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Entry tags:
Avengers - Fanboys
Title: Fanboys
Genre: Slightly cracky, slightly Clint/Coulson
Rating: PG-13 for mild language and violence
Length: ~5,500 words
Warnings: Mild language, violence against mutant animal-like things
Synopsis: Five times Clint was less than pleased to have a fan base, and one time he really didn't mind.
Author's Notes: Pure and utter self-indulgence fic.
Disclaimer: I do not own these characters and am making no profit from this.
Also available on AO3.
1.
The problem, Clint thought wryly, began with the "rescue."
So there was this big, giant, lizard thing attacking Manhattan. He wasn't sure if it was alien or a mutant or some sort of experiment gone wrong - he had kind of tuned out that part of the briefing to pull up a schematic of what they knew of the thing's anatomy to look for weak spots instead. Stark made the obligatory Godzilla jokes but, in truth, the thing was like Big G's smaller, less evolved, cousin. It was like a gecko with an attitude problem and a serious growth hormone issue.
Anyway, he was on the roof of an eleven story building trying to land a shot through some scales to the beast's brainstem when the tail caught him off guard and knocked him from his perch. The explosive arrowhead was already loaded and he had no time to switch it out for a grappling hook before he was sent flying. He took the shot anyway, hoping for a lucky hit, and then tucked and rolled and hoped for a miracle.
The whole hoping thing apparently worked as he heard the thing scream in pain right before he added to its chorus when his back collided with a sheet glass window and he tumbled to the floor on the other side, shards of glass digging into any and every bit of exposed skin and head smashing painfully against carpeting that really was far too thin to serve as any form of padding.
The wind was knocked out of him as was, possibly, a bit of consciousness, and the next thing he remembered was a very far away voice cursing and demanding, "Damn it, Barton, respond!"
"Yeah, yeah, give me a second to breathe and, you know, wake up," he griped, knowing his comm would pick it up and pass it on to the appropriate individuals. It wouldn't ease their minds, not really, but at least they knew he was alive and all that, and it had the added bonus of making them stop with the shouting that really was doing nothing for the pain in his head.
"Status report," a new voice sounded and it was one he could not ignore - he knew because he had tried in the past and failed each and every time.
He forced himself into a sitting if not fully upright position both because laying on a quiver hurt like a bitch and lying to Coulson hurt worse. The world tilted and swayed and turned an interesting shade of gray for a moment, but he managed to reply, "Upright and active, sir," and have it be mostly true.
"Incoming now," Stark said, a rush of wind accenting the words. And damned if he wouldn't tattle, so Clint forced himself fully to his feet, using a really flimsy desk as leverage, just to be able to stick his tongue out at him, if nothing else.
Glass tinkled around him and crushed beneath his feet when he tried to steady himself, and he dared to look out the gaping hole in the wall just as Godzilla Junior spun around towards his very spot and Tony amended his earlier announcement to, "Scratch that, Baby G is in the way. What did you do to him, Barton, take his cookies away?"
And Clint grinned despite the fact that the action pulled at what he assumed was a fair sized gash near his lips, the grin growing larger when he saw the damage for himself. "Nope," he replied, reaching for another arrow and, yeah, that hurt to do too. "Look how he's favoring his left side. I think I might have paralyzed him, at least partially."
He shuffled closer to the window, the wind pulling at him and the thing's breath giving new meaning to the word rancid, even from this distance. There was the sound of more shots being taken, but most seemed to bounce off like before. There was a small gap in the scales though, partially from its anatomy and partially from its earlier injury.
"Wow, that is gruesome," he heard from far too close behind him. It was overlapped by a second voice enthusing, "That is so cool!"
"Shit, we've got civilians," he muttered. But it was too late, really. He needed to take the shot while he had it or else risk far greater damage over a far larger swath of the city. Louder now, he ordered, "Duck and cover, this thing's going to blow."
He heard his teammates call in their understanding and the civvies behind him question if he meant them and then the world narrowed down to the target and the release of the string and the scream of the beast and the glow of the payload going off. He barely had time to turn and duck himself and, if he thought the thing's breath was bad, that had nothing on its guts, which were now sprayed halfway across the neat little office and all over him.
He heard retching and was surprised to find it wasn't himself and opened his eyes to see one of five office workers making use of a trash can while three stood in quiet shock and the final guy whispered a sadly enthusiastic, "Awesome!"
He really did not have the strength, patience, or reserves of consciousness to deal with them right now, so he offered them a halfhearted thumbs up and leaned against whatever solid surface he could find to await pickup.
2.
Two weeks found him mostly healed thanks to the wonders of SHIELD Medical and the neat derma-abrasion tech they stole during a raid on some bad guys a few years back. It also found him in the middle of yet another battle.
This one had been going on for hours and both Thor and Tony had flown by with spare quivers full of arrows for him because there were too damn many of the little bastards to take down with a single load and just the standard shaft was proving extremely effective against them.
This time it was squirrels. Evil mutant, and possibly ninja, squirrels that were quick, agile, and really fucking destructive. They were also big. Well, squirrel big. Bigger than anything Central Park had to offer though technically only about the size of a small yet well-fed nine year old. With teeth. And claws. And fluffy tails Thor may or may not have mused about making into trophies when all was said and done.
They had started out with only about a dozen but must have woken the nest or something because now the ground was swarming with the things, mass destruction left behind their scurrying little wakes. The only saving grace was that they made easy targets when they got distracted by something like food. The down side was that the ones with the brown and gray stripes seemed to actually duplicate themselves when fired upon with anything other than a tranq, though any other color made a nice and satisfying splurt and were no longer an issue.
"Any chance we can get, like, an industrial sized tin of popcorn and toss it on Main?" he asked for the third time. "Get them all nice and corralled and in one place?"
Sitwell denied the request but Coulson hummed in a way that meant he was honestly thinking about it. The fact that at least one of the critters seemed to be eating its own exploded varmint friend possibly aiding in that decision. It redefined the word gross and, as one made a swipe at him, Clint had a moment to think about how much he did not want the words "killed by mutant zombie squirrels" written on his tombstone.
"How did that one even get up this high?" he asked when Stark swiped the thing down and chucked it to the waiting Cap below.
