A/N: This is for my friend, Beth! IT'S HER BIRTHDAY TODAY! And as a treat she gets this Avengers fic! YAY! HAPPY BIRTHDAY, BETH!

Happy reading!

angellwings

Slow Burn

By angellwings

A day at the beach has sounded so nice. Pepper longed to leave behind superheroes and secret agents and lay out by the gently crashing waves and enjoy the smell of the salt water. It had been a challenging year and she didn't think that was too much to ask. She'd invited Dr. Jane Foster along and her assistant as well. Both were normal women who were dumped into a world of crazy, and granted Pepper hadn't been dumped really. She'd more or less walked right into this insane new world of aliens and heroes and multiple dimensions, but she definitely understood how overwhelming it could be. They all needed a break.

But none of them had counted on Pepper's aerosol sunscreen failing to spray as wide as it should have. Or even count on the slight east coast ocean breeze that blew away the little bit of sunscreen that actually did spray. Maybe this wouldn't be so bad for most women, but for three fair skinned women who spent the majority of their work weeks in doors it was probably the worst thing that could have happened. Five hours had passed before they realized their sunscreen hadn't been properly applied. For five hours they'd been out in the sun without any protection.

Pepper had been lying on her back when Darcy looked up from her iPod and pulled out her ear buds urgently. "Oh my God, Pepper, your skin is like…bubble gum pink."

Pepper's brow furrowed and suddenly she recognized the heated feeling of her skin and the slight burn that trailed across her arms and back. "Oh God. No, no, no."

She slowly sat up and knew her face had distorted into a horrified expression when she looked up at Jane and Darcy. Jane's head was still buried in her book, but her forehead and scalp that her visor hadn't shielded were already very pink along with her legs and arms. Darcy's stomach was covered in uneven angry red splotches and the strap of her bikini top had moved slightly and Pepper could clearly see the milky white skin underneath the bright neon pink. Hell, even the top of Darcy's feet were pink.

"I think we all need to go now," Pepper said with a wince.

"Why?" Jane asked as she looked up. "What's wrong?"

Darcy's eyes widened and she bit back a chuckle. "Jane, your forehead!"

"What about my forehead?" Jane asked as her hand rested on her visor.

"You have a line across the top of your forehead! You're totally gonna have a visor line," Darcy said with a laugh. "I love it."

"Seriously, though," Pepper said as she stood up and started to gather her things. "We should really go."

"Why?" Darcy asked. "Because you're burnt?"

"Because we're all burnt," Pepper said as she motioned to Darcy's stomach. Darcy looked confused and glanced down at her blotchy stomach.

"What the hell?" She exclaimed. "What kind of sunburn is that? If I'm going to burn it could at least be even!"

"The house isn't far from here," Pepper said as she tried to hurry Jane and Darcy along. "If we hurry we can get home before it darkens. Cold baths and aloe for all of us is an immediate need I'd say. Right now."

"I don't understand," Jane said as she scrambled up and folded up her chair. "We put on 50! And we never went near the water! We should not be this pink."

"If we're this pink now, we're gonna be lobsters later," Darcy said as she snatched up her towel and wrapped her ear buds around her iPod. "This is so embarrassing. We look like tourists."

"Technically we are," Jane reminded her. "We haven't moved into Stark Tower yet, Darce."

"Still, just because I am one doesn't mean I want to look like one," Darcy grumbled as they walked briskly down the beach toward Tony Stark's compound in the Hampton's. It was so large that calling it a house or a mansion didn't seem to be enough.

Once they reached the back door Pepper punched in the code for the lock and stepped inside. She winced when she moved her arms the wrong way and the burn intensified. "Thank God, Tony had to stay in the city. Maybe by the time we get back I won't look like a boiled lobster. He does not need ammunition to tease m—"

"Well, ladies, don't you all look positively radiant," a smirking voice said from inside the living room area.

Pepper groaned and her shoulder's sagged before she turned to glare at the intruder. "Tony, not another word."

"I'm loving what the coast has done for the three of you. That salt air is really good for the lungs, and I gotta tell you I think that burnt look might actually be in this season. Put on a blue dress and you're appropriately patriotic actually. Considering it's Memorial Day and all," Tony said with a grin.

"God, I hate you," Pepper said as she threw her bag down by the door.

"You wish you hated me," Tony told her with a quirked brow. "I told you to use my stuff."

"Your stuff is so expensive that it's practically currency," Pepper muttered.

"It would have worked better than whatever cheap corner drug store sunscreen you bought. Your compulsion to be economical is adorable, dear, but you can afford to splurge," Tony said in a tone that said he knew he was right. He was rarely right so Pepper fully expected him to gloat. For a long time.

Footsteps came around the corner and a quiet exclamation of "Holy God" could be heard. The four of them looked up to find Bruce biting back a grin.

