mini nanowrimo, word count 891, first bit of this fic-The Life You Save
moar works in progress. just using mini nanowrimo to work through and plod along with stuff.
this one, is a different take on an "origins" story. idek what it is other than, "i wanted clint as a nurse who meets up with coulson and eventually ends up at SHIELD" fic. not necessarily a "paramedic au" except it is. except it's not?
eta- now with actual content. unbeta'd obvs. clunky and chunky in places [just like me!]. rawest of raw things. apologies abound.
Title: The Life You Save
Author: clumsygyrl/thegirlthatisclumsy
Fandom: Avengers movieverse
Pairing(s): Clint Barton/Phil Coulson
Summary: “Coming in hot,” Travis yelled and Clint nodded. He adjusted the straps against his chest and leaned forward. The thump of the bird landing hard made the air catch in his chest quick before Clint unhooked himself.
Author Notes: Uh. I have no real explanation for this other than I love AU's and alternative what could have beens. Plus, I have a competency kink.
“Coming in hot,” Travis yelled and Clint nodded. He adjusted the straps against his chest and leaned forward. The thump of the bird landing hard made the air catch in his chest quick before Clint unhooked himself.
“Go get 'em, cowboy,” Travis gave him the thumbs up. McGregor and Anderson were already hopping out and Clint adjusted his grip and focused. His eyes narrowed on his targets and he fought down the smile curving at his lips.
It was going to be a good op.
He grabbed his gear and jumped off right along side Smythe. “Ready, Hawkeye?”
Clint laughed and nodded. He watched at McGregor covered their three and six as Smythe and he made their way to the extraction point. Travis hadn't killed the bird, and he wouldn't, not till he got the all clear. McGregor gave the all clear and Smythe's shoulders visibly relaxed. Clint jogged over to Anderson and he slung the heavy bag down in front of the first man on the ground. “Doctor, we've got a compound fracture of the tibia here and visible lacerations.”
“Let's get to work, Nurse Barton.”
Clint squeezed the shoulder of the barely conscious soldier. “We've got you, soldier. You're going to be fine.”
+
Clint supposed in another life he would have been better at killing.
He joined the Marines when he was barely eighteen. He was two months away from Carson's with the just barely healed over scars zig zagging along his back and one deep gouge in his chest. The circus had dropped him at the nearest hospital they could find and just like the Swordsman had just left him. He hadn't felt the sting really.
Clint had gotten used to being left behind. He barely remembered what Barney had said to him when he'd gone. His parents were nothing but fuzzy memories. The boy he'd been and the safe childhood he'd had left him too.
He'd spent months in the hospital under the kind care of the nurses and nuns. They cared for him and he watched them tend to the sick and dying and Clint never forgot their gift. He wanted to serve the people like they did, but he was sure that he could save more with the skills that he'd been born with, his eyes and steady hands.
It seemed like a good fit.
It had until he'd pulled that first trigger and watched what a real end result and resolution looked and felt like.
+
The Swordsman's first lesson had been focus. Find the target and let that be the end result. There was no alternative other than finding and meeting the bullseye. Clint had been an exceptional student. He was, according to the signage, the World's Greatest Marksman. He lived up to the name night after night, hitting target after target. He had pride in the skill.
The Marines were different. Clint was forced to acknowledge others and that he was one part of a whole. It almost fit. The exercises and the basic training was easy enough. He was affable and could mould himself into the type of soldier that excelled. He followed orders and had the highest rating in short and long range weaponry. Clint had made a family of a sort and he thought that he'd finally fit.
Then came Scout Sniper School.
“You'll do well there, Barton,” his CO said. Clint just nodded and followed orders.
It didn't surprise Clint that he flew through the next two months with flying colors. The tests of memorization and concentration coupled with the harsh training regime felt almost gentle.
His training officers never beat him or tested the sharpness of their knives against his skin as his previous trainer had.
Clint thought them better for that kindness even as they yelled at him.
+
Having a spotter, a partner, was odd to Clint at first. He'd had his troop during basic and he had, what he would call, acquaintances. Hellian was a rail thin guy with the largest Adam's apple Clint had ever seen on a human. He also had the kindest brown eyes Clint had seen outside of the handful of months he'd spent under the care of Sister Anna and her cadre of novices at the hospital. In Hellian, Clint had found his first real friend.
