fic: past tense [dyslexia!verse, pg-13, clint/coulson, 2/2]
Title: Past Tense [2/2]
Author: hoosierbitch
Fandom: Avengers
Rating: PG-13
Series: Dyslexia!verse (LJ tag here, DW tag here, or on AO3 here)
Content Advisory: Grief, depression, character with a learning disability, dealing with the (temporary!) death of a loved one. References to alcoholic parents.
Thanks: To ivorysilk, as always.
Summary: Three months after destroyed landscapes and aborted kisses and painkillers that don’t work, Natasha’s gunshot wound heals enough for her to walk without a cane (a cane with a sword in it, an unexpected present from Hill) and Clint sleeps through some nights without the assistance of vodka and Natasha’s murmured lullabies.
*
One month after destroyed landscapes and aborted kisses and painkillers that don’t work, Natasha’s gunshot wound heals enough for her to walk without a cane (a cane with a sword in it, an unexpected present from Hill) and Clint sleeps through some nights without the assistance of vodka and Natasha’s murmured lullabies.
Two months and Captain "Call Me Steve" America sends Natasha a text (in caps lock) asking her out for coffee. She dresses conservatively, brings extra weaponry, and growls at Steve when he tries to pay for both their drinks. Clint, watching from a back corner, does his best not to laugh.
It's not a date. Clint can't tell if Natasha's relieved or disappointed. Instead, it's a job pitch: join The Avengers (capital letters; maybe italics, probably in red white and blue when Steve says it), move into Stark Tower, and get out from under SHIELD’s control.
Clint's not sure exactly where SHIELD stands on the issue of The Avengers these days; whether they're contractors, back-up, or enemies. When Coulson was alive, he-he'd wanted the team to work together. He’d thought it would be an extension of SHIELD, a new solution to help address the growing threats of an increasingly unfamiliar world. Coulson had designed uniforms for all of them, for fuck's sake. (He'd planned on Clint being a part of the team, but Steve hadn't texted Clint. When he and the Captain had first met, Clint had tried to kill him. Come to think of it, that's how he'd first encountered Thor, too. And Coulson. And Natasha. At least he hasn't tried to kill Tony or Bruce.)
Natasha says she'll think about it and leaves the café, her limp barely noticeable. Clint's ready to follow her, but instead he stays and watches Captain America sit at the little table he’d claimed by the window, hunched over his "Just a plain coffee please," his canvass jacket pulling tight over his shoulders. Clint needs reminding sometimes that he's not the only one who's lost his world.
Eventually Clint meets up with Tasha at the no-tell motel room they're renting under the name ‘Nicholas Melancholy,’ because Natasha had been feeling whimsical but not terribly creative when she put together their last set of fake identities.
"He wants us to be part of his team," she says. "He wants us to leave SHIELD. Move into Tony's giant architectural dick."
"Well, when you say it like that, how could you say no?"
"We. How could we say no."
"He asked you, Tasha," he says softly. (She feels like she owes him, still, for the first time they met. He feels like he owes her because Loki-despite the magical mask that Thor had secured over his face-knows all of her secrets; they’re weapons now, weapons that a demigod has in his arsenal.)
"We're a boxed set."
"Buy one, get one free?"
"Something like that."
They lie on threadbare carpet, feet propped up on the set of cots they’d shoved together to make a bed big enough for both of them, and stare at the stains on the ceiling. "I don't know if I could leave SHIELD," he admits. "It's the only home I've had since I was eight." It's the best home he's ever had.
"It's the only place I've ever felt safe," Natasha says. Clint very deliberately doesn't move to comfort her. (Apparently she has some new secrets, secrets that Loki won’t know.) "I just don't know how much of that was SHIELD, how much is you, and how much was Coulson."
"I don’t know either. Stark doesn't trust Fury, and I think…I think he might have good reasons. I did some poking around when Loki had me researching for the break-in. There’s a lot we don’t know.” If Coulson were alive, he and Tasha would just ask him. And they’d have believed his answers without question. “Hill likes us well enough, but she doesn't have as much clout as Coulson had. She's got no reason to protect us."
"I don't know what to do," she whispers.
He turns onto his side and rests his head on her shoulder. "We'll figure it out."
*
In the end Natasha goes to Pepper and talks it out. She comes back from the meeting (she comes back, says she always will; Coulson had promised that too) and says that she thinks they should make a partial split from SHIELD and act as liaisons of a sort between the team and the agency. They could both benefit from their combined strengths. Pepper, and Natasha by proxy, says they should move into the tower
They go to the top of the US Bank building again to talk about it. It’s got a good view of Stark’s tower. The bank’s roof has been cleaned since the last time they perched there, so they don’t have to clear space among the glass and metal to sit. The poorer neighborhoods still have debris blocking their streets and damaged sewage systems.
"I think Pepper doesn't want Tony to be fighting alone,” Natasha muses.