"Oh, honey, I brought company," Tony said with a smirk.

Darcy gave Bruce a flat look. "Go ahead. I dare you."

"No," Bruce said as he attempted to hide a grin behind his hand. "I think that sunburn is punishment enough."

"What are the two of you doing here anyway?" Darcy asked in an irritated tone. "I thought everyone was locked in the Tower for the weekend per Fury's orders?"

"We…were. For a little while," Tony said with a secretive smile.

"Tony," Pepper said with a parental look. "What did you break?"

"Nothing Jarvis can't fix," Tony told her with a shrug.

The floor vibrated softly underneath their feet and Jane froze. She would recognize those footsteps anywhere. "Oh no. Oh God. Tell me you didn't bring—"

"Jane!" Thor exclaimed as he wrapped her in a tight embrace, ignorant of her unnatural skin tone.

She yelped and struggled to duck out of his embrace. "Ow, ow, ow, ow! Jesus Christ, that hurt!"

Thor looked immediately concerned and stared down at his hands worriedly as she pulled away before he noticed her skin and realization dawned on him. His eyes darkened. "Who has done this to you? Whoever they are I will hunt them down and see that justice is done!"

Jane sighed and shook her head while Darcy's amused eyes sparkled as they landed on Thor's raised fist that had clearly been intended to rally the troops. Darcy chuckled and shoved Thor's fist aside.

"It's a sunburn, you moron. They don't have sunburns in your land or dimension or whatever?" She asked.

"This evil was done by the sun?" Thor asked. "Your sun is surely mighty."

Jane smiled at him and patted his arm. "It wasn't really the sun. It was the sun's rays. It dried out our skin which resulted in irritation that burns. Hence the term 'sunburn'. Don't worry. No evil was done. Unless you count the manufacturing of a faulty product as evil, that is."

"I do," Pepper said with a glare.

"Me too," Darcy said as she raised her hand and then winced as she felt her dry skin tighten. "I say we sick the Avengers on Banana Boat's warehouse and roast marshmallows as it burns."

"Can't say I completely disagree with that plan," Pepper grumbled.

"They make boats from bananas? That does not sound safe," Thor said with a furrowed brow.

"Oh, forget it," Pepper said as she threw her hands up in surrender. "Tony, I don't care why you're here or how you broke out of Stark Tower but if you so much as poke my sunburn I will reduce your R&D budget to a big fat zero. You got me?"

Tony saluted and nodded. "Yes, ma'am."

"Excuse me, I'm going to go soak in a cold bath," Pepper said as she carefully and slowly walked away.

"And a happy Memorial Day to you too," Bruce called after her with a chuckle.

"Keep chuckling and I'll tie you to a lawn chair on the deck in the mid-day sun, Banner. Tell me, does the Big Guy sunburn?" Darcy threatened as she rounded on him.

"I—uh—I don't know—"

"Wanna find out?" Darcy asked with a glare.

"O-kay, I think we need to get some aloe on you and calm you down," Jane said as she stepped in between Banner and Darcy. Darcy could never really hurt Bruce, but she could provoke him. She was very good at provoking people.

Thor laughed loudly and roughly patted Banner on the back. "Is Darcy not excessively amusing? If she were not so tiny I would find her intimidating."

"Tiny?" Darcy exclaimed over her shoulder as Jane led her away. "You just wait until this sunburn heals! I'll show you how tiny I am!"

"Will you stop?" Jane scolder her. "This sunburn is making you crabby—um, no pun intended."

"She must be sunburned all the time then," Bruce whispered to Thor.

He laughed heartily. "You are quite humorous, Angry One. I like you."

Bruce blinked at the larger man and, for lack of knowing how to react, offered lamely, "Thanks."

"Well," Tony said after he was sure the women were gone. "I say, since the women will be nursing their wounds, we go out."

"Out?" Bruce asked in disbelief. "Are you sure that's a good idea? Some of us," Bruce said as he nodded toward Thor. "Don't really know how to be, um, incognito."

"Yes, Stark, you do seem to attract attention in public," Thor said as he crossed his massive arms over his chest.

"Clearly, more so than, say, a behemoth who declares his lineage when introduced to anyone," Tony said in a flat tone.

Thor seemed to take offense and puffed up huge chest. "I am the son of Odin and a proud Asgardia—"

"Asgardian, yes we know. We get it. You're a god with an impossible hammer. That's all well and good but sometimes could you just be Thor? The muscular guy with the thick blonde mane all the ladies love? Maybe wear some flannel instead of…whatever that is," Tony said as he motioned to Thor's battle gear. "You seem like the lumberjack type, I think."

"Lumberjack?" Thor asked in confusion.

"Tony, I'm telling you this is a bad idea," Bruce said with a shake of his head.

