This chapter is a little on the long side, but I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it! This chapter would not have been possible without the awesome input of Proclaim Thy Warrior Soul, Party-Like-A-Hawkstar (omg, I love that! .. Wait, can I use that?), Narnian Sprite, and Pharaonin, so thanks and kudos to them if you like it (but an equal share of the blame if you don't! XD)

I don't think I've ever said this about my own work, but I absolutely love this chapter, and it's thanks to input from readers who have these awesome ideas that I adore writing about. Please continue to offer suggestions if you think of any, and please review if you'd like to see this story continue, that way I'll know when this ridiculous premise has worn out its welcome. ;D

Unlikely Housemates

By: Syntyche

Day Six: It Was Too Wet To Play

9:57 a.m.

"The sun did not shine.

"It was too wet to play.

"So the hawk and I sat under quarantine,

"All that cold, cold wet day," Tony finished, and he seemed inexplicably pleased with himself as he gave Clint an encouraging raise of the eyebrows clearly intended to show that he expected a smattering of applause, perhaps, or at least an approving grin. Clint tried to oblige, to commend Tony's poetic license, but the rain beating against the large picture windows was distracting and depressing. Clint twirled the long black arrow between his fingers and sighed.

"Don't be a dingy bird, Feathers," Tony added cheerfully, with only the slightest frown at being ignored. "Be glad the bad guys are taking the day off too since we're all stuck inside like naughty children with our hands inside the nookie jar."

Clint flashed him a look that was part amused, part aggrieved. "Do you even listen to the crap that comes out of your mouth?" he demanded, an epic furrow creasing his forehead. Hawkeye was known throughout SHIELD as a man of intensity, and his furrows were both intimidating to the untrained eye and also legendary.

Tony parroted Clint's look back at him, only his furrow fell somewhat short of his mark, like an assassin aiming for the heart but only managing to wing their target in the back right knee. "I always listen to everything that both comes out of and goes into my mouth," he said seriously. He and Clint regarded each hesitantly for a moment, neither quite knowing where to take that conversation next, then Clint sighed again gustily.

"It's just … " and the archer stumbled a little awkwardly as he admitted, "I don't like being cooped up."

"What bird does?" Tony asked sagely, and Clint grimaced.

"You know I'm not really a bird, right?"

It didn't escape Clint's notice that Tony didn't bother to answer the question; the inventor-poet-playboy just grinned in his typical wolfish way and announced gleefully, "Not to worry, little hawk, the Cat in the Hat is here, and I know of lots of fun things that are funny!"

"Like not butchering Dr. Seuss?" Clint wanted to know, and yeah, the archer admitted he was being surly, but the team had been under quarantine for two full days now already and he was going just a little stir crazy: he was actually beginning to wonder if he'd sleep better if he put an arrow through his own eye socket.

"Aww, I didn't know the little Clint That Could even knew who Dr. Seuss was!" Tony remarked, sounding inordinately pleased with himself for his wordplay. "Good job, little Clint!"

Clint knew that Tony was still sulking about the naked Thor thing: the archer himself hadn't witnessed the full glory of Thor's majesty, but he had noticed that Steve blushed furiously and made tiny choking noises every time he ran into Thor into the hallways, muttering something along the lines of "… incomprehensible…"

"Thanks," Clint said dryly; he pushed himself to his feet gracefully, tucked the arrow he was toying with into the quiver slung low around his hips, and brushed his fingers on his jeans absently.

"I think I'll see what Agent Romanoff is up to," he said innocently, but Tony halted him with an excitedly upraised finger.

"Wait! I have a better idea," Tony said, his brown eyes flashing in delight. "Teambuilding day!"

Clint frowned. "How is that a better idea?"

Tony grinned. "How is that not a better idea?"

10:43 a.m.

"WOOT! Boardwalk, suckas!" Tony laughed, tossing money at Steve, the banker, who frowned at Tony's crass language but took the cash anyway, putting it neatly into the proper slots. "I'll buy it, of course," Stark announced grandly, rifling through his impressive stack of cash, "and I'm immediately building ten hotels apiece on both Boardwalk and Park Place."

