He doesn't like the military courtrooms. They're nice, Tony will give them that, but they're entirely too formal for his liking. California doesn't work that way. If there were ever a place where the practice of law was lax, it would be Malibu; and he can't complain. DC's Marine Corps courthouse is silent, spotless, and severe – Tony's 3 least favorite 's' words – and it's all he can do not to go insane in the lobby. He balances his phone in the palm of his hands, glancing every now and again at the clock on the wall, the simple circle with the big black hands.
The suit he's wearing is perfectly tailored. The pants cling to him in all the right places – Pepper has assured him of this – and his suit jacket follows the lines of his shoulders and draws tight at his middle. It's black. It's his favorite. Since his arrival in the courthouse lobby nearly an hour ago, he's been counting the number of women (and men) who've been giving him the full body stare, the head to toe, the whole 'check it out' package.
Twenty nine.
Every so often, he meets the gazes and counters them with one of those charming smiles. Tony likes the reactions – the blushes, the downcast eyes, and the feet that scramble away like they're afraid he'll say something to them. For a minute, he forgets that his client is almost an hour and a half late.
Tony's not one to be on time. He's the fashionably late kind of guy, revels in the way that heads turn when he enters a room, fifteen minutes late and nursing a glass of what he says is water, but smells a lot like vodka. He doesn't like to be on time, but he's also not the one being court martialled on charges of first degree murder. He checks his watch again. 11:15. He's got places to be, things to do, women (and men) to fumble around in the sheets with.
"Mr. Stark?"
His head lifts up, and Tony looks over his shoulder with a raised eyebrow. Behind him, just entering the doors, is a man dressed in a t-shirt with cut off sleeves and blue jeans that have seen better days. He's wearing square, black sunglasses. Tony watches his warily, his eyes trailing the outline of his form from the superbly muscled arms, to the tuft of brown hair that juts from his head. He realizes halfway through standing up to greet this stranger that he has no idea who he is. A thought crosses his mind, and it's entirely plausible in and of itself.
Please tell me I haven't slept with him.
Tony holds out a hand for the man to shake, even though he's currently working through a mental list of all the people he knows. It's a long list. The man pulls the sunglasses off and stuffs them haphazardly into the pocket of his jeans. He flashes Tony a wide smile that features a set of brilliant white teeth, and grabs his hand. The grip nigh on crushes the bones in Tony's hand.
"Hello?" Tony tries tentatively, because he still has no idea what's going on.
It takes the man a few moments to realize that no, Tony doesn't know who he is, and that maybe he should introduce himself. He smiles again.
"Shit, sorry, man," he starts, and he relinquishes his grip on Tony's hand, much to Tony's relief, "Forgot we haven't actually met."
Tony rubs his hand and tries to reset the bones back to the places they're supposed to be. He gives Clint his best inquisitive gaze. Behind him, the double doors to another courtroom smack the walls as they open, and a crowd of people file out. Ahead of them is a man dressed in his whites, medals clipped to his lapel, and shoes spit shined so bright the halogen lights reflect off of their surface. His hands are cuffed in front of him. The hair on the back of Tony's neck stands up.
"Clint." Tony tries the name on his tongue tentatively as the people pass him. He watches the procession, sees a lady in the back holding her head in her hands. Her hair is grey. Her eyes are wet. Her shoulders shake.
Clint's smile disappears, and Tony finds it replaced with a faint frown, "You really suck at this, huh? Barton. Clint Barton."
"Barton." Tony murmurs under his breath, and he's still staring at the man in the handcuffs and the woman crying when it hits him, "Barton! Yes! Agent Barton." His client.
"Don't wear it out," Clint says, but it doesn't sound so much like a joke this time. He grabs Tony's hand again, because this time he's the one going in for the handshake.
"Sorry," Tony says kindly, trying to placate the man. His voice is laced with the sweetness that he uses on all people he impresses upon poorly. Clint doesn't seem to be fooled, "Just…distracted."