"He's got her, though. And the Captain."
"I think maybe Tony needs a lot of people to be around him to not feel alone." She’d shadowed Tony for weeks, before-before New York. She knows him, even if he doesn’t know the real her.
She’d had to do a fake lingerie photo shoot as ‘Natalia’ in an attempt to catch Tony’s attention. Apparently that, and nearly choking Happy to death with her thighs, had won the billionaire over. Sitwell had teased her about the photos and Coulson had retaliated by putting wasabi in his egg-salad sandwich. Twice.
Clint thinks about Steve’s hunched back and says, "I think they might need us."
*
They have to turn in resignation letters. Tasha does hers first and then slides the form over to Clint, who copies it out diligently. In all the parts that require actual writing instead of check marks and signatures, he writes, "What she said."
Fury calls them into his office. He's holding the forms in his hands. Clint's overcome with déjà vu, remembering Coulson's hands framing Clint's failing scrawls. That first time, with Coulson, Clint had been convinced that he would be forced to leave. Now he's afraid he might be forced to stay. (The Helicarrier's halls are too empty, but ground base has a new memorial wall that Clint can't bring himself to look at again. It had taken Clint a long time to find Coulson’s name amongst the rest of those who had died by his hands.)
Fury says, "I hope you know what you're doing." Natasha says nothing in response and Clint follows her lead. "Should have expected this, I suppose. Losing my one good eye and my two right hands in one blow."
Clint can’t help himself. "That's one weird metaphorical body you're building, boss." Fury actually smirks at Clint, who's too surprised to smile back.
"Take care of yourselves. And take care of that suicidal megalomaniacal billionaire. Watch out for Hulk. And-and call if you need backup." Natasha nods, sharp and curt. "Coulson would never forgive me if I let anything happen to you."
*
Afterwards Clint goes to his quarters and gathers his belongings. He hadn’t had time to retrieve the stuff that had slowly migrated over to Coulson’s place (clothes, mostly, some early reader books, a weird amount of socks) before a SHIELD recovery team had wiped Coulson’s house clean. The stuff Clint left on base-the stuff he hadn’t brought to New Mexico-doesn’t even fill his duffel bag. When he’s about to leave he finds a piece of paper slid under the door.
It must have been Hill or Sitwell, he thinks, after he figures out what form it is that he’s been given. Hell, maybe it was even Fury, trying to say goodbye.
It’s a copy of his and Coulson's "Declaration of Romantic Intent" form, their signatures at the bottom side-by-side, written in the ink of the same pen.
He's going to need to find a new book to hide it in.
*
He moves into Stark Tower. He has a floor, a whole fucking floor, which is too much to handle, so he pretty much only stays there when he’s too wiped out to stay awake.
Natasha, for reasons Clint doesn’t know (she doesn’t share all of her secrets) insinuates herself as Pepper’s secretary again. After spying on them for a while, Clint’s pretty sure she’s not doing it to gather intel (unless the stilettos they were talking about buying were weapons, but given the fact that they were debating the merits of primary colors, he doubts it).
When Clint sees Tasha these days, she’s either in sharp business suits, her SHIELD uniform for missions, or oversized pajamas that match the set that Clint had stolen from Coulson, too. She starts watching TV shows, texting Clint every so often to come join her. She drags him to the common floor sometimes and helps Tony, Steve, and Clint interact without their various neurosis getting in the way. Slowly, the circles under Natasha’s eyes begin to fade.
Clint’s never held down a day job, even undercover, so when he needs to leave the tower (which is almost all the time) he goes to bookstores. He’s feeling picky about the new book he wants to buy to replace Trick Shot’s gift, he realizes, after he leaves the fifth used bookstore empty-handed. He doesn’t care so much what the book’s about, just that it’s big and the cover’s beat-up and the pages smell right.
He doesn’t really want to buy a new book. (He wants to go back to New Mexico.)
But he and Coulson had never finished reading Trick Shot’s book, and Coulson wouldn’t want Clint to stop trying. Clint had promised Coulson that he would try. Coulson had promised that he wouldn’t leave. Clint, at least, is going to keep his side of the bargain.
Clint’s floor is still empty except for generic furniture, but he likes what Tasha does with hers. He visits her sometimes, bringing vodka and hot chocolate with him and letting her pick which one they drink. One night she picks hot chocolate and then they go to Steve’s floor and Steve draws caricatures of both of them. Steve’s floor is decorated with antiques, a lot of posters of modern art, and various tech that Clint’s pretty sure he wouldn’t know how to use.
Natasha’s filled her rooms with wall hangings and statues and aromatic scent diffusers that make Clint think of the good parts of Budapest.
Eventually Clint switches from wandering through bookstores and starts going to thrift shops, drawn in by the plethora of knickknacks displayed in their windows that have no discernable function.
