My apologies for the large gap in updates. This one's super long though. I've been editing this story and I am reaching the point where it is my fanfiction writing priority, so I hope to from now on update it every three weeks or so.

I do not own Marvel...

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Claire's first impression was that there was a crisis of some sort - fire alarm maybe. And no, that thought had no connection whatsoever to how she had tried to assist Bruce with the cooking the night before and accidentally caused one tiny fire. Nope.

As she sat up in her bed, she got a muddled impression of shouts and... possibly laughter? Maybe? "Jarvis?" Yawning, Claire turned on her bedside lamp the old fashion way.

"Good morning, Miss Thomas," the lightly accented british voice came through softly. "Or shall I say good night. It is currently 2.04 am. Mr Rogers has advised everyone waking up against going into the common room - the team is assembling further up in the tower. If I may, I will take you, if you step into the elevator."

Claire blinked. "Wait, as in assembling, sort of assembling? Is something wrong?" Supervillains breaking in wouldn't sound like that, surely? She'd assume burglars of any sort would try to be more quiet.

"No, Miss Thomas," Jarvis assured her the next second, "Sir and the four models he brought home are merely making a lot of noise. The noise-cancelling systems are up on his floor."

Rolling her eyes, Claire went to the elevator.

Tony was many things, several of them highly annoying, but inconsiderate was not usually one of them, and he had never woken them up in this manner before. Still, it was highly predictable that he would eventually, anyone could see that. Claire was definitely not surprised in any way.

Somewhat to her surprise, the elevator took her to the open door of the Greenroom, instead of any other spot she might have guessed at. Carefully poking her head inside, she was moderately surprised to spot Bruce, Steve, Clint and Bucky; organising a mountain of pillows and looking for all the world as if they were preparing for an epic slumber party.

Spotting her in the doorway, Clint grinned, Bruce waved, Bucky shrugged with an eyeroll and Steve nodded his welcome. "It'll be silent in here," he said by explanation, "it was Bruce's idea."

"Well, since we've all arrived..." Clint decisively pulled the door shut, leaving the room blessedly silent.

Steve looked at Bruce, slightly concerned. "You sure you're alright with this, Bruce? None of us are worried about the Hulk - nor very breakable, as Claire has her own exit - but if you mind..."

Bruce shook his head, offering Claire an extremely fuzzy blanket. "I activated emergency protocol. You'll all be able to get out by voice-recognition. Though either way... I do realise that the Hulk poses very little risk to any of you, under the circumstances. He likes you - we do know that much - and we might all benefit from me being a little less... concerned." Receiving several nods of understanding, Bruce sighed and rubbed his forehead, looking tired.

"Damn straight. We all like the green fellow," Clint assured him with a grin. "Should we not get Natasha and Pepper?" The archer then suggested suddenly, already having made a dive for the pillow-pile at this point.

Bruce and Claire shook their heads at the same time. He waved for her to go ahead and explain. "They have noise-cancelling panels of their own, for the baby's sake. Two-way, so she wouldn't wake anybody up, nor be woken by anything when they're activated..." Claire explained.

"We have them too, but only to keep noise from escaping out," Bucky remarked. Steve rolled his eyes, the reason why clear as his boyfriend continued. "Tony put them in. He said so we could have all the noisy super-solider sex we wanted without waking the entire Tower..."

"And?" Of course it was Clint who had to ask. "Do you use them?" Steve threw a pillow at him and then burrowed into the blankets, while Bucky ignored him totally. Claire doubted that they did, judging by the way they unreservedly shrugged the matter off, devoid of any embarrassment, but she didn't tell Clint.

There were a few minutes of silence, except for the rustle of duvets and blankets, as they all settled in. Worried, no doubt, that she'd get phobic about Clint (or just enjoying being hen mums as an opportunity presented itself) they all arranged themselves with the archer at one end and her at the other. She was not very worried about him any more - she was starting to get to know him better, claiming him as one of hers, too - but figured it was not the time to tell them so.

Indeed, as Claire ended up between the two super-soldiers, using Steve's surprisingly comfortable shoulder as a pillow, she decided maybe Tony should get drunk enough to forget going to his own rooms with his one-night-orgys a bit more often. This was cosy.

Say what you will about Tony, but the genius, billionaire, playboy, philanthropist did have a very well-honed ability to function faultlessly the next day, even after a full night of drinking and... well, four models almost half his age.

In fact, not one of the visiting journalists would have guessed that he had been doing anything of the sort, and they were journalists. They always thought that was what Tony Stark was doing. They practically believed as much even if they could see the man, and there was no one with him.

Tony was leading them on a well-mapped, non-private route sure to show them only exactly what he wanted them to see. Unfortunately, it was still fairly early in the morning, and Bruce had not bothered to black out the glass wall to his medical lab, leaving it's windows still transparent.

Now, no Avenger would have seen anything unsettling - nor, indeed, unusual - in the scene the reporters passed, but they did. Bruce was running analytics and scans, while Claire - his test-subject of choice for the time being - was half-asleep under the main scanner, still wrapped in one of the duvets from the night before.

This made it look uncannily, if you did not know what you were in fact looking at, as if Bruce was running some sort of tests on a corpse. Fortunately, Claire chose that very moment to move, disproving this theory. Not so fortunately, however, her movement was restricted, making it look as if she was restrained. She was no such thing, of course, but she had managed to get tangled in her duvet.

Predictably, the journalists went crazy over this, but Tony was experienced enough to have only invited a number he could easily deal with, and he did not let himself be overly bothered, merely ushering them along as Jarvis blocked out their view.

Distracted by the engineers' well-experienced ramblings about what he wanted them to know and see, Tony with obvious expertise allowing no one to go off topic, it was until the end of the tour that anybody saw Claire again.

The more mainstream reporters were half-dreaming about their scoop, half-entranced by Tony, and missed it entirely, but there was one person who managed to catch a recorded glimpse of that blond head they'd spotted in the lab before.

The by Jarvis warned CEO of Stark Industries, Virginia Potts, would later quell all questions about prisoners in Stark Tower and ridiculous ideas about certain Avengers' perspective on females and test subjects, but that one video first got truly popular with the nerds, and then went all sorts of viral anyway.

"You can do more of that mad scientist routine when you've had some more sleep." Steve Rogers could be seen saying in the footage, carrying a slight, blond figure still wrapped in a duvet.

And when the original nerds eagerly enhanced the sound, many could have sworn they heard her half-grumble in reply. "I'm not a scientist, I am a mad engineer!"