Chapter 1
Clint woke up to Kate’s foot in his face and Lucky’s tail brushing lazily against his chin every few seconds. He groaned, already knowing it was far too early to be awake.
“Katie,” he whined, shoving her foot out of his face only to have her heel slam down into his groin unrepentantly. “Ugh,” he complained, crunching up in pain. He twisted around until he fell off of the couch entirely, landing face first onto the floor. “Ugh, Kate, why.”
She grumbled something unintelligible at him, twisted on the sofa so she was stretched out into the space he had previously been occupying, and promptly fell back asleep.
Lucky was wide-awake now, too, tail thumping against the floor as he watched Clint intently with his one good eye. Clint gave in and reached out to pet him, rubbing Lucky on the head to the dog’s great enjoyment.
“Coffee. I need coffee.” He pulled himself to his feet and went about doing just that. After his third cup he was feeling marginally more human, and his brain had finally started working again. And then he caught sight of the clock on the wall and sighed. He was not looking forward to this fight, and it took him a few long moments to try and wrap his head around the reason it was now his job.
“Katie. Katie-Kate. Kiddo, you have to get up now.” The only answer was a long moan. And then silence. “Katie. Hey, now.” Clint hovered over the back of the couch and peered down at his apprentice. “You’ve got school in an hour. Time to get up.”
She cracked open an eye to glare up at him, her hair everywhere and her eyes caked with gunk. He never understood how people could say that someone was beautiful right when they woke up; Kate always looked like a human disaster when she rolled out of bed.
“I’ve got coffee,” he bribed, waving his mug under her nose, but just out of reach. Her eyes opened a smidge more, and she looked far more awake now.
“Coffee?” she mumbled, reaching out for the mug but only getting thin air.
“Yep. Coffee and cereal. What do you say, kid?”
She was quiet for a long moment before she sighed with her entire body and sagged into the sofa. “Fine,” she whined, twisting around on the sofa so she could roll to her feet. She teetered there, almost knocking herself over, before she stood straight again and stomped off to the bathroom to begin the process of looking like a Real Girl™ again.
Clint watched her go with a smirk and then moved to the kitchen, grabbing another mug and a bowl for her cereal. Her breakfast was waiting for her on the table for when she returned and he had to marvel over how this was his life now. It was so mundane.
Kate appeared ten minutes later, looking polished and not like she had just woken up at all. She fell into her seat at the table and brought the coffee up to her face, breathing in deep.
Clint watched her in amusement, waiting for her to get halfway through her first cup before he even attempted to speak to her.
“Hey, Kate. You know I love having you crash here every now and then, whatever, but this is becoming kind of a regular thing. I mean, we have a routine now. Once there’s a routine, that means it’s happening a hell of a lot.” She raised a brow at him, leaned over her mug of coffee, and glared at him to get to the point. “I’m just saying, are you ever planning on going home? I’m sure your dad misses you.”
She scoffed into her cup and set it aside with a longing look to start on her food. “Dad doesn’t even notice when I’m gone. He won’t care I’m here. It’s no big deal.” She hesitated for a moment, her eyes flashing with some sort of emotion, before she glared down at her cereal, swishing her spoon through it sullenly. “If you don’t want me crashing here anymore, I’ll find somewhere else. It’s fine.”
“That’s not what I said, Katie!” Clint said, sounding offended. “You’re always welcome here, kid. But I think you should at least let your dad know that you’re gonna be spending so much time here. I don’t want him to freak out if he can’t find you. Or have him think something weird is going on here with us if he ever does track you down.”
“Gross!” she shrieked, her face scrunched up in disgust. “Fine, I’ll call him tonight after school. Ew, I’m not going to be able to get that out of my head now. I need brain bleach, Barton. Ugh,” she whined, her eyes scrunched closed and tongue stuck out.
Clint just rolled his eyes, reaching out to ruffle her hair in response. “Shut up, weirdo, and finish your breakfast. You’re down to twenty minutes to get to school, now.”
Kate grumbled through the rest of her food but she was out the door in time to make it to class, so Clint couldn’t complain. Much.
