Title: Fun and Games
Author:hufflepuffsneak
A Gift For: kadollan
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Swearing, minimal violence
Pairings: Clint/ Natasha, Pepper/ Tony
Summary/Prompt Used:
"Today's difference between Russia and the United States is that in Russia everybody takes everybody else for a spy, and in the United States everybody takes everybody else for a criminal."


Banner by frea_o



Clint took a swig of beer. All alcohol tasted the same to him, had ever since he was fifteen and now that he was twenty-two it hadn’t changed much. All that mattered was how strong the alcohol was. Unfortunately, he had to keep sharp and was stuck with beer. The only reason he was even in this crappy warehouse was the poker game. He was fresh from a lousy job tangling with those AIM freaks and needed to supplement his income. It was either that or get less picky about his hits, but he’d stayed out of jail by being smart and keeping low.

“Raise,” he said, casually throwing his chips. They fell perfectly in the center of the rickety table.

Bones, the man on his left, had a good hand but would fold at the slightest pressure. Trevor, on the right, would raise any amount, even with a pair of twos. Billy, across from him, was the unknown variable. Almost too fast for Clint to see, a card flicked from Billy’s sleeve into his hand. Clint smirked. He had gotten rid of the card up his sleeve the round before, and planted the spare card on Trevor.

“I think it’s time to check the deck. Don’t you think, Billy?”

Even in this circle Hawkeye had a reputation for sharp eyes. Both Trevor and Bones turned to Billy with suspicion in their gaze.

“This is bullshit, Hawkeye. You’ve had the best hand for the last three rounds,” Billy blustered.

“Guess I’m just lucky,” Clint said with a shit-eating grin.

As if to contradict his words, the door to the warehouse was blown down with a deafening crash. Men in black SWAT uniforms came through the doorway, their flashlights catching the dust and debris that floated through the air from the explosion. Clint’s grin melted into wide-mouthed shock. The four men at the table sat, frozen.

“Cops!” Bones screamed, breaking the stillness.

All four men hit the ground, finding meager shelter under the table. Clint winced as he felt a splinter dig into his hand. He began to crawl towards a nearby pillar that would offer protection from gunfire and that, given the chance, he could climb to get himself into the rafters.

A man in a plain grey suit walked calmly through the doorway, flanked by more men in black uniforms.

“We’re here for Hawkeye, the rest of you may leave,” the man said. His expression was inscrutable behind sunglasses.

Clint managed to put the pillar between himself and the men at the door as Trevor, Billy and Bones all scrambled for the exit. Clint snorted in disgust. There really was no honor among thieves. Now the question was whether to pull his handgun or not. He knew he could take the five men at the door, but they knew who he was. Once Hawkeye became a cop-killer, it was only a matter of time until he ended up in a hole in the ground somewhere, just like his parents.

“Clint Barton. You’re a difficult man to find,” the suit called out, unruffled by the insects streaming from the walls as they fled the warehouse.

“Yeah, well, did you try your Mom’s house?” Clint knew it was weak, but between the explosion and the revelation the cops knew his real name, he figured he got a pass on the defiant banter.

“No, I’ll have to have another talk with her about her predilection for younger men,” the man in the suit replied without inflection.

“Pred-i-what?” Clint asked, his back against the pillar. He fingered his handgun and looked towards the ceiling, trying to remember how to pray. He was going to need all the luck he had left.

“I have an offer for you, Mr. Barton.” The man’s voice was knowing, as if he could tell Clint was considering shooting his way out.

“I’m listening, but next time just call. I didn’t need the greeting party.” Clint took his hand off the handgun.

“I work for a certain branch of the government. One that is very interested in your skillset.” The suit waved his hand and the men in the SWAT uniforms backed out of the warehouse.

“Let me guess. Past sins erased, serving my country and all that bullshit. I’ve heard that before.” The suit was silent. “What makes you think I’ll come work for you?” Clint asked.

“A decent paycheck. Friends. Poker with people who won’t cheat you,” the man offered, moving from his position at the door to walk slowly and deliberately towards Clint.

“Don’t you get it? I’m a criminal. Scum,” Clint explained as the suit came closer. This wasn’t the oddest job offer he’d received, but it came close.

The suit smiled. “But that’s not all you are. I’ll think we’ll get along well.” He held out his hand for Clint to shake. “My name is Agent Coulson.”

***

“You’re cheating, Natalie!”

Natasha rolled her eyes. They were all cheating, which is why they were playing for pocket change in the first place. And poker was not the most interesting game happening around this table by a long shot.

“Only a little, Lucy,” Natasha answered.

Three other people sat around the table. If any outside observer had asked, one was a refrigerator salesman from New Jersey, two were sisters and aspiring models from Ohio and Natasha herself was a ballerina from Connecticut. The outside observer might find it odd that such disparate personalities were sharing a poker table and a bottle of vodka together, but their accents and mannerisms were so perfectly American that they escaped notice.

