As far as cupcake making with Clint went, he literally sat there, observed, and sometimes ate the ugly cupcakes, sometimes snuck in the good looking ones too.

She had parted from Bucky reluctantly, but had mentioned that she'd see him later. He said they'd finish their conversation, and she tried not to be nervous about that, but apparently super spies are all about body language - because he broke the tension by challenging her to a cupcake-off, which was about as much competition to her as arm wrestling to him.

Still, she'd give him points for trying.

"Alright," Clint said, kind of amused. "What's with the face?"

"What face?" she asked her vanilla raspberry swirl. Since Tony was such a fan, he'd stocked every flavor and every color and all sorts of neat decorating tools on her floor, in the communal kitchen, along with some books on the subject signed to her by culinary royalty, because Tony Stark did not half ass anything. "I don't have a face."

"You look like you want to punch your cupcakes." he mused. "Wanna talk about it?"

"I'm just thinking." she muttered.

"No, your thinking face and your cupcake punching face are two different things." he pointed at her, swirled his finger around. "You're not upset about having to leave Buck-ee, are you?"

"I'm not upset." she said, but she was, and he knew it. Judging by the raised eyebrows, he wasn't going to roll over and let it slide, either, so she focused on the icing bag in her hands and carefully sculpted a dollop of jam onto the tiny cake. "I was thinking about Tony."

"What about him?" it may have come out just a touch too quick. His resting face was cold cut and kind of intimidating, and she could never read it to guess if he was putting it on or just at ease.

"I said something to him, and I can't figure out what it is that made him... freak out."

"Yeah, that was a little confusing." he agreed, but didn't offer anything to the contrary.

"I don't know." she tilted the bag, pinching the top, making sure it didn't leak everywhere. "I might make him something special to make him feel better. Something edible."

Clint eyed the new batch of cupcakes with interest.

"You never make me something special."

She smacked his hand when he reached for one, gave him a sweet smile.

"So, Mr. Spy Man. I'll give you two warm cupcakes and do a coffee flavored batch if you take Tony a special one and... do a little... spy work. Not a lot! Just a little." she held up a thumb and forefinger to indicate the littleness of his spying.

He arched a brow, leaned his forearms on the counter with interest.

"What kind of spy work are we talking, here, Lewis?"

"I just want you to maybe see if you can talk to Tony about why he was - well, why he is, you know, like he is, with me. Do you think-?" she put her eyes down, frowning. "Maybe I'm looking too much into it, but... He gets really shifty whenever I mention my dad. And everyone knows that he's had like, dozens of nannies to bring him up, and butlers, and his father and mother were always away, when he was growing up, so I thought - do you think he's like, stepping up to the plate? Like, trying to parent me, a little?"

Clint's blink was very slow.

"Actually, cuppy cake, I think that might be exactly what he's doing." he said, smiling a little. "You're a sharp one, never let anyone tell you any different."

Something in her brain was warring with her, an annoying internal beep; like correct results had not yet been processed, that she needed additional data. But she didn't say anything, just returning Clint's entirely too-small smile, and loading up the nicest of her vanilla swirl cupcakes for Tony onto a plate.

"I'll be back shortly," he said, leaning over the counter to give her temple a quick kiss. "Stop scowling, that's my job."

"Are you going to tell her?"

Shit.

"Tell who what?"

Tony looked up from the new tech he was going to attach to Barnes, the internal workings of which he was painstakingly going over for the second time himself before he had JARVIS run a scan to ensure that everything was going to mesh smoothly. Barton was standing with a plate of cupcakes, shoulder leaning against a wall, eyes focused on him. He tried, for a moment, to smirk, to be as Barton would expect-

"Are you going to tell Darcy you're her father?"

The smirk fell off his face. He put his tools down, tugged off his gloves, shoving his goggles down on his neck.

"How did you figure it out?"

"I'm called Hawkeye for a reason. You two are similar enough, with the mechanical engineering and the eureka face, and the sassiness." he tapped his nose at him, sauntering across the room sliding the plate down on the desk. Two very defined arms folded across his chest, and he continued to stare without blinking, that creepy sniper intense look that made Tony nervous for reasons he didn't want to examine too closely. "But you reacting to her calling you dad was what did it. Even she's onto you, now, and it won't take her much longer to put the pieces together. So. Are you going to tell her you're her father, or do you want me to do it?"

"I'm not her father, though, am I? What does she need me for?" his smile was twisted, nasty, on the archer. "When she's got you?"

Clint rolled his eyes, breaking the tension.

"You know, for a genius," he said bluntly. "Not so genius."

"She doesn't want a father." Tony retorted.

"Not when she's convinced he's a crack head in the mid-west, she doesn't." Clint reminded him. "The kid has always wanted to know her father, despite the noise she makes. Confirming he's amounted to nothing and nobody is not something she wants confirmed, is the problem. She will want to know when it's you."

"She doesn't need to know it's me, especially because it is me," Tony bit back. "And for good reason."

"What reason is that?"

"Because I am a genius," he said, staring right back, dark eyes glittering dangerously. Clint tilted his head at the lift to the billionaire's chin, the ram-rod straight spine. "And this could be very dangerous for her, all variables considered. I've already considered the consequences, and I've done the pros and cons. She doesn't need to know, Barton, and I swear, if you tell her, I will make your life very, very difficult."

