om_main | OM: Clint and Tony, Thursday Morning

Clint has a run-in with a toaster and Tony shuffles to his rescue. No, really.

Clint knew he should have stuck to the cafeteria.

The cafeteria had food that they just popped out and served to you, no mess, no fuss, and no skill required to cook it. But, he'd woken up just a little late that morning (okay, he'd missed a class or two), and the cafeteria had been between serving breakfast and lunch, so with the doors closed to him, he'd poked his head in the communal kitchen.

He'd decided to start simple. Toast was simple. Toast couldn't possibly be that hard, and look. There was a pot of coffee just sitting there waiting for him.

Grabbing a loaf of bread, he'd taken two pieces and stuffed them in the toaster, only to stare blankly at the digital display on the front of the thing. Where was the button? The simple little button that just let you toast your toast? Wasn't toast supposed to be simple? You just...toast it. Simple.

But no. There was no button. And if there was, he couldn't find it. He took the thing in his hands and turned it end over end, trying to figure it out, getting a little more annoyed.

As he tugged, the cord tugged with him and straightened out, knocking the loaf off of the counter and scattering it across the floor. "Aw, bread," he sighed, giving the toaster a furious glare. "That's it. You're toasting my toast whether you like it or not."

Flipping the toaster over in his hands, he started punching in a bunch of things on the digital interface, furiously trying to just get it to work. He didn't even realize that the thing had caught part of his shirt in the grating and was happily searing the material until it started to smoke.

With a yelp, he pulled the toaster away from himself, throwing it halfway across the kitchen to smash into the wall, losing at least three pieces of itself in the process.

Tony, eyes barely open and hair sticking up in every direction possible thanks to another mostly-all-nighter, arrived at the kitchen door just in time to see a toaster fly by. He blinked. When the toaster remained in pieces on the floor he blinked again.

"Is...are we making a sacrifice to the gods of breakfast or what here? Do I need to say a few words?" He squinted in the direction the toaster had come from and...Barton. Of course it was.

"Do you mind? I left my sacred scrolls in my room," Clint grumbled, examining the scorch mark on his shirt. Stark. Of course it was.

"Gotta watch out for that," Tony said mildly, and shuffled over to take a look at the damage. "What did the toaster ever do to you?"

"Well, for one thing, it doesn't even toast," the archer complained, crouching down to start scooping up pieces of bread off of the floor to toss them in the trash.

"Sure it does." Though as he gathered up the pieces,Tony couldn't help but peer at the thing curiously. "Probably. What did it look like before it had an impromptu with the wall?"

"Kind of like something you'd see in your workshop," Clint drawled, but looked up. "It had this digital junk on the front, and I couldn't find the, you know...'toast' button, switch, lever thing.

"Right, yeah. I think it runs by phone, actually," Tony said absently as he set the whole thing down on a countertop, and produced a small screwdriver from somewhere to begin poking at the mess.

"Because why should a toaster be simple?" Clint asked sardonically, finishing up with cleaning up his mess and going to pour a cup of coffee instead.

Tony snorted at him, though his attention was mostly on the parts in front of him. "You're in the wrong place for simple, Katniss. Possibly the wrongest place."

"Cat-what?" Clint asked distractedly, pouring a second cup for Stark because...well, the guy did give him a phone and computer.

It got Tony to arch an eyebrow over at him, which had the handy side-effect of making Tony notice the extra cup. Which he accepted with a nod and gave him a moment to consider whether or not it was worth it to try and explain that little reference.

"Never mind," he said finally. "Point being, you're now stuck in a building with people who defy laws of nature on a whim, let alone wrecking the grade curve by existing. Pretty sure simple's not a concept that exists."

"Toasters. Toasters should be simple," Clint insisted. "I'm not asking for much, here! Toasters. Just toasters!"

"Whine more," Tony said with a decided lack of sympathy. "Really, I enjoy it. But tell you what. You can go to the designer and tell her to put a nice 'on' button in there for you."

"You enjoy whining?" Clint asked, taking a sip of his coffee.

"Absolutely. Best thing ever."

"I weep for you, dude. I have so many more best things..."

"Yeah?" Now that required a bit more attention. "For instance?"

Clint began to tick things off on his fingers. "Coffee. Pizza. Bows. Motorcycles. Girls. Everything about girls, really. Blade Runner. Classic cars. Rock. Boomerangs. Beer. Chinese Food-"

"Boomerangs?" Tony interrupted without restrain, one eyebrow climbing towards is hairline.

"What?" Clint asked, taking another sip. "They come back to you. Tell me that isn't cool as fuck."

"You know, I think I know a guy you're gonna get along with great," Tony said dryly, and shook his head as he turned his attention back to the formerly-toaster. He considered it with a hum before producing what looked like a small, portable soldering iron.

"Isn't your thing arrows, anyway?" He asked after another moment.

"That's the thing," Clint told him, his eyes lighting up. "I've been thinking... arrows. That come back to you. Right?"

"That a hint?" Tony asked with obvious amusement, muffled as it was around the screwdriver stuck into his mouth.

The blond blinked at him, obviously confused. "A hint about what?"

"Arrows. Probably could do it, if I tried."

