Okay, so this idea came from the song The Piano Man. It's not really like it, but it's where I got the idea.
I don't own The Avengers or Billy Joel's "The Piano Man."
I hope you enjoy.
Now cross-posted to ao3 at /works/6691006 .
The Piano Man
It was a Saturday, around nine o'clock, and Phil Coulson watched as his customers made their way inside, sober at the moment but, no doubt, that was going to change. Phil was the owner of SHIELD, a nice bar to come to if you wanted to escape for awhile, and he had to admit it provided the perfect opportunity for his favorite pastime: people watching. That lady over there in a sleazy dress and six inch heels was a millionaire, using her inheritance to get drunk. That man in jeans and a T-shirt was an off duty cop wanting to break the rules a little. The man in the back corner with the shades on was a mob boss about to seal a deal. Each person had their own story until he learned their real one. Sometimes they came back, sometimes they didn't.
Still, he could count his number of regulars on two hands, coming up with a total of six. The first had come here on the run from the police, clutching his new bounty like it would take him to a new world. It did, each night disarming the man's brain, ripping out his shy and quiet personality for an angry one. His name was Bruce Banner, /Doctor/ Bruce Banner, and he came each night with the intentions of stopping. He never did.
The second to come was Natasha Romanoff, an orphan who had slipped into a bad business. Coulson wasn't sure how bad it was, but he knew it was bad enough for her to come in each night, gamble away any money she had earned that day and get so drunk he didn't want to know what went on when she made it back home to her husband.
Thor Odinson had been next, chasing his wayward younger brother in one night only to lose him and then lose himself in the drinks he bought. He hadn't missed a night since, even the night when Phil saw in the newspaper that his brother had been shot and killed by an enemy gang who called themselves the 'Frost Giants'.
That was when Tony Stark found him, coming early one night when there was nobody else around and slapping a fifty on the bar, sliding onto a stool and burying his head in his arms, only raising it to chug down some more beer. He came each night since then, raising popularity for the bar and also jacking up the number of beers he drank.
Clint came next, not saying his last name because he said he wasn't that person that came with it but just Clint. Clint, the blond, blue-eyed man who had amnesia and didn't know who he was anymore. He'd been found early one morning, he said, bleeding everywhere and unconscious. He'd been John Doe for awhile until his family identified him. Sometimes he said he wished he was still John Doe, because then he at least knew who he was.
Then there was Steve Rogers, an old soldier who preferred things the way they used to be, before the 'younger folk' came along and changed things. Before there were computers and cell phones, selfish people with selfish minds, and the most dangerous thing was the war, not having to worry about terrorists and kids who came into schools shooting.
And it was Tony who had come up with SHIELD's name, saying one night that anyone who came had a high possibility of getting stoned, high, eloped, intoxicated, laid, and/or dumped on their asses so hard they fell off. Which, when put together, made for a rather cheesy but nice acronym for a bar's name. He later claimed that he had been maybe a little stoned, totally high, eloping was gonna happen sometime, definitely intoxicated, and the laying occurred forty-five minutes after, and that he had also proved you could get arrested in the bar, and Phil should therefore, in keeping with the one-word-string, change D to A for arrested. Phil, on the other hand, had said that he was already rather attached to one girl named Lola and had no intention of leaving her for SHIELA.
So each night Phil unlocked the door, ready for his customers, and over time his regulars left and sometimes came back. Steve was first, dying from old age, and Phil made sure to go to his funeral. Doctor Banner was next, finally going into rehab at the suggestion of Phil himself, and he later came back to thank Phil before disappearing. Then Tony came in grinning, a real smile on his face for the first time in years, a pretty redhead holding his hand who was identified as Pepper Potts. When it came along, Phil went to their wedding and was happy when the two still came around every once in awhile for a drink or two. And Clint had come in once with a smile of his own, saying that he remembered, and his last name was Barton, and he finally felt like himself. He stayed around, surprising Phil when he got together with Natasha after the woman divorced her husband and finally got out of the business she had been stuck in. Thor had been the last to leave, finally coming to terms with his brother's death and deciding that a new place would be alright.
And maybe Phil changed the acronym, because SHIELD could always stand for Stolen, Happy, Inspired, Engaged, Loved, and Devoted. And there was no room for an 'A' in that acronym.
Alright, so I hope this was satisfactory. No real dialogue, but I hope it was okay all the same. Please review!