Author's Note: Ok, WAAAAY longer delay than I expected. But I was split from my partner at work, and since he was a lot of the inspiration (along with the others I worked with) for my writing, I didn't have the heart to work in anything that reminded me of them. So. Here's my Christmas gift to fanfic, and I hope it's worth the wait. I like it, but it seems rushed, despite the 3000 word count. Happy Holidays, everyone!

"It's the freakin' Valiant!" Travis said. Actually, to be perfectly honest, it was more of a girlish squeal, like that of a Justin Bieber fan on YouTube.

Wes simply rolled his eyes, completely bored with the helicarrier staff around him. "Yes, Travis, it's the Valiant. The glass is thick, but I think I'm beginning to see some cracks. Tone it down."

Travis resorted to hopping up and down while grabbing onto Wes's shirt sleeve. He didn't care if he was acting like he was two years old. His partner was a part of the Avengers, and he was standing in the middle of the Valiant's bridge. Well, off to one side, out of the way of everyone.

"Travis! Let go of me," Wes growled, trying to wrench his arm away from his partner.

"Did I miss a memo? Is today bring your child to work day?" a tall, leggy brunette asked, her arms folded across her chest and a blue tooth attached to one ear.

"You can thank Steve for this, Agent Hill," Wes said coolly. "It's either him geek out here, or him geek out at the precinct where everyone else can hear and see him spouting off about the team."

"Stark is looking for you, by the way. He says to send you to the lab as soon as you'd arrived," Agent Hill informed, smirking.

Wes rolled his eyes. "What the hell does he want now?"

Agent Hill shrugged. "I'm sure I don't know. You're supposed to be his mentor. Maybe he needs some mentoring."

Travis glanced suspiciously between the two agents (his partner was a freaking S.H.I.E.L.D. agent!), trying to decipher what the hell that meant. "Mentor?" he echoed.

"Your partner didn't tell you? How he came to be a part of S.H.I.E.L.D?" Hill asked, smirk broadening into a Cheshire Cat grin. "He met Stark –"

"Another word, Agent Hill, and I'll see to it that Stark reprograms all of your media devices to play nothing but anime porn. Loudly. To the whole helicarrier," Wes said quietly. "And you know he will, just because it's evil and juvenile."

Agent Hill's mouth snapped shut, turning beet red as she did so.

"Thought so. Come on, Travis." Wes grabbed Travis by his elbow and led him towards he turbo lift they'd arrived in.

"What's she talking about? How did you wind up in S.H.I.E.L.D? And why don't you want her to tell me?" Travis asked as Wes punched in a sequence of numbers, sending the lift down a couple floors.

"Because it's really not that interesting," Wes said. "Very boring."

"If it was just boring, you wouldn't care if anyone told me."

"It would bore me to death," Wes assured dryly as the lift doors opened into a laboratory that seemed to stretch for miles in every direction. It had technology that looked like it belonged on the USS Enterprise instead of in modern day. Transparent Plexiglas monitor screens hung from the ceiling, while work benches were covered in spare parts and tools. Travis had to squash the impulse to touch everything because this was where Iron Man worked. Surprisingly, it looked empty of human life.

"What would?" a voice piped up from the corner. A young, thin man, not nearly as impressive as any of the other team members, sat playing with one of the screens while scribbling down notes on a pad of paper balanced precariously on a knee. He glanced up as they walked in, pushing his glasses up onto the bridge of his nose from where they slid down. Thick, tousled hair stood up in every direction, and his thumbs were pushed through holes in his shirt sleeves. He looked barely out of high school, with baggy pants, barely tied sneakers, and a frame entirely too bendy, given the position he was sitting in and finding balance.

"Peter?" Wes said, obviously surprised as he spotted the young man. Then his whole face lit up. "Peter! What're you doing here, man? Don't you have finals this week?"

Peter smiled. "No, next week. New York public is a week off from California. So Tony invited me out the Valiant 'cause I've only ever been to the tower in New York. Said if I really wanted to be part of the team, it was mandatory."

"So instead of studying, you're out with a billionaire playboy in LA," Wes said. Travis could tell he was trying to be disapproving, but whoever the hell this kid was, Wes obviously had a soft spot for.

Peter shrugged, unable to keep the smirk off his face. "You forgot the genius part," he said.

"And the philanthropist bit!"

"Good thing he left out modest too…"

Two more voices chimed in from beneath a piece of equipment in the back corner. Travis already met Bruce, but there…smudged with grease and looking like he'd almost singed his eyebrows off at some point in the recent past…was the Man himself. Tony Stark. The Tony Stark. Before Travis even managed a step in Tony's direction, however, Wes snagged the back of his jacket.

"Don't…you…dare," Wes growled. "He doesn't need any more ego boosting."

"You brought someone to the Valiant?" Tony asked, failing at hiding a smile. "I didn't even know you had friends in civilian land."

"He's not a friend; he's my partner at work. You know this, because you can't keep your grimy cyber fingers out of personnel files if your life depended on it." Wes gestured towards Travis. "Travis Marks, Tony Stark. Iron Man and bane of my existence on my weekends."

