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Avengers - On with the Show
Title: On with the Show
Genre: Gen, Friendship
Rating: PG-13
Length: ~2,600 words
Synopsis: Sleepless nights are a little more tolerable when shared with friends. So is the past that causes them.
Author's Notes: For the "insomnia" square at![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
hc_bingo.
Disclaimer: I do not own these characters and am making no profit from this.
Also available on AO3.
The sheets were too rough, despite their ridiculous thread-count. The room was too warm despite the carefully monitored climate controls. The breeze from the vents was too cold despite the weight of the blanket. The room was too dark even as the light from the clock was too bright and yeah, it was time to face the facts, there was no way he was sleeping tonight. Again.
He kicked off the covers and padded over to the bathroom, splashed some cold water on his face and wondered if he should try counting the shadows and lines he saw reflected in the mirror instead of sheep, but gave that up as a lost cause. Instead, he pulled on a pair of sweatpants that were kind of clean and kind of didn’t clash too horribly with the tank top he wore, and headed on out to the common area to look for a distraction.
It wasn’t the first time sleep had evaded him, and probably wouldn’t be the last. In truth, it wasn’t the first night even of the last three. He wasn’t too concerned though, not yet. He had gone days with barely minutes of rest while on ops in the past, and knew he could handle an emergency should one hit come morning. If he was honest with himself, he’d probably appreciate one as the adrenaline crash at the end might be enough to push him over the edge to actual rest.
He also knew the source of this particular bout of insomnia, so at least he didn’t have to pick his brain while he worried about that. The date, the weather, the man shooting at him only hours before that looked just a little too familiar in the right light, until he got close enough to see he didn’t look a thing like Barney at all.
Clint sighed and shook his head to clear it from random useless thoughts that he couldn’t do a damn thing about, and detoured to the kitchen instead. Coffee was not exactly going to help with the lack of sleep, but it wasn’t exactly going to make it suck any more than it already did, so there was that. One nice thing about living in Stark’s super-powered home for super heroes was that there was pretty much a line of caffeine going at any given moment, and that didn’t even include his own stash in his own rooms.
Sure enough, there was about half a pot left. He poured himself a mug and tossed some cold cuts and mayo between some bread and called it a meal. He even put the sandwich on a plate, though he doubted it would last the short walk to the salvation of mindless television and even more mindless infomercials.
He was a little surprised to find the room already occupied, images of black and white flickering across a rather haggard looking Cap. Actually, the poor guy looked rundown enough that it would be an insult to his moniker to call him anything more than Steve, so Clint made the mental connection enough to decide at least that, and then managed a very intelligent, “Can’t sleep, huh?”
Steve raised his eyebrows, likely at the obviousness of it all, but said only, “That about sums it up.”
He shifted over to share the couch despite the plethora of chairs available. Clint took the offered position and spared a glance at the screen. It was one of those weird semi-documentary and semi-dramatization things and seemed to be about World War II, or at least the conclusion of it by the looks of it. They were talking surrender and such and it was nearing the end of the hour but, most importantly, Steve wasn’t actually taking notes on this one like he sometimes did, which meant it was either a repeat or he really was too tired to care.
He was guessing on the repeat though since Steve still had that look in his eyes, that way he scanned any and all available footage for a familiar face and the way his shoulders would droop when he found none. “Wanna watch something else?” he offered. The video library was extensive, not including the actual real live feed from stations and outlets, and he really had no idea what else too choose - far too tired to think that part through - but he figured it couldn’t hurt to ask.
“Nah,” came the reply. There was a smile, just the barest hint of one, just enough to know this was not solely a trip into melancholy. “They’re having a 1940’s and 50’s marathon. The next bit is on Teddy Boys and Teddy Girls and, well, not all of those were just in the 50’s. Some of those girls were really swell.”
“Hot, Steve. We call them hot now,” Clint corrected, but chuckled anyway. Go fig, Steven Rogers, epitome of the wholesome American Way had a thing for the counter-culture types, even during his own time. Because he couldn’t resist, he added, “If you say ‘swell’ now, it usually means that’s what a part of your anatomy is about to do.”
Steve blushed the way Clint knew he would, but shook his head good-naturedly. He didn’t elaborate and Clint didn’t make him. He also didn’t pry into whatever brought Clint to the couch at the current hour, just like Clint didn’t pry about Steve's own reasons.