"Maybe it was a flying squirrel?" Tony mused before he left to find more fluffballs to knock out.
Clint snorted and fired another shot, though he did pause long enough to ask, "Hey, Cap, you done with Rocky down there? Because after him it looks like there's only three more on Sixth."
"Three more for real, or three more of the replicating kind?" Steve asked. He was already running over to help Tasha and Thor though, so it was rather a moot point.
Also a moot point was Clint staying where he was as he no longer had a clear line of sight to where the rest of his team were now walloping the last few furry fiends. He picked up the empty quivers and shouldered them with the remaining half-full one, and headed for the fire escape to make his way down, radioing in so no one would be surprised when they tried to play Spot the Archer later.
By the time he made it to ground level, several people were daring to venture out into the open again, most utterly and completely disgusted by the remains of the battle, but that could just be because some of the critters were still twitching. He put the squirrel-things out of their misery and called for a containment team as he jogged the few blocks to join the others because, really, someone needed to control the civvies and it wasn't going to be him.
He heard all sorts of commentary as he made his way through the streets, but one voice in particular sounded oddly familiar, even though it wasn't coming from his comm. He turned to find a small group of twenty-something's all dressed in semi-professional clothing pointing randomly and having a rather animated discussion about something.
He subtly slowed, just enough to try to pick up what they were saying in case it was important, and honestly did not know what to make of them.
"There he is!" one said.
"Did you see all the arrows? He totally got more than the others," another one chimed in.
It was when the third, a sharply-dressed, not much more than a teenaged boy, young man with glasses enthused, "I saw him in Manhattan - and still have the monster blood splattered clothing to prove it," that he decided he really did not want to know what was going on.
They offered him goofy smiles and thumbs up and he forced a grin and returned the gesture, keying his comm to to complain, "Where the hell is that containment team? Any closer and these kids are going to need decontamination procedures."
Coulson assured him that they were on the way, and Thor assured him that the last of the enemy were rightfully defeated. Most importantly, Tony assured him that there would be more than beer waiting for him when they got home.
3.
The less said about the alien chickens that attacked two weeks later, the better. He was pulling feathers out of uncomfortable places for days, and Poughkeepsie was doing the same for weeks.
They were sitting down for a themed dinner and he was trying to choose between, Kung Pow, Kentucky Fried, or broasted when Stark asked, "So what's with the fan club?"
He paused and looked up to see to who he was referring to but, by the way everyone stated at him, it was pretty obvious. He thought back through images of fluorescent beaks and razor sharp talons and sighed when he found what he was looking for: the group of twenty-something's had returned.
He vaguely remembered the guy in glasses, who he now considered the ring leader because he was the only constant that was memorable. Gone was the too-tight dress pants and over-priced dress shirt, and in their place had been too-tight jeans and a black tee-shirt with a rough symbol painted in purple atop it. His followers hadn't gone quite that far but, now that he thought of it, more than one were wearing arm and finger guards in various shades of purple and black.
"Shit," he groaned, more at the situation than Tony's incessant cackling.
The cackling grew in intensity and volume, and paused only long enough for Stark to exclaim, "Look! They have a website!"
Sure enough, JARVIS projected the horror for all to see. It looked to be a hodgepodge of publicity shots and shaky camera phone images mixed with testimonials as to how Clint had either saved their lives or brushed them with his greatness or some such thing. There was also a searchable index of where to rent equipment and a competitive list of scores, even if the individual title page of "Fledgling Fletchings" was cringeworthy.
One group, which seemed to be a subgroup of the main initiative, was hosting a contest to create an "official" fan club bracelet, with the current entries ranging from pretty damn cool to pretty damn embarrassing. On the up side, the donations above cost were to be sent to a youth center archery club. On the down side, there was a fair chance Stark would order enough for the entire team, and possibly most of SHIELD.
"Isn't this like a threat to security or something?" Clint asked, torn between hanging his head in his hands or chowing down on seasoned poultry.
Coulson shook his head. "So far, they are relatively innocent. We'll keep an eye on them just in case," he assured him.
"Don't they have jobs or something? Real lives that don't involve blindly walking into danger?" he tried.
Coulson glanced at a file he had readily available and shook his head again. "We've got three graphic design artists that are currently working from home as their office is not yet repaired from the lizard attack, six college students currently on break, and a handful of various professionals who log in or post remotely, but do not actually follow you around like a love sick puppy dog," he announced, which was both comforting and not.
"It's not much different from the Go Green group that posts about me, or the handful of others that everyone else seems to have," Bruce shrugged. A few pointed remarks had guided his group towards the love of shrubbery versus other possibly illegal greenery, but otherwise he had stayed mostly away from them if at all possible. Clint hoped to be that lucky.
"The Captain America ones are things of legend, and Thor's have inspired some new anthropology and mythology majors, though Natasha shut down the 'Deadly Beauties' website when she found it," Tony agreed. A handful of new pages popped up next to the first one, some of which he had never seen before.
"They were teenaged girls convinced they could take down drug kingpins by batting their eyes and looking pretty," Nat offered dryly.
"Isn't that what you do?" Clint asked with false innocence. He was able to avoid the well-deserved punch, but not the kick to his shin. He still figured he got off easy, though the glint in his friend's eyes hinted that their next workout session would well and truly suck.
She picked up her chopsticks which meant she was now armed, or at least obviously so, and explained, "We were lucky that none of them actually knew what a drug kingpin was or where to find one. Be happy that your group seems to have a somewhat more solid head on its shoulders, if not the best preservation instincts."
"Just as long as they keep their targets paper or hay and not, you know, moving," Clint reluctantly agreed. He speared a piece of chicken and tried not to be weirded out by the whole thing, especially since the others seemed to be more amused than anything else. He took comfort in the fact that there was at least a charity and actual learning involved, even if a handful of the "members" were obsessing to near stalkerish levels.
4.
The next mission was, of course, a disaster. In fact, he thought it may well redefine the word disaster, in the tomes of team history if not actually some version of Webster's favorite read.
It started with puppies. Rather large, two-headed, snarling, slobber-like-acid, seriously pissed off puppies.
Actually, it started with Thor and Tony taking out what they later figured out was the puppies' mother what with her slaughtering cattle to feed her brood. The puppies came later. And they just kept coming.