Clint follows his eye line. The people are almost gone, but he can still see the crying woman just as she turns the corner. When he looks back, Tony's got an easy grin plastered across his face. The gesture sets Clint off a little, makes him feel uneasy, but he's sure than in his situation, he's not exactly at liberty to feel good about anything.
"Let's get down to business," Tony suggests, and he points to the armchairs in the lobby, one of which he's been sitting in for the past hour. Clint raises an eyebrow at him, but he complies anyway.
"Isn't this the kind of business that we should do in your office?"
Tony considers this, "Probably. But I like these chairs better, and I don't think you're one to criticize location, especially since you're over an hour late."
"It's a bit hard to travel in DC when you're a suspected murderer," Clint deadpans, and Tony takes this as a hint to lay off the snark.
The armchair is burgundy leather, soft and smooth against Tony's wrists. He crosses leg over knee and pulls his leather briefcase into his lap. The case is slim and professional, and inside is a yellow lined legal notepad, a pair of reading glasses he refuses to believe he needs, and the thin, sleek glass of his cell phone. He takes the legal pad.
"So, Agent Barton," Tony starts, trying to be as polite as he can even though he wants to punch his hand through a wall, and maybe drink his weight in liquor, "Tell me what happened. Try not to leave anything out, all right? Start from, say, what happened the night of the murder?"
Clint opens his mouth to speak. Tony regrets becoming a lawyer.
Clint is a spy.
Tony figures he should know that from the title 'agent', but he's never been hip with these newfangled governmental or military terms. He and his father, and his father's father have all been lawyers. That's the Stark way. Lady Justice, scales of balance, American liberty – all that crap.
So when Barton slips it into casual conversation, Tony breaks the tip of his pencil. He stops writing and peers over the frames of his glasses.
"I'm sorry," he starts, and he says it the nicest way he can, with hardly any resignation or annoyance. Maybe a hint of surprise, some anger, "Did you just say you were a spy?"
Clint stops talking abruptly, and glances up at Tony with wide eyes. He blinks, "Yeah. I thought I mentioned that."
"No," Tony drops the legal pad onto the glossy white tile of the floor. He pulls his reading glasses from his head, and folds them in his lap gently and politely. When he looks up at Clint again, there is the hint of a confused smile forming on his face, "No, you said you were a P.F.C in Bravo Company. You didn't say you were a spy. You said you were a soldier."
"Yeah," Clint gestures, as if this isn't a thing, "Yeah, no, that's my cover."
"Your – your cover," Tony stops midsentence and looks up at the ceiling. He can feel something building dangerously in the pit of his stomach. He takes in a deep breath and closes his eyes. When he looks back at Clint, the man is sitting patiently, hands in his lap, eyebrows raised, "Your cover?"
Clint frowns, "Yeah. My cover. Anyway, so I've been undercover in the corps for about, what, nine months now? And it's just been this entire shitfit of code. 'Unit, corps, God, country', that kind of radical bullshit. And there's this guy, Lance Corporal Vickers, and he is just a fucking tragedy, let me tell you—"
"You're a spy!" Tony is screaming, and he isn't even sure why. People stop in the hallways, eyes trained on the two burgundy armchairs. Tony realizes that yes, perhaps he should stop with the screaming, and maybe he should refrain from pointing a finger threateningly in Clint's direction, and oh my god, he's been screaming 'you're a spy' at the top of his lungs in a busy courthouse, "Why did you not tell me you were a spy?"
"I think maybe it would be in your best interest to stop screaming?" Clint suggests, voice uneven. He offers a gleaming smile to the people that are staring at them and turns back to Tony, "Please."
Tony stops talking. He presses his lips into a thin line, bites the inside of his cheek, and takes a deep breath. He closes his eyes. Around him, people carry on, their feet making noise against the tile floor. From somewhere inside a room, there's the sound of a gavel hitting the sound block, and judge's voice ringing out over a din of people murmuring. Tony breathes. In, out.