Both were grown men with pasts – some of which they shared and some they wished to keep private – and both were adult enough to respect that even if at least one of them would deny ever being called such. Their work could be stressful at times, on mind as well as body, and that was just their current assignments. Toss in the past with missions gone wrong as often as right, friends lost or as good as, and just generally shitty days, and there were enough land mines to avoid that it simply wasn’t worth it. If someone wanted to talk, they would. If someone wanted a shoulder to cry on, they’d have it. It was just the way they worked and, quite frankly, it kept the team from ending up with knives in vital places for mouthing off at the wrong time to the wrong person.
The show ended up being another one of those docu-drama things. It had old pictures as well as modern day people trying to approximate the style. He could definitely see the attraction, both to acting out like that as well as to those doing the acting out. Steve mentioned a few people he had known, most of them of the female persuasion who didn’t mind a runt like him hanging out with them and would have loved to slide in with the ‘real’ Teddy Girls had they been born a decade earlier. He mentioned how style was not quite as strict in the 1940’s as some would believe, and how women did enough of the so-called men’s work to see the need to dress like them to some extent, but still keep the femininity about them that made them so interesting to sketch.
That led to a discussion of his art in general, and how he’d use models off the street while he sat on the cement steps or at a desk looking through a grungy window. He lamented that it was a little harder now and Clint offered to take him to the tiny corner coffee shop that was in the middle of people-watching central where they could have a few sugary drinks and watch the world go by, maybe remind themselves why they did what they did while blending in with the masonry.
“Maybe this afternoon,” Steve amended with a yawn. “Because I don’t think they’re open now and we should probably get at least a little shuteye before the rest of world remembers there’s bad guys in it.”
Clint laughed a little and had to admit he was slowly being lulled to sleep by the quiet drone of the television mixed with the hushed way Rogers told his tales. The couch was comfy enough and Natasha would keep people from waking him too early if needed, or else haul his butt to his own bed if it got to that. He debated grabbing one of the knit blankets and seeing if it would be enough, but froze when he glanced back to the screen.
Gone were the tales of society-wide counter-cultures, and a new show was starting up, this one on the weird and unseen secrets of the traveling circuses. The preview was bad enough: weight lifters with bad backs who still lifted more than they should, bearded ladies and women forced to get body-encompassing tattoos in less than sterile conditions to make enough to pay the bills, acrobats who worked with extremely poor equipment putting their necks and lives at risk for pennies’ worth of entertainment, matted and disheveled animals in too small cages, and the crappy music that just would not die.
He glanced over to Steve to see him watching with a speculative look in his eye. “Is that…?” he asked, gesturing to the spectacle on the screen like Clint wouldn’t know what he was talking about.
“Worst of the worst and totally dramatized,” Clint promised. “Think the exaggerated parts of what you saw about the war and figure it’s at least that bad.” On the screen, a man took a shot with a crappy handmade bow and landed the arrow through the oversized hoop of a woman’s earring. “Possibly worse,” he amended with a wince. A garish set of costumes paraded by, a woman in an improbable corset with a man in a ridiculously colored fake silk and chiffon suit. “Definitely worse.”
“I don’t know,” Steve shrugged, nudging him with his toe to get his attention. “Couldn’t be all bad if it managed to create you and that aim of yours.”
Clint leaned back against the pillow he had stolen earlier, resigned to talk. It wasn’t like he hid this part of his life, and it wasn’t as if it was actually all that bad, it was just that he had moved on from it, moved on from the lifestyle and the struggles and the occasional unpleasant memory. It had kept him somewhat warm and somewhat fed and had opened the doors to opportunities that he never would have had without it. He had bruises and scars and posters with his face emblazoned on them and experiences like no other and a leather-bound book with the inner pages cut out where he had hid his bobbles and savings that possibly still resided on a shelf in his room. It was part of him, for better or for worse, and he didn’t think he’d change that even if he had the ability to do so.
“Barney and I were too young to actually know what we were getting into when we signed our contracts,” he began. “We performed or went hungry. Hell, there were times when we did both. We made friends with who we could, looked out for each other, tried to cover if one of us got in over our heads - that sort of thing. You never did just one job in a circus, not really. I could string the high wire and put up the tents. Hated cleaning the big cats’ cages, but would do it if it was needed and meant dinner on a table.”
Steve raised an eyebrow at the screen, where the image changed from a tiny woman lifting another above her head with a single hand to a man riding a horse and firing off arrows into various improbable targets. “And that was needed?” he confirmed.
Clint snorted. “No, that was just fun,” he laughed, pleased for a glimpse of something pleasant for a change. He remembered the trick shots and the feeling of exhilaration when he made them, the way he would try to push it that much further, just to see if he could. “This guy they’ve got here is an amateur. A real one would be standing barefoot on a bareback while the horse galloped around the rings. They even had me up on the swing more than once, just to see if I could do it.”