Thinking back, it made sense why she had needed quite so much food for them all.
They had decided to try to tranq the less-than-little guys because, really, no one had the heart to actually harm puppies, even ones whose drool left holes in solid stone. They hoped to either turn them back into harmless balls of fluff, or rehabilitate them in some other way because, again, puppies. Of course, the fact that their fur-covered hides were impossibly thick meant that the dart guns were barely effective and so he had switched to modified, lightweight arrows that seemed to work without actually causing permanent harm.
Natasha was approaching a pile of the things that had taken offense to a particular piece of statuary when something zoomed by between her and her prize. The dogs were sufficiently distracted from what they had been doing and spun around to find both their new toy and their new unwelcomed guest. She readied the tranq and calmly radioed, "A little help here?"
Clint prepped another arrow but had not yet released it when he heard a surprised yelp that was definitely human and Nat dropped to the cement, clutching at her thigh and its newly appeared gash. "What the hell, Barton?" she growled, chucking an arrow in the general direction of his current perch. Thankfully, it looked like the original hit had only winged her and not gone straight through.
"That was not me," he insisted. It was difficult to tell from his current position but he asked, "Is that an actual wood and feather shaft?"
She had a moment to catch her breath and shake her head as the puppies bounded after what they saw as another toy instead, and admitted, "Substandard carbonite with plastic fletching. If I had to hazard a guess, I'd say store bought."
He blinked as the implication of her words sank in. "Shit," he muttered, and turned to look for the culprit.
He didn't need to look far, only about forty yards away to where a small group of twenty-somethings dressed in purple and black looked more than a little dumbfounded. His suspicions were confirmed when he heard Tony gripe, "Barton, try to keep your fan club from shooting your teammates!"
Cap was more concerned about Natasha, Thor was more concerned about the killer puppies headed for the small crowd of civilians, and Bruce was just worried about Hulking out due to their extreme idiocy as he trudged over to talk to, and possibly disarm, them.
Coulson met him there along with a handful of SHIELD agents who appeared to take great joy in ripping their weapons out of their hands and possibly intimidating them to the point needing a change of clothing. Figuring it was as under control as it could be, for now, Clint keyed his comm and asked, "Are you okay, Nat?"
"Control your children, or I will," she gritted out. Medical was swarming around her, and he wasn't sure which annoyed her more, the need for treatment, or that the infamous Black Widow was taken down by an overzealous idiot with probably little to no real training.
He was betting on a little of both about as much as he was betting on needing to buy her pints of Ben and Jerry's and maybe a bushel or two of flowers. He was debating how much overnight shipping from her favorite pastry shop in Munich would cost as he descended to street level when he was brought back to the present by the distinctive clearing of a throat.
"When you are done rounding up the last of the litter, please come and address your group, stressing the non-interference, possible injury, and possible being hauled off to a deep dark cell in the middle of nowhere aspects to them, please," Coulson ordered primly. There was the slightest hint of a quirk to his lips that Clint could see when he approached, which meant their handler found the situation at least slightly amusing, though that amusement was clearly tempered by the fact Nat had been hit and would be taking it out on them all shortly.
So Clint did as requested and asked them all to back off and leave the super heroing to the actual super heroes and tried to ignore the crestfallen faces and possibly somehow got wrangled into personally approving the current bracelet selection if and only if they stayed away from actual danger. It went better than he thought it would, but that may have been due to the sunglasses and suit wearing line of intimidation that encircled them all, or possibly the look of disappointment Thor offered them because no one, absolutely no one, ever wanted Thor to be shooting that look in their direction. Add in a few words about warriors, worthiness, and training, and he called it a night.
5.
He thought that that would be that but was, of course, wrong.
The Fledgling Whatevers stayed neatly behind the barriers for the next two missions. He noticed a handful of bow cases were still worn, mainly because he had been asked to sign them, but the cases themselves remained closed and the civilians themselves managed to actually not make themselves targets or shoot the people trying to save their lives.
The third time was apparently the charm or some such thing as it was the third mission after his pseudo-lecture that made him want to bang his head up against something big and solid and he had a moment where it looked like Steve was willing to offer his services to do just that. He refrained, but mainly only because he knew Coulson would take personal offense to him using his childhood hero for such a duty when there was a perfectly good brick wall he could use nearby.
This time, it was not lizards or puppies or even giant kittens or whatever other surrealness the universe decided to not only come up with, but to throw at them. It was thieves. Pure, simple, thieves with some pretty advanced tech they used to steal some even more advanced tech, and a few burly thugs they used to knock him from his perch before he ever really reached it.
He was climbing the fire escape to both get a better view of the situation and possibly get an angle on the geeky guy controlling the tech. And he did mean geek - possibly even bordering on full out nerd - complete with thick glasses and a white coat that was either a cliched lab coat or a reject style from the late Eighties; it was hard to tell if those were shoulder pads, or if there was some sort of escape harness under the thin and flowy fabric. Regardless, the guy must have spotted out possible vulnerabilities in advance because two of the thugs were waiting for him on the second floor and managed to toss him first to the platform between the levels, and then completely to the ground where another three waited for him in the shadows.
They tried to wrestle his weapons away from him, even going so far as to use a cutting claw-like thing against his quiver, but Stark had made it out of finer things and the blade barely made a scratch. Well, on the quiver, at least. The exposed skin of his shoulder was another matter, though thankfully his armor took the brunt of the slice to his side.
He had managed to recover enough to take down one and almost another when he heard a now familiar voice far too full of false bravado say, "Hey, back off!"
He turned to see four twenty-somethings with new and improved screen-printed t-shirts and store bought bows standing in a mockable formation, only one of them with a stance approaching textbook, and most of their aims off by at least ten to fifteen degrees.
He blamed a combination of his shock at seeing them there and a surge of panic at the realization that there were civilians on the battlefield for thug number three being able to pry his own bow out of his blood-slick hands. Instinct took over then because that bow was his life and yeah, Stark was right about him being a bit more than a bit over-attached to the thing. He had a knife strapped to his thigh and two more in his boots, and that wasn't even mentioning the spare bow string he could use should the garrote fail or the arrowheads that could be used as charges or even the basic arrow shafts that could still really hurt if poked in just the right places, like an eye socket or ear.
