[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.

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Day 155

[awwnoun]

Day 156

[awwnoun]

Just before Lockdown

[bottledblond]

Steve shouldn't have lingered. He'd checked the crazy math house three times before he came to grips with the fact that Bucky had indeed left the moment that the fog cleared and the doors unlocked. He couldn't blame him. Not after their conversation the day before.

With almost half an hour wasted, Steve took off at a greater pace than he likely should have. He tried to calculate in his head how far he had to go without freezing his fingers off to check the map House made on the pad. It was still fairly concerning how easily the weather and the lack of benefit from the serum could hold him up.

Steve didn't bother ducking into any of the houses, not even for a moment, to warm up along the way.

Bad idea.

Clint, and anyone else inside the house, would hear a sick, wet coughing coming from a few yards away as Steve bent over, hands on his knees, and spat congestion into the snow. The sky was turning purple now. The tablet reminded him that he had only a minute, maybe two, to get inside. Still coughing, he sprinted the final distance. Normally, he'd be more polite and knock but...

Well, time was of the essence. Steve grabbed the door handle and tumbled inside, red face and gasping.

[awwnoun]

Clint hears that coughing immediately, which has him standing up - he's been worried about the guy. He hadn't wanted to pull his hands out of his pockets to check on Steve with his tablet, and by the time he figures out he needs to stop for the night, he thinks he might have to spend the night alone.

He doesn't, thankfully. The night in the church by himself sucked. And hey, Clint likes Ecks.

In any case, Clint is at the door when Steve tumbles in, which mean Clint gets an armful of Steve Rogers. Normally this would be full of more whoa whoa whoas, but Clint is completely voiceless. So instead, Steve gets Clint helping him up and grinning a little sheepishly, patting Steve on the back.

The door locks behind them. Talk about cutting it close.

[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."

for clint!

[redrooms]

[Sometime after lockdown, Natasha finds Clint. He made her grab those stupid books from that house last night, and now she's going to foist them off on him. Really, though, she's hoping to cheer him up, so even though she approaches him with a very stern look on her face, there's a smile creeping through. She drops the books in his lap, the Russian spy one on top.]

I thought you might be interested in that one.

[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?"

annnd an open one

[redrooms]

[Natasha spends most of the night alternating between her tablet and Clint, because sometimes she's predictable. She checks the network obsessively on a good night, but she's especially bad tonight, because she's trying to distract herself. After a while, she parks herself in the kitchen with a length of twine tied to one table leg, twisting it tightly and carefully into a stronger, thicker length. She might not have her garotte or her Widow's line, so she's improvising, but it might make her look a little nuts.]

[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]

"Is that Cat's Cradle?" Steve hadn't exactly been keeping to himself so much as trying not to do anything to summon another coughing fit or asthma attack again. He's been very generous with the junk food he'd gotten from the market three days back and had a pack of cookies in his hand now to share with Natasha.

He crouched down to see what she was doing, eyebrows arched.

"I haven't seen anyone do that in years."

[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.

[awwnoun]

[ HOLY SHIT. This is the biggest score he's ever seen! She drops the books in his lap and he grabs at them, looking over the titles. It takes about three seconds for him to figure out what the Russian spy on is, and it pulls a pretty gleeful look up on his face. What a fucking nerd, really.

He opens his mouth to say something out of habit, pauses, and then wrinkles his nose before signing holy shit at Nat. He's got his hearing aids in, so he can hear her, at least, as he flicks through the book. ]

[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."

[redrooms]

[Natasha smiles, sitting down in front of him.]

Sign slowly. I'm rusty.

[She grabs the Russian spy book again, holding it up in front of him.]

Should we see how many terrible inaccuracies there are?

[redrooms]

That's not what she's doing, so she shakes her head, but she ties off the cord she's working on and grabs some of the extra twine, tying that off into a loose loop, and then weaving it into a cradle between her hands. "Careful, Steve," she says, holding her hands out to him. "Everyone will know how old we are."

[bottledblond]

"I just hit thirty-one," Steve grinned, sitting down in front of her to pinch the two X strings and pull them over the horizontal strings to begin the next design. Even with such large hands, Steve was careful and delicate. He was still trying to compensate for a strength he no longer had, ten days after losing it. "But you're still in your early twenties so I wouldn't worry about it-- Nor would I ask a lady her age."

It wasn't as cold as it had been for the last few almost unbearable days so his fingers weren't completely iced over just yet.

"I honestly didn't know anyone still played this." It's probably strange to find this so enjoyable, but Steve really did love simplicity. The modern world was anything but so be treasured the pieces of the past where he could.

[redrooms]

Natasha raises her eyebrows, smiling at him. "Flattery will get you nowhere, Steve."

She pulls on the new set of Xes and loops them under, tugging them off of his fingers as she does. Luckily for her, her gloves are thin, but offer at least a decent amount of protection from the cold. "Unless you really are only thirty-one, in which case there are more differences between our timelines than I thought."