"I drive a black Aston Martin Vanquish," he starts, opening his eyes and looking Clint in the eyes, "The license plate is Stark 2, the keys are in this bag."
Tony hands the bag to Clint, who fumbles inside until he's holding a set of silver keys with the Aston Martin logo printed on each one. He holds them in his palm with a questioning frown.
"Okay."
"Go." Tony hisses after a moment, and Clint rolls to his feet, moving quickly towards the parking lot. Tony's fast on his heels, clutching his glasses and his legal pad in both hands.
Tony knows there are eyes roving all over him as he skitters towards his vehicle, and this time he doesn't enjoy the looks, doesn't enjoy the whispers that carry up to the high ceilings of the courthouse. When they're both outside, standing at the side of Tony's car, back in the most secluded part of the parking lot, Tony takes a deep breath in and breathes it out.
"You okay, man?" Clint asks, tentatively.
Tony nods slowly, his whole body shaking with the movement. Clint watches him carefully.
"Good, okay, because really for a second there I thought you were gonna blow a fuckin' gasket. Your face got all red and you were biting your lip and shit. It was pretty f—"
Clint doesn't continue, mostly because Tony has slammed him up against the side of the Aston Martin and is trying his best not to strangle the life out of him. He's clutching Clint's forearms (even though his hands don't actually go around them) as tightly as he can, and he's so close to his face that he can see the little blood vessels in Clint's eyeballs.
"You told me," Tony starts in low, hushed tones that he hopes feel as sharp as they sound, "That you were Private First Class Clint F. Barton, United States Marine Corps. That is what you told me. You told me to call you Agent Barton."
"Well, I sort of figured that was a subtle hint that maybe I was not Private First Class Clint F. Barton, United States Marine Corps."
Tony lifts his grip on Clint's arms and throws himself back down. Clint grunts.
"iYou didn't tell me you were a spy!/i"
"What the fuck is the big deal?" Clint's voice is raising, affronted and offended, and there are people in the parking lot staring at them now, wondering whether or not it's a good idea to call the police, and why anyone would be starting a fight in the parking lot of a courthouse.
Tony loses his fucking imind/i, "You're supposed to tell your lawyer when you're a spy! Especially when you're being charged for a violent crime as a United States Marine!"
"Everything okay here, fellas?"
The voice is deep, gravelly, almost guttural. Tony's grip on Clint's forearms lifts, and he stands completely still. Clint does the same, pressed up against the car.
"We're great," Tony fumbles for words, looking down and standing straight. He pats his suit down, closes his eyes, breathes. All that neat shit he's learned in anger management, the stuff Pepper tries to force him to absorb. He looks up at the source of the voice, "We're – we—"
He's about thirty. Tony and Clint both know he's in the military, probably the Marine Corps, because he's wearing the whites, and they're prim and proper and just the way that they should be. He's got his hair slicked back neatly, not a single strand out of place, and he's offering them a stern but friendly smile. All white teeth, All American boy.
He's a lawyer, and Tony doesn't even have to ask.
"A+, family bonding," Clint's picked up where Tony's left off, because he figures that incomplete and questionable sentences are probably not going to hold water for Mr. America over here, "You know how brothers are, always pushin' each other around, haha, and don't they just always end up in courthouse parking—"
"We're fine," Tony assures, and no, he definitely did not just elbow Clint in the stomach. Tall, blonde, and lawyerly raises an eyebrow, but nods and smiles all the same.
"Brothers." He agrees, as if strangulation in the parking lot is normal behaviour.
He leaves them there, straightening his tie and walking towards the rosewood doors of the courthouse. Tony's eyes follow his retreat, and if he's being completely honest, something entirely different, too. He comes back to reality when Clint clips him in the head.
"What the fuck?" Clint says, and Tony thinks that this is maybe not the person he wants to piss off right now. He steps back and points to the door.
"Get in."
"Why?" Clint moves for the passenger side anyway.
"We're going back to the office," Tony mutters, disappointment coloring his tone. So much for having things to do, "So you can tell your lawyer you're a spy.