The Avengers weren't sure, exactly, how to act when Tony came in the next day.

He walked in with hands stuffed deep in pockets and hood up, paused in the kitchen and wheeled to survey the staring faces. Steve caught the purpling bruises under the shadow of his hood, Natasha saw his clenched fists, Bruce remembered with a pang of anger the events of yesterday, wished they had done something rather than let him leave and stew. Clint started, "Tony-"

"Don't." Tony cut him off. He walked into the kitchen and put the kettle on, getting out a mug and spooning coffee into it before grabbing a packet of chocolate biscuits and two apples. The kettle popped and he poured the water into the mug, stirring it once before dumping the spoon in the sink and gathering up his food, coffee held precariously in one hand. "I am going down to sulk in my workspace for around a week. Then I will come out and you will forget everything that happened yesterday. That clear?"

"Tony." Bruce said firmly. "We are going to talk about this. Do you understand?"

"No, we're not. And if you do, I'm quitting. So I won't have any income and we'll end up homeless and it will all be your fault."

He glared at them all ferociously, a trapped animal, a caged lion.

Natasha saw his fists clench harder, and Steve caught the gleam in his eyes.

"And if you offer charity again or talk about my family at all I quit. Ok?"

"This isn't over," Steve warned, because it really wasn't.

"Yes, it is. I'm gonna fucking quit if you don't promise me you'll leave me alone. I got it sorted, yeah?"

He was shaking, not bluffing, the Avengers saw the truth in his eyes and Clint remembered a desperate childhood.

"Agreed." Said Clint.

"Good, because I'm going to sulk now. I'll be out in a week." And he turned on his heel and left the room, apples in one hand, packet of biscuits in the other, coffee swinging from two fingers.

That was that.

0000000000000

Tony got on with sulking.

Tony's sulking was not something he was that familiar with, contrary to popular belief. When he lived with... Howard, yes he could say the name the stupid dead man didn't scare him at all, sulking had been vaguely associated with beatings and smashed bottles. Then again, most from that period of his childhood was associated with those things. And then growing up in homes and with foster families, no one had really cared if he sulked so there was no point doing it there.

The great thing about having people who cared about you was that you could sulk. You crossed your arms and pouted your lips and downturned your eyes whenever they came into the room, stormed out the second they said something to you, slammed doors whenever possible. Went back and slammed it again, just to be sure. Refused to answer any calls or messages, sat tight lipped and waited until they came back and sorted out whatever was happening. There had been a great many of these routines with Rhodey- jeez, he missed the guy.

Since sulking now was consisting of taking food into his lab, and not coming out, Tony finished all the work he had set for himself with the Avengers (tranq arrows, luminous tracker patches, electric shock wallets just because he could) and started on Jarvis. And Jarvis- was his AI, and it stood for Just A Rather Very Intelligent and it was just a coincidence that it was also the name of that kindly butler from his childhood who was just a shadow- a watery, faded shadow- in his memory, of a wrinkled smile and soft laugh and walks in the park.

Just a fucking coincidence. And he wasn't thinking about Jarvis anymore, so there.

Not thinking about Jarvis was extremely hard when he was making Jarvis, so he moved onto the easy coding- programming relations to the voice activation system, linking it up with the speakers around- and focused determinedly on something else. This something else happened to be the Avengers, and ohmygodhowdarethey- seriously. They- offered him charity, and pity, and- what the hell? Did they think he wanted it? Did they think he hadn't been surviving on his own for, huh, oh yeah fifteen years? Oh- oh and now they could sweep him and rescue him from his totally non existent, abusive, neglectful family and poverty stricken circumstances- news flash! They were years too late. Even the poverty thing- now he had a job, and that job was earning money, and he was going to be filthy rich in a matter of... decades... now that he knew not to, um, spend it all on a shopping spree.

Anyway. The Avengers.

And- and then they had the audacity to think that they should protect him, just because of some weak bruises on his face and damnit they did not have the right. They might be Avengers, and protect the entire world, but Tony and his landlord were a different matter entirely. (He'd already got revenge for the beating, anyway, emptying his landlord's savings account into a generous donation towards a strange little charity about watching clouds). And and and now he had to sulk for an entire week- because of them!

Jarvis' voice was established and Tony set to linking it with recognizable patterns of speech, and- accent? Well. British. From the England part. All posh and Queen like- yeah, like that. And, um, text? No, he'd keep that to American spelling; he was American, after all.

