Mate

"Why do you not inject the other humans with the serum that has so enhanced the Captain?" Thor asked Bruce, looking with some concern as Clint picked at the bandaging on his forearm. "Captain Rogers is a stout warrior and not easily injured. Would this not be a good plan of prevention?"

Bruce followed Thor's gaze to the corner, where Clint was sitting on a cot and drugged to the gills with narcotics. "It doesn't work that way, Thor," he explained gently. "The recipe for the serum was lost, and the only solution we could figure out made me."

Thor frowned. "How were you able to find that solution, then, if the original was lost?"

Bruce launched into a simplified discussion of the serum and DNA replication that the demi-god seemed to follow without trouble. "And each base has a mate," Clint snickered. "That matches it perfectly."

Thor nodded. "So these mated pairs," another giggle from the cot, followed by a muffled apology, "form a helix and contain the information from the serum?"

Bruce nodded. "And we don't really know what comes from the serum and what comes from Steve. The mates are -,"

Thor never found out what the mates were, because Bruce finally huffed in exasperation and turned to Clint, chuckling in the corner. "What is so funny, Barton?"

"'M sorry, Doc," Clint sniggered helplessly. "But you said mate, and that's just a science-y word for sex! So all I can think about is DNA having sex all over your body." He gestured loosely to Bruce. "All up in there."

Natasha finally walked into the lab as Clint dissolved into another fit of giggles. Taking in the scene on the cot and the blank look on Bruce's face, she smirked. "Is he making sex jokes again?"

Thor nodded, watching the archer with confusion and no small display of alarm. Bruce tore his eyes away. "He does this often?"

Natasha shrugged. "Only when he's on narcotics. Then he finds everything hilarious." She grinned. "If you really want a show, you should see him on opiates."

Animal

"We approve of your decision to remain in one area," the lead councilman announced, ignoring the four distinct beeps that Tony's cellphone emitted.

The lone female councilman added, "With the exception of the animal, of course."

There was a pause, wherein Bruce simply bowed his head in quiet agreement and Fury rolled his eyes in exasperation at the continuing argument. Tony leapt to his feet, a string of insults and abuse emerging from his mouth. Thor clapped a supportive hand on Bruce's shoulder as Clint leaned back in his chair, propping his feet on the table with a sense of boredom.

Steve stood, physically interjecting himself between Tony and the screens showing the Council members. "Tony, calm down," he murmured, placing a firm hand on Tony's chest. Turning to the Council, he glared at them with hard eyes. "Hulk is not an animal. He is intelligent, capable of learning, in possession of feelings, other than anger."

One of the Councilmen snorted. "Does he obey your orders?"

Steve rolled his eyes in exasperation. "Do any of them?"

"Hey!" Clint raised his hands for attention. "We do when we need to."

"For fuck's sake," Natasha interrupted the growing, off-topic argument. "He gave us all names."

The room stilled. Fury raised a brow at Steve. "Captain?"

"She's right," the soldier told them. "He knows Tony as Stark, because that's what we all call him during battle. He knows that Tony and Bruce are friends. Natasha is Girl, for obvious reasons, and Thor is just You."

"The letter?"

"The pronoun, dumbass," Tony snarled. Steve gave him a quelling glare.

"They don't have the most violence-free relationship," Steve murmured, off-hand.

"He is a worthy opponent," Thor put in resolutely.

"Barton?" Steve glanced back at Fury.

"Clint is Pal." At Fury's silence, Steve elaborated. "Clint needed a lift to the top of a building and Tony was busy, so he asked Hulk."

"When I got up there," Clint finished. "I said, 'Thanks pal. You can go smash now." So he calls me Pal."

"And you, Captain Rogers?"

Steve smirked. "Tony sarcastically calls me sir when I use what has been dubbed my 'Captain Voice' and Hulk, taking his cues from Stark, calls me Sir too."

There was silence in the room. "Bottom line," Steve said, turning to the Council and crossing his arms. "You're wrong about Hulk. He's part of our team, and that means you have to go through us to get him."

"Not your best plan," Tony announced, holding up his phone and gleefully pressing a button. "Considering I have now hacked all of your personal records, your military records, your financial records, et cetera and I, bitch and gentlefucks, am one vindictive bastard."

With another flourish, he cut the connection and grinned at Bruce. "Anyone else starving?"

Ignorant

"Captain, a word?" Steve sighed, trying not to roll his eyes at the director. Waving the team on, he turned back. Fury gestured helplessly at the now empty conference room. "What the hell was that, back there?"

Tired, hungry, and exceedingly fed up with bureaucracy in general, Steve found his patience worn thin. "What was what, Director?"

Fury looked slightly taken aback and more than a little irritated. "That stunt, that's what."

"It wasn't a stunt," Steve replied firmly. "You gave me a group of loners and told me to make them a team. I have done that. Don't get pissed because I did."

Turning smartly on his heel, he walked away and did not look back. Fury was still for a few minutes, a small smile pulling at the corners of his lips. "Oh Phil," he murmured. "You should see them now."

Cold

"What the hell is going on?" Natasha glanced up from her book, one brow raised in question. Tony was standing in the middle of the lounge, frowning up at the ceiling. "This is the second time in an hour that's it's been too hot to function."

"Oh," she said, turning back to her novel. When Tony's eyes began to bore holes in the side of her face, she sighed. "It's the nightly thermostat war," she explained. "You usually miss it because you're in the lab."

Tony crossed his arms, narrowing his eyes at her. "What thermostat war?"

"Thor is the last one to bed, usually, and because he is hot natured, he turns the thermostat down before he goes to sleep. Bruce and Hulk don't like being cold, so when their room gets chilly, Bruce will go turn the temperature up. Clint needs to sleep under piles of blankets, and Bruce's change makes him sweat, so he cranks it down. When it gets cold again, that reminds Steve of the Arctic and he gets up to change it again, which starts the cycle all over."

Tony frowned. "Don't they ever talk about this with each other?"

Natasha snorted. "Really?"

"Fair point," Tony muttered rolling his eyes. Fixing his gaze upstairs again, he stood for a few moments. "Give me a couple of days."

It took him six days and more wiring than he'd anticipated, but every room had an individual thermostat and vent system by the end of the week. No one said thank you to his face, but if there was a new copy of Scientific America, or set of wrenches, or extra bottle of scotch, or his four-one-fives were mysteriously completed, he knew who had done it, and that was enough.

Disappear

It took time.

It took a lot of time, in truth. It ended up taking less time than Steve had thought it would, in his darker moments. Black moods when he and Tony butted heads, Clint retreated into himself, Thor stared longingly at the stars, Natasha hid her thoughts behind a mask, and Bruce secretly searched for airplane tickets to far away destinations like Togo and the Niger. But eventually, finally, the walls were down. The barriers were dropped, the prejudices gone like water under the proverbial bridge, and the six of them stood together.

One unit.

A team.

The Avengers.

Fin.