"You know, this game would be much less intimidating if we weren't using real money," Bruce pointed out in his wry, soft voice that always made him sound embarrassed about whatever he was saying.

"I know," Tony agreed, "but since it belongs to yours truly, we don't need the little fake Canadian money that it comes with. Your turn, bitch!" When all sets of eyes darted to him in disbelief and Natasha went for her guns, Tony raised his hands innocently. "What? I was referring to the tiny metal dog that is the dear Captain's choice of game piece." As an aside, Tony grimaced dramatically and stage-whispered to Clint on his left: "Seriously, what dude picks the little Scottie dog?"

Steve rolled his eyes. "Thanks … or whatever." He tossed the dice with a casual flick of his wrist as if he were giving orders to them to roll exactly how he wanted them; it must have worked because he landed on Free Parking, and with only a small, barely gloating smile Steve scooped up the pile of cash in the middle of the board.

"That'll buy a lot of punching bags," Clint opined dryly and perhaps a little bitterly: his cannon piece had only missed the Free Parking space by one on his last turn, and SHIELD was still docking his pay for damages to the helicarrier. Between Clint and Bruce, they owed New York taxpayers a pretty sizable chunk of change.

"It is the fair Agent Romanoff's turn!" Thor interrupted, clearly impatient to get to his roll: his wheelbarrow had been stuck directly in jail his last two turns and the demigod feared he was falling behind his teammates in their capitalistic pursuit of land acquisition and building construction. But at least he had stopped shouting, "For Asgard!" every time he purchased a property.

Natasha snarled, throwing the dice on the board in irritation; she'd been hell to deal with the past few days: the assassin had been closest to the explosion in the villain of the week's lab that had resulted in the team's quarantine, and she'd caught some splatter. Fortunately the worst it had done - apart from contaminating them all - was turn her flaming red hair green, which displeased the Black Widow greatly (Tony's initial comment about wondering if the carpet still matched the drapes was met with a thoroughly grossed-out silence, including from Tony himself, who was rarely contrite about anything he said but really, really regretted voicing that comment aloud.)

Even without trying, Natasha rolled snake eyes, which annoyed Thor mightily since he'd been unable to roll doubles his last few times and now had to post his own bail, but he took it in good stride; it was really difficult for the hammer-wielding demigod of lightning to feel depressed while he was wearing low-riding skinny jeans, because Thor knew that he looked damn good in them.

Damn good.

"Again?" Steve questioned disbelievingly, in a hushed whisper that was supposed to be discreet but of course everybody heard. "She always rolls snake eyes."

"It's a talent," Natasha snarked, her upper lip curled in irritation as she moved her pistol and picked up the little yellow card as directed. "I'm sick of this game. It's so boring!"

"Why?" Tony interjected with a grin, "Don't want to share your Community Chest?"

He received murderous glares from the two assassins at the table, but Steve's blush was totally worth it.

1:01 p.m.

"Hide-and-seek is for children," Natasha said disdainfully. Her mood had not improved, even after they'd lunched on carrot sticks and chocolate milk and peanut butter and jelly sandwiches that Pepper had very thoughtfully cut all of the crusts off of.

"You think everything is for children," Tony retorted cheerfully. "Love. Build-a-Bears. Eating the filling out of Oreos and putting the cookie bits back in the bag - "

"That was childish," Clint put in snippily, "I really wanted some damn Oreos, not crumbly Tony leftovers."

" - footie pajamas," Tony continued, ticking items off on his fingers.

"Those garments of exceeding comfort are most certainly not only for children!" Thor remarked sulkily; after he'd been caught parading around Stark tower stark naked in the middle of the night - he was apparently unaccustomed to 'nighttime clothing' - Tony (with some artistic input from Clint) had purchased for the demigod the brightest, fuzziest, most ridiculous looking footie pajamas they could find in a size that would fit the tall warrior. Thor loved them.

"Gamma Green Hulk Hands - "

"Those are just embarrassing," Bruce said, burying his face in his regular-size hands.