"Tony?" There was a quiet voice at the door and a firm knock and Tony groaned, sinking forwards and catching his head on the table. He stopped a squeak of pain as he sat up hurriedly, rubbing angrily at the weal. And Clint walked in. "What?" he directed at the man irritably, minimizing the screen with Jarvis' coding- yeah, like he was going to show that to any Avengers anymore- and putting up a frozen Tetris game.

"Can we talk?"

"Already doin' it." Tony bit out.

Clint looked at him.

Tony glared.

"Fine! Yes. Yeah. We can talk."

"Have you finished sulking yet?"

Tony gave him an incredulous look. "I said a week."

"You do realise how childish that sounds? And you're fifteen?"

"You can't tell me that I'm not a child after we had an argument about you guys calling me a child."

"That wasn't an argument about calling you a child, it was about us trying to help and you refusing it."

"Well- I don't need help, so there."

Clint eyed his black eye, yellowing strains of bruises on his face, red purple flutters of streaks. Tony crossed his arms and sat back defiantly.

"It's pretty obvious you do, Tony." he said gently. "And it's not a weakness to accept it."

"I told you, I don't need help!" he shouted exasperatedly. "Seriously. Why don't you guys get that? The bruises were from my landlord, I told you, and it won't happen again."

"It shouldn't have happened in the first place."

"So? What's done is done, and there's nothing you can do about it."

Clint thought about that for a second, furrowed his brow, then disregarded the point and continued.

"Ok, but. Can I tell you something? I grew up dirt poor. Okay? I know what it's like. I resorted to joining the circus, for god's sake. So don't take this offensively when I say it's pretty obvious that you could do with money. And we just want to offer you a place to stay in. That's it."

"Me and my family," Tony interjected with a frown.

"What?"

"'We want to offer you a place.' You and your family, right?"

Clint narrowed a stare. "You do realise that I'm a SHIELD agent and you're a fifteen year old kid, and also I've been lying a lot longer?"

"You think I'm lying?"

"I know you are."

A moment.

Both glared.

Tony gave in first, in a wilt and a sigh and a brush of listlessness that had him curling his arms around himself. "You gonna tell anyone?" he said in a muffled voice, not looking up.

"You gonna move into a place we find for you?"

Tony shrugged helplessly. "I don't want to. I like my apartment. I mean- well, I've lived in it for a while and it's- it's ok. The thing with my landlord was a one-off, I swear. I just-" he looked up at Clint, from below hair and shadows, gulped. "You can't just leave it?"

Clint sighed. "Okay, I guess. But if it happens again- at all- that's it. And you can stay here anytime you want, you know."

"Yeah." Tony shrugged again, gave him a smile.

"Want to talk about your family?"

There was another tense moment, Tony shifting backwards and inching in on himself. "Not really."

"Have you got any, at least?"

There was a quiet, "No."

And, almost too quiet to hear- "Not anymore."

"Ok," said Clint, because he had a brother, and he- of all people- he knew. "I'm going back up. You can come join us if you like."

Tony grinned, unravelled, slopped out. "Got a week of sulking to do, remember?" Clint grinned back. "Yeah, well, lunch is in ten."

He walked to the door, stopped, turned. "I'm always here to talk. We all are."

Tony didn't say anything and unfroze Tetris, watching the falling shapes and not bothering to press any buttons. They cluttered up precariously, all balanced on top of each-other, thin little things of fake plastic colour tottering on one square and edging up the screen in a lopsided tower. It hit the top, the game ended, and Clint went away with a creak of the door.

()()()()()))((()((()()()())()(()())(()

Tony opened his door to come out for lunch, walked into the room where everyone froze and stared at him, and walked straight out to go down the street for Burger King.

()()()()()))((()((()()()())()(()())(()

He had a cheeseburger, and sat on his own in the brightly coloured booth in the corner. It was greasy and tasteless with fries like soggy plastic, and even when he added two sachets of ketchup and a literal spreading of sugar, it left a bad taste in his mouth. There were a bunch of teenagers obviously ditching school who came and sat at the table behind him, and then started giggling and whispering loudly.

With a scowl, Tony stood up and left, dropping the burger in the bin on his way out.

He wasn't quite ready to go back to SHIELD and the Avengers- which were about a ten minutes walk away, he'd gone down to the nearest high street for lunch- so Tony wandered a little, ending up at a small little park with a grey pond stretched out and glistening, a single duck floating brown and white along one bank. The sky was a precarious shade of muffled white, the tipping point between raining and not, the promise of water hanging shadowy and misty all around. He found a bench and sat on the top, staring out into nothing.