"No, come on," Tony said as he waved off Bruce's concern. "It'll be fine."

"Right, because it's not like a clandestine government agency is looking for us after we broke out of our mandatory debriefing or anything," Bruce said with a sigh.

"The key word there, Brucey, is clandestine. They don't want to make a scene. That's why they're clandestine. It's not like they're going to make a show of taking us down. They'll want to do it discretely which is exactly why we should be out in public," Tony said with a grin. "Especially you."

"Why? Because I'm holding The Other Guy over their heads?" Bruce asked with an exasperated sigh.

"Exactly," Tony said with a grin.

Bruce huffed and mumbled, "Agent Romanoff just had to come and pull me out of Kolkata. SHIELD couldn't have let me stay there. Hare brained schemes like this never happened in Kolkata."

"You can't go back to Kolkata. You'd miss me too much," Tony said with a cheeky smile. "Admit it. You love me."

"He really destroyed part of his own building to escape a routine debriefing?" Steve asked in a tired voice as he and Maria met Fury in Stark's penthouse.

"You know him as well as we do. Would you put it past him?" Maria asked him with a knowing glance.

Steve stared off into the distance for a moment before he tilted his head and sighed. "No. No I suppose I wouldn't."

"They're definitely not in the building," Fury said with a sigh. "This is why we originally left him out of the Initiative. He took Thor and Bruce with him."

"Natasha and Barton?" Steve asked.

"They're searching the perimeter, but they won't find them," Maria told him. "They're long gone. Sir," Maria said as she turned toward Fury. "I think we may need to deploy Agent—"

"No, it's too soon," Fury told her.

"We may not have a choice. No one else could bring these three back as covertly as him and you know it," Maria told him as she rested one hand on her hip and the other on her gun. "We don't have to put him back in the field permanently just yet but we need him for this. For Stark."

"Fine," Fury snapped. "Deploy him."

"If you don't mind me asking," Steve said as he looked at both Shield operatives curiously. "Deploy who?"

Pepper had taken a cold bath and then gone right to bed. She'd had to sleep on her stomach but she'd managed to fall asleep. Until Jarvis alerted her of someone at the door.

"I'm sleeping, Jarvis. Send them away."

"I would, Ms. Potts, but he's insistent on seeing you."

"I'm sunburned and I'm pretty sure Tony did something illegal today so I'm not in the mood to have visitors, Jarvis. I don't care who—"

She paused when she heard the front door open and close.

"I apologize but my protocols were over ridden," Jarvis said calmly.

That worried her. Someone had gotten past Tony and Jarvis's protocols? Not many people could do that. She hesitantly wrapped her robe around her and winced when the fabric rubbed against her sunburn. She put on her slippers and grabbed the baseball bat she kept by the door when she stayed at the Hamptons without Tony. She raised it over her head and crept down the hallway toward the living room. She heard a creak behind her and turned on her heel.

"Pepper."

The bat fell to the floor with a loud bang.

IronGirl OMG. IRON MAN IS HERE! You'll never guess who he has with him! #hamptons

NYdude89 Just saw this lumberjack dude who looked like that Thor guy from the New York attack. Weird. #hamptons

StarkFan87 Who's the mousey nerd with Stark? He's totally killing the mood. #buzzkill #hamptons

AvengerLove Stark is dancing on top of the bar! His friend, on the other hand, smashed more than a few mugs. #party #hamptons

WillysBar Come on down to Willy's! Everybody's partying with The Avengers! #hamptons

"Tony!" A voice yelled across the bar.

Tony paused at the scolding tone, but quickly went back to doing the grapevine across the bar.

"Tony Stark, you get down from there right now!"

His eyes landed on a literally red faced Pepper and he smirked. "I think you need to get up here with me."

He held out a hand for her to join him. She rolled her eyes and knocked his hand away with a blush. "You're ridiculous."

"I should get one of these for The Tower," Tony said as he tested the sturdiness of the steel bar by jumping repeatedly. "We could put it on the terrace."

"Tony, you already have three bars in your penthouse alone. No."

"Not like this one!" Tony exclaimed with a pout. "Please?"

"Bars are not cars, Boss Man. You don't need different varieties. They all do the same thing," Pepper told him with a bemused smile. "Where's Thor?"

"Regaling the woman in the corner with tales of Sif, the Asgardian Lady warrior who can apparently do no wrong," Tony said loudly to be heard above the other patrons. "We owe the owner for about 12 glass beer mugs, by the way. He finds it amusing to break them after he chugs the contents."

"And Bruce?" Pepper asked.

"Hiding," Tony answered. "Last I saw of him he was sulking in the corner booth."

"You lost him?" Pepper asked. "Get down from there right now and help me find him!"

