Ten
+++
He thinks he’s being funny with his bitten-off chop-sticks, always making certain that they are in his breast pocket when out of his gear and close by even when he is in regalia. Darcy has noticed; it’s not difficult to. And if she’s honest she is kind of wondering about it, but because everyone has their small hang-ups she leaves him the chop-sticks; doesn’t try to talk him out of it. Even though she also doesn’t step in when Clint and Kate both remind him, repeatedly, that they could be a hazard on the field. Memorabilia or not they have a point.
Peter hasn’t yet returned with the wood impaled into his arm or elsewhere yet though… So Darcy doesn’t step in and she doesn’t try to talk him out of them. There is something worrying about the way he clings to them and Darcy… does not think that they’re there.
Not yet.
-
“I had a friend.”--Peter says one evening.
They are trying to gaze at stars; but only manage to stare at the smog that is sometimes illuminated by a wayward sky-light. Vision is bad tonight but that has never stopped Darcy and it certainly isn’t impeaching the young man from keeping her company. Staring up at the dark void can have its charms too.
He huffs a small, self-deprecating smile. “I had several friends.”--he corrects himself, and even though Darcy turns her head to look at him, give him her full attention, he doesn’t quite return the motion. Stares at his fingers instead, plays with the laces of his shoes.
“But he was… different.”--a small pause. “I could have gone to him probably. I don’t know-”
Darcy knows almost immediately where his mind is stuck. She’s been there; she knows the circles he’s walking in his mind intimately and close up. The ‘Why didn’t I go there’s and ‘If only I’d swallowed my pride’s. She waits him out, taking in the slumped picture of a teen-aged hero-vigilante.
“I don’t know why I didn’t go to him. Because I know he’d have taken me in; he’d have helped me. I don’t- Why didn’t I- Why wouldn’t-?”
He stops, swallows, collects himself as he finally looks at her and he is a sort of beautiful, this young broken Spider; silhouette set off against the mesh of pale blue lights of offices and warm golden hues of street-lamps behind him. His hoodie belonged to Clint at some point but the blond washed it too hot which means that it fits Peter – or would… will: as soon as she gets some weight back on his bones.
“I would have loved to go, sometimes.”--he admits. “But I didn’t. And I learned how to use chop-sticks instead.”
Darcy pulls her throw a little higher around her chin – summer isn’t quite here yet and the nights can be just as chilly as they can be sweltering – and puts a hand to his knee, careful and with large, announced movements she’s quickly learned will cause less flinching and freezing up on Peter’s part (and she’s going to rain hellfire on whoever is the cause of that) and simply lets it rest there. They soak in their quiet before Darcy even attempts to find the right words to speak.
“When I lost my job I kind of lost the rest of my life.”--she starts. “Like…”-apart from Jane, “-I didn’t have an income so my phone had to go and I couldn’t really wash and I was hungry most of the time and I am not going into detail about gender-specialized hygienic subjects.”
Peter draws a moue of commiseration; there’s something he’s not quite telling her but she can deal with that. She has learned to wait.
“But it never once occurred to me that I could have called my friends from college. Or that I could go to a shelter – trust me I can not emphasize how much I did not want to go there.”--she pauses shortly. “I read once that poverty, de-socializes and while the concept is easy to grasp theoretically you don’t really realize what it means until you’ve really been there and it came to me at that point that – yeah: I was not going to be social when my smell offended my own nostrils; and I was not going to go to dinners with friends when I could barely pay for half a slice of cheese; and I was not going to go partying when all I owned was a pair of jeans, three shirts and one pullover.”
She draws her hand back and tilts her head up to stare at the single, off-white spot that is the moon above them. There’s a lot of things she wants to tell him. That she’s glad he’s found them. That he did what he had to in order to survive and that there is absolutely no shame in that – none at all. The instinct of survival brings you to new and wondrous realizations, yes, but there is no shame in surviving. She wants to tell him that she understands him.
Instead she looks at him and gives his knee a little jiggle. “Whenever you’re ready, you could always call him and have him over.”--she offers instead and the small widening of his eyes, barely even noticeable in the city-night if it weren’t for her eyes having long gotten used to functioning in somber environments, lets her know that at the very least she’s given him an idea to chew on.
-
He’s kind of a genius.
She doesn’t know how she’s managed to overlook that.