They trained together daily and spent a fair amount of time outside of training letting themselves just be Clint and Greg.
“You know, you can tell me,” Greg had said sipping his beer and kicking his feet up to rest against the rust riddled post of Clint's back porch. The military housing was miles above what he'd had at the circus and Clint treasured every inch of the privacy that the concrete walls gave him. It was freezing during the winter months and blistering hot in the summer, but it was his space.
Clint licked the foam off the top of the fresh bottle and shot Greg a look with a curl of his lips. “Tell you what?”
Greg leaned forward and sighed rolling his shoulders. “You're one of my best friends, Hawk.” He waved the brown bottle at Clint. Greg was the only one who'd shortened his call sign. He was the only one that Clint had allowed the leniency. “Me and Cynthia. We don't care. We'll love you any way.” Greg's voice went soft at the mention of his wife. They'd been best friends since diapers and married just before Greg had signed up for his hitch. They were expecting their first baby within months.
Clint stared down at his hands, there were tiny faint scars and knicks from arrows and knives and burns from cigarettes and shell casings landing on thin skin. “I love you both, too.” He took another sip of the bitter brew and side eyed Greg. “His name is Simon, but it's not anything serious. He knows it and so do I. Just... something fun once in a while.”
Greg nodded and he bumped his shoulder against Clint's with a snicker. “Do you have to say Simon Says when you touch his-.”
Clint shoved Greg off the lawn chair before he could finish the sentence.
Clint had a best friend in Greg. The feeling he kept in his chest, he thought, felt like what he hoped love was.
+
The round had been meant for him. He knew it and so did Greg. But Greg was being too fucking nice about shit.
“Just, just you don't die, okay? Okay, Greg?” Clint yelled at him and tightened the knot of fabric around the gaping wound in Greg's chest. “Stay with me, man.”
Greg's smile was bloody and gruesome. “Stop crying, Barton. We're Marines. Marines don't cry.”
Clint swiped his arm against his face and he looked up and around. The sand was kicking up and night was falling fast. He knew their team was at least two clicks from where they were last known to have been. The .50 bullet was meant to take out the American sniper. It was just Greg's luck to have been switching places with him at that moment.
“Go on, go take a piss. I'll watch it for now.”
Clint recalled the exact sound and moment of impact and the look on Greg's face. The round had spun Greg around catching him in the chest and propelling him almost off the mountainside. Clint had caught, dragged and cursed at him within the same two breaths.
“I swear to God, Hellian. If you leave me to tell Cyn that I got you shot in this fucking sandbox, I am telling your kid that you did it on purpose you attention whore,” Clint said and propped Greg up a little to keep his lungs clear.
Greg groaned and he coughed a little. It was clear with no blood but he was going a gray white under the sunburn. “You are a horrible friend, Hawk. What'd I ever do to you?”
“Shut up. Shut up and stop bleeding on me,” Clint said and held down pressure on the hole in his friend's chest.
“Aw, you care,” Greg said closing his eyes.
Clint pinched Greg's cheek. “Eyes open, soldier.”
“You are a mean son of a bitch. Those nuns trained you up good.”
“I'm just scared of what your wife will do to me when she finds out I'm bringing you back all banged up,” Clint made a fist against Greg's chest, counting the beats against his knuckles. They were still strong, but Greg was losing a lot of blood.
“Yeah, she's terrifying,” Greg said with no small amount of love and pride.
“She is. So be a pal and don't die on me okay?” Clint hugged Greg tighter. “I'll buy you a beer when we get back stateside.”
Greg snorted and then cursed. “Fuck. You're buying me so many beers. If you didn't have a bladder the size of a fuckin' walnut...”
The med team found them bloody, arguing, and alive.
+
It was that mission that changed Clint's life.
“I'm getting out,” Clint said watching Greg try to change his son's diaper with one arm. His other arm was strapped across his chest. The bullet had ripped through his chest, missing his heart and lung by millimeters, but it had done a number on his muscles and shattered part of his scapula.
“The closet or the troop?” Greg smirked and then flipped Clint off when Owen tried to roll away from his father, diaper still half on and filled with dubious substances.
“Fuck you.”