“Did you?” Steve asked, smile already in place. Clint didn’t bother to deem that with an answer beyond a pointed rolling of his eyes. He remembered the first time he did it, the wave of dizziness that settled into a wave of almost euphoria when he made the shot and Lionel helped him upright again. He had earned both a meal and cash for that one, even had a few people slip him tips he told no one about, not even his brother.
He expected a rush of panic to accompany the rush of memories that followed, having wandered down to avoid thinking about Barney and the day he ran away from the life they had made for each other. Fate was a bitch though, so of course he ended up thinking about pretty much exactly that: the life they had for many a long year, relying on each other to get by, making a family out of strangers, knowing they would have his back just like he would have theirs when it was time for the axe or tent or whatever menacing thing that was being used against them to come down.
Instead, he found that he thought of the good times. Like when Marcia met her future husband by picking him up from the crowd and carrying him around the inner circle while he laughed and flirted back, or when Nicky finished reading his very first book all on his own, or when Alexa told them about the school she had found, the one that would let her in and pay for nearly everything because her test scores were so good. He thought of kids covered in cotton candy and sweat and random bits of hay, of the little girl who skipped away promising she was going to be an acrobat when she grew up and then seeing her make Nationals for gymnastics a few years later when he managed to find a working station just outside of Cerdo Gordo. He thought of how learning to push himself, learning to look out for others and knowing they would be looking out for him, how to manipulate his body and his mind to manage the unlikely shot, how all of that led him to his life’s choices and led him to where he sat at that very moment, a bonafide superhero poking him in the side after he had saved his life just a few hours prior.
He also found himself actually yawning soon enough, a blanket he didn’t remember grabbing draped over him and more and more outrageous dares being volleyed back and forth, some of which he had already done before but hadn’t admitted as much yet and some which just sounded damn cool. Somewhere around Steve suggesting he try making a shot from the back of his bike, possibly while standing on one foot while Rogers himself drove some imaginary course, he felt his eyes begin to drift closed, the sound of the next segment a muted mumble in the background, not a nightmare in sight.
Throughout it all though, that damned music still played on.
End.
Feedback is always welcomed.
Genre: Gen, Friendship
Rating: PG-13
Length: ~2,600 words
Synopsis: Sleepless nights are a little more tolerable when shared with friends. So is the past that causes them.
Author's Notes: For the "insomnia" square at
hc_bingo.Disclaimer: I do not own these characters and am making no profit from this.
Also available on AO3.
The sheets were too rough, despite their ridiculous thread-count. The room was too warm despite the carefully monitored climate controls. The breeze from the vents was too cold despite the weight of the blanket. The room was too dark even as the light from the clock was too bright and yeah, it was time to face the facts, there was no way he was sleeping tonight. Again.
He kicked off the covers and padded over to the bathroom, splashed some cold water on his face and wondered if he should try counting the shadows and lines he saw reflected in the mirror instead of sheep, but gave that up as a lost cause. Instead, he pulled on a pair of sweatpants that were kind of clean and kind of didn’t clash too horribly with the tank top he wore, and headed on out to the common area to look for a distraction.
It wasn’t the first time sleep had evaded him, and probably wouldn’t be the last. In truth, it wasn’t the first night even of the last three. He wasn’t too concerned though, not yet. He had gone days with barely minutes of rest while on ops in the past, and knew he could handle an emergency should one hit come morning. If he was honest with himself, he’d probably appreciate one as the adrenaline crash at the end might be enough to push him over the edge to actual rest.
He also knew the source of this particular bout of insomnia, so at least he didn’t have to pick his brain while he worried about that. The date, the weather, the man shooting at him only hours before that looked just a little too familiar in the right light, until he got close enough to see he didn’t look a thing like Barney at all.
Clint sighed and shook his head to clear it from random useless thoughts that he couldn’t do a damn thing about, and detoured to the kitchen instead. Coffee was not exactly going to help with the lack of sleep, but it wasn’t exactly going to make it suck any more than it already did, so there was that. One nice thing about living in Stark’s super-powered home for super heroes was that there was pretty much a line of caffeine going at any given moment, and that didn’t even include his own stash in his own rooms.
Sure enough, there was about half a pot left. He poured himself a mug and tossed some cold cuts and mayo between some bread and called it a meal. He even put the sandwich on a plate, though he doubted it would last the short walk to the salvation of mindless television and even more mindless infomercials.
