A Series of Plans

A Word: Hm, cake.

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Plan C is, in retrospect, a stupid plan that he should have seen the obvious flaw in before getting smacked in the face by it.

He has to give up another floor, but he was planning on doing that anyway with a training floor. He just has to alter the plans he already has to include a much better shooting range than he was originally planning on. One that runs the whole length of the floor and has a an advanced AI to switch out and move the targets depending on a difficulty setting.

Tony doesn't bother programing any difficulty levels below what would be almost impossible for most people to complete. A warm up setting for Clint.

Bruce is only slightly interested in the training floor. The man shrugs, "I don't exactly need it, do I? Besides, good things don't happen when my heart rate gets high."

Tony almost points out the reinforcements that he made sure were in place, on all the levels of the floor really, rated to stand up to the Hulk. Sure, they'd buckle in a second if the big guy were trying, but Tony's fairly confident it'd stand up to any indirect or accidental Hulking out.

"I'm sure there's plenty of other things you can do," Steve cuts in from the boxing ring. There's an open area next to it for the more acrobatic sparring some of them prefer. He's seen what passes for horseplay between Clint and Natasha, and has poked fun at Steve's flipping more often than not. "There's a lot of equipment here."

Steve's pleased, and eying the floor with an assessing gaze that's all planning. Tony can almost see the training schedule he'll be avoiding forming in Cap's head.

"Hm," Natasha hums loud enough to be an acknowledgment. She's perched somewhat impossibly halfway up the rock wall against one of the walls. She's eying the exposed struts of the ceiling. Which Tony had also had reinforced after figuring out where his two favorite assasssin's liked to slip off to when giving him heart attacks. "Some improvements could be made."

"What improvements? Where?" Tony demands because he stole the plans for every SHIELD training facility and made them better.

Natasha flows up the wall like her namesake and doesn't even pause before jumping for the closest strut. She uses them like monkeybars, flipping occasionally. "It could use a refrigerator."

Tony pauses and tilts his head because he could have sworn he had one of those, but a quick scan fails to reveal it. "Huh," he's going to have to look into that. Or have Jarvis track it down. "Yeah, I'll get on that."

Three out of four —five?— opinions accounted for. Tony turns to the shooting range. The door is still open from when Clint had disappeared into it the second Tony identified where it led. Tony hears the already familiar sounds of a bow being drawn and released as he nears the door.

Clint stands firmly and at ease as the targets shift and realign for him. His eyes take it all in as the AI does it's work. Spinning, jerking, and moving targets at irregular intervals. Clint tracks them all. Moving his entire body to accommodate it. He releases an arrow as Tony watches, and has another drawn and ready before it can sink into a target. Dead center, of course.

"Well?" Tony butts in because the man has to know he's there. "Does it measure up to your exacting SHIELD standards?"

"Yeah," Clint rotates slightly to the left and Tony watches. A little mesmerized at the way the light plays off Clint's arms as he releases another arrow. Tony doesn't even notice if this one hits. Clint's lips curl up into a satisfied smile. "Yeah, this is good Tony."

"Good," Clint shoots two more arrows while Tony stands there. He's probably grinning stupidly, but no one around him is paying close enough attention to tell except for Jarvis. There's now two floors for use that allow Tony to engage Clint in casual conversation. Plan C is going very well.

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The fatal flaw in Plan C comes into focus very, very quickly.

Clint uses the shooting range. Constantly and with a kind of focus that doesn't encourage casual conversation. No matter how often Tony drops in to talk to the back of the man's head. Watching Clint move doesn't quite lose it's appeal, but that's what security feeds are for. He can watch Clint anytime he wants. His plans have all been geared to talk to him.

He's failing pretty badly.

Natasha smirks when Tony fails, again, at prying anything more than single word answers out of Clint on the range. The last one had been more a grunt than a word.

"He has strict time limits imposed on his range time at SHIELD," she offers out of pity as Tony slumps over the counter in the kitchen. Waiting for the coffee pot to put out enough liquid to drink because his teammates are horrible people who don't know to keep the pot full at all times. He's going to have to step up his plans on installing the automatic brewer if this keeps up. "If you leave him to it, he'll move into that range."

"How," Tony waves his empty mug back towards Nat. "How can anyone live like that? Doesn't he have other things he wants to do? I don't know how anyone can just hole themselves up in a room like that for days and not want to come out."

"The irony of what you've just said doesn't even register, does it?" Nat says after a pregnant pause in which a thin stream of black gold finally starts pooling into the pot.

"What irony?" Tony asks as he gauges the rising level with an expert eye. Snatching the carafe out and filling his mug the second there's enough coffee. He takes a careful drink. Burning his tongue a bit but that's a price that has to be paid sometimes. "Hm, I need to get that new pot hooked up. Anyway, I'll be in the labs."

"Of course you will," Nat's voice is dripping with something as Tony leaves the kitchen. The problem of Clint holing up in the range battling in his mind with the importance of having an automated coffee pot as he heads in to the elevators.

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SHIELD has a rather sophisticated lock down plan for Clint, Tony finds out after snooping around some more in their databases. It's a system that involves flooding every range they have with rookies once Clint reaches a certain number of hours logged in per week. It's a startlingly effective tactic. There's footage showing the man's mounting irritation as he draws an awed crowd for longer than it takes him to show off a few really tricky shots. His fingers twitch with each missed shot as greener and younger rookies rotate in and show off just how badly they needed the range time.

