that he banned any and all weapons from debriefings, otherwise he would be shooting out his other eye. Why this particular debriefing is even happening is a whole other headache, one he doesn't really want to think about at the moment.
So he's back to worrying about the fact the Hulk—the Hulk—thinks Tony Stark is swell (damn it, Rogers), and he just doesn't know what to do about that. This is a fact that has not only given Fury ulcers, but is pretty much directly responsible for the crumbling of no less than three dictatorships…coincidentally right after he asks the Council for a goddamn vacation. After the dictator of Cambodia disappears and the Council sends him a list of anger management specialists, he creates Thursday night (drinking binges) poker with Hill. Coulson comes as soon as he gets out of the hospital.
He doesn't mind it so much when they aren't nearby—it's wonderful when they're in battle. Iron Man and the Hulk combined with the rest of the Avengers are as close to an unstoppable force as possible. During the Chitauri fiasco he didn't care if the Hulk and Tony were planning a June wedding, he was just glad someone was able to direct the Hulk, and someone was sort of able to stop Tony from martyring himself.
It's only after the battle, after everything is peaceful again and New York is being rebuilt, again (why does anybody even live there anymore? If he was an ordinary citizen, in between alien invasions and that kid with the webs and Tony motherfucking Stark, he would have given up and moved to Ohio) that he realizes Stark's friendship with Banner leads to other things. Terrible things. Things like the Hulk deciding it's a brilliant idea to spar with Stark and Thor in the middle of the NYC cleanup, which resulted in, you guessed it, more cleanup. (And a paranoid agent utterly convinced he saw Loki perched on one of the skyscrapers, laughing like a hyena as Thor got pounded into the concrete and Tony hung onto the Hulk's neck like a tiny man-shaped cape. Fury flatly refused to listen and put him on Stark watch.)
Or it leads to things like Stark convincing the Hulk (not Bruce, mind you) to join a drinking competition between him, Natasha and Barton—a drinking competition directly responsible for the security overhaul of no less than four top-secret government facilities, forty SHIELD employees and countless civilians in therapy, the governments futile attempt to bring back Prohibition, and a shawarma waitress bribed so heavily she can now afford her own private island, as long as she promises to never again speak of that night.
After crawling out of the fucking mountain of paperwork caused by this incident, Fury, Hill, and Coulson aren't seen for two weeks and the dictator of Libya spontaneously turns up dead in a sewer.
You would think it's better when Banner's in control, but it's really, really not, because Banner likes Stark, too. And the two of them prance around the lab—that they designed together, just shoot him—inventing shit that gives him heart palpitations. All SHIELD agents are now issued the Banner-Stark Protocol Handbook, joining the six volumes on Stark alone and Banner's eight on the required manual list. This is a fact he makes special efforts to hide from Stark, and he somehow still walks into the lab one day to find the little shit presenting a copy wrapped with a little bow to Banner and a framed one on the wall. The day the two of them figure out how to make a death ray is the day he's smothering himself in his own trench coat, because humanity is fucked. (How to Make sure These Two Idiots don't Become Evil Scientists and Take over the World may or may not be Chapter 11 of the Handbook, he's not at liberty to say).
Which is why, in the weeks before Thor had finally gotten him to agree to a meeting—and wasn't that situation just a barrel of fun—Fury had taken extra care to keep Stark and Banner light years away from Loki, because Loki is psychiatrist wet dream insane, and he doesn't need that joining up with his other resident psychos. Even if he's damn certain Loki knows nothing about human science, since Thor can barely work a toaster.
Except he does, as he's finding out now. After the shouting, and the throwing things, and Barton trying to kill Loki with a small collapsible bow he somehow keeps in his shoe, Fury grudgingly explains why he's letting the god stay. So, naturally, Tony and Bruce start discussing the vitally important technicalities of the situation nobody else can understand. This doesn't terrify him beyond the norm, until Loki asks a question, and suddenly the self-declared Science Bros (patent pending, he swears to God) are looking like Christmas has come early. Soon they're all eagerly discussing something that, despite the fact he can barely understand it, he's sure is going to lead to an actual heart attack this time. And then they're smiling. Thor is so ecstatic tiny lightning bolts are actually pinging down from the ceiling, Barton looks like someone killed his mother with a grilled cheese sandwich right in front of his very eyes, and Rogers just looks confused. Natasha, unflappable as ever, discretely passes Fury a flask under the table.
FUCK. HIS. LIFE.