He was a little surprised to find the room already occupied, images of black and white flickering across a rather haggard looking Cap. Actually, the poor guy looked rundown enough that it would be an insult to his moniker to call him anything more than Steve, so Clint made the mental connection enough to decide at least that, and then managed a very intelligent, “Can’t sleep, huh?”
Steve raised his eyebrows, likely at the obviousness of it all, but said only, “That about sums it up.”
He shifted over to share the couch despite the plethora of chairs available. Clint took the offered position and spared a glance at the screen. It was one of those weird semi-documentary and semi-dramatization things and seemed to be about World War II, or at least the conclusion of it by the looks of it. They were talking surrender and such and it was nearing the end of the hour but, most importantly, Steve wasn’t actually taking notes on this one like he sometimes did, which meant it was either a repeat or he really was too tired to care.
He was guessing on the repeat though since Steve still had that look in his eyes, that way he scanned any and all available footage for a familiar face and the way his shoulders would droop when he found none. “Wanna watch something else?” he offered. The video library was extensive, not including the actual real live feed from stations and outlets, and he really had no idea what else too choose - far too tired to think that part through - but he figured it couldn’t hurt to ask.
“Nah,” came the reply. There was a smile, just the barest hint of one, just enough to know this was not solely a trip into melancholy. “They’re having a 1940’s and 50’s marathon. The next bit is on Teddy Boys and Teddy Girls and, well, not all of those were just in the 50’s. Some of those girls were really swell.”
“Hot, Steve. We call them hot now,” Clint corrected, but chuckled anyway. Go fig, Steven Rogers, epitome of the wholesome American Way had a thing for the counter-culture types, even during his own time. Because he couldn’t resist, he added, “If you say ‘swell’ now, it usually means that’s what a part of your anatomy is about to do.”
Steve blushed the way Clint knew he would, but shook his head good-naturedly. He didn’t elaborate and Clint didn’t make him. He also didn’t pry into whatever brought Clint to the couch at the current hour, just like Clint didn’t pry about Steve's own reasons.
Both were grown men with pasts – some of which they shared and some they wished to keep private – and both were adult enough to respect that even if at least one of them would deny ever being called such. Their work could be stressful at times, on mind as well as body, and that was just their current assignments. Toss in the past with missions gone wrong as often as right, friends lost or as good as, and just generally shitty days, and there were enough land mines to avoid that it simply wasn’t worth it. If someone wanted to talk, they would. If someone wanted a shoulder to cry on, they’d have it. It was just the way they worked and, quite frankly, it kept the team from ending up with knives in vital places for mouthing off at the wrong time to the wrong person.
The show ended up being another one of those docu-drama things. It had old pictures as well as modern day people trying to approximate the style. He could definitely see the attraction, both to acting out like that as well as to those doing the acting out. Steve mentioned a few people he had known, most of them of the female persuasion who didn’t mind a runt like him hanging out with them and would have loved to slide in with the ‘real’ Teddy Girls had they been born a decade earlier. He mentioned how style was not quite as strict in the 1940’s as some would believe, and how women did enough of the so-called men’s work to see the need to dress like them to some extent, but still keep the femininity about them that made them so interesting to sketch.
That led to a discussion of his art in general, and how he’d use models off the street while he sat on the cement steps or at a desk looking through a grungy window. He lamented that it was a little harder now and Clint offered to take him to the tiny corner coffee shop that was in the middle of people-watching central where they could have a few sugary drinks and watch the world go by, maybe remind themselves why they did what they did while blending in with the masonry.
“Maybe this afternoon,” Steve amended with a yawn. “Because I don’t think they’re open now and we should probably get at least a little shuteye before the rest of world remembers there’s bad guys in it.”
Clint laughed a little and had to admit he was slowly being lulled to sleep by the quiet drone of the television mixed with the hushed way Rogers told his tales. The couch was comfy enough and Natasha would keep people from waking him too early if needed, or else haul his butt to his own bed if it got to that. He debated grabbing one of the knit blankets and seeing if it would be enough, but froze when he glanced back to the screen.
Gone were the tales of society-wide counter-cultures, and a new show was starting up, this one on the weird and unseen secrets of the traveling circuses. The preview was bad enough: weight lifters with bad backs who still lifted more than they should, bearded ladies and women forced to get body-encompassing tattoos in less than sterile conditions to make enough to pay the bills, acrobats who worked with extremely poor equipment putting their necks and lives at risk for pennies’ worth of entertainment, matted and disheveled animals in too small cages, and the crappy music that just would not die.
