Title: The Girls' Breakfast Hour
Author: wihluta
Fandom: Avengers (movieverse)
Characters: all of them (various canon-compliant pairings, plus Darcy/Clint)
Words: ~2460 (one image)
Rating: PG
Warnings: none
Summary: There's a lot more going on than just breakfast!

Notes: This is part 2 of a series in which The Girls Are Awesome. You can find the first installment here (AO3), but it's not necessary to read it to understand this work.
Beta-credit goes (as usual) to torra and caersmane. Any remaining mistakes are mine and mine alone.



“Darcy flipped me over last night,” Clint states apropos of nothing. He is sitting at the edge of the sparring mat where Steve and Thor are currently beating the crap out of each other, both sporting huge grins.

Tony is leaning against the wall next to him, tinkering with some sort of metal object Clint can’t be bothered to try and identify. Bruce is reading a scientific journal in the corner. Somehow Steve and Thor’s training sessions have become the official hang-out of the male part of the Avengers. Clint isn’t going to look too closely at the reasons for that, though.

“We’re not interested in your sexual activities, Barton,” Tony says absentmindedly.

“That’s not what I mean - I mean, yes it kinda is, but it’s not like that.”

Steve goes down with a crash and Thor turns around to say, “If Clint wants to talk about it, I think we should listen. That is what our brotherhood is for, is it not?”

“You are no longer allowed to speak to Steve,” Tony says, pointing his finger at Thor.

“Please continue, Clint,” Steve encourages Clint from the floor.

Clint can feel his face heat up. Why did he have to blurt that out just now? Now he’s stuck having to talk about it.

“I just meant... we were fooling around - not like that Stark - and suddenly she did this move, swept me off my feet and flipped me over, pinned my hands over my head and... anyways. It just wasn’t something I expected her to be able to do. It was weird.”

“And kinda hot?” Tony asks.

Clint shrugs. “I’m just worried that there’s something hinky going on.”

Bruce puts his journal down and comes over to them. “Betty’s been moving like she’s got sore muscles for the past three weeks.”

“As has my Jane!” Thor admits, “But she will not tell me why she feels this pain. It is causing me much worry.”

Tony’s eyebrows knit together. “You think they’re up to something?”

“The only thing they’re all doing together is have breakfast on Tuesdays. I doubt that leads to sore muscles and mysterious fight moves,” Steve opines.

“Yeah, but what if it’s not actually breakfast?” Tony asks.

“It’s just breakfast,” Clint says, “I’ve been checking up on them.”

At Steve’s disapproving look he clarifies, “Not eavesdropping or anything. Just poked my nose in for a second or two.”

Steve seems mollified.

“If they refuse to tell us, we’ll never know,” Bruce says philosophically.

“Pah,” Tony scoffs, “This is a mystery! Mysteries exist to be solved. JARVIS what do you know about the whole affair?”

“Absolutely nothing, sir.” JARVIS says and he even sounds sincere about it.

------------------

It all starts with breakfast. At least that’s as far as Darcy can trace it back.

Breakfast at the Avengers Tower is mostly an individual affair. Some of them get up really early - no honestly, we’re talking about ass-crack of dawn early and Darcy cannot fathom how that would be a good thing - some of them get up pretty late, some have just coffee, some a real proper fry-up, and some just pop in for some toast on the way to work. So mostly everyone does as they please and when their paths cross there’s the universal morning greeting of grunting and squinting and frowning going on.

As with many changes, it all happens gradually. Pepper likes to sit down with some toast, her coffee and the newspaper in the morning before she heads off to work and since Darcy has to head into S.H.I.E.L.D. headquarters every Tuesday morning - yeah, no, she doesn’t know either how this happened, this is a proper job she’s got here - she starts sitting down with her bowl of cereal and keeping Pepper company. They don’t talk much, but occasionally there’s some small talk happening or some S.H.I.E.L.D. and S.I. business needs to be sorted out and it’s nice and calm and Darcy really starts to enjoy her breakfast despite the early hour.

