6. Where have you been, my blue-eyed son?

"Doctor Banner?" Bruce blinked at the screenful of data he'd been staring at. Three weeks, and he still wasn't entirely used to JARVIS's omnipresence. He'd gotten over jumping every time a disembodied voice addressed him from out of nowhere, at least. That was something. Being startled wasn't really on his list of healthy, calming activities.
"Yes, JARVIS?"
"You asked to be notified when the grocery delivery had arrived, sir."
"Oh, right." He checked the readout at the bottom of his screen. Ten past five already? Really? Huh. That one experiment hadbeen running a while...and he was definitely hungry. Tony might be able to survive for days without food, but Bruce preferred to pretend he wasn't superhuman. He grinned wryly as he considered that Tony mostly preferred to pretend he was. Food time, definitely. He checked everything he had currently going. What couldn't be paused could be left to keep going unattended for a few hours, so he set the computers to number-crunching and statistical analysis. One definite perk to having his own dedicated Stark lab was the analytical software, which could spot patterns that weren't strictly numerical. If he hadn't met JARVIS, he'd have said it was impossible for mere software to have hunches, but he was reformulating that opinion in the face of contradictory evidence.

He locked the lab down – it might be able to be left unattended, but that didn't mean he wanted anyone inadvertently messing with it – and headed upstairs to what Stark called "Avengertopia" and everyone else referred to as "the common area". Everyone else consisted of himself, for the most part, though Natasha had arrived a few days ago and was beginning to venture into the public spaces, and Rogers seemed to alternate between the tower and some tiny apartment in Brooklyn. Stark had included living quarters for several other people in his redesign, though, and one of the places currently taking shape in a subbasement had a suspicious resemblance to an archery range.
Shocking, really, how quickly the remodelling of several floors of a skyscraper had progressed, but Stark had the money and resources to command several construction crews around the clock. They'd swarmed the place like termites building a mound. Bruce had felt vaguely guilty.
He arrived in the state-of-the-art kitchen to be greeted by the refrigerator. That was new. Tony had been tinkering again. The man was determined to have everything perfect – he'd poured money into rebuilding Manhattan, starting with the local Middle Eastern restaurants. There had been a more than a few references to "better, stronger than before", though thankfully Pepper had talked him into only saying that in private.
"Hi, Dr. Banner!"
"Hi... sorry, what was your name?"
"Coolio, Dr. Banner!"
"Er... nice to meet you, Coolio."
"Nice to meet you too! Here's what I've got..."
Bruce suffered through an appallingly cheerful list of the fridge's contents. Butter chicken seemed like a good bet. Hopefully nobody would tease him about liking fake Indian food as much as real Indian food. He opened a cupboard, expecting to find a chopping board, and was disappointed when the cupboard turned out to contain a truly prodigious quantity of protein bars.
"Coolio, where are the chopping boards?"
"Bottom cupboards, second from the left, Dr. Banner!" chirped the refrigerator.
"Thanks."
"Happy to be of service!"

Dicing chicken breasts had never been quite so soothing before.

Unusually, the smell attracted all four of his motley housemates. Steve, in Manhattan today, followed his nose in and sat down at the counter that separated the kitchen from the more formal dining room, hooking his feet into the bar stool footrests. His hair was still damp from a shower. Natasha was next, and she set about finding out where the cutlery had moved to ("Middle set of drawers, top drawer, Miss Romanov! My pleasure! No need to thank me!" "I didn't." "No problem!") and setting places on the long counter. Tony and Pepper arrived just as Bruce was ladling the chicken over rice into bowls and setting them out. They were about to take their first bites when JARVIS interrupted.
"I beg your pardon sirs, ma'ams. Agent Barton has just entered the premises, and I have a standing instruction to inform any of you who are here when that happens."
Natasha made a noise and was gone, leaving behind a spinning bar stool and gently steaming bowl of butter chicken.
"Did she just teleport?" Tony asked the air where she'd been. "Because I've been working on that for years, and I'm pretty sure Bruce has at least looked into it, and the best anyone's been able to do so far is make a photon jump. We could totally patent that."
"I'll start drawing up the paperwork," murmured Pepper through a mouthful of chicken. "This is really good, Bruce."
Bruce took a bite. It wasn't bad at all, if he did say so himself. Steve was eyeing his plate mournfully, clearly hungry, but unwilling to eat if they were waiting for someone. Pepper clearly noticed as well. "It's all right, Steve. Go ahead and start – Natasha won't mind, and from what she's told me, Agent Barton won't either."
Natasha had talked about Agent Barton to Pepper? That was something. She was hardly an open book. Pepper was easy to talk to, though, he'd found, and Natasha was still a little wary of him.
JARVIS chimed in again. "Sirs, ma'am, Agents Barton and Romanov are in the elevator. They should reach this floor in twenty-six seconds, on my mark. Mark."
How on Earth had Natasha reached the ground floor that quickly? On second thought, Bruce decided, maybe he didn't want to know after all. He'd go with Tony's teleportation hypothesis for now.

There was a muted ping from down the hall, right on time, and a few minutes later Agent Barton appeared in the doorway. He looked... better than he had the last time Bruce had seen him, when he'd been concealing bruised eyes under sunglasses and bruised muscles under several layers of clothing and painkillers. Still tired, but according to the tracking information Tony had "borrowed" from the SHIELD mainframe, he'd been travelling a lot.
"So, I know that what with everything, proper introductions didn't really happen." His mouth tightened a bit, and Natasha stepped up beside him, a clear indication that she was on his wing and on his side. He scrubbed his hand across the back of his head.
"I'm Hawkeye. Agent Barton. You can all call me Clint, though."
None of them were quite sure what to do. It figured, thought Bruce, that when he met the last of his teammates properly for the first time, he'd be wearing a pink apron with the outline of an improbably curvy naked torso on it. Tony's choice, of course. It fit well, so he'd kept it. The silence was finally broken by Steve, who vaulted the counter and strode towards Clint, who looked, to Bruce's practiced eye, as though he wanted to bolt.
Steve stuck out a hand and said, genially, "Welcome home, Clint. It's nice to meet you."
Agent Barton's – Clint's – shoulders relaxed slightly, and Bruce was sure he caught the hint of a smile on Natasha's face as Clint reached out and shook Steve's proffered hand.
"Thanks, Cap. Nice to meet you, too." The look on his face was bemused as he gazed around, taking in the faces smiling at him, the shining kitchen, the view out of the window. "Home, huh."
"For as long as you want it," said Tony, uncharacteristically quietly.
"Well, how about that." Clint finally smiled, and Bruce was startled at how much younger he suddenly looked. "Thanks. It's good to be home."

A/N: And that's it! Thank you very much to those of you who've read the whole thing, particularly those of you who've taken the time to let me know your thoughts on it. I really appreciate it. If you're wanting to know more about what happened while Clint was away, I'm thinking about writing that as its own story. It's been a fun opening jaunt into Avengers fandom - thanks again!