"Using Cap's shield as a sled on the stairs - "

"Extremely inappropriate and dangerous," Steve added sternly, with an exceptionally judgingly parental shake of his head at the inventor and the archer, neither of whom had the good grace to even look the remotest bit ashamed. Tony actually waggled his splinted wrist at the soldier gleefully, and Clint's bright eyes stood out even more against his darkening shiner.

"My point is," Tony said, inching carefully close to the Russian assassin, "that sometimes it's okay to be childish." One of his long forefingers landed gracefully on Natasha's shoulder. "And you're it!" Then he was off, tearing gleefully down the hall in search of the perfect hiding place.

Natasha blew out a sharp breath and looked at the remaining men, all of them shuffling awkwardly. "Can you believe him?" she asked testily.

"You have to count to one hundred," Bruce said plaintively, and then he too bolted, Steve right behind him and Thor disappearing down the opposite direction with a war cry that echoed through the hallway. Natasha sighed heavily.

"Why should I be surprised at the levels of childishness, when clearly I'm living with a bunch of children?" she wondered, looking to Clint for agreement. The archer shrugged, but all he said with a grin was,

"Don't forget you have to close your eyes when you count, Nat."

2:56 p.m.

"Now this is much better," Natasha said with satisfaction as she peered over her cards at the men seated around the table. Tony was frowning into his drink, clearly wishing it would provide more excitement than it currently was, and Bruce had inadvertently been giving away all of his good hands - apparently the Hulk enjoyed poker because the scientist's eyes would flash green when he had a particularly decent set of cards, resulting in everyone else at the table immediately folding.

"I call," Natasha said, cracking the thin smile that was her version of shouting "in your face!" with some sort of unflattering Russian epithet tacked on to the end.

A chorus of groans rose up to meet her announcement.

"It isn't fair playing with you," Tony fussed. "You have the best poker face ever."

4:33 p.m.

It turned out that Steve, for all of his demure blushing about not knowing how to dance, was surprisingly good at Dance Dance Revolution. Natasha gave him a run for his money, but when the non-poker chips were down (Steve had actually been worse than Bruce at poker, something about an innate inability to lie, cheat, and deceive,) Cap really had it going on and even the Russian was breathlessly forced to concede.

Tony tossed a handful of popcorn into his mouth, supremely pleased that his Day of Teambuilding was going about as well, if not better, than he'd planned. Everyone looked more relaxed and happy, and sweaty in a good way and not an I-just-got-the-crap-kicked-out-of-me kind of way.

Everyone except …

Tony did a double-take.

"Hey, where's Feathers?" he asked suddenly, and it occurred to the assembled that the archer was indeed missing.

"I haven't seen him since hide and seek," Bruce finally commented, after thinking for a moment.

"That little bugger," Tony snarked darkly, "is not taking my hide-and-seek victory! Jarvis?"

The AI answered promptly, sounding apologetic as was its wont. "I'm sorry, sir, but Agent Barton instructed me that if you were ever to inquire as to his whereabouts, I was to inform you to … ehm … go do highly inappropriate things to yourself, sir, and leave him 'the hell alone.'"

Tony's eyebrows shot up. "Wow. That guy is serious about his hide-and-seek."

"Actually, sir," Jarvis returned, "that protocol has been in place since Agent Barton moved in."

Tony ignored that, swinging his attention back to the clustered group. "Listen up, Avengers! First person to bring down Barton gets ten grand." Tony frowned, grimly irritated; he'd been so sure he'd won the hide-and-seek game, victory was not about to be snatched from his grasp. "I. Don't. Lose," he muttered.

5:59 p.m.

"I give up!" Tony finally said. "This is friggin' ridiculous." The inventor gave Jarvis the signal to amplify his voice. "All right, birdbrain, you win!"

The vent over their heads slid back and Clint dropped down to land lightly in the middle of the group.

"Cool," he said nonchalantly.

7:08 p.m.

"Okay, everyone clear on their objectives?" Tony barked, gesturing to the floating display of the map of Stark Tower, battle zones clearly highlighted in red, safe zones in blue. "If you have any questions, now is the time!"

