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8.
The meal is large and spread out in bowls and dishes across the table; like most times no one can make a decision about what to eat, it’s a mixture of Indian and Thai dishes with five pizzas. It’s hard to believe it, still, that it’s going to all get eaten – but at a dinner with Thor and Steve this much food is basically a necessity.
Clint tears apart naan in his hands, waiting for Pepper to stop wrangling a minor PR disaster on the phone so they can start. Tony started ladling some beef panang onto his dish, but Steve’s distracted him with a look.
Clint offers one of the halves he’s torn apart to Nat; she checks to make sure Steve and Tony are still consumed by the expressions-battle they have going on, and snags it, slipping it onto her plate. Pepper sits down.
"For you." Tony turns to her, smoothly, and offers the panang.
"Aw," Pepper says, "you guys didn’t have to wait. Thanks."
"Oh, I think we did," says Tony, and everyone else (including Pepper) rolls their eyes. His hurt bluster only lasts as long as it takes to get the pizza to him, then he’s thoroughly distracted.
Clint watches all of this, entertained, explaining the dishes that are new to Thor since his last visit from Asgard as they pass. He’s not that familiar with the non-vegetarian ones, but it’s pretty easy to guess. Natasha is running defense against Steve to make sure some of the vegetarian dishes actually get to him and Darcy.
"Oh, and actually, blond and beautiful," says Tony, "our current bet which you probably missed up in Asgard is what type of animal Clint was, originally."
Steve shoots him a sympathetic look, which says I don’t actually think you were an animal. Clint grins, rolling his eyes.
"I’m still holding out on a canine," Bruce says, mildly, and Darcy makes an offended noise from behind her pile of food.
"What? He’s totally a shrike."
"Have you ever met a shrike?" Bruce asks, raising his eyebrows.
"Yes." Darcy tilts her chin up slightly. "And they’re awesome."
"I don’t see why we’re going for the little guns," Tony says, "I mean, his name is Hawkeye, and we’re superheroes. Why isn’t anyone paying attention to this?"
"Hawks aren’t very friendly," Pepper says.
"Yeah, what would you guess?" Clint leans back so he can look around Thor. Pepper eyes him thoughtfully for a long moment.
"Maybe a meerkat? They’re social, right?"
Natasha snorts behind him, and Clint grins at Pepper. "I like the meerkat option, personally. Lion King’s awesome."
"Is it so unclear to all of you?" Thor asks, voice rumbling with friendly confusion. Clint looks up at him, stilling. Shit, that wasn’t just a Loki thing? He was kind of assuming it was a mysterious magical wizard trickster god thing. "Clint was one of those birds you call a—" he glances to Clint, looking for the word, and catches his expression; Thor’s face falters for a moment, and he corrects himself. "Or at least, he seems birdlike to me."
"You owe me ten bucks," Darcy tells Steve, who just looks startled. The table bursts into immediate overlapping conversation and Natasha touches his elbow. He presses against her for a moment, before joining in.
7.
"Someone started a rumor at the office," Natasha says, lightly, and Clint shifts his gaze from the stir-fry to her face.
"Yeah?" He's only had contact with his team from SHIELD, though them regularly; time off at half-pay for recovery (and grief, he supposes, but he doesn't know how to talk to the SHIELD therapists about that beyond "I'm sad," and when asked why, "Coulson's dead. And… other people." But they keep asking; it's really frustrating). "What about?"
"It's weird." She tilts a smile up at him. "Something was discovered in the re-organization, which apparently can turn non-human animals into humans. Stark's not allowed to play with it," she adds, reassuring, and he laughs, though he's watching her more closely. "It went off once, a month before you joined SHIELD. So rumor has it you were a test subject or something."
"That I'm an animal? Was an animal." He pauses. "Why does it have to be me?"
"Because Jen Monier in Accounting being a secret gecko isn't that interesting," Natasha says. Clint breathes a laugh.
He's not really sure how to play this; he rubs the side of his face, thinking. "What type?"
Natasha snorts, and the tofu-and-veggie stir-fry goes into a bowl; the sauce is still thickening, though. "What do you think, Hawkeye?" she says, code-name overemphasized. "A bird of some sort. There's a betting pool on if you're a hawk or an eagle, though. Lewis keeps telling everyone they read too much Animorphs."
"They probably do." Clint smiles at her, reaching to tap the side of his hand against her cheekbone, push her hair back over her ear. She leans into it very slightly, more felt in his fingers than seen. "Have you entered the pool?" he asks, drawing back, and she smiles, shrugs.
"I don't know much about birds."
6.