The thugs were taken down in a matter of minutes, possibly two, and the Fletchings or whatever the fuck they were called were disarmed by the time the third minute had passed. His comm still worked and so he called in both an update and a containment team, belatedly realizing the ring leader of his little fan club had a decent scratch down his own arm and adding a med team to the mix and then running off to hopefully save the day.
Coulson sent him back to deal with the would-be bowmen while Tony less than humbly took down the bad guy with his own hacked tech, and it wasn't until Cap showed up with a pointed look at his still bleeding arm that he realized he had been had and was now at the mercy of the waiting medics that he himself had called to the scene.
During the debrief, Natasha muttered something that sounded like "amateur" and he really hoped it was "amateurs" instead, but held little hope that she was actually talking about the thieves or the kids and not himself. She did replace his garrote with one from her own stash though, so he figured there was probably no actual hard feelings and just a lot of teasing awaiting him in the near future.
+ 1
His arm had needed stitches but not full PT and so he was thankful for small favors. He wasn't as thankful for the whining pleas he had to listen to while still in Medical of more than one birdbrained kid complaining that the big bad agents took their bows away and it wasn't fair and they had paid good money for it and yadda.
He finally verified with Sitwell that they could get their gear back on two major conditions: one being that they signed neat little forms promising to not use it on anything other than an approved range or pre-approved hunting trip, and the other that it was scrubbed clean first. Oddly enough, Fury was wary of his agents' blood being out and available to the highest bidder in a market full of cloning tech and genetically targeted biological weaponry. That's what cleanup crews were for, with said crews usually supervised by the only person who may be slightly pickier than Fury himself on the matter.
Speaking of Coulson, Clint really and truly wished he had been more surprised to walk in on him doing what was apparently his new favorite pastime, the room dark save for the glow of the computer screen, a screen that was scrolling past images of the latest battle.
"You too, sir?" he sighed. He didn't even head for the open chair, but instead flopped back on the extremely welcoming bed.
"What do you mean 'too,' Barton?" Phil asked with a barely raised eyebrow and, yeah, he really should have seen this coming. "Someone had to monitor the site to make certain it was not to be used against SHIELD's best interests, and it was simple enough to take it over from there. Besides, several of the videos are proving enlightening and may be used against you on your next performance review."
Because shaky cell phone footage was better than SHIELD's multiple hidden cameras and other sources. Yeah, Phil was just screwing with him, he had to be. Clint ran a hand over his face and may have offered up a silent prayer that this was true. And maybe another one that there was no footage from the chicken incident because that was just sad. Not to mention perfect blackmail material if placed in the wrong hands.
Hands like Phil's. Hands that were currently pulling up that exact footage just because his life was like that now.
"Nice, sir," he sighed, less than amused.
"I could be persuaded to misplace the footage," Phil pondered as though just coming to this revelation. "Accidentally delete it from all but my personal server and ensure it never makes it to any official training record." He froze said footage on a particularly embarrassing image involving a beak, a wing, and a squawk that hadn't come from one of the birds.
It was a setup, but Clint went with it anyway. "And what would the price be for this little breach of protocol?" He turned his head slightly to the side to see Phil staring at him with almost comically wide eyes and knew it had to be good.
"Vote for my design?" he asked, devoid of all shame. He ignored Clint's answering guffaw and continued, in a near plea, "Seriously, Barton, the popular vote is being swayed by a twelve year old. Twelve. I know you said you'd go with whatever people seemed to want anyway but, really, that thing should never be seen by the general public and it'd be easy enough to add in a few false votes to put mine over the top, especially if it had your support as well."
Clint glanced over at the leading options and, yeah, they were far from pretty. The kid's was bad, but while Phil's was kinda cool, it had all the subtlety of a Captain America costume, which was to say not a lot, so he wasn't exactly sure which was the lesser of two evils at this point. He'd honestly prefer if the whole thing just went away, but doubted that was going to happen anytime soon. Instead, he sighed and tried not to grin as he said, "Really, sir?"
Coulson stood and sauntered over to the bed, draping himself beside him and running one long finger along Clint's exposed bicep. "I'll make it worth your while..." he singsonged.
And that did it, that had Clint burst out into a full laugh and point out, "It's a bracelet for a fan club that should never exist."
"It's an atrocity against nature and the good people of this country and the club is already there so you might as well try to make the best of it," Phil corrected, his finger making the path back down and up again.
"Chicken incident deleted and placed under the same lockdown as the Belize cafe," Clint negotiated. He propped himself up on one elbow, working both the view and his clear advantage.
The faintest hint of a pout crossed Phil's features. The chicken incident had already provided him with hours of torment fodder for the team as a whole, and he was clearly reluctant to let the rare evidence of it all go. "But..." he tried.
Clint cut him off with a shake of his head. "Belize," he insisted. "I know many a junior agent that would love the dirt on that one. A certain senior agent, a few too many fruity yet potent beverages? How you managed to get the tattoo parlor to drop the charges is a thing of legend, really. Or would be if anyone knew about it."
Coulson's eyes narrowed ever so slightly, but Clint knew he had won even before the nod and the reluctant agreement of, "Fine, Belize. But my design wins and you don't stop Stark from buying a shipment for the Tower."
Clint would have objected, but noted the usually precise agent hadn't made the stipulation that he would actually have to wear what Stark bought, and gave him his win even as he allowed the out in his favor. "Agreed," he relented, offering his free hand to shake on it.
Phil did just that, and then used his grip to pull him closer, insinuating a thigh just so and letting the grip of his fingers become just a little more intimate. "So what's the chance I can get you to sign one of them for me?" he whispered against the sensitive skin of Clint's neck.
"You are such a dork," Clint laughed, but leaned in to the contact offered.
"I'll frame it, put it up right next to the Captain America poster in my office," Phil promised maybe a bit too earnestly, still not pulling away.
"Fanboy," Clint accused, but didn't say no.
"You wouldn't have it any other way," Phil smiled, breath warm against his skin. And yeah, Clint maybe, possibly, had to admit that there were times in which having his very own personal fan club didn't completely suck.