“Cyn might be into that,” Greg said and pointed the baby powder bottle at Clint. “Come on, little man. Be nice to your old man. Your Uncle Clint is a lazy bastard and won't help me change your stinky winky diaper.”
“Uncle Clint is helping you be self sufficient, asshole. Also, Cyn is going to have your balls in a vice when your kid's first word is bastard.”
Greg successfully unpeeled the tape on the other side of the diaper and rolled it up with a grimace. “I'll blame you. It's your membership due for being part of the Hellian tribe.”
Clint snorted and he shrugged. “So, I'm thinking about using my G.I. bennies to go back to school.”
“Is slutting around a college major now?” Greg frowned and looked at his son's butt and the hand that held the baby wipe.
“I am comfortable with my sexual prowess. Do not try to shame me. I have enough residual Catholic guilt, thanks,” Clint said sighing and leaning over to wipe up his godson's ass and tossing the dirty paper into the bin. He was gracious enough to slide the clean diaper under said godson's now clean ass. “Now you're on your own.”
“Thank you,” Greg said making a face at Owen. Owen squealed and kicked his fat little legs in the air.
“I'm going to be a medic,” Clint said after a moment. “Eventually I think I want to be a nurse.”
There was a long silence before Greg turned his head to look at him. His lips were already twitching with suppressed mirth. “Will you be wearing the sexy white plastic dress and heels?”
The laughter was uncalled for, Clint thought.
He did not feel bad at all when Owen baptised his father with a fountain of piss.
It was Greg's own fault for not putting a diaper hat on his son's junk. Clint had learned that mistake the first time it'd happened.
Author's notes: Uh. I kind of love Greg. Clint loves Greg, but not in a "I want to have sex with you love" but an actual familial love kind of deal. It's super raw and I haven't rewritten it in bits and pieces 11 times over, but hey nano! that's what it's good for... actual sort of production of things.
now with handy dandy counter
2959 / 4500
(65.76%)
in other breaking news, it's best to use cardboard for power moves i'm off for two days! sleeeeeeping in! watching mooooovies on my telly. staying in my pjs all day! or do general upkeep things. like laundry. or buy more socks instead of washing them. that seems financially unsound.
this one, is a different take on an "origins" story. idek what it is other than, "i wanted clint as a nurse who meets up with coulson and eventually ends up at SHIELD" fic. not necessarily a "paramedic au" except it is. except it's not?
eta- now with actual content. unbeta'd obvs. clunky and chunky in places [just like me!]. rawest of raw things. apologies abound.
Title: The Life You Save
Author: clumsygyrl/thegirlthatisclumsy
Fandom: Avengers movieverse
Pairing(s): Clint Barton/Phil Coulson
Summary: “Coming in hot,” Travis yelled and Clint nodded. He adjusted the straps against his chest and leaned forward. The thump of the bird landing hard made the air catch in his chest quick before Clint unhooked himself.
Author Notes: Uh. I have no real explanation for this other than I love AU's and alternative what could have beens. Plus, I have a competency kink.
“Coming in hot,” Travis yelled and Clint nodded. He adjusted the straps against his chest and leaned forward. The thump of the bird landing hard made the air catch in his chest quick before Clint unhooked himself.
“Go get 'em, cowboy,” Travis gave him the thumbs up. McGregor and Anderson were already hopping out and Clint adjusted his grip and focused. His eyes narrowed on his targets and he fought down the smile curving at his lips.
It was going to be a good op.
He grabbed his gear and jumped off right along side Smythe. “Ready, Hawkeye?”
Clint laughed and nodded. He watched at McGregor covered their three and six as Smythe and he made their way to the extraction point. Travis hadn't killed the bird, and he wouldn't, not till he got the all clear. McGregor gave the all clear and Smythe's shoulders visibly relaxed. Clint jogged over to Anderson and he slung the heavy bag down in front of the first man on the ground. “Doctor, we've got a compound fracture of the tibia here and visible lacerations.”
“Let's get to work, Nurse Barton.”
Clint squeezed the shoulder of the barely conscious soldier. “We've got you, soldier. You're going to be fine.”
+
Clint supposed in another life he would have been better at killing.