Sure Peter is quiet most of the time and he can sneak around better than Kate or Clint can, especially because he has the advantage of climbing walls if he really wants to go unseen – what amazes Darcy is that when she finds him tinkering is just how silent he is while working.
Now she’s seen Jane work on her appliances and that had always involved a lot of muttering into a beard that the tiny scientist would never grow without some serious Asgardian Hoodoo, hitting self-made-machines that wouldn’t cooperate and gallons of coffee. She’s seen Tony Stark work – on very rare occasions and only through glass-windows, like an exhibit in a museum – and that has always included ACDC or any other kind of old-school hard rock as well as a lot of gloating, gallons of coffee and, of course, JARVIS. And coffee. Ever since moving in, she’s also caught Clint working on his arrows and gadgets and that has always involved cursing, grunting and taking huge, greedy gulps of coffee in between the gentle clicking of whatever it was that Clint’s arrows are made of.
Peter is different.
When she ‘catches’ him first, she is returning from a grocery-run – because four mouths and a flea-bag eat a hell of a lot more than two do – and stashing away Clint-bribes in the form of Nachos, Nic-Nacs and Salted Peanuts (Popcorn in the kitchen because they are not the microwave kind and Clint doesn’t dare prepare them) where (a) he cannot immediately find them and (b) she can have access to them at all moments.
He is sitting in the living room, with a thermos she doesn’t doubt is full of coffee, his materials spread out before him on a white, cared-for piece of cloth which he has spread over the small table that is usually their improvised dining-table. He is tinkering with something small in his hands, eyes focused on the task, hands still and precise, mouth closed – he doesn’t even look up when Darcy comes in.
And so she learns that Peter Parker is a very quiet sort of tinkerer. He gets lost in his machinations, works almost meditatively and it’s only when she very carefully edges into his field of vision that he re-emerges from his quiet kind of stupor.
“Hm?”
Darcy has seen that look of coming-out-of-a-science-binge too often to not recognize it immediately and something in her lurches a little uncomfortably with a hot flash of Jane before it settles into a well-known role. “You eat anything?”--she asks, gently because she has his attention and there is no need to startle the scientists when they are coming out of it, as she removes the thermos and replaces it with a cup of green-tea.
Not surprisingly he shakes his head.
Darcy nods and opens her hand, quietly demanding the trinket he’s been working on. “If you give me that and eat something now, I’ll give it back to you afterwards and not disturb you again until dinner.”
She says it slowly and quietly – tests the waters that she thinks would be better to be smooth around Peter. Jane had always needed a little push and shove to give in; but she doesn’t peg Pete as the same kind of science-nerd as her JaneTM. He does give her the gadget, swaps it for the smoothie bowl she’s prepared for him – the two young-ones are as much fanatics for all sorts of fresh produce as Darcy is and Clint isn’t – and a half-liter bottle of water.
He is complacent in his intake, if quick, and once it is all done, Darcy – as promised – hands back the gadget and leaves. Until dinner she makes certain that neither Clint nor Kate interrupt the young man as slowly the small thing in his hand becomes a little larger and then, finally, assembles into something that might just resemble an arrow-head. But as dinner rolls around Darcy doesn’t even have to call him out of his science for it; he’s already at her side, quiet and still a little in his science-head-space, but there.
A week later he presents both Kate and Clint with a prototype Putty-Arrow and Darcy helps Clint to make room in the attic for a small lab. Mostly because Clint is way too enthusiastic about Putty-Arrows.
###
Luke likes the boy.
He can see why the Homeless Folk around wanted him off the streets though.
There is something tiny about the young man despite the fact that the T-shirts he wears now that the weather is getting warmer depict, indeed, quite the muscle on him, sinewy as he may be. He is a clever head, Luke has been able to tell from the first few moments and it was confirmed when the boy vanished under the counter to fiddle around with his Premix when the darn thing wouldn’t work – again – only to emerge with a triumphant smile, leaving Luke with an optimally working equipment.
The fact that he’s a hero-vigilante himself comes up at a later – much later – date and by then Peter Parker already has his seal of approval. If only for the fact that he accompanies Kate almost every-where despite her ceaseless arguments that she can protect her damn self; can’t hurt to have two of them traipsing around in any case. Darcy seems to agree.
-
He knows he’s struggling with giving up his need for secrecy.
Carl Lucas is still kind of a wanted man after all, even if he managed to escape the fuzz – thrice by now, at the very least, although the documents on Luke Cage being Carl Lucas somehow magically disappeared into whatever abyss it could disappear into. He ain’t complainin’.
