Clint swirls the bourbon around the tumbler, the clinking of the ice a welcome counterpoint to his thoughts. “Thanks.” He nods at the phone Spencer is tucking back into the pocket of his well-worn jeans. “Thank your friends, too. Maybe it’ll take them longer to come back this time.”
Spencer’s nod changes to a frown. “Come back?” He takes a swig of his own drink. “They’re not coming back, dude. We took down the whole operation.”
“They always come back,” Clint says, eyes turning toward the cityscape laid before them, but his internal gaze focused more on his memories. A friend bleeding out on the rooftop, a dog cruelly beaten and broken, a woman whispering fearfully in the backseat of a cab. “Like roaches.”
Spencer seems to search his face for a long moment, but he doesn’t ask why Clint’s so sure of that. He simply takes another drink, watching the city in silence with Clint. It’s an easy silence; old soldiers always sense it in one another. Simple companionship often makes words unnecessary.
Without turning his head, Clint glances at Spencer’s fingers. Reddened from the battle, not bloody or bruised. Strong, rough hands that have downed many an adversary. “Still,” Clint says into the muggy air, “good thing I was home tonight.”
“Wha—what does that mean?” He turns toward Clint, eyebrow rising. “You think I couldn’t have taken them all by myself?
Clint shrugs, the corner of his mouth turning up on the side Spencer can’t see. “If I hadn’t pinned the tall one to the wall, you’d still be under a mountain of track suits.”
Spencer sets his glass down on the edge of the roof with a click, huffing in disbelief. “That’s not the way I remember it.”
“It’s down one level,” Hardison says in his ear, but Eliot is already halfway down that flight of stairs.
“Got it.” He’s looking forward to a good old-fashioned smash-and-grab with this one. Not much for fancy tech, these Russian mafia types. And any time he has the edge over Hardison on a job, he sleeps better that night.
On another channel he can hear Parker chatting up the security team in the lobby. “Yeah,” she says, popping her gum, “It’s like I was tellin’ my girl, Stacy. There are guys, and then there are guys...”
He tunes it out; she’d already slipped him the keycard minutes ago, and she’s well into the distraction phase of the plan. Eliot pushes through a door into a dank hallway, lit only by a hanging bulb.
“Nice,” Hardison comments. “Very 1970s mobster movie.” He’s watching through a lapel cam while tracking heat signatures in the building from the van.
“Not very well-protected for a secure file room. You sure no one’s hiding down here?”
“How long we been doing this?” Hardison tsks. “Trust me. Third door on the left.”
Eliot steps up to the door, sliding the key card from his sleeve. He looks both directions first, then slides it smoothly through the reader to the right of the door. There’s a quiet click, and Eliot slowly turns the knob to slip inside. Only when he enters the room, about five guys, their red tracksuits a makeshift uniform, look up from their game of cards. One of them reaches for his gun.
Eliot springs into action. As he punches the first guy, sending him flying back into the second one, he murmurs, “‘Trust me,’ he says.”
“Hey, how was I supposed to know they’d have the room shielded?”
Eliot kicks another one and he smashes the table beneath his weight. “That’s kinda your job to figure that stuff out, isn’t it?”
One of the quicker goons eludes his grasp and draws a gun, holding it steady with both hands. “Step back, bro.” No fancy tilt or flashy style, just good, solid aim. This one knows what he’s doing.
“A gun? Really?” he quips, mostly for Hardison’s benefit. And though he’ll get shit for his stubbornness later, he can’t help but add, “I hate guns.” He tenses to knock it away.
Before he can move, an arrow pins the guy to the wall and the gun goes flying, unfired. Eliot tumbles out of the way. The goon screams something in Russian, although pain is pretty universal, really. He’s incapacitated but not badly hurt—this is the work of an expert marksman. Eliot’s head whips toward the new threat.
“Hate ‘em, too.” The archer, a man with short, unstyled hair and a stubbled face, lowers his bow. He’s wearing a T-shirt and jeans and looks like he’s been drinking coffee all day and nothing else. Despite his disheveled appearance, he has an easy grace. A deadly one, if Eliot’s any judge.
“Who are you?” Eliot asks, in unison with Hardison’s “Who is it?” in his ear. He ignores it.
The archer nods toward the incapacitated Russians. “No friend of theirs.” One of the men Eliot had downed starts to rise, and the archer gives him a kick. Over the guy’s moans, he says, “I’ve been a bit of trouble for them lately. Looks like you saved me a couple arrows.” Stepping forward, he holds out his hand for a handshake. “Clint. Clint Barton.”
Eliot eyes the hand, then the bow held loosely in the left. He won’t shake Barton’s hand, not before Hardison can research who he’s up against. He’s not sure bows are much better than guns—the weapon of a skilled warrior, much like a sword. He begins to subvocalize, “Hardison, you got anything on—”
“OH. MY. GOD.” Hardison’s voice blares through the earpiece, and Eliot’s unable to control a wince. “Ohmygod, ohmygod, ohmygod.”
“What the hell?” Eliot mumbles.
Barton slides the hand back with a shrug. “I’ll give you two a moment.” He points at his ear.
Eliot frowns, but he steps off a few paces, careful not to turn his back. “You mind explaining why you decided to blow this job in front of an unknown hostile?” he growls at Hardison.
“Wait. Seriously. You don’t know who that is? Holy crap, even Parker knows who that is.”
“I know what?” Parker chirps.
“Who Clint Barton is.”
“Is that the silent movie star guy?”
Eliot can almost hear Hardison facepalm. Better than having to see it, though. “Are you going to tell me or am I going to have to knock him out and bring him to you personally first?”
“Oh ho ho, you could try!” Hardison chuckles. Eliot clenches his fists to gain a moment of calm, but before he does, Hardison finally comes through. “That’s Hawkeye. Of the goddamn motherfucking Avengers.”
“Ohhhh,” Parker says. “Why didn’t you just say it was the Hawk-guy? Or the dude on your wall, whatever.”
Hardison chokes a little and starts to deny it, but Eliot ignores their patter to give Barton a second look.
He’s standing there, rubbing the back of his neck with one hand, twisting slowly back and forth. “So, yeah,” Barton says, like he got the gist of Eliot’s conversation. “Nice to meet you, Spencer.”
Hardison makes another choking sound. Eliot raises an eyebrow; he never gave Barton his name. He touches his ear this time. “Got a little bird of your own?”
Barton shrugs. “I—” he only pauses briefly to nock and fire an arrow at a rising goon so fast Eliot’s elbow doesn’t have time to connect. “—got a tip something was going down.”
An impressed grin spreads across Eliot’s face. He’s gotta give Hardison some credit—this is a fanboy crush he can respect.
Clint tilts his head. “Maybe you had it handled. I dunno.” He takes another swig.
“Maybe?” Eliot challenges him, but there’s a glint of camaraderie there in his eyes.
Clint nudges at a loose bit of concrete with the toe of his boot. “Nice to have another ally.”
Spencer raises his tumbler to clink against Clint’s. “To allies.” After a moment, he shakes his head and mumbles something like, “No, I will not ask him to sign anything, you nerd,” and then slips his earpiece out. Turning to Clint, he says, “Know any good bars around here? Preferably loud.”
Clint smiles, something he doesn’t do often enough. “We can find one.”