Excused Absences

Clint was rubbing the side of his face into the plush cushions of a black chair in Nick’s office, like a cat.

“It’s too early,” He whined, though neither Natasha, who was applying her mascara using the computer screen at Nick’s desk, or May, who was flipping through a pamphlet on the wonderous clubs and sports teams with little interest in the chair next to him, was paying him any mind. “It should be illegal to get up this early.”

“Clint, it’s seven o’clock,” Natasha stated as she plunged the sticky brush back into its tube. “You’re up at seven o’clock anyways.”

“But I had to get out of bed at six in the morning,” He said the words like they were poison.

“You got up at six forty,” May said quietly, not looking up from the brief description of the Quiz Bowl team.

“Yeah,” Clint drew the word out, meeting Natasha’s eyes with a ‘did-she-just-talk-and-it-was-to-me’ look in his own eyes. “But I was supposed to get up at six.”

“But you didn’t,” Natasha pointed out. “And did you get dressed in the dark, Barton?”

“Huh?”

“You’re wearing two completely different shoes.”

Sure enough, with a disbelieving look at his feet, he was.

One was a purple high top and the other a ratty tennis shoe. Natasha laughed crackled from behind Nick’s desk when his mouth dropped open in surprise, and even May’s lips tilted up into an amused smirk.

“Why didn’t you say anything before?”

“I thought this would be funnier,” Natasha responded, trying and failing to stop the smirk appearing on her lips. “And would you look at that, it is.”

“This is your fault, all of your fault,” Clint grumbled to May with no real anger to it. He ran his hand through his already disheveled hair, trying to remember if he had different shoes in his locker. “You should have come on Friday.”

May raised an eyebrow at him.

“If you would have come on Friday then your tour of this place,” He waved his hand in the air – gesturing to the school building as a whole, “would have happened on the weekend at a decent time and not seven. Where’s Fury anyways?”

“Having a ‘serious’ discussion with Miss Hill,” Natasha replied, motioning with her hand at Nick glaring at Maria on the other side of the office doors. “Probably about having you meet with the guidance counselor, May.”

“He did that with Tasha,” Clint said.

Natasha added, “And with you.”

“It didn’t work.”

“Not at all.”

“He’s probably not going to make you do it,” Clint told May. “Tasha gave Miss Hill a black eye their first meeting.”

“First and only,” Natasha added with a proud smile. “And that was totally an accident, unlike what you did.”

“That was an accident, too.”

“He busted all the basketballs in the gym,” She told May, rolling her eyes slowly at the thought of it. “With arrows.”

“On accident,” Clint added. “I don’t like basketball anyways. Nat broke someone’s arm.”

“Not an accident,” She said with a laugh that had Clint giggling. “Fury will probably get-“

“No, he won’t.”

“How do you know?”

“I asked.”

“That’s so stupid.”

“I know!”

“What are you-“ May began to ask as Nick gestured for them to come to him.

“Oh, Nick wants us,” Clint interrupted. Natasha glared at him because May’s word count was like fourteen and interrupting her was not really the way to encourage her to raise it.

He gave Clint and Natasha instructions to show May where her classes were and where the cafeteria was, and which girls’ bathrooms had paper towels instead of hand dryers. And to not – I mean it, Romanoff – put a bucket of water over Sitwell’s door again.

“Did you grab the calculator off the kitchen table?”

“Yes.”

“Locker combo?”

“Yes.”

“Is it memorized?”

“Yes.”

“A pen?”

“Three.”

“Do you know where your first class is?”

“Yes.”

Nick looked up to that because there was something in that, an emotion to it.

May was standing in front of him with her hair curled at the bottom, a leather jacket over black jeans, and she was annoyed with him.

“Would you like to just go to class?” He asked with an amused smirk. Barton and Romanoff had already taken off ten minutes before to go meet up with their friends and to try to see if they could do something about Clint’s shoe problem.

“Yes, I would.”

And with that she nodded once and then made her leave, still as quiet as ever.

Nick thought that despite everything with May, she wouldn’t be anything to worry about. She was not Barton with his mouth or Natasha with her fist.

She was quiet and shy like the little girl in the picture, and despite the switch from school uniform to leather jacket, Nick thought that he might just see that girl returning.

Or not.

Not three minutes after May made her way out of his office, he was called down to deal with the metal detectors.

Marvel High School wasn’t a bad school but it was not perfect. The metal detectors were solely precaution, and precaution was necessary when your student body was made up of a bunch of child geniuses and government agents’ children. Nick had learned that it was better to be safe than sorry, especially when it came to the lives of children.

And again, school ran by S.H.I.E.L.D. screw-ups so it was probably best to take all the precautions you could.