Tony went to offer Travis a blueberry from the vacuum sealed pack he normally carried with him in the lab, but pulled it back as he raised an eyebrow. "I'm not sure if he should have any more sugar. He looks like he's about to have a heart attack on the spot."

"Nice to see I don't even warrant a 'hey, who's that kid in the corner'," Peter said dryly, going back to his book.

"Aw, we feeling a little left out of the group, Spidey? Should we have a group hug?" Tony asked, making an exaggerated frown.

It wasn't until that moment that Travis realized why the kid looked like he was sitting in such an awkward position. He wasn't actually sitting on anything. He was actually sitting on the wall Travis thought he was leaning against, stuck there like a…spider.

"Don't touch me," Peter warned, staying where he was. "Or I get webbing in your armor again."

Tony smiled at that, his arms going back down to his sides. "That was worse than gum. I still haven't figured out how you do that."

"That's because it has nothing to do with mechanics, computers or machines. It's chemistry and biology and intuition," Peter replied. "If you'd actually bothered to study the formula I gave you in relation to the arachnid-"

"NO spiders in the lab!" Tony yelled.

"Wait…you're an Avenger?" Travis asked, looking skeptically at Peter, who gave a little half wave. "Since when?"

"Since Tony and Bruce decided they wanted to adopt," Wes said.

"Ooo, someone is feeling snarky today," Tony said, and offered the blueberry bag to Wes, who surprisingly took one.

"Peter has been here ever since a SNAFU in New York required a bit of brains not mechanically inclined, but more towards bio technology and cross species genetics. And he's not official just yet, since he's not legally old enough to vote," Wes explained, smiling at the frown on Tony's face.

"I would've eventually figured it out," Tony sniffed indignantly.

Peter and Wes shared a skeptical look, before Peter turned back to Stark. "Oh? And exactly how is it that the decay rate algorithm works? And remind me again how I construct a bio material cable that can mimic the effects of spider webbing and still degrade naturally over the course of an hour?"

"Don't you have homework?" Tony growled.

"I can multitask," Peter said.

Tony pointed to Bruce, who raised his eyebrows innocently. "What?"

"This is your influence, Banner," Tony accused.

"Mine?" Bruce retorted. "How is it mine? Pretty sure this is the child your mother cursed you with."

"Thought you could escape me by not having any of your own," Peter said, extending fingers towards Tony as if they were claws. "Muwahahahahaha…"

Travis immediately felt slightly jealous at the easy banter between the four of them. This was his partner, his friend, who'd he known for close to a decade. And he hadn't been this relaxed, or this entertaining, since Pac-man died. How were these guys any different? Yeah, they were the Avengers, but…right now they were just friends. And they looked like better friends than Travis and Wes ever were.

"So how did you all meet? I mean, not you guys, 'cause that was all over the news with the crazy crap in New York, but how did Wes of all people become a member of S.H.I.E.L.D?" Travis asked. "He's not exactly social, and last I knew, he wasn't even all that fond of computers."

"Tony picked him," Peter said, earning a glare from Wes. "What?" he shrugged. "That's how he tells it."

"Is it now…" Wes said, turning back to Tony who smiled brilliantly. "Is that how you remember it?"

"Like your version is so much better," Tony retorted, pulling back his bag of blueberries. "No more treats for you."

"Tony and I met in court actually," Wes said, mouth twitching in what Travis assumed would be a smile for his partner.

"You were his lawyer? Damn, man, I knew you were good, but I didn't think you were that good," Travis whistled.

"No, no…I wasn't defending him. We weren't even part of the same case. We were part of sentencing," Wes explained.

That thought made Travis come to a screeching mental halt. "Wait…what?"

"Both of us were in the court house the same day, for the same reason, and wound up with the same punishment, even though it was two separate incidents," Wes said.

"Community service?" Travis suggested.

"Anger management," Tony said. "I hit a meter man's car with a golf club when he towed my Ferrari."

"And I may have punched another lawyer after a particularly bad case," Wes said. "Long story short, we were no better than you and I are in class, except neither of us wanted to be there and made no attempts to participate. So we sat in the back, MST3K'ing the entire meeting, and found out we actually had a few common interests."

"Like cars. Did you know that Wes here can take apart the engine of a Mach 1 almost as fast as I can, AND put it back together?" Tony said. "Thing of beauty."

"So you bonded with Iron Man over cars and anger management?" Travis asked.

"Tony wasn't Iron Man at the time. This was actually a year or two before all of it," Wes explained. "I think he only stayed friendly because he likes to annoy me. A little like you."

"You're just too fun to annoy," Tony quipped. "I wasn't willing to leave behind my favorite toy."

"Seriously?" Travis asked. "That's the whole story?"

"Sorry I'm not more of a damsel in distress," Wes said, rolling his eyes. "I told you it was a boring story."

"So you just what, slowly got into computers? Is that why you work here?"

"Wes isn't a computer tech," Peter said, raising an eyebrow as if it was the weirdest statement he could've said. "He's a helicarrier tech."