One day he buys a lamp. It's ugly and yellow and when he gets it home and plugs it in, it doesn’t work. He goes down to Tony’s lab for the first time-it’s got glass walls and classic cars and robots with names-and Tony takes the lamp. A robot proudly bearing a “Participant” ribbon stuck to its front kicks him out.
Half an hour later Tony wanders into the kitchen, tells him that there had been a loose wire in the lamp, and that Tony had made it better.
Clint plugs it in and discovers that it now responds to voice commands.
He puts in on a dresser. It looks lonely.
A few days later he passes a greenhouse that’s throwing a big sale. Coulson’s bonsais are probably dead by now. Clint buys himself a blue cactus with weird fuzzy leaves.
He forgets to water it and it dies.
He buys a calendar, one with paintings by Dali, an artist whose name and work he actually knows. (Coulson and art museums. Clint shoves the memories down.) He flips the calendar to October. It's getting cold outside and rebuilding efforts are slowing down. SHIELD had given Clint bonus pay before he quit, and he doesn’t have to pay rent now, so he gives most of his salary to homeless shelters.
He buys another cactus with the money he keeps, painstakingly reads the directions that come with it (he hadn't realized plants need manuals), and marks out every fifth day on the calendar with a blue marker to remind himself to water it. He never misses a day. The cactus lives. Natasha, for no reason Clint can figure out, names it Frank.
*
He misses Coulson every day. He misses Coulson when he wakes up in bed alone, when he brushes his teeth and Coulson isn’t there reminding him to put the cap back on the toothpaste, when he fixes his coffee and doesn’t get the mix of cinnamon and cream quite right. He misses Coulson when it rains and aches settle deep in his bones and there's no one there to massage his joints, or give him painkillers, or know without being told that Clint is hurting.
He misses Coulson when he wakes alone, and on the nights he can't fall asleep. He misses Coulson with every breath he takes and again when his lungs feel too tight to breathe at all.
Clint’s been left behind by more loved ones than he can count. (That’s a lie: Mom and Dad and Trick Shot and the Swordsman and Barney, a full hand of fingers. Coulson’s the beginning of a new hand.) Even with all his practice Clint’s still too dumb to figure out how to not care.
*
Days pass. The cactus grows, sending little off-shoots out beyond the rim of its pot. One day after working out he carries it up to the common room and stares at it. Eventually Steve wanders in and offers to help him repot it, which is apparently a thing that they did in the 40s and has nothing to do with marijuana. Steve tells him it’s still a thing in the 2010s, and then asks him a lot of questions about pot. Clint defers the inquiries to Tony.
He takes Steve to a thrift store with him to shop for a new pot. While they’re there they buy Steve a new coat and a scarf. Steve doesn’t really feel the cold, but he looks weird walking around in a light jacket when the sky’s threatening snow.
They get dirt all over Tony’s balcony and don’t clean it up. Steve grins at him like they’re children sharing a secret and Clint leaves Frank the Cactus and his cheesy “It’s Your Birthday!” pot on the table in the common space next to Tony’s gleaming decorations.
His dresser looks empty again. He buys porcelain statues of shepherds and ducks, clocks that don’t work, ceramic vases, and wicker baskets. He's never used a wicker basket, never even seen one used, but thrift stores always have shelves and shelves of them, so he figures he better own some just in case. He owns a lot of things now that aren’t good for anything.
Time passes. The Avengers-the four of them; Steve still in the uniform that Coulson designed-take down a mutated octopus off the coast of Florida, a mad scientist with twelve-foot-tall attack dogs, and a kid with power over electricity who burns out the entire electrical grid in Cincinnati. They don’t get there in time to save him. Stark Industries pays for the repairs and Tony doesn’t come out of his workshop for days; when he does, he’s upgraded the jet to increase its speed. Clint’s pretty sure that Tony doesn't know that there are some people who just can’t be saved.
*
Clint changes Dali to November. This month's the melting clocks, which Coulson said was overused when Clint had been thinking about buying a poster of it to put next to his framed target. Clint had liked it a lot, but hadn’t bought it. (He’d thought he’d have time to think it over.) He likes it less now, since time actually does feel like it’s dragging, melting, distorting itself to fit the new landscape of his life, which manages to echo even in the JARVIS and Tony-filled halls of the tower.
November means Thanksgiving is close. Bruce had apparently said (on one of the occasions Tony tracked him down to poke him or feed him or whatever the hell Tony did) that he’d come to New York and stay for a while to celebrate with them. Apparently that means Thanksgiving is now going to be a big deal. Tony morphs into a whirlwind of preparation and planning that Pepper tolerates with a level of amused aplomb that Clint’s only ever seen in Natasha before.
Clint says he’s not going to help with Thanksgiving, mostly just so that Tony and Steve will have to work to convince him to help. He likes it when they talk to him.