"Just send Darcy after him. She could probably pick up his scent. She's ferocious like that," Tony said as he hesitantly climbed off the bar.

"Jane!" Thor's voice thundered from the other side of the room. "Tell this lady of your many accomplishments so that she may strive to do better! Sif's many victories do not seem to be convincing her!"

Pepper laughed softly as she looped her arm through Tony's. "Thor found a townie barfly who has potential, did he?"

"What can I say? Thor's a feminist," Tony said with a grin.

"Let's check the back alley for Bruce," Pepper suggested as she ignored him.

The back door opened and Tony was shoved outside as the door was slammed shut behind him. "Pepper, what in the he—"

He turned and was met only with the closed metal door that led from the bar to the alley and realized that Pepper hadn't followed him. What in the world was going on here?

"You shattered the window of your own penthouse to escape a debriefing? Really, Mr. Stark? If you had stayed you would have been done by now."

"Well, well, well…if it isn't Agent P. Coulson. Phil is your middle name isn't it?" Tony asked with a scoff. "I know Fury is the secret agent to end all secret agents but this is really crossing a line. Does he think he can just hire some look alike and we'll all fall for it?" Tony paused and glared suspiciously at Coulson. "Or are you one Xavier's people? Maybe an illusion of Loki's?"

Phil Coulson gave Tony a bored look and grinned. "Would a trick or an illusion know why it was always so easy for me to get through Jarvis's security protocols? It never made sense to anyone at SHIELD that I of all people could get past Jarvis. They didn't realize you always left the backdoor open."

Tony blinked at him. "What back door? There's no back door. At any of my residences."

"Someone as intelligent as you should really know better than to leave an audio pass code in your security system. You never know who could walk up to your front door and just happen to say 'I'm a government stooge.' It's completely unsafe for someone who houses as many home made weapons as you do," Coulson said in a matter of fact tone with a completely straight face. "That code will let anybody who says it walk right in."

Tony paused and gave Coulson a long measuring stare before he spoke up again. "If you wanted Capsicle to sign your cards you could have just asked him. You didn't have to die, you know."

Coulson gave Tony a ghost of a grin and nodded. "I know."

"So, what does Fury want so badly that he had to pull out the big guns?" Tony asked as he crossed his arms over his chest.

"He wants you and Thor and Banner to lay low. For a while at least," Coulson told him. "He wants you back in the tower for the debriefing and then he wants you all to take mandatory leave."

"Leave. I could do leave," Tony said with a grin.

"Low profile leave, Stark," Coulson said with a smirk. "No races in Monaco or gambling in Vegas. This is a leave where you stay out of the public eye. Do you think you can do that?"

"Fury's in pretty hot water with his bosses, huh?" Tony asked knowingly.

"That's a matter of National Security," Coulson said with a blank expression.

"Of course it is," Tony said with a chuckle.

"So? Are you going to go back willingly or are you going to force Fury to make a scene? Don't think he won't cause one either. He will," Coulson asked as he pushed his sunglasses further up on his nose. Nevermind that it was night time and they were outside. A good SHIELD agent must have a pair of aviator sunglasses. That was one of the first things Tony had learned about SHIELD.

"I think that's already been decided for me, Agent," Tony told him. "I'm sure you're the reason Bruce disappeared so suddenly."

"All I did was present him with the opportunity. It was his decision to go home," Coulson said with his sorely missed non-smile. It was the kind of expression that wasn't really a smile but gave the impression there was one under the surface just dying to escape.

Tony sighed and shook his head. "Fine, I'll get the God of Thunder and go home. But I'm not happy about it! And I will be making cocktails when we get there. I may have to leave the bar but no one said I had to leave the alcohol behind."

"Do whatever you'd like, Mr. Stark. Just do it in the privacy of Stark Tower," Coulson told him. "And don't tell anyone else about…well, me. So far, you, Banner, and Pepper are the only ones outside of SHIELD that know. We need to keep it that way for a while longer, I'm afraid."

Tony sighed. "Secrets, secrets, and more secrets. Is that all you SHIELD agents do?"

"You're one to talk," Coulson said pointedly. "Or are we going to ignore those five new prototypes you've started since the New York attack?"

"How did you—I mean….what prototypes? I'm not working on any prototypes," Tony lied.

"Of course you're not. Just be back at the Tower in exactly two hours. Agreed?" Coulson asked.

"Agreed," Tony said with a nod as he turned toward the door.

"Oh, and Mr. Stark?"

Tony glanced over his shoulder at Coulson with a curious look.

"Buy those girls some after sun care, will you? They really look pathetic. Vitaman E, Aloe, whatever they need. Pepper's complexion matches her hair. It's not very becoming," Coulson said with an amused fatherly expression.

Tony smirked. "Yes, Mr. Government Stooge, Sir. Will do."