Feedback is always welcomed.
Genre: Slightly cracky, slightly Clint/Coulson
Rating: PG-13 for mild language and violence
Length: ~5,500 words
Warnings: Mild language, violence against mutant animal-like things
Synopsis: Five times Clint was less than pleased to have a fan base, and one time he really didn't mind.
Author's Notes: Pure and utter self-indulgence fic.
Disclaimer: I do not own these characters and am making no profit from this.
Also available on AO3.
1.
The problem, Clint thought wryly, began with the "rescue."
So there was this big, giant, lizard thing attacking Manhattan. He wasn't sure if it was alien or a mutant or some sort of experiment gone wrong - he had kind of tuned out that part of the briefing to pull up a schematic of what they knew of the thing's anatomy to look for weak spots instead. Stark made the obligatory Godzilla jokes but, in truth, the thing was like Big G's smaller, less evolved, cousin. It was like a gecko with an attitude problem and a serious growth hormone issue.
Anyway, he was on the roof of an eleven story building trying to land a shot through some scales to the beast's brainstem when the tail caught him off guard and knocked him from his perch. The explosive arrowhead was already loaded and he had no time to switch it out for a grappling hook before he was sent flying. He took the shot anyway, hoping for a lucky hit, and then tucked and rolled and hoped for a miracle.
The whole hoping thing apparently worked as he heard the thing scream in pain right before he added to its chorus when his back collided with a sheet glass window and he tumbled to the floor on the other side, shards of glass digging into any and every bit of exposed skin and head smashing painfully against carpeting that really was far too thin to serve as any form of padding.
The wind was knocked out of him as was, possibly, a bit of consciousness, and the next thing he remembered was a very far away voice cursing and demanding, "Damn it, Barton, respond!"
"Yeah, yeah, give me a second to breathe and, you know, wake up," he griped, knowing his comm would pick it up and pass it on to the appropriate individuals. It wouldn't ease their minds, not really, but at least they knew he was alive and all that, and it had the added bonus of making them stop with the shouting that really was doing nothing for the pain in his head.
"Status report," a new voice sounded and it was one he could not ignore - he knew because he had tried in the past and failed each and every time.
He forced himself into a sitting if not fully upright position both because laying on a quiver hurt like a bitch and lying to Coulson hurt worse. The world tilted and swayed and turned an interesting shade of gray for a moment, but he managed to reply, "Upright and active, sir," and have it be mostly true.
"Incoming now," Stark said, a rush of wind accenting the words. And damned if he wouldn't tattle, so Clint forced himself fully to his feet, using a really flimsy desk as leverage, just to be able to stick his tongue out at him, if nothing else.
Glass tinkled around him and crushed beneath his feet when he tried to steady himself, and he dared to look out the gaping hole in the wall just as Godzilla Junior spun around towards his very spot and Tony amended his earlier announcement to, "Scratch that, Baby G is in the way. What did you do to him, Barton, take his cookies away?"
And Clint grinned despite the fact that the action pulled at what he assumed was a fair sized gash near his lips, the grin growing larger when he saw the damage for himself. "Nope," he replied, reaching for another arrow and, yeah, that hurt to do too. "Look how he's favoring his left side. I think I might have paralyzed him, at least partially."
He shuffled closer to the window, the wind pulling at him and the thing's breath giving new meaning to the word rancid, even from this distance. There was the sound of more shots being taken, but most seemed to bounce off like before. There was a small gap in the scales though, partially from its anatomy and partially from its earlier injury.
"Wow, that is gruesome," he heard from far too close behind him. It was overlapped by a second voice enthusing, "That is so cool!"
"Shit, we've got civilians," he muttered. But it was too late, really. He needed to take the shot while he had it or else risk far greater damage over a far larger swath of the city. Louder now, he ordered, "Duck and cover, this thing's going to blow."
He heard his teammates call in their understanding and the civvies behind him question if he meant them and then the world narrowed down to the target and the release of the string and the scream of the beast and the glow of the payload going off. He barely had time to turn and duck himself and, if he thought the thing's breath was bad, that had nothing on its guts, which were now sprayed halfway across the neat little office and all over him.
He heard retching and was surprised to find it wasn't himself and opened his eyes to see one of five office workers making use of a trash can while three stood in quiet shock and the final guy whispered a sadly enthusiastic, "Awesome!"
He really did not have the strength, patience, or reserves of consciousness to deal with them right now, so he offered them a halfhearted thumbs up and leaned against whatever solid surface he could find to await pickup.
2.
Two weeks found him mostly healed thanks to the wonders of SHIELD Medical and the neat derma-abrasion tech they stole during a raid on some bad guys a few years back. It also found him in the middle of yet another battle.
This one had been going on for hours and both Thor and Tony had flown by with spare quivers full of arrows for him because there were too damn many of the little bastards to take down with a single load and just the standard shaft was proving extremely effective against them.
This time it was squirrels. Evil mutant, and possibly ninja, squirrels that were quick, agile, and really fucking destructive. They were also big. Well, squirrel big. Bigger than anything Central Park had to offer though technically only about the size of a small yet well-fed nine year old. With teeth. And claws. And fluffy tails Thor may or may not have mused about making into trophies when all was said and done.
They had started out with only about a dozen but must have woken the nest or something because now the ground was swarming with the things, mass destruction left behind their scurrying little wakes. The only saving grace was that they made easy targets when they got distracted by something like food. The down side was that the ones with the brown and gray stripes seemed to actually duplicate themselves when fired upon with anything other than a tranq, though any other color made a nice and satisfying splurt and were no longer an issue.
"Any chance we can get, like, an industrial sized tin of popcorn and toss it on Main?" he asked for the third time. "Get them all nice and corralled and in one place?"
Sitwell denied the request but Coulson hummed in a way that meant he was honestly thinking about it. The fact that at least one of the critters seemed to be eating its own exploded varmint friend possibly aiding in that decision. It redefined the word gross and, as one made a swipe at him, Clint had a moment to think about how much he did not want the words "killed by mutant zombie squirrels" written on his tombstone.
"How did that one even get up this high?" he asked when Stark swiped the thing down and chucked it to the waiting Cap below.