"What's the difference?" Travis asked, and noted how Wes was suddenly looking everywhere except at the others while the base of his neck was flushing scarlet. Apparently there was a huge difference.

"He operates, repairs and maintains the engines and integrity of the ship," Bruce said, smiling, sounding as if he was reciting a job description from . "He only monitors it from a computer on the bridge."

"He helped design the Valiant," Peter said. "Tony put in a good word for him when S.H.I.E.L.D was originally building it, and Tony thought they were doing it wrong."

"It looked horrible. Like an actual aircraft carrier but in the sky. Terrible plan. Hideous," Tony confirmed. "I wasn't about to have a super-secret base of operations in an ugly tin can with no windows." He shuddered at the thought. "They were going to have the Honda Civic equivalent in the air. I wanted nothing less than Maserati."

Travis let out an appreciative whistle. Tony Stark asked his partner to design the Avengers' home base? That was…epic. Which meant…the very room he was standing in, and all he'd seen, Wes had a hand in designing it? No wonder the man was OCD and a perfectionist. His version of a hobby was building and designing the most high tech piece of weaponry that the world had seen outside of the Iron Man suit.

"Enough oohing and awing over the ship," Tony said. "Let's go destroy something, shall we? This is the first time Wes has ever given me permission to do anything in 'his' town."

"I still have studying to do," Peter said idly, but there was no real protest in it. Wes grabbed him round the shoulder in a brotherly hug as he dragged him out of the door of the lab.

"Peter, you're at a doctorate level of education in high school. If you're studying, we've been grossly mislead about the state of public education in New York City," Wes said, Tony on the other side of the teenager.

"Time to misspend some youth," Tony agreed.

The lab door slid shut behind them, leaving Bruce and Travis in the lab alone.

"You're not going?" Travis asked curiously.

Bruce shook his head, settling his glasses down on the bridge of his nose again. "I still don't have quite the same level of confidence in the Other Guy that Tony does."

"So is that really what happened to get Wes on the Valiant?" Travis asked.

"Mostly," Bruce said. "Why?"

"It just seems so…mundane."

Bruce shrugged. "Not everything is this epic story. Sometimes people are just really good friends through average circumstances."

A niggling thought struck Travis. "Wait…Tony and Wes were friends before Iron Man, right?"

Bruce nodded, holding up a miniscule piece of machinery in front of him as he fiddled him it.

"So they were friends before and after he was a prisoner in Afghanistan," Travis reasoned.

"Tony doesn't like to talk about it," Bruce said. "But yes, they were."

Travis thought for a moment. "There was a period right after we started working together that Wes suddenly disappeared on leave. Captain said it was a family emergency, but his wife was fine and he doesn't speak to his other family members. When he came back, he looked awful. Said he had a friend who was severely injured and didn't want to talk to anyone, and his girlfriend called him asking for help. I wonder…if that was Tony…"

Bruce sighed, putting down the bit of machinery. "I don't like prying into other's lives, mostly because I don't like when others interfere with mine. But if what you're wondering is if they're better friends than you two are, the answer is no. They're just a different kind. Tony and Wes have similar backgrounds, and after Tony changed, Wes was his only friend who stood by him afterwards when things went sideways. Besides Happy and Pepper, anyways. In case you haven't picked up on it, both of them have rather severe trust issues when it comes to others." Bruce cocked his head to the side. "Except when it comes to you. Wes trusts you, and Tony respects that."

Travis felt his ears turn red at the compliment.

"TRAVIS!"

"Looks like you're missed. Go have fun. Things are never dull when Tony is around." Bruce waved him out. "Steve might join you guys later."

Travis turned out of the lab just in time to hear the beginnings of an argument between Tony and Wes…and it sounded like it might be a good one.

"TONY! WHAT THE HELL DID YOU DO TO THE FIGHTER!?"

"It's improved! I don't know what your complaint is."

"Why does it look like you had it on Pimp My Ride?! IS THAT LEOPARD PRINT!?"

"It's more us, don't you think?"

"I'm going to choke the life out of you…"

"Money on Wes!" Peter's voice yelled above the two others.

"What? Shut up, rookie, you're fired!"

"You can't fire me, this is a volunteer position!"

"You're still fired!"

"Travis! Where are you when I need you?! Operation Storm Front!"

Travis couldn't help the smile as he broke out on a run in the direction of the voices. Maybe they were looking for another volunteer?

Author's Note: And a Merry Christmas/Happy Holidays to all! I apologize for the incredible delay, and the sort of mushy/odd spot to leave off. But I wanted to finish this, and between my partner and I being split up at work (and a rather serious bout of depression following) and a new work schedule AND finding out Common Law was cancelled, it was hard to get the motivation to write the last chapter of this. I apologize for the lack of Tony (I think there's a lack anyway), but there was so much other stuff going on that it seemed too much to keep adding more. So this is it! Ta da! Done! It was supposed to be a one shot…let me know what you think! Good? Bad? Indifferent? Send me a note and let me know!