Despite the detectors never having caught anything worse than a Swiss army knife (granted a lot of Swiss Army knives, like a lot, like where do you even find so many Swiss Army knives?), they cause Nick trouble. Particularly for the reason he was walking there now.

“Nick to see you again, Fury,” Logan all but growled at him, stripped of him shoes and his leather jacket. Nick sometimes wondered if Logan knew how to do anything other than growl.

“What is it this time?”

“This bozo won’t let me through,” Logan whined, in a whiny-growly way that only he could manage.

Nick directed his one eyed stare to the guard and asked, “Why not?”

“He’s new,” Logan grumbled.

‘Ah.’

“He keeps setting off the machines.”

“He does that,” Fury replied.

“Sir, I can’t let him through,” The young guard said because he took his job very serious. Nick like that, especially considering this guy looked to be civie and not a S.H.I.E.L.D. washout.

“Look,” Nick said to the guard because Logan was a special case. He walked through the metal detector and set it off. “I’ve got metal plates in my knee from an IED and these things are temperamental. Logan’s got more metal in him than that deathtrap motorcycle of his.”

“An accident,” Logan added vaguely as he stalked past the guard and down the hall.

Fury asked, “Anything else?”

“No, sir.”

Nick left, followed down the hallway after Logan with plans of going back to his office and enjoying his morning coffee.

Five minutes.

It had been five minutes since May left his office. Just five minutes and then a boy collided with him with enough force to nearly send him back on his ass.

It was another ten seconds before Nick realized that he currently had a death grip on the arm of Ian Quinn. Nick let go once he straightened up. Quinn had a bloody nose that was gushing over his hands.

“What the hell is going on?” Fury demanded. Just because there were fights at MHS, didn’t mean that he didn’t deal with them like the ex-military, ex-spy son of a bitch that he was.

Quinn was mumbling nonsense about his nose being broken – it probably was – and blood on his crisp white dress shirt.

“Quinn,” Fury warned because people were apparently fighting in his goddamn hallways.

Quinn pointed down the hall with a bloody hand to the crowd of students that started to gather. Somewhere in Nick’s mind registered that the late bell had run and wondered how many teachers were going to be giving their students detention for being late. “Go to the nurse, now.”

“Get to class,” Fury shouted, a demand that got immediate results as students decided that class sounded a hell of a lot better than dealing with a Nick Fury death glare or his soldier voice. Nick pushed his way through the kids into an opening.

“Damn it,” He muttered to himself as the scene opened before him.

Marcus Daniels had May in a headlock, the blood leaking from a cut on her lip smeared across her cheek while John Garrett stood in front of her. His big meaty hand was raised into a fight, like he was going to punch her.

Raina, with a rip in the sleeve of her flower dress, standing back away from the fighting and holding a hand to her left eye. The contents of her backpack were thrown across the floor like she had been the one throwing it.

Nick noticed that May’s hand, which was clawing at Daniel’s arm, was smeared with blood. It was likely her who punched Quinn and by likely, he meant most definitely.

He was about to call a stop to it, had his mouth open and everything, but before he could get a word out, May kicked Garrett hard in the shoulder with both feet and knocked him back into Raina. They both went back into the lockers.

And before Nick could react to that or register the shocked look on the faces of Clint and Banner across the hall, May – 5’4, 115 pounds soaking wet maybe, Melinda May – bashed the back of her head into the nose of Daniel’s. She used his own momentum when he stumbled back and then rushed her, to flip him over her head. His back smacked against the floor hard enough that it made even Nick feel winded.

Garrett was back and steady on his feet, yanking May’s hair and slamming her face first into the lockers but that didn’t stop her. Struggling against his grasp, she managed to turn herself so her back was against the locker with Garrett leaning over her.

“You think that you can just-“ was all Garrett got out before he was kneed in the groin and pushed away from her.

She went to kick him, her foot aiming for his head but Garrett caught the limb seconds from impact. Melinda, after a smirk that promised pain, had swung her other leg and corkscrewed in the air with all the grace of the ballerinas in Natasha’s dance class. Her foot connected with Garrett’s face, dropping him to the worn tiles in an inelegant heap.

Melinda landed on her feet in a crouched position before straightening up and pushing her hair out of her face with the same cold look Nick saw in her eyes on that first day they met.

May sidestepped the geography book that flew past her face. She followed the book with dead eyes of disinterest as it slammed against the locker and split onto the floor before turning her gaze to the person that threw it, Raina.

“May,” Nick stated as she progressed onto the flower-dressed girl. Nick would give it to Raina, she stood her ground even in the face of May’s ice glare.