"Maybe it was a flying squirrel?" Tony mused before he left to find more fluffballs to knock out.
Clint snorted and fired another shot, though he did pause long enough to ask, "Hey, Cap, you done with Rocky down there? Because after him it looks like there's only three more on Sixth."
"Three more for real, or three more of the replicating kind?" Steve asked. He was already running over to help Tasha and Thor though, so it was rather a moot point.
Also a moot point was Clint staying where he was as he no longer had a clear line of sight to where the rest of his team were now walloping the last few furry fiends. He picked up the empty quivers and shouldered them with the remaining half-full one, and headed for the fire escape to make his way down, radioing in so no one would be surprised when they tried to play Spot the Archer later.
By the time he made it to ground level, several people were daring to venture out into the open again, most utterly and completely disgusted by the remains of the battle, but that could just be because some of the critters were still twitching. He put the squirrel-things out of their misery and called for a containment team as he jogged the few blocks to join the others because, really, someone needed to control the civvies and it wasn't going to be him.
He heard all sorts of commentary as he made his way through the streets, but one voice in particular sounded oddly familiar, even though it wasn't coming from his comm. He turned to find a small group of twenty-something's all dressed in semi-professional clothing pointing randomly and having a rather animated discussion about something.
He subtly slowed, just enough to try to pick up what they were saying in case it was important, and honestly did not know what to make of them.
"There he is!" one said.
"Did you see all the arrows? He totally got more than the others," another one chimed in.
It was when the third, a sharply-dressed, not much more than a teenaged boy, young man with glasses enthused, "I saw him in Manhattan - and still have the monster blood splattered clothing to prove it," that he decided he really did not want to know what was going on.
They offered him goofy smiles and thumbs up and he forced a grin and returned the gesture, keying his comm to to complain, "Where the hell is that containment team? Any closer and these kids are going to need decontamination procedures."
Coulson assured him that they were on the way, and Thor assured him that the last of the enemy were rightfully defeated. Most importantly, Tony assured him that there would be more than beer waiting for him when they got home.
3.
The less said about the alien chickens that attacked two weeks later, the better. He was pulling feathers out of uncomfortable places for days, and Poughkeepsie was doing the same for weeks.
They were sitting down for a themed dinner and he was trying to choose between, Kung Pow, Kentucky Fried, or broasted when Stark asked, "So what's with the fan club?"
He paused and looked up to see to who he was referring to but, by the way everyone stated at him, it was pretty obvious. He thought back through images of fluorescent beaks and razor sharp talons and sighed when he found what he was looking for: the group of twenty-something's had returned.
He vaguely remembered the guy in glasses, who he now considered the ring leader because he was the only constant that was memorable. Gone was the too-tight dress pants and over-priced dress shirt, and in their place had been too-tight jeans and a black tee-shirt with a rough symbol painted in purple atop it. His followers hadn't gone quite that far but, now that he thought of it, more than one were wearing arm and finger guards in various shades of purple and black.
"Shit," he groaned, more at the situation than Tony's incessant cackling.
The cackling grew in intensity and volume, and paused only long enough for Stark to exclaim, "Look! They have a website!"
Sure enough, JARVIS projected the horror for all to see. It looked to be a hodgepodge of publicity shots and shaky camera phone images mixed with testimonials as to how Clint had either saved their lives or brushed them with his greatness or some such thing. There was also a searchable index of where to rent equipment and a competitive list of scores, even if the individual title page of "Fledgling Fletchings" was cringeworthy.
One group, which seemed to be a subgroup of the main initiative, was hosting a contest to create an "official" fan club bracelet, with the current entries ranging from pretty damn cool to pretty damn embarrassing. On the up side, the donations above cost were to be sent to a youth center archery club. On the down side, there was a fair chance Stark would order enough for the entire team, and possibly most of SHIELD.
"Isn't this like a threat to security or something?" Clint asked, torn between hanging his head in his hands or chowing down on seasoned poultry.
Coulson shook his head. "So far, they are relatively innocent. We'll keep an eye on them just in case," he assured him.
"Don't they have jobs or something? Real lives that don't involve blindly walking into danger?" he tried.
Coulson glanced at a file he had readily available and shook his head again. "We've got three graphic design artists that are currently working from home as their office is not yet repaired from the lizard attack, six college students currently on break, and a handful of various professionals who log in or post remotely, but do not actually follow you around like a love sick puppy dog," he announced, which was both comforting and not.
"It's not much different from the Go Green group that posts about me, or the handful of others that everyone else seems to have," Bruce shrugged. A few pointed remarks had guided his group towards the love of shrubbery versus other possibly illegal greenery, but otherwise he had stayed mostly away from them if at all possible. Clint hoped to be that lucky.
"The Captain America ones are things of legend, and Thor's have inspired some new anthropology and mythology majors, though Natasha shut down the 'Deadly Beauties' website when she found it," Tony agreed. A handful of new pages popped up next to the first one, some of which he had never seen before.
"They were teenaged girls convinced they could take down drug kingpins by batting their eyes and looking pretty," Nat offered dryly.
"Isn't that what you do?" Clint asked with false innocence. He was able to avoid the well-deserved punch, but not the kick to his shin. He still figured he got off easy, though the glint in his friend's eyes hinted that their next workout session would well and truly suck.
She picked up her chopsticks which meant she was now armed, or at least obviously so, and explained, "We were lucky that none of them actually knew what a drug kingpin was or where to find one. Be happy that your group seems to have a somewhat more solid head on its shoulders, if not the best preservation instincts."
"Just as long as they keep their targets paper or hay and not, you know, moving," Clint reluctantly agreed. He speared a piece of chicken and tried not to be weirded out by the whole thing, especially since the others seemed to be more amused than anything else. He took comfort in the fact that there was at least a charity and actual learning involved, even if a handful of the "members" were obsessing to near stalkerish levels.
4.
The next mission was, of course, a disaster. In fact, he thought it may well redefine the word disaster, in the tomes of team history if not actually some version of Webster's favorite read.
It started with puppies. Rather large, two-headed, snarling, slobber-like-acid, seriously pissed off puppies.
Actually, it started with Thor and Tony taking out what they later figured out was the puppies' mother what with her slaughtering cattle to feed her brood. The puppies came later. And they just kept coming.