He joined the Marines when he was barely eighteen. He was two months away from Carson's with the just barely healed over scars zig zagging along his back and one deep gouge in his chest. The circus had dropped him at the nearest hospital they could find and just like the Swordsman had just left him. He hadn't felt the sting really.
Clint had gotten used to being left behind. He barely remembered what Barney had said to him when he'd gone. His parents were nothing but fuzzy memories. The boy he'd been and the safe childhood he'd had left him too.
He'd spent months in the hospital under the kind care of the nurses and nuns. They cared for him and he watched them tend to the sick and dying and Clint never forgot their gift. He wanted to serve the people like they did, but he was sure that he could save more with the skills that he'd been born with, his eyes and steady hands.
It seemed like a good fit.
It had until he'd pulled that first trigger and watched what a real end result and resolution looked and felt like.
+
The Swordsman's first lesson had been focus. Find the target and let that be the end result. There was no alternative other than finding and meeting the bullseye. Clint had been an exceptional student. He was, according to the signage, the World's Greatest Marksman. He lived up to the name night after night, hitting target after target. He had pride in the skill.
The Marines were different. Clint was forced to acknowledge others and that he was one part of a whole. It almost fit. The exercises and the basic training was easy enough. He was affable and could mould himself into the type of soldier that excelled. He followed orders and had the highest rating in short and long range weaponry. Clint had made a family of a sort and he thought that he'd finally fit.
Then came Scout Sniper School.
“You'll do well there, Barton,” his CO said. Clint just nodded and followed orders.
It didn't surprise Clint that he flew through the next two months with flying colors. The tests of memorization and concentration coupled with the harsh training regime felt almost gentle.
His training officers never beat him or tested the sharpness of their knives against his skin as his previous trainer had.
Clint thought them better for that kindness even as they yelled at him.
+
Having a spotter, a partner, was odd to Clint at first. He'd had his troop during basic and he had, what he would call, acquaintances. Hellian was a rail thin guy with the largest Adam's apple Clint had ever seen on a human. He also had the kindest brown eyes Clint had seen outside of the handful of months he'd spent under the care of Sister Anna and her cadre of novices at the hospital. In Hellian, Clint had found his first real friend.
They trained together daily and spent a fair amount of time outside of training letting themselves just be Clint and Greg.
“You know, you can tell me,” Greg had said sipping his beer and kicking his feet up to rest against the rust riddled post of Clint's back porch. The military housing was miles above what he'd had at the circus and Clint treasured every inch of the privacy that the concrete walls gave him. It was freezing during the winter months and blistering hot in the summer, but it was his space.
Clint licked the foam off the top of the fresh bottle and shot Greg a look with a curl of his lips. “Tell you what?”
Greg leaned forward and sighed rolling his shoulders. “You're one of my best friends, Hawk.” He waved the brown bottle at Clint. Greg was the only one who'd shortened his call sign. He was the only one that Clint had allowed the leniency. “Me and Cynthia. We don't care. We'll love you any way.” Greg's voice went soft at the mention of his wife. They'd been best friends since diapers and married just before Greg had signed up for his hitch. They were expecting their first baby within months.
Clint stared down at his hands, there were tiny faint scars and knicks from arrows and knives and burns from cigarettes and shell casings landing on thin skin. “I love you both, too.” He took another sip of the bitter brew and side eyed Greg. “His name is Simon, but it's not anything serious. He knows it and so do I. Just... something fun once in a while.”
Greg nodded and he bumped his shoulder against Clint's with a snicker. “Do you have to say Simon Says when you touch his-.”
Clint shoved Greg off the lawn chair before he could finish the sentence.
Clint had a best friend in Greg. The feeling he kept in his chest, he thought, felt like what he hoped love was.
+
The round had been meant for him. He knew it and so did Greg. But Greg was being too fucking nice about shit.
“Just, just you don't die, okay? Okay, Greg?” Clint yelled at him and tightened the knot of fabric around the gaping wound in Greg's chest. “Stay with me, man.”
Greg's smile was bloody and gruesome. “Stop crying, Barton. We're Marines. Marines don't cry.”
Clint swiped his arm against his face and he looked up and around. The sand was kicking up and night was falling fast. He knew their team was at least two clicks from where they were last known to have been. The .50 bullet was meant to take out the American sniper. It was just Greg's luck to have been switching places with him at that moment.
