Clint Barton
Clint sat up all night in the Eyrie, watching.
[Sam hated that name, said it should be the Falcon’s nest. Or something stupid like that. Clint hadn’t really been listening. Sam was always going on and on about stuff like that, saying he was the one with the true ‘bird’s eye view’, blahblahblah, ’I’m so cool look I have wings anyone could use if only they too had the manual I’m so superspecial and cool Cap lookkit, lookatmeeee’, etc. A simple ‘God, Wilson, get a room. You’re worse than Coulson,’ would usually shut him up for a while. But Clint was the original Hawkguy around here, thank you very much, as he constantly reminded anyone who would listen (or be in his general vicinity) so the Eyrie it remained.]
Clint sat up all night in the Eyrie, watching. He had a dozen major news networks on the television, streaming silent in the background. He had Google, Bing, even fucking Yahoo set to alert him on an uptick in mentions of SHIELD, Captain America, The Winter Soldier and/or boolean combinations of the three. (See what he did there?) He had satellites watching all the well known Russian military bases and all the lesser-known Russian military bases and all the unknown Russian military bases and all the super-secret unknown Russian military bases, and it was all adorable, really, that they thought they could hide from him.
But so far, all was quiet. Nothing on NBC. CNN. BBC. Al Jazeera. Or—God really fucking forbid—Fox.
…Oh. Would you look at that. Beyonce dropped another album. Hot damn. Just for that, he was treating himself to a new pair of hearing aids and a new set of speakers, and he was treating Laura to a romantic night for two complete with nookie, dinner, nookie, more nookie, and some concert tickets (possibly followed by even more nookie). Laura just fuckin’ loved Beyonce.
[Clint loved Beyonce’s ass.]
[Laura said that was fine, as long as she got Daniel Craig. Clint thought about it for a minute, then called it fair.]
[Although if Laura wanted Beyonce, Clint was happy to share. He loved him some Laura-on-Queen Bey faux-lesbian action. Laura called him such a teenager. Clint thought a man could dream.]
The headphone speakers were tinny, and the base/treble sucked, and he’d have to get Stark to invent something more catered to his configuration, but Queen Bey was Queen Bey, and at his age an impromptu overnighter required both copious amounts of caffeine and goddess goodness in order to function.
Every once in a while he’d glance down. James Barnes dying. Bruce exercising his bedside manner muscles. Steve Rogers crying his eyes out, bawling like a little kid. Nope. Nothing to see here. Nothing at all.
He played Angry Birds. Man, he loved that game.
You get it?
En route
Can you pick up a pizza?
SRSLY??!!
Yeah. JARVIS hates unscheduled deliveries.
She would kill him. Man, he was killing himself.
[Laura said he told dad jokes. Clint said he was a dad so he didn’t see the problem.]
[Laura grounded him from the PS3 for a week.]
“Romanov?” Banner asked in that Oh-Christ-I've-forgotten-what-a-boner-felt-like way of his.
“Here,” Nat said. “I called in some favors. Old contacts. Got in touch with a handler from the Red Room. It’s what they used to feed him back in the Soviet days. I couldn’t find anything more recent.”
Brucie and Natty sitting in a tree…
You’re seriously going to do this now
K-I-S-S-I-N-G
Seriously Barton
First comes love
Then comes marriage
Then comes
He thought better of it. Deleted that last line.
You bring Brucie fun science stuff and you can’t even get me a pizza?
The hell is that stuff anyways?
…Seriously, Romanov
Hawkman is hungry
You bring my pizza?
Nat shot a glare up at him that could fell a Chitauri at fifty feet.
Is that a no?
FUCK YOU BARTON
She would kill him for sure.
He pulled out his earbuds, rappelled down. He couldn’t hear well from this distance, and truth be told his long distance lip-reading skills sucked.
SHOW OFF
“You having a heart attack, Banner?”
“Tasha, this stuff is nearly 100 calories per millileter.”
“No shit.”
“It’s a hundred times the concentration I’ve been giving him, and I borrowed that from the veterinary pharmacist at the Bronx Zoo. It’s meant for orphaned rhinocerous.”
[Clint believed the correct term to be rhinoceri, possibly rhinocerouses (he had a three-year-old. He’d heard it both ways). But now just wasn’t the time.]
“No way his body can handle this,” Bruce shook his head. “Not right now.”
“If it doesn’t, we might not get another chance,” Nat insisted. “You said it yourself, Banner, he’s a supersoldier, the Soviet’s killing machine. His body’s made to heal itself but he’s starving to death. So we unstarve him.”
“If we’re taking a vote on dangerous, experimental medical treatment potentially killing Winter Boy, I’m in favor.” Stark called, then shrugged. “No offense, Cap.”
“Go to hell, Stark,” Nat and Steve said together.
“Twinsies,” Stark sipped his coffee, unperturbed. Then— “And you’re welcome, Cap. I expect a fruit basket in my bedroom by morning. And when I say fruit basket, I mean strippers.”
Clint watched from the Eyrie. On the monitors, nothing happened. He got through the Beyonce album at least twenty times. He got a new high score on Angry Birds. James Barnes was dying. Bruce was flexing his bedside manner muscles, Steve Rogers was crying like a baby, Nat was sleeping against his shoulder, Laura sent a scandalous sext of her thong elastic around the toes of her left foot, and all was right with the world.
Well, almost.
…still could’ve used a pizza