May’s gaze found his eyes before bouncing around the hall like she was just realizing where she was. Something in her posture changed, something less predatorily overtook her, making her look small and young as her eyebrows pulled together in confusion.

She turned to Nick, opening her mouth to speak but she made a not a sound.

‘So, so stupid,’ Nick thought because you should never turn your back on an enemy, even when those enemies were high school students. She should know that.

‘Her parents should have taught her that,’ He thought before realizing that maybe they never got the chance to tell her.

Riana raised her hands with another textbook held in her grasp over her head.

Clint yelled May’s name at the same time Nick shouted for Raina to drop it but none of that really mattered because in less than a second, Melinda had already rounded on her and kicked. Standing with her fist up and the hell of her boot crushing down on Garrett’s hand as Raina fell to the ground.

“How did you even do that?” Someone yelled over the sound of John Garrett swearing at May as he pried his hand out from under her boot.

“Everybody,” Nick said slowly and loudly, letting his annoyance and his frustration slip into his voice so that he made it pretty fucking clear that he was not dealing with this shit today. “Get. To. Class.”

And that worked, it always worked.

He was, after all, still Nick Fury.

The hall cleared out soon enough, except for Garrett who was finally picking himself up off the floor and Daniels who was keeping Raina on her feet. Clint stayed rooted to his shot despite Banner telling him to move.

“Barton, class now-“ Nick didn’t even spare him a glance as his eyes scanned over May for injuries. She was breathing hard and the tight grip that her hands had on her elbows suggested that maybe she was a little shaken up but nonetheless, didn’t seem to be injured much to Nick’s relief.

“Fury,” Clint said, his voice coated in both awe and concern.

“Clint,” Nick warned.

“Okay, fine, whatever,” Barton muttered, the awe in his voice replaced with a nasal irritation. “I’m going.”

Once Barton uprooted himself and glared at Fury one last time, he stormed off down the hall with Banner right behind him.

“Okay, what the hell-“

“JOHN!” Echoed around the hallway, followed by loud hurried footsteps that put Melinda on edge again.

Nick rolled his eyes as Grant Ward came barreling down the hallway. He came to a full stop once he saw Fury glaring back at him.

“Garrett,” Ward huffed as he took in stock the forming bruises on the side of Garrett’s face. “What the hell?”

“What the hell, indeed,” Fury grounded out. “Which of you idiots are going to tell me what the hell you thought you were doing fighting in my hallway.”

No one said anything.

Nick let the frustration coat his voice, “May?”

She didn’t even spare him a glance from where she was leaning against the lockers with her arms across her chest. She didn’t even so much as wipe the blood from her cheek.

“Garrett? Raina? Daniels? Anything want to tell me why Quinn has a broken nose? Anybody?”

Not a word, just heavy breathing and Riana’s muffled cry.

“Ward, take Raina to the nurse then get to class,” Fury commanded. “The rest of you to my office. Now.”

Ward, who had been examining the boot print on the side of Garrett’s face, nodded to Fury before he took Raina’s hand and pulled her towards Dr. Steintin’s office.

“Did I stutter, go!” Fury pointed down the hall to emphasize his point, prompting Garrett and Daniels to drag themselves to their feet and down the hall with their heads hung low.

May didn’t so much as move an inch. She was still standing stock still, staring daggers into the locker opposite her.

“May, let’s go,” Fury said as Garrett and Daniels disappeared around the corner. She didn’t move. “Melinda.”

Nick put his hand on her shoulder, which in hindsight was a terrible idea. Her hands struck out and he blocked the first blow but not the second, ending up shoved into a locker with his arm twisted behind his back.

“Melinda.”

With that, she let go and Nick was free to move his arm again. When he turned around, he was actually surprised that she was still standing there, having expected her to bolt the moment she let go.

“Come on,” He said, not touching her. “My office. You know where it is.”

She moved, ducking her head as she took her leave but not offering Fury any actual words. Once she disappeared around the corner, Nick shook out his arm and wondered what his life had become that he was being shoved against lockers by a teenage girl.

“Having fun?” Someone voiced from behind him.

Nick was seriously starting to question when he had stopped being so paranoid that he didn’t even realize that someone had walked down the hall in the first place. Let alone, that he was letting little girls get the jump on him.

“Don’t you have a job to do, Hand?”

“I ran into Quinn.”

“I’m handling.”

“It looks like it’s handling you, sir.”

He grounded out through clenched teeth, “Hand.”

“You better make sure that they aren’t down there killing each other,” Victoria pointed out, her heels clicking as she traveled back into the direction that she had come.

He could hear the smirk on her voice when she called over her shoulder, “You know how pissed off Maria gets when they get blood on the floor.