Nevertheless he’s been aiming to keep it quiet around him. It was bad enough that street folk was very well aware not only of his being Carl Lucas but also looking to him in terms of peaceful grounds to step on and into if ever that was needed – after-hours, naturally.
Now, however, he’s realized that running away… yeah he could do that, everyone could do that. But in the end you couldn’t quite outrun yourself could you? He was always going to be a Strong-Man, as Darcy had called him, and he was always going to run into people like him – they are a fact of nature after all, most of the time.
And Darcy… Darcy hadn’t even known she is what she is and now she is and she’s working for him and he does neither have an inclination to kick her out, nor does he like playing with the thought of running. Although he has, admittedly.
“You okay there, Luke?”
Kate surprises him as she slinks into his personal space, pulling him into an easy embrace that grounds him so much better than any and all nights of meaningless-but-supposedly-life-affirming sex ever could.
Tiny Bishop is another reason he doesn’t want to leave.
She might not know it, but he’s always missed the ease that came with family, with friends, and it has taken him this slip of an angry young woman camping outside of his cardboard-hovel under the bridge despite all sorts of warnings to realize it.
His arms come around her frail frame pull her a little closer, feeling her sink into an embrace that is as much family to her as it is to him. It’s good to not have to worry about breaking her any moment what with Darcy’s food-schedule. “As good as it gets, Tiny Bishop.”--he responds, smirking at the ‘’m not tiny’ that gets muffled in their embrace.
Forward.--Pops had said. Always, always forward.
-
They call the boy ‘The Runt’ - or at least Clint and Kate do – and, for some reason, it sticks with Luke when he talks to Matt about the newest addition to Darcy’s Crew. They shouldn’t stick together like they do, maybe; shouldn’t work together at night but Clint has a way of finding them on his patrols and sticking to their hides that makes them almost feel like some ill-begotten-semblance-of-a-team.
And so Matthew Murdock patronizes his joint every now and then when he feels like stepping out somewhere that is not Hell’s Kitchen with his work-colleagues. The first time he brings his law-buddies, Luke recognizes Karen Page from the Daily Bugle with a flinching intake of breath. She’s been on a lot of sites he’s been cause and center of in the last year and he can tell by the way that her eyes light up for a split second that she recognizes him too. It’s just as well, he thinks, waiting, the next few days, for the big reveal in the Bugle and missing it entirely because it never comes.
“Karen knows about me too.”--Matt divulges on another evening when only his friend, Foggy, and himself have come in. At one-fifty in the morning Foggy Nelson is well under-way of waking up with a head-ache and a cotton-mouth but that is, apparently, not stopping him the slightest from attempting to drown his sorrows in a Solo-Tequila-Act. It’s actually quite impressive; if it weren’t so worrying.
“She knows about a lot of people.”--he continues when he sets a glass of water in front of Foggy that the man downs like he’s downed his shots until now; Luke just watches and listens. Because apparently Kate and Frank Castle are kind of a thing as well.
“How can you be ‘kind-of-a-thing’ with a man that calls himself The Punisher?”--he wonders, giving Matt a look that the other man may not see but can probably damn well interpret perfectly by the pitch of his voice or something.
Indeed the lawyer gives him a crooked smile and lifts a shoulder in a Gallic Shrug.
Luke shakes his head and puts another glass of water in front of Foggy that the man downs without question before going back to his Tequila. Seriously what is it with the people from Hell’s Kitchen?
-
They return to Clint’s place after a night filled with heavy-hitters and Harlem shaking in its boots from the appearance of The Devil at the side of Luke Cage in a small skirmish against Shades’ enforcers looking to tear up a children’s shelter.
“The place is ours.”--Shades hisses. “We have interest in it.”
And, better than Luke perhaps, Matt understands just exactly what that means from where he has the other man dangling from a rooftop by only one leg. The way Shades is trying to jab at the man in the mask he reminds Luke of a kitten batting at a disapproving parental unit. The Devil sways the man at the reply, grinning a dangerous little grin that is barely the split of lips and more a show of teeth. “More than you have in your life?”--he rasps.
Luke is rather impressed just how well Matt hides his strength during the day, how little of it he actually employs and instead hides with actor-like proficiency. He’s seen Matt in action before – sort of – but he’s never quite realized that The Devil and Matthew Murdock are, indeed, two different personas that just happen to don the same vessel.