But this time Tony just glares at him and says that if Clint doesn’t find him a good glazed ham recipe ASAP (which Clint is not going to be able to do, because cookbooks aren’t like normal books; Coulson had always written directions out for him), Tony’s going to evict him from the tower. Clint knows that Tony is probably kidding, and in any case, the shelters are always overflowing with food during the holiday season, so Clint would be able to manage just fine without having to compromise a safehouse or retreat back to SHIELD.
"I'm not a ham fan," Clint says.
"Glazed. Ham. It's a Thanksgiving staple, Barton. JARVIS says so. You need to put together an ingredients list before tomorrow afternoon."
"Thanksgiving is two weeks away."
"Yeah, well, maybe Steve's boy-scout-ness is rubbing off on me. Now get cracking, or I'll have Dummy show you the door."
Clint's pretty sure that he could elude one dumbass robot (even though it's hard to be mean to Dummy, who seems to have taken a liking to Clint and fetches his bow for him at inappropriate times). “If you try to kick me out I’m just going to move into your vents and haunt you,” Clint says, hiding all of his nervous tics and sending a quick mental Thanks to Hill, who’d trained him out of them. “I’ll be like the ghost of Christmas past. Only for Thanksgiving instead of Christmas. And with bows and arrows instead of nostalgic trips down memory lane.”
“I will make vent-bots,” Tony says. “Many many vent-bots…” He wanders away and Clint’s left standing alone in what suddenly doesn’t feel like a common space anymore. It feels like Tony’s kitchen in Tony’s tower.
Clint goes back down to his room (no, Tony's room) and thinks maybe he’d be able to take all of his stuff with him if he had to leave fast. It’s only ever taken him one trip to move all his shit between places before, but now he’d need boxes. Suitcases. Paper or bubblewrap to protect his lamp and figurines and vases. He’d have to find something to carry his growing collection of cacti (which Natasha has named Mario, Francisca, John, Weasel, and Benedict).
He and Natasha could help each other move, maybe, on the rare chance that Tony kicked them both out instead of just Clint.
*
Clint finds a recipe app on his kindle that has pictures next to all of the instructions, and manages (with JARVIS’s assistance) to make a glazed ham. Natasha buys two cans of cranberries and dumbs them in a bowl, which Clint thinks is unfair. She eats half the bowl while watching him swear and glaze and kick the oven.
Bruce arrives on Thanksgiving Day, looking smaller than he actually is. His clothes are all too big on him, which helps to perpetuate the illusion, but most of it’s his posture, which Clint knows intimately. Don’t notice me.
Tony fastens onto Bruce like a limpet, gripping his elbow and steering him around the Tower, describing it in detail like Bruce has suddenly been struck blind. By the time dinner is served-Pepper and Happy show up last-minute bearing stuffing and rolls and green bean casserole-Bruce starts relaxing. Natasha ninjas the seating arrangement so that Bruce is sandwiched between her and Tony, and between the two of them they keep Bruce engaged and calm the entire meal.
The glazed ham is pretty good. The cranberries are pretty terrible.
Clint realizes after dinner is done and they start in on the blueberry pie that he hadn’t thought of Coulson once during the meal.
He excuses himself from dessert, goes to his quarters, and pukes up everything he’d eaten that night.
Instead of bringing the drinks down to Tasha’s floor he drinks them both in his own room. Hot chocolate (Coulson’s brand) and vodka (Natasha’s), one in each hand, until the room goes blurry in front of him.
“Never even had a Thanksgiving with him,” he slurs, when Natasha’s face swims into view. One of them had always been working, or on a mission (early on, Coulson had visited his family; Clint wonders if, eventually, Coulson would have taken Clint to meet his parents). “Not a real one. Like this.”
“It was my very first.” They’d celebrated it in the SHIELD caf a couple of times. It had always been mostly empty and they’d just sat on the table and gorged themselves on pumpkin pie.
“I had Thanksgiving with my parents,” he says, struggling through his words, “before they died, but it wasn’t that fun.” It had flipped between being violent and joyful in turns, depending on his mother’s determined cheer and the level of liquor in his father’s glass. Clint had kept an eye on everyone’s drink intake over dinner by force of habit, and had noticed Bruce doing the same.
“D’you-d’you-d’you think he’d be…”
“He’d be proud,” Natasha whispers.
“D’you think he’d’ve been here?” He closes his eyes because suddenly he feels like Coulson is next to him, solid and concerned, near enough to touch. “I think he’d’ve been here,” Clint says. Natasha’s face is blurry again but she wipes his cheeks with the back of her finger and he realizes he’s crying. “I think he’d be here if he could.”
*
The next time he goes out to a bookshop he takes Natasha (who asks Pepper’s advice on where to find rare and antique volumes) and when they get back to the tower Clint has a carefully wrapped second edition of The Adventurs of Robyn Hode and His Merrie Men tucked under his arm. He reads two pages before he gives up. He closes the book, using the "Declaration of Romantic Intent" form as a bookmark.