“I’m not coming back! And there’s nothing you can do about it. I hate it there.” Kate was screaming into her phone when Clint opened the door to his apartment and it had Clint immediately on guard. “No!” she shouted once more, glaring a hole into the wall, her phone pressed tight against her ear and her arms squeezed close to her body. Her face was pinched and stressed, and her eyes were just starting to shine with tears. That had Clint freaking out momentarily, even more than the screaming; Katie didn’t cry over anything.
This must be bad.
“Katie-Kate, that your dad?” he asked quietly, even if he already knew the answer. She gave him a supremely unamused look back, because she knew he knew damn well who she was talking to. “Do you want me to talk to him?” She hesitated, someone still speaking loudly on the other end, before she nodded and handed the phone over, moving to the sofa instead to flop down, tugging Lucky into her lap to pet at in her agitation.
The man was still droning on when Clint brought the phone to his ear. “’Scuse me, sir? This is Clint Barton. Kate’s been crashing on my sofa for a while, now. I told her this morning that I wanted her to let you know where she was so you didn’t worry.”
There was a long silence, and then the man started going again. “And just who are you? And how old are you? This is ridiculous, Katherine should be home, not ‘crashing’ on some stranger’s couch. I swear, that girl-,” he complained, his voice grating and aggravating to Clint’s own ears.
“With all due respect, sir, I’m no stranger. I’ve known Kate since she was thirteen. I taught her archery and self-defense, and she just kind of latched on to me after that. I’m thirty-two, and have no untoward thoughts or feelings toward your daughter, honest. She’s sixteen! Besides, she’s a little too annoying for my tastes.”
“Hey!” Kate shrieked indignantly, scowling at Clint.
Clint stuck his tongue out at her before continuing. “I swear, sir. She’s like a little sister to me. She’s safe here. I make sure she’s clean and fed and studies and I get her off to school and everything. She’s fine. I just wanted her to let you know where she was.”
The silence stretched on for so long that Clint was almost afraid the man had hung up on him, but then there was a long, drawn out sigh and he started speaking again, sounding exhausted.
“I’m going to do a background check on you, young man. Katherine speaks highly of you, so if you check out, I suppose she can stay as long as she likes. I want her happy. She obviously wasn’t, here.”
Clint was slightly blown away at that. He was sure he was going to have to fight the man harder than that. “Thank you, sir. I promise, I’ll take good care of her.”
“I’m not a little kid,” Kate groaned from the other side of the room, pouting up at Clint. Lucky whacked his tail against her thigh, suitably distracting her from Clint’s rolling eyes.
“You’d better,” Kate’s father said, before promptly hanging up. Clint stared at the phone, surprised by the abruptness of it all, before he shrugged and tossed the phone to Kate.
“Well, that went well.”
Two weeks later, a thick packet of papers appeared at Clint’s door. He opened the package slowly, wary of surprise mail left in front of his door. Inside were pages and pages of some sort of contract. When he looked closer, her saw Kate’s name multiple times, along with her father’s and Clint’s own as well.
“Uhm,” he said, scratching his head in confusion. And then he read the headings and his eyebrows shot to his hairline. “Guardianship papers, huh?” He flipped through a few more, seeing the guardianship papers along with medical proxy and something from Kate’s school saying he would be called with anything to do with her.
“Sure works fast, doesn’t he?” Clint said to himself as he pulled a pen from his junk drawer, settling at the table to fill out the papers. He didn’t even hesitate over the first signature. Kate and him were close, and he would do anything for her. Even this.
“Well, Katie-Kate. It’s official.” He wrapped an arm around her shoulders as they left the lawyer’s office, a smirk on his face. She just rolled her eyes at him.
“It’s just a legality, I don’t know why you’re so excited,” she grumbled.
“Because now I don’t have to worry about your dad breathing down my neck or have to watch you look all frowny-face when he doesn’t show up to stuff he promised he would. I’ll have you know; I take my responsibilities veryseriously.”
“You couldn’t make the last call to Assemble because you burned your hand drinking coffee straight from the carafe,” Kate pointed out, deadpan, supremely unimpressed. That was practically her default setting, though. Clint had stopped taking it seriously a long time ago. “That’s being responsible?”
“Damn straight!” Clint said with a grin, squeezing her shoulders before releasing her so he could prance ahead of her. “Look at you. You’re learning fast, kid!”