"I thought you were a computer guy?" Clint finally found himself awake enough to realize that Tony was fixing the toaster, and was apparently just walking around with...was that a tiny blowtorch?

"I'm an engineering guy," Tony corrected, absently twisting wires back together with his bare fingers. "And mechanics and robotics and I won't bore you with the details."

"And you just...make all this stuff for other people for free? No reason at all, no money?" the blond asked skeptically.

"What else am I gonna do, sit around? Go swimming through bank vaults full of gold?"

"So you are one of the rich kids," Clint surmised. He'd thought so, given what Tony had said before about being able to feed him, but he hadn't really been sure. Only someone really bored and really rich could afford to go throwing phones and computers at people though. "So if you can make arrows, could you make a bow? Like a really tricked out bow?"

It earned Clint a brief incredulous look -- because, seriously? -- before Tony's attention went right back to the toaster. "Probably. I've already done a crossbow, it can't be that much harder."

Clint took a sip of his coffee, missing the look entirely. "I was thinking. Something easy to conceal. On your back or something. A recurve bow that could fold up to be more compact. Something slick and black and commando. With a superior sight."

"Collapsible recurve," Tony said musingly, eyes going slightly far away for a second before he snapped back to what he was doing. Good thing, considering how close the soldering iron was drifting to one of his fingers. "Ja--" He stopped. With a muffled curse he fumbled into his pocket for his phone, which got dropped onto the counter next to him.

"JARVIS," he tried again, "make note. Collapsible recurve bow."

"Noted, sir," JARVIS said promptly, "though may I recommend a bit of sleep before embarking on such a task?"

"Yeah, yeah," Tony muttered to himself. "Nag."

Clint wasn't sure which he wanted to ask about first. The voice in the phone (the one Tony had been talking to the first time he'd met him, he realized) or the sleep comment. Finally, he decided not to ask about the first one. "What's wrong with your bed?"

"What?" Tony blinked over at him, utterly confused by the non sequitor.

"Your bed. Your robot's suggesting sleep and it's like ten in the morning. So there's got to be something wrong with it. The bed. Not the robot. Although that one's suspect too," Clint shrugged.

"AI," Tony corrected, as if that was the important thing, "not robot. And there's nothing wrong with it. I've just got better things to do with my time than sleep."

"Listen, I don't claim to know anything about this kind of stuff, but doesn't your big, genius engineer brain need sleep?" the archer asked.

"Sleep is for lesser beings," Tony declared with as much pompousness a s he could muster, and carefully put the casing back on the toaster. "There. Good as new."

"What's an AI anyway?" Clint asked, grateful, but not sure he should give Tony that much credit. Especially when he was just called a lesser being.

"Okay seriously." Tony gave the toaster one last look before he nudged it back into it's usual position and turned to lean against the counter as he looked over at Clint. "You've seen no movies? No TV, no books, nothing?"

Clint's face colored slightly. "Hey, I didn't grow up with all the little toys you did, Einstein. But yeah, I've seen plenty of movies. You know. The really good ones."

"But no Sci Fi, apparently," Tony said, ignoring the dig without blinking. "Right. So. Artificial Intelligence. Basically a program that can mimic human intelligence. Or have it, in JARVIS' case."

"Like replicants," Clint grumbled. He loved Blade Runner. He just couldn't remember that that's what they'd been called.

One side of Tony's mouth curved up, but it was more amused than mocking. "Something like that. More human than human's still a ways off, but JARVIS here can kick the Turing Test's ass any day of the week."

Clint refused to admit he didn't know what that was either. Talking to Stark was like walking through a minefield of humiliation. Instead, he quipped, "He can kick my math test's ass too, anytime he wants."

"If you are in need of tutoring, Mr Barton," JARVIS' voice came from the phone again, somehow deceptively mild, "I would be happy to assist."

"Oh hell no," Clint aimed at the phone. "No offense, Jarv, but I'm not getting tutored by a - by an AI. Thanks, but no thanks."

"Of course," the AI returned politely. Tony just snorted in amusement.

"Don't start," Clint pointed a finger at Tony. "He'd probably be better at it than you."

"Not arguing that," Tony said with a wider grin. "Come down in a week or so and I'll see if I can't show you something."

"You're serious about this," Clint frowned. "You're really going to make me a bow."

"Yes?" Tony drew out the word a little as he gave him a mildly confused look. "You have some objection?"

"I'll deny it ever happened," Clint warned, then grabbed the guy by the shirt and hauled him up into a hug. A brief, hard, bracing hug, before letting the other teen go. No one had ever done anything like this before. No one had ever given him as much as he'd gotten at the school already, but Tony, making him a bow? "And I'll owe you one."

Tony's eyes went comically wide as he was pulled in, though at least it meant he had enough time to suppress the urge to stiffen entirely. He still just patted Clint's back awkwardly before he was released. "I will keep that in mind," he told him solemnly.

The archer took his coffee and headed toward the door, fleeing the awkwardness of the moment, but as he hit the door and turned the corner, told Stark, "Just let me know when."

"I'll have my people call your people," Tony promised as he finally went back to collect his coffee. Ugh. Cold.