He's going to keep trying.
http://hoosierbitch.dreamwidth.org/97843.html |
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Author: hoosierbitch
Fandom: Avengers
Rating: PG-13
Series: Dyslexia!verse (LJ tag here, DW tag here, or on AO3 here)
Content Advisory: Grief, depression, character with a learning disability, dealing with the (temporary!) death of a loved one. References to alcoholic parents.
Thanks: To ivorysilk, as always.
Summary: Three months after destroyed landscapes and aborted kisses and painkillers that don’t work, Natasha’s gunshot wound heals enough for her to walk without a cane (a cane with a sword in it, an unexpected present from Hill) and Clint sleeps through some nights without the assistance of vodka and Natasha’s murmured lullabies.
*
One month after destroyed landscapes and aborted kisses and painkillers that don’t work, Natasha’s gunshot wound heals enough for her to walk without a cane (a cane with a sword in it, an unexpected present from Hill) and Clint sleeps through some nights without the assistance of vodka and Natasha’s murmured lullabies.
Two months and Captain "Call Me Steve" America sends Natasha a text (in caps lock) asking her out for coffee. She dresses conservatively, brings extra weaponry, and growls at Steve when he tries to pay for both their drinks. Clint, watching from a back corner, does his best not to laugh.
It's not a date. Clint can't tell if Natasha's relieved or disappointed. Instead, it's a job pitch: join The Avengers (capital letters; maybe italics, probably in red white and blue when Steve says it), move into Stark Tower, and get out from under SHIELD’s control.
Clint's not sure exactly where SHIELD stands on the issue of The Avengers these days; whether they're contractors, back-up, or enemies. When Coulson was alive, he-he'd wanted the team to work together. He’d thought it would be an extension of SHIELD, a new solution to help address the growing threats of an increasingly unfamiliar world. Coulson had designed uniforms for all of them, for fuck's sake. (He'd planned on Clint being a part of the team, but Steve hadn't texted Clint. When he and the Captain had first met, Clint had tried to kill him. Come to think of it, that's how he'd first encountered Thor, too. And Coulson. And Natasha. At least he hasn't tried to kill Tony or Bruce.)
Natasha says she'll think about it and leaves the café, her limp barely noticeable. Clint's ready to follow her, but instead he stays and watches Captain America sit at the little table he’d claimed by the window, hunched over his "Just a plain coffee please," his canvass jacket pulling tight over his shoulders. Clint needs reminding sometimes that he's not the only one who's lost his world.
Eventually Clint meets up with Tasha at the no-tell motel room they're renting under the name ‘Nicholas Melancholy,’ because Natasha had been feeling whimsical but not terribly creative when she put together their last set of fake identities.
"He wants us to be part of his team," she says. "He wants us to leave SHIELD. Move into Tony's giant architectural dick."
"Well, when you say it like that, how could you say no?"
"We. How could we say no."
"He asked you, Tasha," he says softly. (She feels like she owes him, still, for the first time they met. He feels like he owes her because Loki-despite the magical mask that Thor had secured over his face-knows all of her secrets; they’re weapons now, weapons that a demigod has in his arsenal.)
"We're a boxed set."
"Buy one, get one free?"
"Something like that."
They lie on threadbare carpet, feet propped up on the set of cots they’d shoved together to make a bed big enough for both of them, and stare at the stains on the ceiling. "I don't know if I could leave SHIELD," he admits. "It's the only home I've had since I was eight." It's the best home he's ever had.
"It's the only place I've ever felt safe," Natasha says. Clint very deliberately doesn't move to comfort her. (Apparently she has some new secrets, secrets that Loki won’t know.) "I just don't know how much of that was SHIELD, how much is you, and how much was Coulson."
"I don’t know either. Stark doesn't trust Fury, and I think…I think he might have good reasons. I did some poking around when Loki had me researching for the break-in. There’s a lot we don’t know.” If Coulson were alive, he and Tasha would just ask him. And they’d have believed his answers without question. “Hill likes us well enough, but she doesn't have as much clout as Coulson had. She's got no reason to protect us."
"I don't know what to do," she whispers.
He turns onto his side and rests his head on her shoulder. "We'll figure it out."
*
In the end Natasha goes to Pepper and talks it out. She comes back from the meeting (she comes back, says she always will; Coulson had promised that too) and says that she thinks they should make a partial split from SHIELD and act as liaisons of a sort between the team and the agency. They could both benefit from their combined strengths. Pepper, and Natasha by proxy, says they should move into the tower
They go to the top of the US Bank building again to talk about it. It’s got a good view of Stark’s tower. The bank’s roof has been cleaned since the last time they perched there, so they don’t have to clear space among the glass and metal to sit. The poorer neighborhoods still have debris blocking their streets and damaged sewage systems.
"I think Pepper doesn't want Tony to be fighting alone,” Natasha muses.
"He's got her, though. And the Captain."