The man who is his flock sits, observing the laboratories, as people move around. Clint’s just found the rations that were brought in, dispatched two soldiers to organize a sandwich-building line, so the scientists won’t have to leave their stations to eat.
He sits down next to Loki, sandwich in hand, and looks at him. He looks tired; focused, but tired. Clint looks down at his sandwich, and tears it in half, offering him the larger portion.
Loki glances over, startled for a moment, before accepting it.
"How long have you been a man, Agent Barton?" He asks, while tearing the half-sandwich into pieces. It isn’t until he eats one that Clint nods, and considers the question.
That Loki asks it surprises him; not because Loki knows he has not always, but because it doesn’t seem relevant. (Everything Loki asks is relevant.) "Fourteen years."
"An intriguing story, I’m sure, were there time to tell it," Loki says, then looks outwards again over the laboratory. "Tell me what you know of those Fury would gather about himself."
Clint does.
5.
It’s the week after Hallowe’en. This is important, because only the three kids on his floor of the apartment complex visited, and he still has a huge bowl of jolly ranchers left. (Natasha says she thinks he used the kids as an excuse; they were never going to make a dent on it. Clint thinks Natasha is needlessly suspicious, and right.)
He’s on his second jolly rancher of the night (grape, it tastes kind of weird on the heels of sour apple), the rain rapping heavily against his windows, when Natasha glances up from the paperwork she’s doing at his table. He’s been watching her, but she’s used to that.
"It’s raining." Her brows narrow in suspicion at him still standing across the room.
He grins. "You seemed busy."
"Not that busy," she says, archly, glancing into the folder and closing it, setting it aside. "Unless you had other plans?"
Clint laughs, and crosses to her as she stands out of her chair, putting a hand to her elbow as she wraps an arm around his back, pulling him down as much as he holds her up. "I could serenade you," he says, and feels her grin as much as sees it before kissing her.
He presses his free hand down over her hip, moving the other to her back, and Natasha makes a noise, tilting her head to deepen the kiss. He grins slightly against her lips before matching her, carefully sliding the jolly rancher into the corner of her mouth. Natasha laughs at him, and Clint’s pleased, until she tries to return it.
He draws back slightly. "It was a gift," he tells her, disconcerted. Natasha stares at him for a moment, before giving him her fond you’re weird but aren’t we all look, and pulls it back into her mouth. He watches her and feels like he could memorize everything about her face in the time before she smiles.
"Thanks," she says.
Clint hums, and presses his cheek against hers before starting to kiss down her neck.
4.
The San Diego team is still a little nervous about Romanoff, flown in from Chicago for this mission, but with Coulson in charge, Clint's pretty sure everything's going to be all right.
(It's hard to shake the idea, still, that with Coulson around nothing could be anything but all right.)
They've just finished their pre-mission briefing, and everyone but Coulson and Romanoff decided it was a good time to go to Barney's and get some proper food before what sounds like a long job on rations for the back-up. Clint was kind of torn, because he loves Barney's, but Beamon promised to bring him back leftovers.
They're eating in the cafeteria, Coulson deftly shifting a section of Clint's fries onto his plate and Clint spearing the occasional carrot slice off of the side of Coulson's. Romanoff's watching Clint with amusement when he glances up, sticking a carrot piece into his mouth. He raises his eyebrows questioningly as he slides the carrot off his fork.
Romanoff doesn't respond, just pops open her bag of Doritos and positions it angled between the plates so it's available to any of them. Clint slides his gaze to Coulson, who smiles around his eyes.
Clint nudges the side of his plate with the fries towards her in reciprocation, something warm uncurling inside of him.
3.
Schmidt is new to the team, now that Nowak's retired, so they're having a getting to know you potluck because Clint's team is the best. He is entirely biased, and really doesn't care.
"You're really a vegetarian?" Schmidt watches him trying to spear one of the – there's not really a good name for them Clint's found, yet, because "vegeballs" sounds kind of euphemistic and "vegetarian meatballs" is just awkward.
"Yeah," he says. "This is really embarrassing. Stop staring at my failures." Schmidt laughs, and dutifully turns her back to him; Clint spears two of them in a row before adding them to his rice because he's classy that way. "Why do you ask?" he says, once he's managed it.
Schmidt glances over her shoulder, and turns back in his direction. She seriously looks like she's in her early 20s, but he knows she comes highly recommended from seven years on the NYPD. "I don't know, it just kind of doesn't fit with your whole macho dude persona."
"Barton," Huerte throws his arm around Clint's shoulders, leaning against him, "only pretends to be a macho dude. Secretly he likes hugs and bunny rabbits and shit. If you want someone who knows how to be macho … " he waggles his eyebrows expressively. "Ow! Fuck, Henry, seriously?"