A young woman walked past, tacky clothes and ripped coat with duffel bag on her back marking her as homeless. A little boy who was probably her son- you could see it in the shape of their faces, the tint in their eyes and wild black hair- was hopping around her, the excitable energy of a toddler racing him up any little ridge he could find, dipping next to the pond, staring for a second and that lone, serene duck, running up again to tug his mother on the hand until she sighed and pulled out some crusts. He grinned a full wide smile of gap teeth and white gleams, and started throwing it as far as he could. The duck immediately came over and started eating the soggy bread.

The kid cheered. The mother watched fondly, hands down deep in pockets- she couldn't have been more than twenty, face unlined and eyes bright.

Tony watched for a while. Easily read the love in the young mother, despite her circumstances, despite the bruises all too clearly shadowing her face. The unbridled, pure joy in the child. And then he stood up, and walked back to the Avengers tower, with an ache in his heart that had nothing to do with the rain that was now quick shatters in the fog.

()()()()()))((()((()()()())()(()())(()

"Why are you wet?" Natasha enquired when he walked in, chopping up a carrot with a small tub of humus on the table. He stopped and stared for a moment before saying drily, "It's raining. Duh."

Natasha rolled her eyes at him and went back to chopping. Tony turned to grin at her before disappearing into the kitchen, fixing himself a sandwich and making sure not to go near the Poptarts cupboard.

"I take that as you're not sulking anymore?" Bruce said, amused, from where he was laid out on the couch with The Great Gatsby in hand. Tony thought to himself before deciding it was too much effort and he had been depressed for the large portion of the day, so he shook his head and jumped into the space next to the doctor to eat his sandwich loudly. "Where's everyone else?" he said around a muffled mouthful of bread and cheese.

"Somewhere in San Diego, fighting an influx of mutant lizards." Bruce told him, at which Tony remembered that the Avengers actually did have a job and did not laze around the headquarters all day, contrary to his somehow ingrained belief. "You okay?" he then said, putting his book down and shifting straight to stare at Tony intently.

"Yes." Said Tony, and dared him to protest. Bruce just stared at him for another long moment before sinking back into the couch and turning to his book.

Miffed at the abrupt dismissal, Tony stuffed the rest of the sandwich in his mouth- promptly choking on it, coughing for a full minute before staggering to the kitchen for a glass of water- and wandered through the floor before going through the double doors of the gym, sloping round lazily to stare at the various equipment. There were a couple of punching bags strung up on one side.

Tony pulled his fist back and punched it.

"Ow!" he said to his fist, which was red and aching, and then again to the punch bag which hadn't even swayed and was- fucking stone, man.

"That's Steve's punch bag." Natasha informed him, suddenly there by his right shoulder. Tony made an effort to hide the fact he hadn't noticed her at all until she spoke. "We put bricks in leather bags because he kept going through them so fast."

Tony was right. It was fucking stone, man.

"Right." He said faintly, shaking out his fingers and stuffing them gingerly into his pocket. "I'll do something about that." –with mind already whirring through calculations and formulas for the makings of a strengthened punch bag, he would fill it will a resistant- wait, he'd make it of a resistant material, and then- no, he could soak a normal punch bag in a liquid that would make it far more tough and then-

"Tony?"

"-sorry," he apologised. "Just thinking about better solutions than... bricks."

Natasha gave him a fond smile and then slid down to the floor. She stared at him until he sat next to her, and then the smile turned into an ice grin and her face was all sharp angles and cold lighting.

He knew she was being too nice.

"Clint's hiding something."

He made an effort to smooth down his expression and make no move to react to that statement. "Right."

"Something about you." she said. "What is it?"

"I would have expected a spy to be more... subtle."

"I am when I need to be." The cold lighting turned into warm shadows, sharp angles softening to curves. Green eyes fixed on his own, sincere, steady. "But in this I don't think I do. Do i?"

"Maybe." Tony admitted. "I'm... probably not going to talk about it. Like, ever. And Clint won't either."

"Why so sure?"

"He promised." Tony made sure his voice didn't waver, and watched Natasha for some sign that this trusting was wrong. But she was the Black Widow, and watched him back every inch as carefully before inclining her head in a nod.

"Is it something about your family?"

And what to say to that?

"Yes."

"Alright."

He watched in mute surprise as Natasha stood up and left the room, and then sighed. You couldn't win them all.

A/N: I'm back, guys.