"You're threatening me? Really." Clint was unimpressed with the show of machismo. "Because I seriously think I can take you down before you can even get the suit on. Just because I don't have my bow doesn't make me any less weaponized."

"I won't lift a finger to you, but by the time I'm done, I won't have to." his voice had taken a dark tenor, vibrating with implied malice. "There are other ways to ruin a person. Don't make me get creative."

There was a heated silence. Clint was prepared to use the stapler next to his hand if Tony decided to call on the suit. Instead, the genius reached over, took a cupcake, and grumpily chewed on it. His eyes rolled up into his head.

"God, these are good."

"No kidding." he took one, leaning his hip on the table, pulling off a chunk to shove in his mouth. They chewed in companionable silence, then Clint ate more of his cupcake. "I won't tell her. But you should. How long have you known?"

Tony swallowed, considered the cake in his hand.

"Since she was in London." he looked up at Clint who was eating, but watching him. "I got an email from someone about kidnapping my daughter while they were on foreign ground, and had to look around for proof. I'm not on her birth certificate, there was only - a brief interlude, with her mother. They sent me her DNA. I did the test."

"And the kidnapper?"

"Was paid two hundred thousand dollars in cash and went quiet. Didn't even see it coming, just ended up taking the money and running. We were baiting them to see if they tried again for more, figure out the game, but they didn't. It was probably a stroke of luck, nothing real."

The look on Clint's face, though, that made Tony think twice.

"Who else knows?"

"Bruce, without my permission." Tony offered. "I told Pepper just after Darcy moved in. Jane was the first to figure it out, and she was close to the kid, so I kept in touch to keep an eye on it. Friendship evolved."

"How long has Foster known?"

"Weeks. Just before we picked everyone up from New Mexico." he swallowed, scrunched his nose. "She told Thor not too long ago, and they both think I should tell her, too."

"Why don't you?"

"Barton, imagine you find out you have a kid." his voice was whip-crack sharp, and Clint was reminded that although Tony wasn't physically a match for him, he was intellectually a giant. "A kid half as bright and beautiful and innocent as Darcy. Imagine she idolizes you, but hates her unknown father, is used to hating him. Imagine trying to tell yourself that her ignorance isn't your bliss."

"You're letting her live a lie." Clint warned him. "Darcy likes to know things. She gets it from you."

Tony winced, but shook his head to cover it.

"You know what else she'll get from me? Friendship." he took a big bite of the cake, smearing jam on his chin. "She's safer this way. I had a hundred and ten enemies before I was Iron Man, you don't think they'll stop at nothing to get a little pay back on me, through her? You want her to be a bigger target than she already is?"

"Neither you, nor I, would let anything happen to her." Clint said, flatly. "But she is a smart girl. And you've seen what happens when she feels lied to by people she loves, so. When she learns the truth, are you gonna be ready for the fall out?"

"She won't." Tony warned. "There's no proof. I've disconnected the computer I ever did the paternity test on, recycled it into car parts for good measure. I've searched high and low for anything to link us otherwise, and there's nothing to prove I even knew her mother aside from a very, very short meeting around about the right time. Darcy'll settle for nothing less than a DNA test, and I won't give it."

He considered trying to say 'no' to Darcy, and corrected himself.

"Alright, I'll give it, but I'll rig the machine to lie to her."

There was a pause.

"How did it happen, Stark?" Clint muttered. "How did you let it happen?"

"Look, twenty-odd years ago wasn't the best time for my higher brain functions. Cocaine is a hell of a drug." he wiped the jam off his chin, took a bigger bite. "Her mother was supposed to be my live-in sober companion. Except I may or may not have gotten her into some... recreational pills and powders. The last I heard, she failed a drug test at her work and fell off the map."

Clint shut his eyes.

"You did that, to her?" he said, darkly.

"Did what? Got her pregnant?" Tony scoffed. "I'm pretty sure we just had this conversation."

"Got her on the drugs." Clint's eyes flew open, all sniper intensity aimed at Tony once more, studying him like he was looking for the point to put the bullet in. "You put Darcy's mother on the drugs - you did that? You were that gateway?"

And even if Tony's genius wasn't people compatible, he could sense when there was more to something than he was being told.

"What happened?"

"I don't know how nothing was wrong with Darcy when she was born, no infant withdrawal, nothing, like her mother hadn't been taking the whole time she was pregnant. She was only allowed to keep the kid because by the time they did the tests, the drugs were outta her system and no one was the wiser."

Tony looked at the cupcake in his hands, frowned.

"What do you know?"

"Darcy's upbringing was fuckin' pitiful, and you're talking to a guy who got bull whipped in a circus as a child. Neither of us know how she survived. That would've been all Darcy taking care of herself, but I can't figure out how an infant could cook her own food, do her homework, feed her mother, make sure she didn't die in her sleep, survive. She told me she did the deals, when her mother wasn't sober enough."

"Deals." Tony repeated, eyes narrowing. "The drug deals?"

"What other deals do you think I mean?" Clint snapped. "Darcy thinks that maybe she got clean, for a while, managed to raise her up half sober until she could do things for herself. But I checked - you feel free to do the same - there was no rehab, no police records, and coke's not exactly a drug you ween off of by yourself, and not by halves."

"Amen." Tony said, lowly.

Clint put his half eaten cupcake down on the plate behind him, jaw clenching.

"You tell her soon, Stark. Before she figures it out." he started walking from the lab. "Then she'll hate both of us."