Title: Ticket to Entry
Rating: PG to PG-13 (mostly for language; Tony and Clint need to have their mouths cleaned with soap)
Warnings: Lots of swearing, a lot of cavity inducing fluff, and the Avengers being their baggage-leaden selves. And, yeah, this is un-beta'd so any mistakes are my own and if you would like to tell me about them feel free, I like my FF to be relatively mistake-free.
Pairings: Hints of several pairings including minor Steve/Tony, Bruce/Clint, Thor/Loki, Natasha/Pepper, and a few others. Bromances include Tony/Bruce, Tony/Clint, Thor/Everyone (because Thor is everyone's favorite), Steve/Natasha, Clint/Natasha, Bruce/Natasha, Coulson/Natasha/Clint and Fury/Hill.
Summary: Series of short drabbles based on quotes. Basically my interpretation of what the quote means in Avenger FF form.
Chapter 1: Bill Cosby
"I don't know the key to success, but the key to failure is trying to please everyone." -Bill Cosby
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Stretched thin was something of an understatement for Tony. With the Avengers Initiative forcing him into battle after battle, with endless arguments against Fury, with trying to be the best boyfriend he possibly could (when he bothered to remember) to Pepper, and still attending Stark Industries meetings and fundraisers, yeah, he might as well have been a rubber band.
But Tony tried, and isn't that saying "it's the thought that counts" sort of totally relevant in this context? He wanted to meet all the expectations he was required to meet, he did. There's just the small fact that people tend to expect the impossible from him, a sentiment the suit seemed to encourage. He couldn't help it if the bar was too damn high for him to even think about reaching. Maybe he needed to find more friends with lower expectations. Or he'd just spend more time with Bruce and Clint. Clint only wanted him to sit and provide aimless banter with him while Bruce idly provided a comment or two between glances through his microscope or paragraphs of research notes. And maybe the occasional helping hand on whatever experiment he was working on. Tony could totally do that, that was totally a thing he could do. If y'know he didn't already have prior engagements of supreme importance like fixing the suit, upgrading Clint's bow or his bots, taking Pepper out on those (rare) dinner dates, or even silly stuff like saving the world. For the umpteenth time.
Tony would just like to reiterate the fact that stretched thin is a goddamn understatement of gargantuan proportions and he'd very much enjoy everyone getting that through their heads.
The fact of the matter is though, that Tony does, really and truly, want to please his friends. Tony wants to be the guy Pepper wants, wants to be the friend Rhodey deserves, wants to be the hero the world needs, that the Avengers need. But among all the "taught bow string" metaphors he's sure Clint could make here, Tony has no fucking clue who he wants to be. I mean, sure, he just said he wants to be what others expect of him, but in all that, he's not really sure what he expects of himself. Tony's lost to all the other wants and needs, most of the time he forgets about his own. Which is quite ironic, verging on the horribly depressing, considering how narcissistic Tony has the tendency to be.
The Avengers, though; Steve, Thor, Natasha, Clint and Bruce, can't really presume too terribly much from him when one takes into account all of their own baggage. Which, y'know, is probably why he tries his hardest to not screw up around them. They make him want to be better, despite their unassuming attitudes towards their teammates. Steve doesn't ask when Tony drags him into the media room to watch hours of cartoons under the pretense that he's taking seriously his duties of "informing Cap how much he missed in the way of television and how much he's probably going to hate it," even though they both end up falling asleep halfway though a marathon of Looney Tunes anyway. Natasha doesn't crack when Tony (most likely either drunk or angry or both) goads her into a sparring match with and occasionally without the suit. (Neither do the rest of the team, really, the only difference is that, sans suit, he's more likely to come away with more bruises when fighting Natasha and Clint, whereas Thor, Steve and Hulk know when they're going to break one of his limbs and actively try not to.) Clint doen't prod when Tony knocks on his door at odd hours of the night with two bottles of Jack Daniels and his personal copy of the Die Hard collection. Bruce doesn't wonder why Tony demands help with a project he's working on, when really, Tony could've done it by himself much quicker. Thor doesn't point out the obvious when Tony invites him to try out a new resaurant he claimed he'd found randomly, even though all the staff greet Tony like an old friend. They take all of his problems, match them with their own, and coexist with practical ease. They have their ups and downs of course, one of them being that (Tony insists vehemently) he does not eat Thor's goddamn food, another being that he denies accountability of his tech once it's out of his hands and if Clint breaks another one of his customized weapons he's not fucking fixing it and Clint can get the fuck over himself.
But maybe the moral of the story isn't that Tony tries (without much assumption that he'll be successful) to be better. Maybe it's that he wants, really really wants, to reach those goals with the Avengers at his side. Tony would never in a million years admit this and would like to give Clint Barton a repulsor blast to the face when he implies it, but yeah, that's pretty much exactly what is going on. Maybe that's why Fury didn't argue much when Tony finally insisted (or verbally assaulted until he got his way) on being part of the initiative, that sneaky fucking beaver. Coulson also occasionally gives him strange looks from time to time and he could swear he's heard Hill give Fury "reports" on his behavior before. Anywho, the point being, that stretched thin is not a representation he wants to wear often. He likes being comfortably coaxed by whatever tide he's drifting on, and he loves that he doesn't have to worry 99.99% of the time anymore about everything. Now he really only has to 65.37% of the time. That's if Bruce isn't Hulked out and Clint hasn't refused a trip to medical. Tony thinks he's maybe-kind-of-sort-of starting to enjoy the presence of the Avengers. Maybe not how much they like to burst into his workshop unannounced because come on, some things are sacred, but hey, he's learning that having friends is about accepting all their faults. Even if all he wants is to bash their heads in with his workbench sometimes.
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If anyone has any requests for a pairing and a quote, or a situation and a quote, or just my interpretation of a quote, feel free to contact me on AO3, FF, or tumblr. My username is the same for all of them (DemyxTheMenace) so hit me up. I promise I don't bite...on our first encounter at least. I may or may not try a nibble once we're acquainted.