After a while, Jane starts showing up at around the same time as they are having breakfast each Tuesday and while she usually just nurses a cup of ridiculously sweet coffee in silence, it’s nice to have someone else there.

Darcy knows that Betty tends to have her breakfast down at the lab and since there’s already three of them now, she goes down one morning and invites Betty to join them in the kitchen. Without the guys there - sometimes one of them will flit in and out of the kitchen, but no one ever stays, especially now that there’s three of them sitting around the table and seriously, how are they all classed as grown-ups? - it’s a very relaxing way to start the morning.

Natasha is the last one to join their little breakfast club, but one Tuesday she just shows up, fixes herself a bowl of cereal and yoghurt and sits down next to Jane. She smiles at Darcy and borrows the sports section of Pepper’s newspaper and thus Tuesday becomes The Girls' Breakfast Hour - name courtesy of one Tony Stark.

It’s a couple months later, a week after the General Ross incident, when Natasha clears her throat and says, “You should get some training.”

Pepper puts her paper down and looks at Natasha across the table. “Excuse me?”

At the same time, Betty asks, “What kind of training?”

Darcy just tries to ignore it all, this cannot end well.

“Basic self-defense, hostage situations, covert messages, maybe some shooting practice-”

“I am not touching a gun,” Darcy interrupts her.

Natasha shrugs, “Okay. Just the other things then.”

“Why?” Betty asks, “We’ve been fine so far.”

“True, but considering how close each one of you is associated with the Avengers, it’s only a matter of time before you become the focus of some deranged asshole trying to get back at us. It’ll help if you have some basic training.”

“Okay,” Pepper says, “but how do you want to handle the whole training thing? We’re all pretty busy.”

“I don’t want the guys to know about this either,” Darcy says.

Betty nods. “Bruce would get worried and Steve would try to help and I don’t really want that.”

“Besides, Clint and Tony would joke about it until their tongues fall out.”

“I don’t think it would be that bad, but I agree with keeping this between us,” Jane says.

Natasha shrugs. “We’ll have to find a place outside of the Tower or S.H.I.E.L.D., but that shouldn’t be too hard.”

“I know someone who runs a gym downtown, I’ll ask if we can reserve the training room once a week. If that’s okay with everyone.”

Everyone agrees.

--------------------

After two weeks of snooping around and trying to coax JARVIS to spy on Pepper (even more than he already does) Tony has to admit defeat. They still have no idea what the women they are living with are up to that results in ninja moves and sore muscles. Logically it should involve training sessions in a gym, but they are not having any at the Tower or at S.H.I.E.L.D. or anywhere else that Tony knows to check.

Clint and Thor have been trying to talk their respective partners into revealing their secrets, but without success. Bruce blatantly refuses to be a part of this scheme and Steve just shook his head at their antics, but doesn’t try to stop or help them.

Tony is about to give up as a lost cause when …

“Sir, Miss Potts is over half an hour late for a scheduled meeting with the investors from SymaCorp. Her personal assistant is unable to contact her through the usual means.”

Tony drops the soldering iron and rolls himself over to the computer terminals in the workshop. “Can you track her through one of the more unusual means?”

“I cannot currently confirm the whereabouts of Miss Potts through any means at my disposal.”

Tony grunts and activates the comm link connecting to the rest of the Avengers. “Guys, we might have a situation. Meet me in the living room in five.”

It takes Tony three minutes to explain the situation. The others look concerned, but so far this isn’t an emergency. Although Tony would very much like it to be one. Call it a gut feeling.

“Why don’t we ask one of the gi- women?” Clint says. Then he looks around the room. “Where’s Natasha?”

Everyone shakes their head.

“I’ll try calling her.” Bruce takes out his phone and dials. After a few seconds he shakes his head. “Voicemail.”

“Try the others,” Steve says.

None of their phones connect. The situation is starting to look at lot more dire.

Steve goes to inform Fury and Coulson and see if they can get any news from the S.H.I.E.L.D. side of the business. Clint and Bruce start a scan on any strange activity reported in the past two hours, since that’s when Thor last saw Jane. Tony gets in the suit, and he and Thor start scouting the city in a grid pattern starting with Pepper’s last known location, to see if there’s anything they can find to help them.