He wonders, quietly, if this is similar to Darcy’s circumstances, missing Shades’ retort completely.
“Give us a week.”--Luke barters then, stepping right into an increasingly hostile conversation between the two men and doesn’t miss the way Shades’ eyes reflect eerily in the light that illuminates him from below. He goes for a longer period of time than he’d really need to evacuate the shelter and isn’t all that surprised when the smarmy smirk on Shades puce face makes an appearance – spiting his circumstances.
“Lukey-boy.”--he sings, “’s not that easy.”
He knows that; it never is and he’s well aware that Mariah has the Russians breathing down her neck since the passing of Cotton-Mouth and his own consequent appearance on the political plan. During the chaos he caused the Nagy had convinced themselves that the Harlem market was just waiting for them – Black Mariah had other opinions; but not quite the same thrall or fire-power. Luke is well aware of all this, he just rather the competition underestimate him. He loves catching people off guard in such a manner; doesn’t happen all that often being his size and it’s a funny feeling.
Probably kind of like Tiny Bishop must feel.
“Four days.”--he offers instead of rising to the bait and Shades actually contemplates this before he attempts to shrug.
“Fine.”
Just for shits and giggles, though, Luke doesn’t protest when Matt ties Shades to the railing and leaves him hanging over the edge of the rooftop screaming and yammering (and hopefully pissing his pants). Mostly he trusts that The Devil knows his knots. It isn’t until they return to the shelter to clean up the damage and mess they’ve caused that they find Clint and Cohorts packing up the groaning low-lives they’d punched through earlier that evening.
“Fuzz is on their way.”--he informs them when Spider Man helps him to string up a pack of three thugs over a lamp-post. “We should probably talk.”--and he might not look much like a leader when he vanishes into a side-alley to take the rooftops, but they follow either way. Because he’s right. And because Luke is curious about the Spider Twerp’s connection to Clint (and to Darcy).
But when they arrive at the apartment complex, there is only Clint and Darcy. Luke is a little disappointed – he likes the Spider-Twerp.
-
“Spider-Twerp.”--Kate snorts into her coffee, inelegant and sleepy but irrefutably amused by this. The Runt – Luke meets him for the first time in person that morning – presents himself as Peter Parker and gives his sister a dirty, tired look over the rim of his own cup, increasing Tiny Bishop’s merriment of the situation. She chortles when he sets away his own cup.
“You’re just jealous there’s not a hero stemming from Park Ave.”--he grunts, voice rough and sleep-laden and, Luke notes that he does actually look kind of beat. Grimy hair, rings under his eyes and the full-blown slowness that comes with not having gotten enough sleep.
Kate’s smile turns sharp at this. “Aw. Did I offend your teensy-queensy feelings?”--she sing-songs with a scratch to her words and instead of answering The Runt sticks his tongue out at her and steals a slice of apple from her plate. Boy has quick fingers he notes; would’ve done good as a thief probably.
Luke leans back and watches them bicker. It’s kind of surprising, actually, sleeping over because he found himself a little too sleepy after Darcy filling them up with actual, healthy food that even Matt didn’t mind taking home with him and waking up to find himself surrounded by… family. He tries thinking of another word for it, but can’t come up with something fitting.
Matt would have appreciated this – he muses as he leans back into the lumpy cushioning of Clint’s decrepit couch and simply lets the scene wash over him. Darcy’s cooking drowns the small apartment in the pleasing smell of eggs and bacon, mingling with the scent of brewing coffee, the fresh strawberries on the table and the cereal in Clint’s bowl. The rising sun paints the back of Peter’s head, as well as Kate’s side, golden warming the room and tickling the Basil on the window-sill.
Forward, he thinks and takes a deep breath, always forward.
###
Kate isn’t too happy about him leaving and he gets it – he doesn’t really want to go either, not when there’s training to be done with Peter and her. Not when the Russians are rearing their heads closer to home than necessary. But Nat’s indicated that whatever is happening has a high enough priority to warrant him tearing himself away from his home (and hearth). So he packs up. Despite the fact that he won’t even be able to properly say his good-byes to Darcy what with her being at work.
He hates leaving her in the middle of the night.
“I need you to adhere to the patrol-system.”--he instructs the two kids quietly over his methodical rummaging in several cupboards that hold an assortment of his weaponry. He doesn’t like stashing them all in one place. “I mean it. I don’t want you gallivanting around Solo because you think you’re above all that and get hurt in any way, okay?”