Thinking back, it made sense why she had needed quite so much food for them all.
They had decided to try to tranq the less-than-little guys because, really, no one had the heart to actually harm puppies, even ones whose drool left holes in solid stone. They hoped to either turn them back into harmless balls of fluff, or rehabilitate them in some other way because, again, puppies. Of course, the fact that their fur-covered hides were impossibly thick meant that the dart guns were barely effective and so he had switched to modified, lightweight arrows that seemed to work without actually causing permanent harm.
Natasha was approaching a pile of the things that had taken offense to a particular piece of statuary when something zoomed by between her and her prize. The dogs were sufficiently distracted from what they had been doing and spun around to find both their new toy and their new unwelcomed guest. She readied the tranq and calmly radioed, "A little help here?"
Clint prepped another arrow but had not yet released it when he heard a surprised yelp that was definitely human and Nat dropped to the cement, clutching at her thigh and its newly appeared gash. "What the hell, Barton?" she growled, chucking an arrow in the general direction of his current perch. Thankfully, it looked like the original hit had only winged her and not gone straight through.
"That was not me," he insisted. It was difficult to tell from his current position but he asked, "Is that an actual wood and feather shaft?"
She had a moment to catch her breath and shake her head as the puppies bounded after what they saw as another toy instead, and admitted, "Substandard carbonite with plastic fletching. If I had to hazard a guess, I'd say store bought."
He blinked as the implication of her words sank in. "Shit," he muttered, and turned to look for the culprit.
He didn't need to look far, only about forty yards away to where a small group of twenty-somethings dressed in purple and black looked more than a little dumbfounded. His suspicions were confirmed when he heard Tony gripe, "Barton, try to keep your fan club from shooting your teammates!"
Cap was more concerned about Natasha, Thor was more concerned about the killer puppies headed for the small crowd of civilians, and Bruce was just worried about Hulking out due to their extreme idiocy as he trudged over to talk to, and possibly disarm, them.
Coulson met him there along with a handful of SHIELD agents who appeared to take great joy in ripping their weapons out of their hands and possibly intimidating them to the point needing a change of clothing. Figuring it was as under control as it could be, for now, Clint keyed his comm and asked, "Are you okay, Nat?"
"Control your children, or I will," she gritted out. Medical was swarming around her, and he wasn't sure which annoyed her more, the need for treatment, or that the infamous Black Widow was taken down by an overzealous idiot with probably little to no real training.
He was betting on a little of both about as much as he was betting on needing to buy her pints of Ben and Jerry's and maybe a bushel or two of flowers. He was debating how much overnight shipping from her favorite pastry shop in Munich would cost as he descended to street level when he was brought back to the present by the distinctive clearing of a throat.
"When you are done rounding up the last of the litter, please come and address your group, stressing the non-interference, possible injury, and possible being hauled off to a deep dark cell in the middle of nowhere aspects to them, please," Coulson ordered primly. There was the slightest hint of a quirk to his lips that Clint could see when he approached, which meant their handler found the situation at least slightly amusing, though that amusement was clearly tempered by the fact Nat had been hit and would be taking it out on them all shortly.
So Clint did as requested and asked them all to back off and leave the super heroing to the actual super heroes and tried to ignore the crestfallen faces and possibly somehow got wrangled into personally approving the current bracelet selection if and only if they stayed away from actual danger. It went better than he thought it would, but that may have been due to the sunglasses and suit wearing line of intimidation that encircled them all, or possibly the look of disappointment Thor offered them because no one, absolutely no one, ever wanted Thor to be shooting that look in their direction. Add in a few words about warriors, worthiness, and training, and he called it a night.
5.
He thought that that would be that but was, of course, wrong.
The Fledgling Whatevers stayed neatly behind the barriers for the next two missions. He noticed a handful of bow cases were still worn, mainly because he had been asked to sign them, but the cases themselves remained closed and the civilians themselves managed to actually not make themselves targets or shoot the people trying to save their lives.
The third time was apparently the charm or some such thing as it was the third mission after his pseudo-lecture that made him want to bang his head up against something big and solid and he had a moment where it looked like Steve was willing to offer his services to do just that. He refrained, but mainly only because he knew Coulson would take personal offense to him using his childhood hero for such a duty when there was a perfectly good brick wall he could use nearby.
This time, it was not lizards or puppies or even giant kittens or whatever other surrealness the universe decided to not only come up with, but to throw at them. It was thieves. Pure, simple, thieves with some pretty advanced tech they used to steal some even more advanced tech, and a few burly thugs they used to knock him from his perch before he ever really reached it.
He was climbing the fire escape to both get a better view of the situation and possibly get an angle on the geeky guy controlling the tech. And he did mean geek - possibly even bordering on full out nerd - complete with thick glasses and a white coat that was either a cliched lab coat or a reject style from the late Eighties; it was hard to tell if those were shoulder pads, or if there was some sort of escape harness under the thin and flowy fabric. Regardless, the guy must have spotted out possible vulnerabilities in advance because two of the thugs were waiting for him on the second floor and managed to toss him first to the platform between the levels, and then completely to the ground where another three waited for him in the shadows.
They tried to wrestle his weapons away from him, even going so far as to use a cutting claw-like thing against his quiver, but Stark had made it out of finer things and the blade barely made a scratch. Well, on the quiver, at least. The exposed skin of his shoulder was another matter, though thankfully his armor took the brunt of the slice to his side.
He had managed to recover enough to take down one and almost another when he heard a now familiar voice far too full of false bravado say, "Hey, back off!"
He turned to see four twenty-somethings with new and improved screen-printed t-shirts and store bought bows standing in a mockable formation, only one of them with a stance approaching textbook, and most of their aims off by at least ten to fifteen degrees.
He blamed a combination of his shock at seeing them there and a surge of panic at the realization that there were civilians on the battlefield for thug number three being able to pry his own bow out of his blood-slick hands. Instinct took over then because that bow was his life and yeah, Stark was right about him being a bit more than a bit over-attached to the thing. He had a knife strapped to his thigh and two more in his boots, and that wasn't even mentioning the spare bow string he could use should the garrote fail or the arrowheads that could be used as charges or even the basic arrow shafts that could still really hurt if poked in just the right places, like an eye socket or ear.