Four hours later they still have nothing and Tony is ready to start tearing his hair out or shoot random things with his repulsors. It probably wouldn't help, but he insists it would make him feel better. Even Coulson is starting to look worried. That’s the moment that JARVIS informs them that Betty, Pepper, Jane, Natasha and Darcy have just entered the building.

When they enter the living room-slash-command center they look slightly ruffled but otherwise fine.

Tony - who returned to the tower half an hour ago - stabs a finger in their direction. “Where the hell have you been?”

Pepper holds up her hands. “Let us sit down and we’ll explain.”

Coulson, Clint and Bruce step aside so that they can all sit down. Tony stays on his feet and keeps glaring at all of them.

-----------------

Pepper’s version of the events are as follows:

We were about the get a taxi, when six men carrying automatics surrounded us and led us to a van with blacked out windows. They took our bags and cell phones - that’s why we didn’t call - and drove off with us in the back of the van.

They eventually stopped inside an old warehouse and told us to leave the car. There were some chairs set up and they had tape to tie us down, but Natasha gave us the signal and we took them out.

(At this point, Tony collapses onto the sofa and pulls at his hair. He refrains from saying anything, but his expression clearly states something along the lines of Oh my God, are you crazy, you could have gotten killed. Pepper, being very adept at reading Tony’s expressions, skips any further description of the ensuing fight.)

Once we had the kidnappers subdued, we took their van and drove back to the Tower to inform you of the events. The criminals are still at the warehouse because we didn’t want to risk any incidents on our way back.

This is how Darcy tells it:

We were on our way out of the gym, when these six huge dudes show up out of nowhere, wearing ski masks and waving guns around and it was fucking terrifying, I tell you. They practically rounded us up and shoved us into the back of this van, which stank of fish, by the way. What is it with criminals these days, is it too much to ask that they clean their vans properly when abducting innocent citizens? Seriously, what is the world coming to?

Anyways. So we were in the van, three of the goons in the front, three in the back with us and we were driving for a while. It was at least ten minutes or so, until they stopped inside this warehouse and shoved us all out of the car.

They tried to tie us all up and tape us to these chairs or whatever and that’s when we had enough. Natasha was giving us the secret Let’s Kick Some Ass sign and that’s what we did. It was all WHACK POW CHOP, like in the comics, I swear.

I mean, they obviously wanted us for ransom, so they weren’t going to shoot us - at least that’s what I figure and since we’re still alive I am right. So I used a snap kick to knock this guy’s gun out of his hand and then hit him with some elbow action and down he went. And Pepper, Betty and Jane did the same with their guys. Natasha took down the other two and voila, the kidnappers become the kidnappees. Only, you know, not.

I mean, we tied them up, got into the van and drove back to the Tower. We’d have called, but the arseholes took our purses and phones away and one of the guys went and smashed them or burned them or whatever around the corner while they were putting us in the van. That’s why we couldn’t actually call anyone.

Did any of you guys find find our stuff? No? Shame. Think Stark will let me have one of his new cell phones? I bet you I’d be a great beta tester.

----------------------

It all ends well. The criminals are apprehended by S.H.I.E.L.D. and treated according to their (attempted) crime.

There is no reason for Clint to mock anyone for taking sessions with Natasha, considering that they just managed to save themselves from a kidnapping. This fact also works to calm down Bruce and wipe the worry lines from Coulson’s and Steve’s foreheads, at least for a while. Thor would have been proud of Jane no matter what. Tony, for his part, has finally solved his mystery, so he’s happy - once he gets over his shock, that is.

The girls are happy, because they have proof that it was totally worth all those sore muscles and bruises and they no longer feel like just accessories. They can kick ass just as well as the guys if they have to. That doesn’t mean that any of them - apart from Natasha of course - is particularly keen to accompany the official Avengers when they go face Evil. But Darcy thinks that it’s nice to know that they could if they wanted to.

The End


Bonus:

Official S.H.I.E.L.D. Report from Natasha Romanov, page 1: