Mandatory funday prompt
Clint Barton was going over every choice he had ever made in his life and was regretting most of them. It seems you had a lot of time to do things like that when you were stuck in a tree over a cannel with a couple of alligators waiting for you to fall out of the tree and become their next meal. Yeah, Clint was having one of his typical bad days and it didn’t look like it was going to get any better any time soon.
4 hours earlier.
Clint strolled across the deck of luxurious super yacht, just a cool, fun loving guy, having a great time eyeing all the skimpily clad beauties, both female and male while cruising the coast of Florida and trying to figure out which one was actually a double agent passing classified info, without it looking like that’s what he was doing, normal, boring spy stuff.
“Black hair, red bikini.” Nat’s voice came through his ear com.
Clint leaned against the deck rail and lazily looked around. His eyes passed over Nat without recognition, admiring her tiny, black bikini, as they skimmed the people on the deck.
“The one with the nice rack or the nice package?” Clint asked.
Nat snorted in his ear as she discreetly tapped the side of her left breast. Clint gave a slight nod and started to move toward the target. He was halfway there, going over his opening lines when there was a thunderous BOOM! and the deck beneath his feet tilted. Clint fell to his knees as people screamed and slid past him. He saw Nat clinging to the deck rail as several men in black tac suits swarmed over the side. Nat was shooting at the bad guys; he refused to wonder where she had hidden a gun and pulled his own from the small of his back. He managed to get to his feet and get off a couple of shots before the ship violently shifted and he went sprawling, grunting in pain as a deck chair slammed into his arm, making him loose his grip on his gun as he slid across the deck. He had just enough time to hope Nat was ok before he hit the rail and went over, falling hundreds of feet into the water below.
With all his might he swam for the surface, breaking the water to utter chaos. The ship was going down fast, people were in the water, screaming and flailing. Speed boats racing toward them and gun fire told Clint he needed to get the hell out of there. His com hissed and popped in his ear.
“Black Widow, do you copy?” he asked, tapping on his ear.
“Hawkeye, I copy.” Came Nat’s voice. “I’m clear. Meet at extraction point.”
“Copy that.” He replied.
He dove under the water and swam away as fast as he could. When he surfaced for breath, he realized he needed a faster way to get away from the sinking ship before it sank and he was pulled under with it. He spotted one of the rubber Zodiacs floating nearby while the thugs inside shot at the people in the water and swam to it. Unheard over all the noise, he climbed aboard, tossed the goons overboard, and drove away. He was feeling pretty good about his getaway when he heard gun fire, shots punctured the boat, he swerved to avoid hitting the boat of goons shooting at him, hit a submerged log, and went airborne, leaving the boat and hitting the water at rapid speed.
“Aw, boat, no.” He mumbled just before he hit the water and blacked out.
James “Bucky” Barnes, former Hydra assassin and current nervous boyfriend, paced a path outside the quinjet. Steve had sent him outside after he had gotten on everybody’s nerves with his pacing and snarling. He had a bad feeling about this mission ever since Clint and Nat had left. His head came up to see Nat walking toward the jet.
“Where’s Clint?” he demanded.
“Hydra sank the ship, we got separated, last time I talk to him he said he’d meet here.” She told him.
Bucky tapped his com.
“Hawkeye, do you copy?” he asked.
Silence was his only reply.
“Coms went dead.” Nat told him. “Last time I saw him he was in the water.”
“Damn it.”
Bucky turned and marched into the quinjet. “Steve, we gott’a find Clint.”
Clint came to with a groan. His, well, everything really, hurt. He was half in, half out of the water, on one of the many micro islands that dotted the water off the Florida coast. He was covered in scraped and cuts and bug bites, but nothing seemed to be broken, which was a nice change. He pushed himself onto his hands and knees, then froze when he heard hissing. Slowly turning his head, he saw the large alligator about five feet from him.
“Shit.” he whispered.
Time stood still while Clint tried to come up with a away to avoid being eaten by large, ugly reptile.
“I don’t suppose you’re a vegetarian?” he asked.
The gator hissed again.
“Yeah, I didn’t think so.”
Clint looked around, spotted a palm tree nearby, and calculated his chances of making it up it before he got gobbled.
“Ya know, Al, you don’t mind if I call you Al do ya?” he said, casually, as he slowly started to stand up. “You really don’t want to eat me. I’m probably high in cholesterol. Gott’a watch those bad fats ya know.”