He hasn’t had that talk with Kate yet; is stalling to the point of avoiding it but he thinks that maybe – just maybe – Matt’s recent brush with death has managed to instill into her at least a smidgen of the reason why he would be so adamant about this. Why he’s been such a cunt to her the first time he met her shooting that bow and arrow.
Peter nods once, big and exaggerated but Clint has to take it for what it is because Nat is going to fetch him in about fifteen minutes and he doesn’t want her any where near his apartment complex. Not yet and maybe not ever. Nat may have helped him buy it in the first place and she may have stayed at his side the longest – as long as she could manage being off the job – but it’s not just about the two of them now.
It’s about Darcy, it’s about Kate, it’s about The Runt and in a way it’s about Luke and Matt as well. He can’t just compromise them like that. And with Nat they would be compromised; she’s a honed weapon on missions, she misses nothing and sometimes she still shoots before her brain catches up. Clint can’t have that.
Darcy would not be safe if SHIELD came upon the intel that she is the very same Hearth Keeper that Thor had waxed poetic about keeping the old New Triskelion in a titter for a week – he’s still not entirely certain which SHIELD he’s talking about and if what is currently being widely acknowledged as the ‘true’ left-over of SHIELD is even completely free of any sorts of Squid-devotees. But anything that endangers Darcy endangers the kids and – to some extent – also Luke and Matt.
And he likes them.
All of them.
Granted it’s something possessive and almost-sometimes a little feral in the right – wrong – moments concerning Darcy but beyond the beautiful woman, who would get him a purple cup because he’s crap even at owning proper dishware, he likes the young aspiring archer whom he dares to call tentative friend and the he likes the bar-keep who looks like he could brawl with Thor and get away without a scratch and he likes the Spider-Twerp and the Devil of Hell’s Kitchen who almost died in his hands.
He’s also way too fond of Lucky to even think about giving him up and Stark has an allergy so that would, indeed, be a discussion.
These are his people – his folk. These are the ones who do not shy back from his deaf, antisocial ass. They have occupied his couch, they have taken over his living room and his bathroom and his house and he can’t remember when he’s last been sitting on the roof all on his lonesome.
Therefore he meets Nat several blocks away from his apartment, slipped into full Hawkeye-Regalia even before he’s off his own roof and on his way to another – he pretends not to notice Kate and Peter following him. Their stealth is (mostly) abominable, gotta have to do something about that as soon as he gets back.
-
He’s missed Wanda though, admittedly. And judging by the way she eases into his somewhat awkward embrace she might have as well.
“You okay, kiddo?”--he rumbles softly, pulling her hair back as she sinks into him, mumbling something into his shoulder that he cannot see or hear; he snorts at her tired effort. “Can’t hear you like that.”--he soothes quietly, glaring at Tony over the shoulders of the young woman as the other man makes to interrupt their reunion.
Glad you’re here—Wanda’s voice rasps through his mind. It’s been some time since he’s last heard another’s voice and he stills shortly before he pulls her somewhat closer still.
“Glad to be here.”--he replies before he lets her go.
Maybe he shouldn’t have been surprised when he took so easily to training Kate and Peter; it’s nothing he hadn’t been doing for Wanda after all: made certain she rested for a healthy amount of time, made certain she ate the good stuff, made certain she didn’t miss Pietro too much during her transition, made certain she felt integrated with them.
New Avengers Facility has done wonders on her; put her weight up to healthy, her pallor gone and replaced with marble-like skin, white and seemingly unbreakable. He smirks, pushes his knuckles against her jaw-bone when the moment becomes too quiet for either of them and she smiles at the familiar gesture.
Chin up, soldier–she muses in the depths of his mind and he smirks again, pulls her into a one-armed hug as they turn towards Tony whose mouth is moving a little too fast for Clint to read properly – he’s also not used to the chewing gum in the man’s mouth, warping his speech even further to his eyes.
“What’s he goin’ on about?”--he asks Wanda quietly when he has to give up trying to read the fast moving lips of the genius.
He has built hearing-aids for you, he would like to know if you’d be amenable to test them.
-
Clint realizes he’s walked into a soft trap a week later – arms wide open even.
He’s been so fucking drunk on hearing the world around him that it hasn’t, once, crossed his mind as odd that he hadn’t left on any of the missions with the team. He’s busied himself – or rather, has been busied – working with the young-ones instead; built obstacle courses for Cap’s Secondary Team: the Vision, the Scarlet Witch, the Falcon and the War-Machine.
