(Untitled)

[inabmovie]

Will was... not happy.

The whole thing with walking in on Magnus and her boyfriend, and then their fight, and then his moving to the compound, had him in a funk that he just couldn't shake. He was not glad he'd moved out, even though he knew it was the best thing, and it was really eating at him

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[anger_sideways]

When Hawkeye strolled into the Winchester and saw Helen's friend, he seriously considered turning tail and running back to his hut. It wouldn't have been a good idea, though - he'd promised Helen he'd go and apologise, and anyway, he was pretty sure that Will had noticed him enter, and it wouldn't send a very good message if his reaction was to immediately leave.

Anyway, how bad could it be? A little bit of the patented Hawkeye Pierce charm could smooth over the roughest of situations.

He slid onto the barstool by Will and flashed him a winsome grin.

"Hey there. Will, wasn't it?"

[inabmovie]

Pierce was the last person Will particularly cared to see, besides Magnus herself. But it wasn't like he could just ignore the guy. Will wasn't quite drunk enough to pull that off.

"Yeah. Will Zimmerman." He tossed back the rest of his drink and signaled for another.

[anger_sideways]

"I'll have what he's having," Hawkeye added, leaning an elbow on the bartop. He didn't know much about Will, but he hadn't pinned him down as the heavy drinking type, which suggested he was in a bit of a sulk right now.

"Look," he said, lowering his head and doing his best to appear contrite, "We didn't meet in the best of circumstances, and I shouldn't have dismissed you like that. I may have had my hands full -" And it was a feat of great moral strength here that he didn't make the joke he desperately wanted to there. "-but that's no excuse. I know Helen meets a lot to you, so I don't want you to get the impression she's dating a total jerk. At worst, I'm only a partial jerk."

[inabmovie]

"Magnus's personal business is none of my business," Will said slowly, after processing that for a few seconds. "I just work for her." He was just an employee. Which meant he really didn't need to know about anything she did when they weren't working together, or who she did it with.

[anger_sideways]

"Healthy attitude to take," Hawkeye said, with an agreeable nod. "Helen doesn't seem to think of it that way, though. Not that she's said much about you to me, but I definitely got the impression that the two of you were good friends." Hmm. Maybe were was the operative word here. Had that been his fault, or was Will just inhumanly huffy?

"I don't want to be your enemy, Will, and I don't want to get in the way of you and Helen when you want to talk about old times, or whatever it is you talk about." He shrugged, and took the glass on the bartop beside him. "I'm just here for a good time, and annoying other people's buddies isn't generally my idea of that." Unless the other person was also annoying, in which case he made a special exception, but he wasn't going to go into that now, not when he was trying to portray himself as likable and reasonable.

[inabmovie]

"Any friend of Magnus's is a friend of mine," Will said, and he was just drunk enough that the phrase was easy to say. And it wasn't entirely a lie, because he'd actually managed to be friendly even with Tesla, sometimes, when he wasn't being called Dr. Expendable or Junior. If he could do that, he could do anything.

[anger_sideways]

Hawkeye grinned.

"Glad we're on the same page," he said, giving Will a friendly pat on the back and entirely ignoring the vaguely insincere tone of the statement. He reached for his glass and downed most of it, not because he felt he needed to drink away his sorrows but simply because he was an inordinately speedy drinker.

"So, c'mon then, Will, tell me about yourself," he said. "What were you up to before cruel fate dumped you here?"

[inabmovie]

"Right before here? With Magnus," he answered. "Trying to figure out how we were going to get off the abandoned oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico where we'd wrecked our helicopter." Technically Magnus had wrecked it, not him, but he didn't have to be that specific.