“Go on, go take a piss. I'll watch it for now.”
Clint recalled the exact sound and moment of impact and the look on Greg's face. The round had spun Greg around catching him in the chest and propelling him almost off the mountainside. Clint had caught, dragged and cursed at him within the same two breaths.
“I swear to God, Hellian. If you leave me to tell Cyn that I got you shot in this fucking sandbox, I am telling your kid that you did it on purpose you attention whore,” Clint said and propped Greg up a little to keep his lungs clear.
Greg groaned and he coughed a little. It was clear with no blood but he was going a gray white under the sunburn. “You are a horrible friend, Hawk. What'd I ever do to you?”
“Shut up. Shut up and stop bleeding on me,” Clint said and held down pressure on the hole in his friend's chest.
“Aw, you care,” Greg said closing his eyes.
Clint pinched Greg's cheek. “Eyes open, soldier.”
“You are a mean son of a bitch. Those nuns trained you up good.”
“I'm just scared of what your wife will do to me when she finds out I'm bringing you back all banged up,” Clint made a fist against Greg's chest, counting the beats against his knuckles. They were still strong, but Greg was losing a lot of blood.
“Yeah, she's terrifying,” Greg said with no small amount of love and pride.
“She is. So be a pal and don't die on me okay?” Clint hugged Greg tighter. “I'll buy you a beer when we get back stateside.”
Greg snorted and then cursed. “Fuck. You're buying me so many beers. If you didn't have a bladder the size of a fuckin' walnut...”
The med team found them bloody, arguing, and alive.
+
It was that mission that changed Clint's life.
“I'm getting out,” Clint said watching Greg try to change his son's diaper with one arm. His other arm was strapped across his chest. The bullet had ripped through his chest, missing his heart and lung by millimeters, but it had done a number on his muscles and shattered part of his scapula.
“The closet or the troop?” Greg smirked and then flipped Clint off when Owen tried to roll away from his father, diaper still half on and filled with dubious substances.
“Fuck you.”
“Cyn might be into that,” Greg said and pointed the baby powder bottle at Clint. “Come on, little man. Be nice to your old man. Your Uncle Clint is a lazy bastard and won't help me change your stinky winky diaper.”
“Uncle Clint is helping you be self sufficient, asshole. Also, Cyn is going to have your balls in a vice when your kid's first word is bastard.”
Greg successfully unpeeled the tape on the other side of the diaper and rolled it up with a grimace. “I'll blame you. It's your membership due for being part of the Hellian tribe.”
Clint snorted and he shrugged. “So, I'm thinking about using my G.I. bennies to go back to school.”
“Is slutting around a college major now?” Greg frowned and looked at his son's butt and the hand that held the baby wipe.
“I am comfortable with my sexual prowess. Do not try to shame me. I have enough residual Catholic guilt, thanks,” Clint said sighing and leaning over to wipe up his godson's ass and tossing the dirty paper into the bin. He was gracious enough to slide the clean diaper under said godson's now clean ass. “Now you're on your own.”
“Thank you,” Greg said making a face at Owen. Owen squealed and kicked his fat little legs in the air.
“I'm going to be a medic,” Clint said after a moment. “Eventually I think I want to be a nurse.”
There was a long silence before Greg turned his head to look at him. His lips were already twitching with suppressed mirth. “Will you be wearing the sexy white plastic dress and heels?”
The laughter was uncalled for, Clint thought.
He did not feel bad at all when Owen baptised his father with a fountain of piss.
It was Greg's own fault for not putting a diaper hat on his son's junk. Clint had learned that mistake the first time it'd happened.
Author's notes: Uh. I kind of love Greg. Clint loves Greg, but not in a "I want to have sex with you love" but an actual familial love kind of deal. It's super raw and I haven't rewritten it in bits and pieces 11 times over, but hey nano! that's what it's good for... actual sort of production of things.
now with handy dandy counter
2959 / 4500
(65.76%)
in other breaking news, it's best to use cardboard for power moves i'm off for two days! sleeeeeeping in! watching mooooovies on my telly. staying in my pjs all day! or do general upkeep things. like laundry. or buy more socks instead of washing them. that seems financially unsound.