Tony doesn't think he can replicate SHIELD's tactics. The bots can be as annoying as rookies, but Clint seems to have more fondness for them than the rookies. Plus, there's no way in hell Tony's going to entrust anything more than an extinguisher to any of them. And even that is something he does with deep seated misgiving since the last time You had spent a day extinguishing every steaming cup of coffee Tony tried to drink.

The range is completely automated. Even the door is operated by Jarvis. Tony could work up a program to lock down the range and refuse Clint entry. Tony tosses the idea around for an hour or two before discarding it. Given the man's fondness for traveling trough the ceilings it probably wouldn't even work to keep him out. He knows that's what he'd do if someone tried to lock him out of his labs. Granted, he'd try hacking the doors, and maybe blowing a few holes in the walls before risking breaking his neck by going the high route.

So, no, no lockout code or flooding the range with bots. Maybe he could lure him out. With cake or arrows or something.

Tony's working out the kinks to a cake baking machine when his screen goes blank. The code he'd been flying through gone in one heart stopping second that never stops being horrifying even though he's got the best autosave feature in the known world. Seriously. One night of brilliant coding gone in a freak accident that had about a one in a million chance of happening was more than enough incentive for Tony to automatically save every keystroke to an offline server.

"Someone ratted you out to Pepper," Clint says from behind and to the left of Tony. A small metallic clang echoing through the lab as he shuts the front of the circuit breaker. Why he has to route everything non-essential to it is a story involving blackmail and Pepper. "You've got a choice now. You can either come with me quietly, or stick around and suffer her wrath when she comes in for the six AM conference."

"Cake," Tony says when Clint comes around the row of lockers that hides the box from the rest of the lab. Weaving far too easily through the obstacles Tony has deliberately taken to putting there to discourage his teammates from exploiting the lab's weakness. "I was just finishing a program for baking cake! How can that be so wrong?"

"I was going more for the fact that you've been locked in here for forty eight hours straight, but that works too," Clint looks amused as he pulls on the back of Tony's chair. Not bothering to try and get him to walk himself. It's completely unfair! Tony's doing this to try and find a way to get Clint to come out of the range. Not Tony out of the lab.

"I'm fine!" Tony grabs onto the underside of the seat as Clint rolls him over some extension cords that've been left out carelessly. By someone who isn't Tony, because two days of not sleeping isn't enough for him to forget things like that. It takes at least three. "Pepper worries too much, and there's nothing wrong with cake! Cake is awesome. Especially cake you don't have to make yourself."

Clint hums as he spins Tony into the hall. Reaching back in to flip a switch to kill the lights. Tony blinks in the sudden dimness of the hall, seeing those fun glowing orbs that mean he's been staring at one thing for far too long. That hum isn't really much of a response though and Tony frowns. Everyone liked cake except for diehard nutritionists and freaks of nature. "You like cake, don't you?"

He's kinda screwed if Clint doesn't, because that's going to send him back to the drawing board. Again. It'll also mean he's attracted to a freak of nature. Which is actually kinda par for the course. Pepper was a diehard nutritionist so Tony's due for a freak or two.

"Sure," Clint spins Tony and pushes him down the hall. "Jarvis, get the elevator would you?"

"What kind?" Tony crans his head back to look at the bottom of Clint's chin. Focusing immediately on a small patch of hair that looks like it's escaped the razor a few days running. He ignores the fact that the elevator opens immediately, which means Jarvis knew this was coming and didn't warn him.

Clint wheels them both in the bright elevator and slouches against the wall. He's wearing a wrinkled shirt and soft looking sweats. There's still a vivid red line on his face from the pillow he was sleeping on not too long ago. "I dunno. Milk cake I guess."

"What the fuck's a milk cake?" Tony frowns because he's never even heard of that before, and also because Clint's hair looks like something birds could nest in. It's obvious the man just rolled out of bed and it shouldn't be a look that Tony likes as much as he does. It's patently unfair. "Don't all cakes use milk?"

"I get it in Mexico a lot," Clint says with a shrug and a yawn as the elevator slows to a stop. The doors sliding open as Clint pushes Tony into his floor. Turning right and heading back for the bedroom even though Tony'd much rather be left at the bar if he couldn't be in his lab. "I think it's soaked in different kinds of milk after it's done baking. I really don't know. I just eat it."

"Huh," well, damn. That's a hell of a lot more complicated than anything his current plans for the machine can make. Tony's just been busy programing it to measure, mix, and bake. Icing was a whole other issue that he's fairly sure will take a separate machine with a limited AI. Maybe more if there's more now that he's got to contend with another step before the icing. "So nothing that can be made out of a box then."

"Nope," Clint says with a snicker as he wheels Tony into the room and stops right next to his bed. The sheets have been changed since Tony's sure he accidentally got engine grease on them the last time he passed out. "You gonna get up or do I have to actually throw you in there?"

That's an interesting question actually and Tony considers it for a few seconds before tipping himself forward into the bed. It'd be a lot more interesting if he even thought Clint might mean that question in anything but a literal way.

"Holy crap," Tony mutters into the mattress. It's soft and warm and way more comfortable than Tony remembers his bed being. Why did he ever leave it on Friday? "I love my bed."

There's a bark of laughter as he's pushed and prodded until he's all the way on the bed. Sprawled out like a starfish and already slipping under. Clint's voice warm and far away, "Wouldn't know it by how hard it is to get you there."

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Plan C isn't a failure, but it also isn't a resounding success. He came up with it, he implemented it, and not a whole lot changed. It sort of just exists. Tony abandons his plans to tinker with it and goes back to the drawing board.

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