12 Days of Ficmas "Family Portraits" Avengers/Mission Impossible Ghost Protocol

[hiddencait]

This one is for aoife for the prompt "Something wacky with Brandt and Barton" and I took total liberties and write it into my drabble series for "Darcy and the Doppleganger."  Pairings are pre-Tasha/Jane Carter, pre Will Brandt/Darcy Lewis, and Clint Barton/Phil Coulson.

Hope you enjoy my dear!

Family Portraits

Jane Carter forced herself to keep a calm and impassive expression on her face, no matter how much she wanted to roll around on the floor laughing like a deranged psychopath. It just wouldn’t be professional (the fact that the infamous Tony Stark actually was rolling with laughter just proved her point), and really she wanted her teammate to remember that she alone had offered him some sort of solidarity.

Not that she was going to rescue him, but at least she wasn’t giggling hysterically as Ethan was or filming the whole thing for posterity as Benji was. And if Jane planned to bribe a copy of the video out of Benji for possible blackmail purposes down the road, well what Will didn’t know wouldn’t hurt her.

“I’d appreciate a copy of the footage whenever you acquire it.” Will’s cousin’s partner had wandered over to stand shoulder to shoulder with Jane, her face every bit as bland as the female IMF agent’s.

“You say that like you couldn’t get a copy on your own,” Jane murmured back with a pointed glance to where Coulson’s assistant was gleefully recording the incident with her phone. Jane wasn’t sure if Will had actually made any progress with the ballsy young woman or not, but clearly Darcy would keep him on his toes if he ever did manage to successfully ask her out.

“J.A.R.V.I.S. has a soft spot for Clint for reasons unknown. Between the AI and Coulson, the cell phone footage and Tower recording will be erased fairly quickly. Other than the portraits themselves, I doubt we’ll have any surviving evidence on our end.”

“Ah, I see. Well, I’m sure interagency cooperation can be arranged.”

“After all, we managed it this time, didn’t we?” Natasha concluded with a wicked grin she didn’t bother to hide this time. 

Jane felt her own lips stretch into a smile that likely matched the redhead’s. She wondered if the cousins would ever guess who had actually caused this insanity, but honestly doubted it. For a former analyst with an eidetic memory and a sniper with a truly impressive eye for detail, the pair could be awfully clueless when it came to plotting amongst their respective teams/found-families. Really they should have known better, Clint especially after the years of working with Natasha, but the poor boys could be oh so gullible.

The gleeful celebrating of all the men in the room probably helped shift the blame, though. So kind of the others to help out, intentionally or otherwise.

A string of curse words in half a dozen languages cut into Jane’s musing, and she turned her gaze back on the boys expecting to see Clint as the culprit of the rather impressive cussing. Instead she found herself staring at Will who was still going with his vicious muttering, currently threatening Stark with something anatomically impossible with an alpaca all in flawless Portuguese. She had to give it to her teammate; he could be creative when he wanted to.

Not quite as creative as Jane, though. The poor abused photographer had given up on trying to get either of the cousins to smile as would normally be appropriate in these sorts of portraits and instead was snapping shots of the various agents and Avengers scattered around the room.

Eventually he’d get the shot Jane and Natasha had paid him for, or so Jane was sure. The man had done photojournalism in war zones before. He was totally capable of staring down a pair of look-a-like cousins for a holiday card. Even if said cousins were both extremely deadly on the best of days. And even more so when they’d been forcibly wrangled into a pair of absolutely hideous reindeer Christmas sweaters.

Jane smiled widely again, absolutely content. She loved it when a plan came together.