Natasha threw down her hand. Full house. The other three grumbled as she collected the chips with an innocent smile that belied her cold eyes. As far as she knew, Lucia and Oksana were still under Red Room control. The fact that they were meeting her face to face, instead of trying to take her out, meant they were going to try to persuade her back into the fold. And that she was probably going to have to kill them. Anton, the “salesman”, was a regular contact who she thought was freelance, but he hadn’t been surprised to see Lucia and Oksana show up. To complicate matters further, there was an American with a fantastic ass following her around like she was a mark. She didn’t like her odds of surviving the night without injury.

“We should not cheat one another. It’s a matter of honesty. Loyalty,” Lucia said to Natasha as the other woman dealt the next hand, palming an ace.

Natasha ignored the hypocrisy and took another sip of her vodka. “And who are you loyal to, Luce?”

It wasn’t even very good vodka. And frankly she was getting irritated that every time she met with a Russian, someone would order vodka for the table. Just once she would like someone to order her tequila.

“Who am I loyal to?” Lucia rolled the words in her mouth. “I’m still trying to figure that out, Nat,” Lucia said, layering her voice with significance.

Natasha put herself into work mode. She catalogued every twitch of an eyelid, every breath, every movement her opponents made. Still, she allowed herself to hope that more Widows had found their way out of the fog of brainwashing and ideology the Red Room had pumped into their brains. Hope was dangerous but it had kept Natasha running these past few years.

“Anthony, your thoughts?” Natasha asked with apparent guilelessness.

“You know me, Nat.” Natasha winced at the nickname. “I’m loyal to one man, and one man only. Benjamin Franklin.” Anton looked between the three women, the speed of his movements betraying his nervousness. “And I think I’ll take my leave of you lovely ladies. Call if you ever need a refrigerator.”

Anton hastily gathered the bills he had managed to accumulate and almost ran from the bar.

“Now that it’s just the family, we can really talk.” Oksana grinned like a cat sighting a canary. “We want out. Will you help us?”

“Of course,” Natasha said as her heart broke. They were lying. Oksana had always been ill-suited to subtle jobs. The Red Room probably sent her because they didn’t think Natasha had the steel to do what had to be done. Her handlers, she reflected, had never known her as well as they thought they had.

Lucia leaned forward eagerly. “How did you escape? What can you tell us?”

Natasha saw no point to continuing the charade. “There’s an antidote to the poison I put in the vodka at my old safe house. The one you cased yesterday. If you leave now you might make it in time.” In truth, the poison would merely make them severely ill, but they didn’t need to know that.

Lucia and Oksana stiffened in their chairs, Natasha held their eyes in turn, reminding them of everything she had done, everything she was. As one both Lucia and Oksana ran from the booth towards the door. Natasha gathered tattered green bills from the table and followed, blinking away moisture from her eyes. As she exited, she walked straight into the point of an arrow, held by the American she had noticed tailing her earlier.

“I have an offer for you, Ms. Romanoff.”

***

It started like a lot of bad ideas -- with Tony Stark opening his mouth.

“Fine, I’ll go to the board meeting,” Tony said.

Pepper sighed in relief and gave him the little half smile that told Tony she loved him more than words ever could. Unfortunately, some impulse kept his mouth moving.

“When you convince the team to play strip poker for our next Games Night,” Tony finished.

“You need to go to the meeting, Tony,” Pepper said, her fond exasperation becoming rapidly less fond as she spoke.

“Uh, no I don’t. That’s why I made you CEO. You talk to the boring people, I get to be in R&D where the fun is. It’s a win-win. Well, more like a win for me-”

“Tony.” Pepper cut off his babble before he could really get started.

“Not doing it. Nu-uh. You can’t make me.”

Pepper raised an eyebrow. “As I recall, we had a deal. You said if I got the team to play strip poker next Games Night then you’d go to the board meeting. And, now that I’ve thought about it, the idea of seeing Captain America naked does have its perks.” Pepper nodded her head with exaggerated thoughtfulness. “It’s actually a great idea. It’s either that or Monopoly, and we don’t want the Avengers disassembling over the house rules for doubles rolls.”

Pepper walked away before Tony could back out of their deal, leaving Tony with his mouth hanging open. Tony wasn’t at all surprised when Pepper got the Avengers, one by one, to agree to the game. The next Friday night he found himself hosting the Avengers at Stark Tower.

“This seems like a strange custom,” Thor said, beginning to take off his clothes. “But I am always ready to participate in Midgardian cultural practices.”

“Not so fast, Thor,” Pepper said, covering her smile with one hand. “First we have to go over the rules.”

The process of getting the Avengers to agree to the game had been similar to putting together a bill in the House of Representatives, with each Avenger having their own demands and Pepper putting together an increasingly complex set of compromises to appease them all. The result was a laundry list of rules. Pepper explained the rules of Texas Hold’em, mostly to Thor, then moved to the strip aspect.