"I think maybe Tony needs a lot of people to be around him to not feel alone." She’d shadowed Tony for weeks, before-before New York. She knows him, even if he doesn’t know the real her.
She’d had to do a fake lingerie photo shoot as ‘Natalia’ in an attempt to catch Tony’s attention. Apparently that, and nearly choking Happy to death with her thighs, had won the billionaire over. Sitwell had teased her about the photos and Coulson had retaliated by putting wasabi in his egg-salad sandwich. Twice.
Clint thinks about Steve’s hunched back and says, "I think they might need us."
*
They have to turn in resignation letters. Tasha does hers first and then slides the form over to Clint, who copies it out diligently. In all the parts that require actual writing instead of check marks and signatures, he writes, "What she said."
Fury calls them into his office. He's holding the forms in his hands. Clint's overcome with déjà vu, remembering Coulson's hands framing Clint's failing scrawls. That first time, with Coulson, Clint had been convinced that he would be forced to leave. Now he's afraid he might be forced to stay. (The Helicarrier's halls are too empty, but ground base has a new memorial wall that Clint can't bring himself to look at again. It had taken Clint a long time to find Coulson’s name amongst the rest of those who had died by his hands.)
Fury says, "I hope you know what you're doing." Natasha says nothing in response and Clint follows her lead. "Should have expected this, I suppose. Losing my one good eye and my two right hands in one blow."
Clint can’t help himself. "That's one weird metaphorical body you're building, boss." Fury actually smirks at Clint, who's too surprised to smile back.
"Take care of yourselves. And take care of that suicidal megalomaniacal billionaire. Watch out for Hulk. And-and call if you need backup." Natasha nods, sharp and curt. "Coulson would never forgive me if I let anything happen to you."
*
Afterwards Clint goes to his quarters and gathers his belongings. He hadn’t had time to retrieve the stuff that had slowly migrated over to Coulson’s place (clothes, mostly, some early reader books, a weird amount of socks) before a SHIELD recovery team had wiped Coulson’s house clean. The stuff Clint left on base-the stuff he hadn’t brought to New Mexico-doesn’t even fill his duffel bag. When he’s about to leave he finds a piece of paper slid under the door.
It must have been Hill or Sitwell, he thinks, after he figures out what form it is that he’s been given. Hell, maybe it was even Fury, trying to say goodbye.
It’s a copy of his and Coulson's "Declaration of Romantic Intent" form, their signatures at the bottom side-by-side, written in the ink of the same pen.
He's going to need to find a new book to hide it in.
*
He moves into Stark Tower. He has a floor, a whole fucking floor, which is too much to handle, so he pretty much only stays there when he’s too wiped out to stay awake.
Natasha, for reasons Clint doesn’t know (she doesn’t share all of her secrets) insinuates herself as Pepper’s secretary again. After spying on them for a while, Clint’s pretty sure she’s not doing it to gather intel (unless the stilettos they were talking about buying were weapons, but given the fact that they were debating the merits of primary colors, he doubts it).
When Clint sees Tasha these days, she’s either in sharp business suits, her SHIELD uniform for missions, or oversized pajamas that match the set that Clint had stolen from Coulson, too. She starts watching TV shows, texting Clint every so often to come join her. She drags him to the common floor sometimes and helps Tony, Steve, and Clint interact without their various neurosis getting in the way. Slowly, the circles under Natasha’s eyes begin to fade.
Clint’s never held down a day job, even undercover, so when he needs to leave the tower (which is almost all the time) he goes to bookstores. He’s feeling picky about the new book he wants to buy to replace Trick Shot’s gift, he realizes, after he leaves the fifth used bookstore empty-handed. He doesn’t care so much what the book’s about, just that it’s big and the cover’s beat-up and the pages smell right.
He doesn’t really want to buy a new book. (He wants to go back to New Mexico.)
But he and Coulson had never finished reading Trick Shot’s book, and Coulson wouldn’t want Clint to stop trying. Clint had promised Coulson that he would try. Coulson had promised that he wouldn’t leave. Clint, at least, is going to keep his side of the bargain.
Clint’s floor is still empty except for generic furniture, but he likes what Tasha does with hers. He visits her sometimes, bringing vodka and hot chocolate with him and letting her pick which one they drink. One night she picks hot chocolate and then they go to Steve’s floor and Steve draws caricatures of both of them. Steve’s floor is decorated with antiques, a lot of posters of modern art, and various tech that Clint’s pretty sure he wouldn’t know how to use.
Natasha’s filled her rooms with wall hangings and statues and aromatic scent diffusers that make Clint think of the good parts of Budapest.
Eventually Clint switches from wandering through bookstores and starts going to thrift shops, drawn in by the plethora of knickknacks displayed in their windows that have no discernable function.