He glanced over to Steve to see him watching with a speculative look in his eye. “Is that…?” he asked, gesturing to the spectacle on the screen like Clint wouldn’t know what he was talking about.
“Worst of the worst and totally dramatized,” Clint promised. “Think the exaggerated parts of what you saw about the war and figure it’s at least that bad.” On the screen, a man took a shot with a crappy handmade bow and landed the arrow through the oversized hoop of a woman’s earring. “Possibly worse,” he amended with a wince. A garish set of costumes paraded by, a woman in an improbable corset with a man in a ridiculously colored fake silk and chiffon suit. “Definitely worse.”
“I don’t know,” Steve shrugged, nudging him with his toe to get his attention. “Couldn’t be all bad if it managed to create you and that aim of yours.”
Clint leaned back against the pillow he had stolen earlier, resigned to talk. It wasn’t like he hid this part of his life, and it wasn’t as if it was actually all that bad, it was just that he had moved on from it, moved on from the lifestyle and the struggles and the occasional unpleasant memory. It had kept him somewhat warm and somewhat fed and had opened the doors to opportunities that he never would have had without it. He had bruises and scars and posters with his face emblazoned on them and experiences like no other and a leather-bound book with the inner pages cut out where he had hid his bobbles and savings that possibly still resided on a shelf in his room. It was part of him, for better or for worse, and he didn’t think he’d change that even if he had the ability to do so.
“Barney and I were too young to actually know what we were getting into when we signed our contracts,” he began. “We performed or went hungry. Hell, there were times when we did both. We made friends with who we could, looked out for each other, tried to cover if one of us got in over our heads - that sort of thing. You never did just one job in a circus, not really. I could string the high wire and put up the tents. Hated cleaning the big cats’ cages, but would do it if it was needed and meant dinner on a table.”
Steve raised an eyebrow at the screen, where the image changed from a tiny woman lifting another above her head with a single hand to a man riding a horse and firing off arrows into various improbable targets. “And that was needed?” he confirmed.
Clint snorted. “No, that was just fun,” he laughed, pleased for a glimpse of something pleasant for a change. He remembered the trick shots and the feeling of exhilaration when he made them, the way he would try to push it that much further, just to see if he could. “This guy they’ve got here is an amateur. A real one would be standing barefoot on a bareback while the horse galloped around the rings. They even had me up on the swing more than once, just to see if I could do it.”
“Did you?” Steve asked, smile already in place. Clint didn’t bother to deem that with an answer beyond a pointed rolling of his eyes. He remembered the first time he did it, the wave of dizziness that settled into a wave of almost euphoria when he made the shot and Lionel helped him upright again. He had earned both a meal and cash for that one, even had a few people slip him tips he told no one about, not even his brother.
He expected a rush of panic to accompany the rush of memories that followed, having wandered down to avoid thinking about Barney and the day he ran away from the life they had made for each other. Fate was a bitch though, so of course he ended up thinking about pretty much exactly that: the life they had for many a long year, relying on each other to get by, making a family out of strangers, knowing they would have his back just like he would have theirs when it was time for the axe or tent or whatever menacing thing that was being used against them to come down.
Instead, he found that he thought of the good times. Like when Marcia met her future husband by picking him up from the crowd and carrying him around the inner circle while he laughed and flirted back, or when Nicky finished reading his very first book all on his own, or when Alexa told them about the school she had found, the one that would let her in and pay for nearly everything because her test scores were so good. He thought of kids covered in cotton candy and sweat and random bits of hay, of the little girl who skipped away promising she was going to be an acrobat when she grew up and then seeing her make Nationals for gymnastics a few years later when he managed to find a working station just outside of Cerdo Gordo. He thought of how learning to push himself, learning to look out for others and knowing they would be looking out for him, how to manipulate his body and his mind to manage the unlikely shot, how all of that led him to his life’s choices and led him to where he sat at that very moment, a bonafide superhero poking him in the side after he had saved his life just a few hours prior.
He also found himself actually yawning soon enough, a blanket he didn’t remember grabbing draped over him and more and more outrageous dares being volleyed back and forth, some of which he had already done before but hadn’t admitted as much yet and some which just sounded damn cool. Somewhere around Steve suggesting he try making a shot from the back of his bike, possibly while standing on one foot while Rogers himself drove some imaginary course, he felt his eyes begin to drift closed, the sound of the next segment a muted mumble in the background, not a nightmare in sight.
Throughout it all though, that damned music still played on.
End.
Feedback is always welcomed.