They’ve been failing a particular challenge for three days straight now and it’s frustrating on all sides. Clint won’t budge from his spot as make-shift instructor, though maybe because he’s finally noticed that his old team had been leaving for missions they neither briefed him on nor told him about, and he’s noticed that he’s not eating with them either –he doesn’t quite know what to do with the intel for a day before he realizes that tutoring is not actually why he’s come here. The B-Team, it’s what they are and there’s no shame in addressing it like that, is frustrated because they’re failing and this gets the A-Team on his case.
Cap specifically.
“Why not introduce them to it step by step?”--the other blond wonders and Clint takes a look around the room, thinks of the blue-prints and programming that has gone into it and has the sudden urge to tell him just how rambunctious Peter and Kate would be in a setting like this. The archer has to bite his lips in order to not tell the good captain that his kids would have made it in two days.
Because they’re stubborn.
And because they work together like a well-oiled machine, relying on each other in the right moments despite the fact that they cannot have known each other for longer than a month now.
This is when he realizes that he’s been here a week.
A week without Kate riling up The Runt over breakfast; a week without patrolling with either Daredevil or Luke. A week without Lucky.
“Clint?”
A week without Darcy.
“Will a battle-situation introduce itself to them step by step?”--he asks instead, crosses his arms and looks on the ground, mulling over the wisps of the thoughts he’s just had, wonders quietly about them as he avoids the eyes of the tall man. “I have been training them up for this; if they’d just tilt their head to the right side instead of the left they’d recognize it too.”
He smirks a little because that is, literally, what Darcy likes to do when a puzzle doesn’t make sense. Naturally her head will tilt to the left when confused and if it, still, doesn’t make any sense then, she tilts her head to the other side, sees what happens there. The mien is still on his lips when he looks up to find the confused look of The Captain and he makes a decision.
“Look. I’m gonna head home. You have your people to train your B-Team and to be quite honest I miss my lumpy couch.”
And Darcy. And Kate. And The Runt.
“Clint.”
The call is harsher this time, nonetheless confused but not Steve so much as The Captain – commanding. Clint stops walking out of instilled training, looking over his shoulder at the other man.
“What brought this on?”
He shrugs, plucks at the hearing aids in his ear-shells. “I’m not a baby-sitter, Cap. I did actually not come here to train your B-Team so you can throw them to your Pet Assassin when the time is ripe.”--because he doesn’t have any doubt that this is what will happen at some point in the future; the second hearing aid is out of his ears and the hum of the place around him is replaced by white, familiar, already aggravating, static. He’s a little pissed at his morals but he can’t take these and just leave with them; his mother may not have raised him a lot, but she did her best.
The aids fall to his feet. Soundlessly.
“And I am not going to allow you to side-line me again because you think I’d be a liability in the field what with the merely prototype hearing-aids Stark has cranked up.”--they’ve been heaven, he has to admit. But they’re not worth leaving his people for. “I have responsibilities now.”--he says then as he turns and meets the tense look of his former Team Leader. “And if you cannot find it in yourself to accommodate a differently-abled person in your team maybe you should consider not going after Barnes just yet.”
Because he’s not a complete asshole, he doesn’t step on the hearing-aids. Who knows, it could come in handy for deaf kids out there if Stark ever got around to marketing the stuff to the right people – they’re A-rate after all.
-
We were worried.--Darcy signs as Lucky trots forward and through the doorway, butting his head against his knees and winding around his legs, sniffing in greeting, and for some reason that is all it takes for his shoulders to drop and his heart-rate to slow as he plucks one arm away from his duffel bag, pushing it into the riotous mop that belongs to the woman in front of him, pulling her close to him.
He’s missed her scent.
We have a guest.
Clint hums. Doesn’t bother to move and drops his duffel altogether as he winds the second arm around Darcy. Peter and Kate appear in the periphery of his vision.
“You’re both horrible at the whole shadowing stuff from what I remember. We’re going to have a few drills ‘bout that.”--he mumbles into the wild crown of Darcy’s hair; doesn’t care that it’s the kids who see them like that. Who see him like that. Aimee has been calling for Darcy since she’s seen him hobble around the curve into the alley to their front-door-step. Peter nods; Kate scoffs.
Clint sinks back into home.