Drinking Games

by Liliththestormgoddess

Summary: When the Avengers decide to drink, it really isn't all that much of a party. Steve can't get drunk, no alcohol on earth is enough get Thor tipsy, Natasha can hold her liquor very well, and Clint and Bruce just don't drink. In short, they basically all just watch Tony make a fool of himself.

Warnings: Lots of angst.

Disclaimer: I don't own the Avengers or Marvel. Middle of the Night lyrics belongs to Stabilo.

I've been running from these demons for most of my life,

But I still feel them watching me in the middle of the night.

~Middle of the Night by Stabilo

Steve idly swirled the glass in his hands. It was his fourth glass and although there was really no point to drinking, he was basically just drinking on principle now.

As he watched Tony stagger around laughing loudly about something quite mundane, he thought about the last time he'd had a drink. Really had a drink.

He'd been in the army, surrounded by his best friends. They drank when they came back from successful missions, toasting one another and drinking until the sun came up. He hadn't been able to get drunk then either, but he'd been surrounded by his friends, and it gave him the same warm feeling.

But now everyone was gone. His gut tightened and he felt quite sick. The liquid in his hands brought his mind back to the night that Bucky had died. He'd nearly lost it then, and if it hadn't been for the serum running through his body, he doubted that he'd have lasted the day. Alcohol had refused to provide solace to him, just as it refused to now.

He looked down at his glass and couldn't help but wish once again that he was in his own time.

Midgardians had strangely weak tastes in drinks, Thor mused as he finished his seventh drink of the night. The mead back on Asgard would probably have tossed him around by now, but the substance he was drinking now didn't even begin to affect him.

He remembered all the celebrations he used to attend, quite regularly, back on Asgard. The feasts were something to behold…and the merriment! Oh, how they could sing and dance for hours on end, until the sun was well into the sky. Loki never wanted to attend those parties, Thor knew, but he dragged him along anyways, and Thor's night was complete when he saw the corners of his brother's mouth twitch upward. That was his only admission that he was enjoying himself, but Thor knew him better than that.

He frowned down at the floor, his thoughts now consumed by his estranged brother. He still couldn't understand the things that his brother had done. What had gone wrong? What happened to the brother who used to joke with him and play pranks with him and sneak around in the middle of the night? Where was the brother who was quick to step up and weave together such a clever lie when their father caught them doing what they ought not to be doing?

Thor looked sadly at his glass and couldn't help but wish that things would go back to the way they once were.

Natasha watched Tony's antics with the ghost of a smile on her lips. She took another sip of the bottle of vodka she held and revelled in the warmth it brought to her body. It wasn't her first bottle, but she wasn't even close to getting drunk.

Natasha was very good at holding her liquor, as the rest of the Avengers had soon discovered. She could drink all of them (except for Steve and Thor, but even then, she could give them a run for their money) under the table. It had been part of her training growing up, to learn to hold her alcohol so that she could seduce and kill men without compromising herself. It had, indeed, been very beneficial to her work over the years, except for the fact that she never found joy or pleasure in drinking. Drinking was for business. Drinking was for fools.

But there were moments like these, moments when she wasn't working and wasn't seducing, that she looked into her glass and wished that maybe things had worked out a little differently.

Clint took another slow, half sip from his beer. He didn't enjoy the taste in any way, but it was something for him to hold. Something that social protocol had dictated that he do in these situations. So he sat on the couch beside Natasha, nursing his first beer. It would be the only beer he would have tonight, and he probably wouldn't even finish it.

He never drank because he hated what it did to people. How it clouded all their senses and made them do stupid things. As an assassin, he valued his senses and was always at risk if they ever dulled or if his brain wasn't working at full power.

He hated how it made people do stupid things; like drinking and driving. He couldn't stand the fact that alcohol had been the major factor in his parent's death. He'd been very young when they were killed in a car accident, but it had turned his whole world upside down. It had sent him and his brother into a downward spiral. He never wanted to be responsible for anything like that. He never wanted to cause harm like that, to be responsible for someone else's demise because of his own stupidity.

Clint picked at the label of his beer and couldn't help but think of how different things could have been.

Bruce sighed from his seat on the couch next to the two assassins. In comparison to the others, he did not have any sort of alcohol in his hands, but it didn't bother him much. He'd never been a drinker, even when he was younger. He preferred to occupy his time with experiments and figures and never really found the time to 'go out'. Being somewhat of a loner had never helped that either.

But ever since his gamma accident, he adamantly refused to touch anything of the sort. The risk of losing control and turning into the Other Guy was too high. Nothing, he felt, was worth that risk. The lives of others were not worth the risk of him enjoying a glass of scotch.

There wasn't a moment when he didn't think about that one mistake. The one mistake that had cost him his career, his reputation, and in many ways, his life. And ultimately, it had cost him Betty.

With another sigh, he lowered his head to stare at his hands, wishing, not for the first time, that he could go back and change it all.

Tony really wasn't sure what he was drinking anymore. Hell, he probably couldn't even tell up from down anymore. But that was the whole point, wasn't it? To get fall-down drunk so that you didn't have to remember?

It had been one hell of a day, and he was pretty sure he deserved an award for not screaming. Everything, everything reminded him of Afghanistan. The world was determined to bring him to his knees.

Well, ha, he said to the world. Because if there was one thing that Tony Stark was good at, it was not doing what anyone wanted.

And as he knocked back the next glass, that one small area in the back of his mind that was still thinking about darkness and caves and missiles was finally silenced.