"Seriously," Henry says, withdrawing his foot from the arch of Huerte's, "and you're in the way of the mac and cheese."
Clint and Huerte scoot sideways automatically, because standing between Henry and food he wants is sure to spell disaster (for you). Clint's not entirely sure if he learned that at church potlucks or in Special Forces training.
Schmidt's laughing, but trying not to, face bunched up with the effort to keep it in.
"God, Barton," (sotto voce, Henry sing-songs "that's blasphemy," behind them) Huerte says, letting him go. "You made me lose my cool factor. My edge."
"Is that what it was?" Clint says, and Schmidt breaks, leaning against the counter as she laughs. Beamon glances up from a conversation with Burke, and smiles at them, while Huerte sighs and turns to go after the beans-and-bacon (though, considering the ratios, it's bacon-and-beans).
Clint shivers hard, happy and relaxed and surrounded by his flock. Henry elbows him gently in the small of the back, and Clint moves to let him through.
2.
Clint's only been at SHIELD three months, learning how to be Coulson's assistant, and now they want him to start new-agent training. Apparently people unfamiliar with handguns don't usually get near-perfect scores (after the first few shots. The kick had initially surprised him a lot, even though Coulson'd warned him it was coming).
Clint's hoping if he gets to be an agent he can learn how to use the bow a woman agent was practicing with, all lines and power. The boy his cover came from knew how to use a bow, though Coulson says it's a different type than the tall one Agent Itou was using.
"If you're an agent," Burke says, thoughtfully, as they're eating lunch in the office. They've been taking advantage of Clint being around to send him to pick up food from their favorite shops, even if Henry (turkey and raspberry preserves with alfalfa sprouts, on sourdough) protested. "If you're an agent, well, we're going to need to get you a codename."
Clint tilts his head forward, watching him. "Why?"
"So you can talk on the radio without anyone knowing it's you," Coulson says, leaning back in his chair.
"Chewbacca," Beamon says, immediately.
Huerte snorts. "Barney."
"Sea Bass." Everyone turns to look at Nowak, so Clint does too, and the man just shrugs. "I thought the theme was monsters."
"Scabbers," Henry says, and before he can get the same look, he shrugs defensively. "He's a pet, in Harry Potter."
Burke gets a thoughtful look on his face.
"Robin, the Boy Wonder." Huerte sighs. "Let's just open up a comic book and make him pick something."
"I thought no one was allowed to be Batman." Beamon sounds a bit hurt, not even fully swallowing her food before interjecting.
"Something other than Batman. Anyway, why are you complaining, you get to be Indiana."
"I think," Burke says, solemn, and they all look at him. "We should call him Hawkeye."
Clint looks at Coulson, who looks back at him flatly, and he's briefly unsure – then Huerte says "Fuck you, that's an awful idea. We can't just replace him with some probational kid."
Meditatively, Beamon says: "One Coulson pet leaves, another Coulson pet arrives."
"I'm not a pet," Clint says, suspicious.
"Neither was Hawkeye," Burke says. "Look, Huerte, I know you were close, but seriously it's like a memorial."
The room is quiet for a few, long moments.
Then, Clint offers, drawing the information up from the encyclopedias he's been reading (the doctors poke and prod about how fast he's learning, but he doesn't really think that's fair. He's been learning his whole life, his mind and mouth just have more space for words now): "I'm from Iowa."
There's a long silence, then Beamon claps and starts to laugh. Even Huerte smiles after a moment, rolling his eyes.
Clint dips his head, pleased, and goes back to his sandwich.
1.
Hawkeye's person comes into the room, and he stirs, stretching before shifting over on his perch to watch, bobbing his head with excitement.
"Morning," his person says, unlatching the cage.
"Morning!" Hawkeye replies, pleased at the quiet laugh this garners. His person's hand is warm as Hawkeye steps onto it, and he speaks in a soothing calm murmur about things Hawkeye doesn't understand. Hawkeye hops to his shoulder, and presses against his person fondly.
They walk out into the big room, and one of his flock-mates looks up happily. "Hey, guys," he says, and Hawkeye hesitates a moment before flying to the landing in front of him, stepping off the slippery papers which they spend their time moving. "I've got to get this done before Burke yells at me," he's told, seriously, but Hawkeye's just watching the fingers moving towards him, and rubs his face against them when they're close enough, fluffing his feathers to let him fix them.
After he's done, Hawkeye goes to watch his person from the perch above where he sits, alternating between listening to the music humming quietly and singing back to it. His person looks tired, and Hawkeye loves him; when he's had more to eat, he'll make sure to share.
After all, if he doesn't look after his flock, he's pretty sure no one will.