The gator was giving him the stink eye. Clint took a couple deep breaths, stretched up on his toes, then took a running leap for the palm tree, scrambling up it’s trunk as the gator shot out of the water after him, its jaws snapping closed just inches from his feet. Clint climbed up until the tree curved out over the water, then sat up, straddling the trunk.
“Ha, take that.” He crowed, looking down at the gator floating under the tree. “No Hawkeye for you.”
He looked around, taking stock of his situation; he was up a tree, wearing nothing but swim trunks, no weapons; he’d tried his coms and got nothing, so add coms on the frits to the list and a pissed of alligator for company; not the worst situation he had ever been but not one he could see a way out of either. He looked down at the alligator floating beneath him.
“I don’t suppose you’ve got a cell phone I could borrow do ya, Al?” he asked
Al didn’t reply. Clint knew the team would find him, Tony Stark had the best technology in the world, he just had to wait and he could do that, he was a sniper after all. He could hold perfectly still for days, waiting to take a shot, but that was for work. It could be argued so was sitting in a palm tree waiting to be rescued, he had been on a mission that had go to hell and landed him in the palm tree with nothing but an alligator for company. Maybe if he thought of it as being on a job he wouldn’t go completely loony tunes waiting to be rescued.
“So, Al, is there a Mrs. Al and a bunch of little Als at home?” he asked. “It seems like you’ve got a nice gig going to support the family. Splash around, scare a few tourists, nice work if you can get it.”
He scratched at a bug bite on his arm.
“Me, I got a pretty good gig myself,” he stated, “I’m a genuine super hero.”
Al splashed his tail.
“Honest,” Clint said, “I’m an Avenger. Hawkeye at your service.” He tipped an imaginary cap. “I’ve also got a smoking hot boyfriend. I mean he’s all muscly and scowly and broody. You’d think to look at him he’d be a bad boy but he’s really a big teddy bear.”
Clint could feel the grin stretching his face as he thought about James “Bucky” Barnes. It faded as he realized Nat would have made it to the extraction point by now and when he didn’t show up, Bucky would be worried about him.
“Breathing down my neck won’t make the search go any faster.” Tony snapped at Bucky as he clicked on a key board. “Jarvis is going as fast as he can so back off.”
Bucky started to snarl at Tony when Steve grabbed his arm and pulled him away.
“Let him work, Buck.” He said softly.
“His dumb ass is out there, Steve, probably hurt.” Bucky snapped.
“We’ll find him, Buck.” Steve said, squeezing his arm.
Clint knew several hours had passed by the movement of the sun, he was hot, thirsty, covered in bug bites, and sunburnt. He also had a pounding headache and was pretty sure heat stroke and dehydration were setting in.
“Hey, Al,” he croaked, “The way these damn bugs are chewing on me there won’t be anything left for you.”
He slapped at a mosquito on his arm and wobbled dangerously to the side. He managed to right himself, then leaned forward to lay face first on the trunk of the tree, keeping his arms and legs wrapped around it to keep from falling off. His new position had him gazing down at the water. It took his heat addled brain several minutes to realize that there was more than one gator floating in the water beneath him.
“You invited friends,” he mumbled, “did anybody bring beer? I could use a beer right now.”
“Got him.” Tony said, finger pointing at the screen in front of him.
“Is he in a palm tree?” Steve asked.
“It’s Barton, of course he’s in a palm tree.” Bucky snorted. “Let’s go get his dumb ass before he falls out of the tree and becomes gator chow.”
Tony sent the coordinates to Nat in the cockpit.
A buzzing sound yanked Clint out of the doze he had been in. He sat up, swaying dizzily, and blearily looked around. Beneath him the water churned and Al and his pals thrashed about angerly.
“Looks like my rides here.” he said with a grin when he saw the quinjet hovering over the water. He started to wave, listed to the side and fell, hands scrambling to grab onto the rough bark of the palm.
“Shit.” He swore are the bark broke and he plummeted toward the water. There was a flash of silver in the corner of his eye, then his knight in shining armor was punching alligators, sending them flying through the air. He went under the water, then was violently yanked back out of it.
“Dumb ass idiot.” Bucky growled at him.
Clint grinned goofily at him as he wrapped his arms around his neck. Bucky snorted and carried him to the quinjet.
“Bucky punched an alligator for me.” He told the team once they were on their way. “He’s my hero.”
“Couldn’t let your dumb ass get eaten by a gator.” Bucky grumbled.
“Course not,” Clint drawled, “only you get to eat my ass.”
Bucky’s ears turned red as the rest of the team burst out laughing.