[log] clint barton's no good very bad week [closed]

[awwnoun]

Characters: Clint, Steve, Ecks, Natasha and Tony
Location: Building 108
Date: Days 155 and 156
Summary: Clint finally meets Steve face to face after he revives - and also finds Ecks again. Nat and Tony catch up the next day.
Warnings: Will update as necessary!

108: A standard single-story house with a kitchen, living room, dining room, bathroom, and bedroom. The bed in the bedroom is a loft-style bed, giving extra space for the desk beneath it. One of the desk drawers is empty, and the others have countless small plastic cases that look like they could have been SD cards, although there aren't any computer chips in them. These are only plastic shells.

Comments

[bottledblond]

It's more than an arm full! Steve might not have the other physical benefits of the serum, but he still had all of the bulk it afforded his once scrawny little body. Unfortunately, that bulk hadn't lent Steve any help in the lungs department.

Doctor Watson warned him that his cold would likely get worse and worse over the course of the next month and though Steve had believed him, he hadn't actually gotten around to heeding his warning just yet. It was entirely his fault.

"Sorry--" That was a wheeze. He shouldn't have tried to speak yet. He'd lived most of his life with asthma. You'd have thought that he would know how to handle an attack, but it was just so easy to forget what sucking air through a straw for each and every breath could really be like.

So...sorry, Clint. But he's going down.

[awwnoun]

Hoo boy. Clint isn't expecting the asthma attack, but hey - Clint's not so small himself. Six foot three and somewhere around two hundred thirty pounds, the guy is well equipped to make sure that Steve can at least get to a couch.

Clint opens his mouth to ask what he can do and then remembers he can't - can't even tell Steve not to apologize, which is frustrating as hell. Instead, he gets one of Steve's arms around his shoulders and drags Steve to the couch to settle him down on it, making sure he sits up. There's a long second where Clint tries to think of what he can do, unsure, but...

He grabs Steve's hand and places it over Clint's chest, so that he can feel Clint's breathing, slow, steady and rhythmic. Clint tries to catch Steve's eye, tries to let Steve know somehow through his expression that he can try to match Clint's breathing. He doesn't know what else he can do, but he can at least give Steve something to work off of.

[bottledblond]

There's some head bobbing at least as one blond focuses on the other. He can feel Clint breathing and that helps. He can see the determination in his eyes, and that helps too. "No... No wonder you're... Such a good... A good dad," Steve managed as soon as he could draw in some steady breaths on his own. He sank back against the sofa, all smiles despite how exhausted he looked.

Steve even held out a hand, nothing if not polite. Clint didn't look entirely different from his teammate but... Wow. Tall. He'd wait for the other man to take his hand in a gentlemanly fashion, deeply breathing the entire time as his heart rate slowed down.

"Steve. Great to finally meet you in person."

[awwnoun]

A - what. A dad?

Clint gives Steve a weird look, somewhere between confusion and surprise, but he doesn't have his tablet on him, so he can't say much yet. Steve's handshake offer makes Clint grin a little, though. This Steve seems a little more... wholesome, than the Steve Clint is used to. He's alright with that, honestly. Might make it easier for them to coexist without constantly arguing. Clint takes that hand, and shakes firmly, then pulls his hand away to lift a finger in a 'hold that thought' gesture.

Grabbing his tablet, Clint fiddles with the settings until he can get it to read his text out loud. He types quickly enough that it hopefully won't be too much of a struggle to have a conversation. Flopped out on the floor, Clint types: "Yeah, good to meet you in person too, Cap. Sorry, the come back to life penalty was my vocal chord, apparently."

The tablet reads it out in the typical Microsoft Sam-y voice.

[bottledblond]

Having read and been told about these penalties, Steve couldn't help but wince. Maybe it was the idea of losing something to come back to life (that sounded like making a deal with the devil honestly...or maybe a little like the Little Mermaind when she traded her voice for human legs in the Disney movie that Pepper Potts had shown him once) or maybe it was the mechanized voice of of the tablet reading stunted words typed into it that caused it. Either way, his nose still wrinkled. "I'm really sorry to hear that, pal. Hope it won't last too long."

What does a person say to a guy that's got the personality of someone you know but is sort of shaped all weird and looks younger to boot?

"You're so much...longer." That sounds like it belongs on off-colored movie scripts, not coming out of Captain America's mouth. Oh well. "How's your hand doing?"

[awwnoun]

Longer. Steve, please.

It makes Clint laugh, anyway, which is just him looking like he wants to laugh and doing it, just... not making any sound. It's kind of weird. Clint rubs at his face, and then pulls himself up so he can sit on the couch. He doesn't seem to have a lot of qualms about personal space, anyway.

"Word you might have been looking for was taller but I'll take longer. I think." Clint glances at Steve, and then shrugs, grinning a bit. "Hand's fine. Like magic."

And then he waggles his fingers at Steve, which are frostbitten free! "Had to die to get them back to normal, which seems like kind of a steep price. Hey, question though."

[bottledblond]

"Taller, yeah." Technically it was the same thing and he didn't really find the need to ask about the difference right now. That was probably for the best.

As far as the lack of frostbite went, Steve was honestly glad to see his hands were fairing well. Still a little red from the cold but Steve's fingers were too. Steve really didn't have a comment about what it cost toe fix yourself here, though. Everything here came at a very steep price. He turned to face the other man more directly. Manners were very important to him most of the time since it was something of his mother's that he could always carry with him.