One day he buys a lamp. It's ugly and yellow and when he gets it home and plugs it in, it doesn’t work. He goes down to Tony’s lab for the first time-it’s got glass walls and classic cars and robots with names-and Tony takes the lamp. A robot proudly bearing a “Participant” ribbon stuck to its front kicks him out.
Half an hour later Tony wanders into the kitchen, tells him that there had been a loose wire in the lamp, and that Tony had made it better.
Clint plugs it in and discovers that it now responds to voice commands.
He puts in on a dresser. It looks lonely.
A few days later he passes a greenhouse that’s throwing a big sale. Coulson’s bonsais are probably dead by now. Clint buys himself a blue cactus with weird fuzzy leaves.
He forgets to water it and it dies.
He buys a calendar, one with paintings by Dali, an artist whose name and work he actually knows. (Coulson and art museums. Clint shoves the memories down.) He flips the calendar to October. It's getting cold outside and rebuilding efforts are slowing down. SHIELD had given Clint bonus pay before he quit, and he doesn’t have to pay rent now, so he gives most of his salary to homeless shelters.
He buys another cactus with the money he keeps, painstakingly reads the directions that come with it (he hadn't realized plants need manuals), and marks out every fifth day on the calendar with a blue marker to remind himself to water it. He never misses a day. The cactus lives. Natasha, for no reason Clint can figure out, names it Frank.
*
He misses Coulson every day. He misses Coulson when he wakes up in bed alone, when he brushes his teeth and Coulson isn’t there reminding him to put the cap back on the toothpaste, when he fixes his coffee and doesn’t get the mix of cinnamon and cream quite right. He misses Coulson when it rains and aches settle deep in his bones and there's no one there to massage his joints, or give him painkillers, or know without being told that Clint is hurting.
He misses Coulson when he wakes alone, and on the nights he can't fall asleep. He misses Coulson with every breath he takes and again when his lungs feel too tight to breathe at all.
Clint’s been left behind by more loved ones than he can count. (That’s a lie: Mom and Dad and Trick Shot and the Swordsman and Barney, a full hand of fingers. Coulson’s the beginning of a new hand.) Even with all his practice Clint’s still too dumb to figure out how to not care.
*
Days pass. The cactus grows, sending little off-shoots out beyond the rim of its pot. One day after working out he carries it up to the common room and stares at it. Eventually Steve wanders in and offers to help him repot it, which is apparently a thing that they did in the 40s and has nothing to do with marijuana. Steve tells him it’s still a thing in the 2010s, and then asks him a lot of questions about pot. Clint defers the inquiries to Tony.
He takes Steve to a thrift store with him to shop for a new pot. While they’re there they buy Steve a new coat and a scarf. Steve doesn’t really feel the cold, but he looks weird walking around in a light jacket when the sky’s threatening snow.
They get dirt all over Tony’s balcony and don’t clean it up. Steve grins at him like they’re children sharing a secret and Clint leaves Frank the Cactus and his cheesy “It’s Your Birthday!” pot on the table in the common space next to Tony’s gleaming decorations.
His dresser looks empty again. He buys porcelain statues of shepherds and ducks, clocks that don’t work, ceramic vases, and wicker baskets. He's never used a wicker basket, never even seen one used, but thrift stores always have shelves and shelves of them, so he figures he better own some just in case. He owns a lot of things now that aren’t good for anything.
Time passes. The Avengers-the four of them; Steve still in the uniform that Coulson designed-take down a mutated octopus off the coast of Florida, a mad scientist with twelve-foot-tall attack dogs, and a kid with power over electricity who burns out the entire electrical grid in Cincinnati. They don’t get there in time to save him. Stark Industries pays for the repairs and Tony doesn’t come out of his workshop for days; when he does, he’s upgraded the jet to increase its speed. Clint’s pretty sure that Tony doesn't know that there are some people who just can’t be saved.
*
Clint changes Dali to November. This month's the melting clocks, which Coulson said was overused when Clint had been thinking about buying a poster of it to put next to his framed target. Clint had liked it a lot, but hadn’t bought it. (He’d thought he’d have time to think it over.) He likes it less now, since time actually does feel like it’s dragging, melting, distorting itself to fit the new landscape of his life, which manages to echo even in the JARVIS and Tony-filled halls of the tower.
November means Thanksgiving is close. Bruce had apparently said (on one of the occasions Tony tracked him down to poke him or feed him or whatever the hell Tony did) that he’d come to New York and stay for a while to celebrate with them. Apparently that means Thanksgiving is now going to be a big deal. Tony morphs into a whirlwind of preparation and planning that Pepper tolerates with a level of amused aplomb that Clint’s only ever seen in Natasha before.
Clint says he’s not going to help with Thanksgiving, mostly just so that Tony and Steve will have to work to convince him to help. He likes it when they talk to him.