Steve raised his hand slowly. "What are we playing, again?" he asked tentatively.

"Humans versus Zombies!" Tony snapped back. "Next question!"

"If we're the zombies, do we actually have to eat each other?" Natasha asked dryly, clearly amused by Stark's delving deep into his character as a human team leader. His level of commitment was awesome to behold.

"No!" Tony snapped. "Never go full zombie! Next question!"

"Does our SHIELD insurance plan cover injuries sustained while playing games like this?" Bruce asked reasonably.

"Fury'll never find out so it doesn't matter!" Tony answered swiftly, clearly eager to get moving. "Anything else?"

"Do we have to play this?" Clint wanted to know; for some reason none of them had yet uncovered, Clint had an unusually strong fear of zombies (and also of being burned alive.)

"Yes!" Tony's sharp eyes settled on each member of his group: they were short only Thor, who had cheerfully agreed to be zombie number one and was currently doing whatever Thor did when he was alone that no one else in the Tower was even remotely curious about.

"Now, do I need to explain further?" Tony growled, adjusting his bright bandana and cocking his Nerf gun dramatically, "Or can we just crack on?"

11:22 p.m.

It hasn't even been a week since the Avengers all assembled at Stark Tower. One week. And now here Phil Coulson is on the doorstop, arriving just as the EMTs are leaving; they look at him and shake their collective heads, the "thank God they're your problem now" sign very clearly illuminated as they huff out.

Phil enters the lounge area just in time to hear Stark say, "Now that was a great game," and try as Phil might to keep a bland expression firmly pasted across his face, he can't keep his jaw from dropping just slightly as he takes in the six figures clumped around on couches and the floor, all with varying degrees of injuries, all with satisfied and exhausted expressions on their bruised faces. Someone had very thoughtfully tossed a blanket over Banner, who had clearly Hulked out at some point but was back to being Banner-sized now, just naked and asleep in the corner.

"Phil! S'up, man?"

Clint gives him a sunny smile, and Phil's seen Clint hyped up on painkillers enough times that he knows that's exactly what he's seeing now. Clint's holding an icepack against Natasha's shoulder; she gives Phil a thin smile too, her green-haired head nodding sleepily against the tattered t-shirt still clinging to Clint's chest.

"Hey, Phil!" Tony chirps, not bothering to lift his head from resting against the back of the couch; apparently when Tony isn't quite in his right mind it's much easier for him to remember that Phil's first name isn't "Agent."

"Did you all have a fun day?" Phil asks dryly. "Sure looks like it."

Thor raises his forehead from where his crossed arms are propped up by the table, peering at Phil through strands of stringy blonde hair. "It was a day of exceeding joviality and bonding," he comments fuzzily, dropping his head back to his arms with a contented sigh as he passes out again.

"Apparently I'm a great dancer but a horrible zombie," Rogers informs him, an odd amount of pride in his voice as he burrows deeper into his plush chair, cradling his right hand carefully. "But we won anyways. Go zombies!"

"Go zombies!" Tony giggles in agreement, eyes still closed as he pumps a fist in the air enthusiastically.

Phil had been initially put out at his new assignment as babysitter, hastily given to him after word of uncontrolled chaos at Stark Tower had reached SHIELD less than an hour ago. Fury had assured him he'd be perfect for the job: after all, Coulson kept Hawkeye and the Black Widow in line, so how hard could it be to add a few more to watch?

The handler/babysitter hides a smile as he looks at the already-snoring or almost there group. Right. How hard can it be?

Phil hands his suitcase to Tony, asks Jarvis for directions, and marches off to his new room.

OoOoOoOoOo

And this chapter is what happens with three hours' sleep, MI:4, and a pint of Ben and Jerry's Double Chocolate Fudge Brownie ice cream. Siiiiiigh. Brandt is so delicious - I need to stop writing fanfic so I have time to read it instead! Also not sure why Phil's part suddenly switched tenses, it just seemed to fit right. Please review if you liked this chapter!

Next: The team goes out for dinner, Clint celebrates an anniversary, and Tony and Clint get very, very drunk …