"You can ask me anything," he promised.

[awwnoun]

Clint kind of just bulldozes to the question, because he's got a whole bunch of things bubbling up in him. Fear, maybe, is the biggest one. A good dad, Steve had said.

"Am I a dad where you come from? Am I married?" His expression is... wary, almost. He doesn't know if he really wants to know the answer to this.

[bottledblond]

Though he can't hear any emotion in an electronic voice, he can see something in Clint's face. Oh no, he thought to himself. What happened? Did Clint lose his wife? Did he lose his children too? Keeping this a secret wasn't going to help anything, so Steve nodded. "The shorter Clint Barton I know has a wife and three kids. Two boys and a little girl."

He would tell Clint Laura's and the kids' names if he wanted him to but Clint kept that life seperate from his Avenging one. And Steve respected that.

[awwnoun]

A wife and three kids. God, he - what's he supposed to do with that? It absolutely is another universe, it has to be, because... well, he'd never even gotten close to having kids with Bobbi. Or with Natasha, or Jessica - he hadn't been married to either of them. He has no idea what to say to Steve's revelation, and it has his fingers silent for a few minutes as he processes.

"I'm not even married." Clint types out finally, giving Steve a sadder sort of smile. "Not anymore, anyway. Was it with Bobbi? What's my wife's name? My kids?"

What a weird question, he thinks.

[bottledblond]

Bobbi...?

"Her name is Laura. She has dark hair-- But you do too where I'm from. Your oldest son is Cooper. Your daughter is called Lila and you just had another son you named after Natasha. He's got a lot of spunk. Nathaniel." Maybe Steve had visited a few times to play with the kids when Natasha went visiting. He was never Uncle Steve but..

He sort of wanted to be. He was jealous of Clint. The guy had everything from where he was standing. The grass was looking really green over on his side of the fence.

"Different time lines. Different people in them I guess?"

[awwnoun]

Clint sort of just... slides down the couch to slump on it, staring up at the ceiling. Laura. He doesn't know any Lauras, he doesn't think. But that Hawkeye is different, the one from Steve's world. Cooper, Lila - Nathaniel, after Natasha? He could almost laugh at that, with how ridiculous it is.

"Very different." Clint types after a minute, after he rubs at his face and clears his throat. Maybe his eyes are burning a little, it's whatever. "I'm divorced from an incredible lady named Bobbi Morse. We still talk but we never even came close to having kids."

He hesitates, not looking at Steve. He'll just try to brush this off with a casual sort of joke, to try and pull the attention away from how upset not having a family might make him. "Do me a favor and never tell Natasha here I named a kid after her. She'll never let me live it down."

[bottledblond]

"Didn't anyone ever tell you how bad I am at keeping secrets?" He actually wasn't all that bad, especially if they weren't suppose to be secrets. Or shouldn't be secrets. Steve thankfully just wasn't the type of guy to hold information like this over anyone's head. "But you've got it. Because you don't have a child named after her," Steve grinned, nodding sagely. "I would find it a little strange too if you told me something radically different about myself too."

Even if that just made him curious.

"Nat and Tony just said that the other Captain is mostly just angrier." He rubbed the back of his neck as if embarrassed. "And older."

[awwnoun]

He figures the information is gonna come out one way or another, because Clint tends to tell Natasha everything whether he means to or not, but still. He appreciates the fact that Steve is going to at least attempt to keep it a secret.

As for the rest, Clint sort of just half grins at the guy.

"You seem younger, yeah. It's not a bad thing. Might be a good thing actually, uh - you and I tend to butt heads a lot." A beat. "You and the other Cap. Whatever. Universes."

[bottledblond]

"How many Caps are there...?" That has got to be confusing for everyone. Did they all wear the Stars and Stripes? Steve use to think of Captain America being a mantle to pass down. Did that mean that he retired? He couldn't be dead if he was still butting heads with everyone.

He liked to think that he and Hawkeye were friends. They weren't as close as he and Nat or he and Sam but they fought side by side. They were a team. Barton might have joined his side of things to protect Wanda but that didn't mean that Steve didn't already enjoy working with him.

Clint was sort of the example of a hero with his life done right. He had it all.

[awwnoun]

"Two. Technically. I don't want to tell you too much in case it messes up what you've got going on back home, but. It's mostly Steve Rogers that is Captain America."

Clint doesn't dislike Bucky as Captain America, he just doesn't think it feels right. Captain America is Steve Rogers, end of story. When he's through, the title gets retired. It's not like Hawkeye, or Wolverine. They're not as important to the grand scheme of things.

Clint sighs. "There's two Hawkeyes, also. That's why I asked you before if I was a girl where you were from."

[bottledblond]

"Can't... Are there so many of us that everyone has to double up on code names?" Steve couldn't help but laugh at the thought of two of everyone running around. "Is the other Captain America a woman too?"

He liked the idea of more women participating in heroics but...should they ride the coat tails of men? Yes, he was a very progressive guy from the 1940s.

[awwnoun]

"No, and no. Mostly it only happens if someone dies or retires and then comes back, the doubling thing? Which happened with me."

Clint looks only mildly sheepish at this. "Other Cap's a guy. Other Hawkeye's a girl named Kate, and I told her she could keep the title."