Author's Note: Sorry, another short chapter. I promise the next one will be longer.

xxxx

Clint found them standing near a picnic table on the beach. The table was covered in a drop cloth and Bruce and Darcy were painting their birdhouses. When Clint got close enough, Bruce painted Clint's nose blue with the tip of his brush. "Are you part Smurf?"

Darcy said, "I think yellow would go nice with that blue."

"Don't you paint me," said Clint.

"Why not?" said Bruce, who had paint all over his clothes and a smudge or two on his face. "Are you going to stop me?"

"I'm not Tony," said Clint. "I don't play your games."

"Tony was the one who wanted me on his lap," said Bruce. "I just told him no."

Clint said, "You two are acting like kids."

"Tony has been coming onto me for months and I made it quite clear to him that I would never sleep with him," explained Bruce. "However, if he wanted to shower me with gifts in the hopes that I would change my mind, that was his problem."

"But you were letting him hug and kiss you until this week," said Clint.

"Darcy called me Stark's boytoy," said Bruce. "I'm nobody's boytoy. I can't control that, when the other guy becomes me, what's left of my ripped clothes falls off, but I don't have to look for other ways to be embarrassed."

"Are you going to pay for your lab space then?"

"No way. Tony pays me a good salary for my work. We are very close to patenting a few products that I'm not in the position to divulge." A high temperature superconductor and few less exciting products that also had high-earning potential. Top secret stuff. Bruce was doing real science and getting pay for it. "He has rooms for all the Avengers in the tower. You guys just never used them. Because I chose to live in the room Tony designated for me doesn't make me his mistress or boytoy."

Clint said, "Actually, it does."

"I don't sleep in his bed or even in the penthouse. My apartment is on the same floor as my lab."

"Tony has access to you 24/7."

"You act like I have a choice," said Bruce. "Nat was the one who informed me that S.H.I.E.L.D. kept governments/organizations from capturing me. I refuse to play by Fury's rules and either he puts me in a cage or he lets somebody else try. And nobody wants that."

"Do you really think Fury would let me go?" said Clint. "We're more alike then you think. Ms. Lewis, you aren't hearing this."

"I heard nothing. I'm just innocently painting my birdhouse a pretty yellow." Darcy said talking with her hands while holding her paintbrush, accidentally painting a yellow strip down Clint's shirt. "Sorry. It should wash off."

After dropping her paintbrush onto the drop cloth, Darcy grabbed an empty bucket and ran to the ocean to fill it with water than returned with the bucket.

"Don't you pour that on me." Clint took a towel and dipped it into the water to wash his nose. Then he started washing his shirt with the same towel.

Bruce started laughing. "You're getting the blue into the yellow. People are going to think I'm contagious."

"Is my face clean?" asked Clint.

Darcy touched his face with her paint-covered hands. "All better."

Bruce started laughing even harder.

"I'm going back to the house to wash up properly," said Clint.

Darcy was giggling so hard that she was panting.

"You really shouldn't do that." Then Bruce whispered in her ear. "He's an assassin."

"I have the Hulk to protect me," said Darcy, still giggling. "You painted his nose first."

"The other Avengers usually let me get my way because they rather not deal with the other guy. And I only use my advantage on little things since Fury has no problems with putting me in a cage. Unlike Tony, I know where to draw the line."

"Or paint it."