The thugs were taken down in a matter of minutes, possibly two, and the Fletchings or whatever the fuck they were called were disarmed by the time the third minute had passed. His comm still worked and so he called in both an update and a containment team, belatedly realizing the ring leader of his little fan club had a decent scratch down his own arm and adding a med team to the mix and then running off to hopefully save the day.
Coulson sent him back to deal with the would-be bowmen while Tony less than humbly took down the bad guy with his own hacked tech, and it wasn't until Cap showed up with a pointed look at his still bleeding arm that he realized he had been had and was now at the mercy of the waiting medics that he himself had called to the scene.
During the debrief, Natasha muttered something that sounded like "amateur" and he really hoped it was "amateurs" instead, but held little hope that she was actually talking about the thieves or the kids and not himself. She did replace his garrote with one from her own stash though, so he figured there was probably no actual hard feelings and just a lot of teasing awaiting him in the near future.
+ 1
His arm had needed stitches but not full PT and so he was thankful for small favors. He wasn't as thankful for the whining pleas he had to listen to while still in Medical of more than one birdbrained kid complaining that the big bad agents took their bows away and it wasn't fair and they had paid good money for it and yadda.
He finally verified with Sitwell that they could get their gear back on two major conditions: one being that they signed neat little forms promising to not use it on anything other than an approved range or pre-approved hunting trip, and the other that it was scrubbed clean first. Oddly enough, Fury was wary of his agents' blood being out and available to the highest bidder in a market full of cloning tech and genetically targeted biological weaponry. That's what cleanup crews were for, with said crews usually supervised by the only person who may be slightly pickier than Fury himself on the matter.
Speaking of Coulson, Clint really and truly wished he had been more surprised to walk in on him doing what was apparently his new favorite pastime, the room dark save for the glow of the computer screen, a screen that was scrolling past images of the latest battle.
"You too, sir?" he sighed. He didn't even head for the open chair, but instead flopped back on the extremely welcoming bed.
"What do you mean 'too,' Barton?" Phil asked with a barely raised eyebrow and, yeah, he really should have seen this coming. "Someone had to monitor the site to make certain it was not to be used against SHIELD's best interests, and it was simple enough to take it over from there. Besides, several of the videos are proving enlightening and may be used against you on your next performance review."
Because shaky cell phone footage was better than SHIELD's multiple hidden cameras and other sources. Yeah, Phil was just screwing with him, he had to be. Clint ran a hand over his face and may have offered up a silent prayer that this was true. And maybe another one that there was no footage from the chicken incident because that was just sad. Not to mention perfect blackmail material if placed in the wrong hands.
Hands like Phil's. Hands that were currently pulling up that exact footage just because his life was like that now.
"Nice, sir," he sighed, less than amused.
"I could be persuaded to misplace the footage," Phil pondered as though just coming to this revelation. "Accidentally delete it from all but my personal server and ensure it never makes it to any official training record." He froze said footage on a particularly embarrassing image involving a beak, a wing, and a squawk that hadn't come from one of the birds.
It was a setup, but Clint went with it anyway. "And what would the price be for this little breach of protocol?" He turned his head slightly to the side to see Phil staring at him with almost comically wide eyes and knew it had to be good.
"Vote for my design?" he asked, devoid of all shame. He ignored Clint's answering guffaw and continued, in a near plea, "Seriously, Barton, the popular vote is being swayed by a twelve year old. Twelve. I know you said you'd go with whatever people seemed to want anyway but, really, that thing should never be seen by the general public and it'd be easy enough to add in a few false votes to put mine over the top, especially if it had your support as well."
Clint glanced over at the leading options and, yeah, they were far from pretty. The kid's was bad, but while Phil's was kinda cool, it had all the subtlety of a Captain America costume, which was to say not a lot, so he wasn't exactly sure which was the lesser of two evils at this point. He'd honestly prefer if the whole thing just went away, but doubted that was going to happen anytime soon. Instead, he sighed and tried not to grin as he said, "Really, sir?"
Coulson stood and sauntered over to the bed, draping himself beside him and running one long finger along Clint's exposed bicep. "I'll make it worth your while..." he singsonged.
And that did it, that had Clint burst out into a full laugh and point out, "It's a bracelet for a fan club that should never exist."
"It's an atrocity against nature and the good people of this country and the club is already there so you might as well try to make the best of it," Phil corrected, his finger making the path back down and up again.
"Chicken incident deleted and placed under the same lockdown as the Belize cafe," Clint negotiated. He propped himself up on one elbow, working both the view and his clear advantage.
The faintest hint of a pout crossed Phil's features. The chicken incident had already provided him with hours of torment fodder for the team as a whole, and he was clearly reluctant to let the rare evidence of it all go. "But..." he tried.
Clint cut him off with a shake of his head. "Belize," he insisted. "I know many a junior agent that would love the dirt on that one. A certain senior agent, a few too many fruity yet potent beverages? How you managed to get the tattoo parlor to drop the charges is a thing of legend, really. Or would be if anyone knew about it."
Coulson's eyes narrowed ever so slightly, but Clint knew he had won even before the nod and the reluctant agreement of, "Fine, Belize. But my design wins and you don't stop Stark from buying a shipment for the Tower."
Clint would have objected, but noted the usually precise agent hadn't made the stipulation that he would actually have to wear what Stark bought, and gave him his win even as he allowed the out in his favor. "Agreed," he relented, offering his free hand to shake on it.
Phil did just that, and then used his grip to pull him closer, insinuating a thigh just so and letting the grip of his fingers become just a little more intimate. "So what's the chance I can get you to sign one of them for me?" he whispered against the sensitive skin of Clint's neck.
"You are such a dork," Clint laughed, but leaned in to the contact offered.
"I'll frame it, put it up right next to the Captain America poster in my office," Phil promised maybe a bit too earnestly, still not pulling away.
"Fanboy," Clint accused, but didn't say no.
"You wouldn't have it any other way," Phil smiled, breath warm against his skin. And yeah, Clint maybe, possibly, had to admit that there were times in which having his very own personal fan club didn't completely suck.
Feedback is always welcomed.