“If you make it to the showdown and lose, you must give an article of clothing to the victor,” Pepper said. “Weapons do count as clothing.” Natasha smirked. “But the sheath or holster does not count as a separate article. Players may leave at any time, regardless of how many clothes they have remaining.” Tony scoffed, but didn’t say anything at Steve’s glare. “Doing anything intentional to provoke the Hulk means you automatically lose a piece of clothing to the pot.” Bruce relaxed as the rule was read out and no one protested. “Once a player is completely naked they must leave the game. First to deal is Bruce. We go in clockwise order. Natasha is forbidden from dealing.”

Natasha stuck her tongue out at Clint as she heard the rule that prohibited her from dealing, recognizing his handiwork. He smirked in reply and then looked around the table at his opponents. Steve was harder to read than most might think, but he was outclassed by Natasha, Tony and Pepper when it came to bluffing. Bruce and Tony were the kind of scary smart that could calculate the exact odds in their head. Thor was the only one who it was going to be easy to beat. Clint settled down to the table, calculating odds and trajectories.

Natasha folded the first round and lost the next two rounds on purpose, handing over a gun to Pepper and a knife to Steve. She could see Tony and Bruce almost unconsciously refocus their attention on the other players, dismissing her as a threat. Unbeknownst to the rest of the team, while Natasha had been Natalie Rushman, she and Pepper had come up with a sign language of sorts that they had used when Pepper needed to get out of a meeting, or when Pepper was on the phone and couldn’t verbally tell Natalie the five different things she needed done in the next minute. Fortunately, this sign language translated well to poker. Over the next hour they both accumulated clothing items, as only the woman with the highest hand would stay until the showdown. Natasha had already catalogued Clint’s tells from their long years of partnership and soon added the rest of the team’s to her mental store of knowledge. From time to time, she caught Clint looking at her suspiciously, but she kept her face bland and free from emotion. Years of training in the Red Room had given her a hell of a poker face.

Predictably Thor lost first. “This was a fine game, my friends!” He wandered away happy and completely naked, to everyone’s general amusement.

Clint caught on to Natasha and Pepper’s strategy just as Steve quit, blushing as he was left in only his white cotton briefs. Clint raked in the pot, a pair of high waisted pants, a pair of Pepper’s earrings and his sunglasses. Steve beat a strategic retreat, walking quickly and confidently, the blush spread over his entire body. Natasha quirked an eyebrow at Pepper, who burst into laughter at whatever Natasha had communicated. Clint reviewed the past few rounds in his head. At no point since the second round had both Pepper and Natasha been in the final round together. He could kick himself. He wasn’t sure if he was more upset at how long it had taken to discover the cheating or that Natasha hadn’t included him in her scheme.

Clint was more cautious in his bets, watching Pepper and Natasha closely from the corner of his eye. Tony continued playing, intentionally erratic in his bets and oblivious to Clint’s discovery. Bruce retired after a run of bad hands, clad only in purple boxers.

“Leaving so soon?” Tony asked, disappointed. “It’s not like everyone hasn’t seen you naked before.”

Bruce shared an exasperated look with Pepper as he left. Clint shifted nervously in his chair. Of the four remaining players, he had the least chips. Fortunately, Tony began to lose more and more, going to the showdown almost every round. Before long, Tony was down to his watch and suit pants, showing no signs of discomfort. It only took him three rounds to lose both of his remaining items.

“You didn’t wear any underwear to strip poker?” Clint asked, amused.

Tony winked. “I don’t play strip poker to win.”

“I’m retiring,” Pepper said with a smile, ogling her billionaire boyfriend as he walked to the door.

“Guess it’s just you and me, Tasha,” Clint said.

Pepper gathered up her purse and jacket, leaving the rest of the clothing she had collected. She followed Tony from the room, deliberately ignoring the rising levels of tension behind her as she closed the door. Clint and Natasha’s voices were audible from the hallway. Tony began to eavesdrop unashamedly. Pepper watched him, internally debating whether she should join him or not. At his mischievous smile she quashed her ethical objections and put her ear to the door.

“Do you want to talk about that stunt you and Pepper pulled?” Clint’s voice was more curious than angry.

“What stunt?” Natasha’s you-can’t-prove-anything smile was audible to the listeners outside.

“You and Pepper cheated,” Clint said accusingly.

“We didn’t have any aces up our sleeves. We simply brought two hands to the table,” Natasha replied, unrepentant.

Tony turned to Pepper in outrage. Pepper looked back with her half-smile. Both of them returned to listening.

“Darling, if you wanted to get me naked, all you had to do was ask,” Clint continued.

“I’m asking.”

Clint choked. “What?”

“I’m. Asking.”

Pepper pulled Tony away from the door.

“Aww, Pep,” he whined, very quietly so as not to be heard by the two master assassins.

“You can either listen to their love life or participate in ours,” Pepper told him, equally quiet.

Pepper strode towards the elevator. Tony looked in between the games room and Pepper for a brief moment, then followed her to the elevator. Pepper pressed the button outside the elevator with a sigh. How on Earth did Tony make even the worst ideas turn out well?