But this time Tony just glares at him and says that if Clint doesn’t find him a good glazed ham recipe ASAP (which Clint is not going to be able to do, because cookbooks aren’t like normal books; Coulson had always written directions out for him), Tony’s going to evict him from the tower. Clint knows that Tony is probably kidding, and in any case, the shelters are always overflowing with food during the holiday season, so Clint would be able to manage just fine without having to compromise a safehouse or retreat back to SHIELD.
"I'm not a ham fan," Clint says.
"Glazed. Ham. It's a Thanksgiving staple, Barton. JARVIS says so. You need to put together an ingredients list before tomorrow afternoon."
"Thanksgiving is two weeks away."
"Yeah, well, maybe Steve's boy-scout-ness is rubbing off on me. Now get cracking, or I'll have Dummy show you the door."
Clint's pretty sure that he could elude one dumbass robot (even though it's hard to be mean to Dummy, who seems to have taken a liking to Clint and fetches his bow for him at inappropriate times). “If you try to kick me out I’m just going to move into your vents and haunt you,” Clint says, hiding all of his nervous tics and sending a quick mental Thanks to Hill, who’d trained him out of them. “I’ll be like the ghost of Christmas past. Only for Thanksgiving instead of Christmas. And with bows and arrows instead of nostalgic trips down memory lane.”
“I will make vent-bots,” Tony says. “Many many vent-bots…” He wanders away and Clint’s left standing alone in what suddenly doesn’t feel like a common space anymore. It feels like Tony’s kitchen in Tony’s tower.
Clint goes back down to his room (no, Tony's room) and thinks maybe he’d be able to take all of his stuff with him if he had to leave fast. It’s only ever taken him one trip to move all his shit between places before, but now he’d need boxes. Suitcases. Paper or bubblewrap to protect his lamp and figurines and vases. He’d have to find something to carry his growing collection of cacti (which Natasha has named Mario, Francisca, John, Weasel, and Benedict).
He and Natasha could help each other move, maybe, on the rare chance that Tony kicked them both out instead of just Clint.
*
Clint finds a recipe app on his kindle that has pictures next to all of the instructions, and manages (with JARVIS’s assistance) to make a glazed ham. Natasha buys two cans of cranberries and dumbs them in a bowl, which Clint thinks is unfair. She eats half the bowl while watching him swear and glaze and kick the oven.
Bruce arrives on Thanksgiving Day, looking smaller than he actually is. His clothes are all too big on him, which helps to perpetuate the illusion, but most of it’s his posture, which Clint knows intimately. Don’t notice me.
Tony fastens onto Bruce like a limpet, gripping his elbow and steering him around the Tower, describing it in detail like Bruce has suddenly been struck blind. By the time dinner is served-Pepper and Happy show up last-minute bearing stuffing and rolls and green bean casserole-Bruce starts relaxing. Natasha ninjas the seating arrangement so that Bruce is sandwiched between her and Tony, and between the two of them they keep Bruce engaged and calm the entire meal.
The glazed ham is pretty good. The cranberries are pretty terrible.
Clint realizes after dinner is done and they start in on the blueberry pie that he hadn’t thought of Coulson once during the meal.
He excuses himself from dessert, goes to his quarters, and pukes up everything he’d eaten that night.
Instead of bringing the drinks down to Tasha’s floor he drinks them both in his own room. Hot chocolate (Coulson’s brand) and vodka (Natasha’s), one in each hand, until the room goes blurry in front of him.
“Never even had a Thanksgiving with him,” he slurs, when Natasha’s face swims into view. One of them had always been working, or on a mission (early on, Coulson had visited his family; Clint wonders if, eventually, Coulson would have taken Clint to meet his parents). “Not a real one. Like this.”
“It was my very first.” They’d celebrated it in the SHIELD caf a couple of times. It had always been mostly empty and they’d just sat on the table and gorged themselves on pumpkin pie.
“I had Thanksgiving with my parents,” he says, struggling through his words, “before they died, but it wasn’t that fun.” It had flipped between being violent and joyful in turns, depending on his mother’s determined cheer and the level of liquor in his father’s glass. Clint had kept an eye on everyone’s drink intake over dinner by force of habit, and had noticed Bruce doing the same.
“D’you-d’you-d’you think he’d be…”
“He’d be proud,” Natasha whispers.
“D’you think he’d’ve been here?” He closes his eyes because suddenly he feels like Coulson is next to him, solid and concerned, near enough to touch. “I think he’d’ve been here,” Clint says. Natasha’s face is blurry again but she wipes his cheeks with the back of her finger and he realizes he’s crying. “I think he’d be here if he could.”
*
The next time he goes out to a bookshop he takes Natasha (who asks Pepper’s advice on where to find rare and antique volumes) and when they get back to the tower Clint has a carefully wrapped second edition of The Adventurs of Robyn Hode and His Merrie Men tucked under his arm. He reads two pages before he gives up. He closes the book, using the "Declaration of Romantic Intent" form as a bookmark.
He's going to keep trying.
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