January

'What are you doing, Tony?' Steve asks the man one time, when he is typing something fervently on his laptop, sitted in his favorite red armchair.

'Secret,' Tony replies in his usual tone, but he sounds distracted. Clint looks between Cap and Tony and waits patiently for the next exchange, they always seem to play the same game.

'Real secret, or you're just typing random words to annoy me with the noise since you know I can hear much better than you?'

'Something real, Cap – okay, secret, let's make it less of a secret, might be useful in case of my sudden death anytime,' Tony rambles; Clint and Cap roll their eyes and sigh in unison, 'This, my dears, is my journal. I'm making notes about how we saved the world yesterday, for the future generations. When I die, you can access the files and publish the story of the life of Tony Stark, a genius inventor et caetera… What do you say, Cap?'

'Somehow, I am not very surprised, Tony,' Steve replies disapprovingly. 'And I'm not sure I believe you. I mean, couldn't JARVIS do that for you, like he usually does almost everything?'

'You wound me,' Tony says, sounding pained. Steve sighs again and leaves. Clint grins and tries to get behind Tony's back to see what the is typing, but Tony doesn't let him see.

Clint gets to have a peek exactly a week later and it's much sooner than he expected.

Tony is doing that again – sitting in his favorite place and typing – when he gets a call from Pepper telling him that if he won't be in some meeting in ten minutes, he is going to regret that. Her voice fills the whole mansion, transmitted via JARVIS – since Tony left his phone somewhere, most likely on purpose – and even Steve cringes at her angry tone.

'Wow, you outdid yourself this time if she is that mad, hmm?' Clint teases, but Tony doesn't even spare him a glance as he scrambles to his feet, cursing, and gestures at JARVIS to have the suit ready in his workshop – and runs out.

Steve leaves, too, declaring that he is going for a run, so Clint is left alone in the room with the book he has been reading.

And Tony's laptop.

'You're stupid if you believe –' Clint starts, murmuring to himself, moving across the room soundlessly to have a glance at the computer, '– that he would leave the file – fuck.'

He did.

Clint blinks for a good half a minute, sensing a trap; JARVIS would save and close the file otherwise, right? That's what the A.I. does: think in place of his creator.

'Well, whatever,' Clint breathes and his eyes lock on yesterday's date; there are only two sentences there.

January 21st: we fought another round of those hellish bots (the whole team plus Coulson, no one injured) and I still don't have good enough intel on them; JARVIS is going to community college for that since I have the strange feeling that after five attacks every second day it won't suddenly end now, we don't even know where they come from – the signals get scrambled – and it has to happen in the middle of the negotiations that Pepper makes me attend, of course, the bad guys couldn't find a better time than a moment where I can't even spare half of the time I need to work those bots out. Plus, the reactor has been uncooperative for the last few days and I need to do the exo-system upgrade in Mark VII and Clint needs a new set of the extra-strong EMP arrows, they seem to be the best against the bots and he's run out of them, and I really feel like getting a chocolate donut but I don't even have time to breathe, not to mention to eat, and I am wasting the only ten minutes of the day I have to relax on writing this, it's kind of nice with Cap here, and with Clint –

'Wow,' Clint says, shaking his head. That's exactly like reading what Tony says: he rambles so much, but there is always some point to his speeches, even if it takes a crazy amount of patience to fish the sense out of the onslaught of words.

The arc reactor is hurting him and he hasn't said anything? That's so Tony.

And Clint can't do anything because it would be like saying hello, I read your journal-thingy. Not a good idea.

'JARVIS?'

'Yes, Mister Barton?'

'You didn't close the file on purpose, right? You don't forget or overlook anything, ever.'

'Sir didn't give me an order to close he file. Also, it is likely to be beneficial to Sir's well-being.'

'As in?'

'As in, you are likely to take action, Mister Barton, are you not? I have analyzed your behavioral patterns. You are the person who takes initiative in 42% of situations of different range.'

'You're creepy, dude,' Clint comments, skims the text again and sighs theatrically. 'So, where is that place where I get Tony the chocolate donuts? And different donuts? Oh boy, I've got to buy at least thirty of them to not make it look suspicious and feed everyone in this house…'

JARVIS downloads directions to Tony's favorite bakery onto Clint's phone, records a brief message telling Steve where he has gone – the man worries about everything too much for his own good – and goes to get the donuts on foot, since it's only a fifteen minutes' walk despite the thick layer of snow.

When Tony is back, he looks cold and tired and whines in an exaggerated manner like he likes, but Clint doesn't let himself be fooled by that; he can notice now how Tony is unconsciously guarding the device in his chest.

He says nothing though, just shoves the donut box under Tony's nose, pushes a cup of hot coffee in his hand and watches a real smile forming on Tony's lips.

A/N: Thank you for reading! Feedback is always welcome :)

(The parts will be ~1000 words, the word count here changes my original count a bit ;p)