Steve feared the cold, but Clint loved it...
The Cold
There was a problem.
And unfortunately it wasn't one to be easily fixed. Steve feared the cold. Literally held a phobia for it.
Who could blame him. Just when things had started to go right for the soldier, just when his world was starting to settle on a true axis he'd had to sacrifice himself. Thrown himself into the ice and snow and frigid water. Not many people realize how much of it Steve had been conscious for. He'd been awake when he's crashed. Awake and aware. He'd breathed in the frosty air and water so cold it seared his throat and lungs. He'd felt his muscle and joints seize up, he'd felt his life slip away before his brain had taken to much and mercifully plundged him into unconsciousness.
For Steve's good heart and sweet soul, for all the good he had paid into the world, his reward had been a 'death' of suffering, pain and a fear so deep it carried through a near century with him.
It was a well earned fear.
It was not something that Clint would ever belittle or sneer at but if left a little hollow ache in the archer's chest because Clint... Clint loved the cold.
He has few fond memories of his youth after the death of his parents. Many of those few were in the depths of winter. Bounding through the deep drifts of an Iowan December, snapping of icicles for play swords, sliding across frozen ponds and staying up into the chilly night to watch holiday lights flicker and glow.
Even as an adult the winter had always been soothing in its own way. A time of rest for his life in the circus when the performers could return to their homes to recouperate before the summer came and the rush into the spot light to earn their bread and butter. As an officer, even in the warmth of the Los Angeles, the winters brought a chill that cloistered criminals into their beds. Fifty degrees or lower meant light days of actual service to the community instead of running ragged after dopers and gangbangers all over the Southland.
As an assassin the cold and still of winter made his work easy, made targets loud and plain obvious. A rabbit hole of packed snow proved warmer and dryer than one dug into the mud, tracks were easy to follow.
To Clint the cold and the winter were welcome. To Steve they were reason enough to stay cloistered away in his apartment.
And it would have been fine enough... but then Sandy came along.
The storm tore through the city, ravaged her and all around her, leaving her weak in the knees and battered, neary broken. But not broken yet. Since Sandy and the Nor'easter that followed New York had been left in a state of damp lethargy and listlessness.
And cold.
The whole city was cold. In the past at least there had been life, lights and a sense of rush as the holidays and the new year rolled closer. Now it was still and gray. Where there had been light there was the darkness of locked doors and boarded windows. Where there had been life there was a eerie stillness of death, the lives lost to the storm, not only the human ones. The many dogs and cats, rats and birds, the wild deer and rabbits clinging to the greeny of the parks had drowned and washed out to the ocean, leaving the city with a void of life. And there was a rush, a rush to mend things. To clean up and fix the rot and restore power, it was a rush of survival, not joy.
Clint and Steve hadn't been dry or warm since Sandy hit. They spent every waking hour out on the streets doing what they could to help, hauling debris out of drains or buildings. Making door to door checks to look for anyone stranded, dropping off warm meals and kerosene heaters.
They tirelessly waded through slush and snow and sometimes murky water that had yet to be drained.
Where they had to return to for those few hours of stolen sleep were no better. SHIELD Headquarters was running on generators and enegry rations. Most of its power had been outsourced to the surrounding neighborhood, pouring into a few hospitals, schools, fire houses and police stations. And Steve's own neighborhood was without power, apartments had either been abandoned in the exodus of the storm until the lights returned or makshift camps had been set up within with battery operated heaters and tinned food.
It wasn't so different to Clint and Steve. Not really. They had each lived this kind of life before. Scraping together heat from tiny campfires or going without, eating out of cans and using what little fire they had to boil water to drink.
But it was starting to wear on Steve and Clint could see it. The soldier went off food, he rarely slept and when he did it was fitful and without true rest. Steve was working himself to near exhaustion out in the streets only to come back to the apartment to put on layer upon layer of clothes to try and fight the chill of his darkened Brooklyn apartment. He never sat still, he was constantly shivering, constantly trying to move, trying to create heat from within.
Clint's fondness for the winter and the cold was waning, rapidly, as his fear for Steve's health and mental state grew each day. The more Steve deterriorated the more frieghtened Clint became. It was getting to a point that no amount of coaxing and reassurance from Clint, no amount of time spent taking in long meals and coffee breaks in the warmth of a cafe, could stop the shivers.
Clint did something he never thought he would do in the winter. Something as unnatural to him as his stead fast namesakes. Hawks held their territories in the winter. They did not migrate. But for Steve... for Steve Clint would leave his roost. Seek warmer lands. Clint would do anything for Steve.
It was painfully easy to make the arrangements. A call and a plead and SHIELD was more than happy to accomodate the two Avengers. There was a safe house on the very edge of the Grand Canyon. In the heat and desert of Arizona. Theirs for as long as they needed it.
The hardest part had been convincing Steve to leave his beloved New York when she was struggling so much. The soldier protested that they were needed, that he had to make sure his neighbors on his street were alright. Steve claimed all was well, it wouldn't be much longer, that soon the city would be on her feet, that they would be able to enjoy the lights and the snow and have too much fun than was good for them at the SHIELD Christmas office party.
The fight that followed had been so severe that the NYPD had been called and it left Clint and Steve in tears. Both of them pleading with the other, begging to be in the right.
Steve cracked. The heartbreak he saw in Clint's eyes was to much for the soldier and he quietly agreed to go to Arizona, pleading with Clint to just stop crying. Anything to get rid of those worried tears.
It was an awkward flight to say the least. They barely spoke and turned more of their attention towards the world outside the plane than inside. And they didn't touch except briefly.
But the tension bled out when they stepped out of the airport, met by a pair of SHIELD agents, and found the air warm and sandy. The breeze carrying the heavy scent of clay earth, desert rose and cactus flowers. The skies streaking pink and gold and purple as the sun slowly sank. So different from New York. But it was warm.
Warm.
For the first time in weeks Steve paused to shed his layers. Stripping all the way down to a light long sleeved tee over his khakis. It made Clint's heart swell to see Steve relaxing again, breathing easy and deeply again.
It was a bit of a drive, the evening was set firmly in by the time that the agents had dropped them off in a small surburban neighborhood on the very edge of the canyon.
They had just enough light to stand out on a back porch with fresh brewed cups of coffee and watched the colors and shadows twist and dance all through the multi layers of the canyon walls. Steve quietly admitted he was glad to be there, that he'd come, that he'd brought along his water colors and pastels and chalks. He admitted that he needed to be here and was thankful that Clint had seen it when he couldn't.
The archer was just glad that Steve wasn't shivering anymore, that he didn't have that hooded look of exhaustion, illness and fear anymore.
They curled up together in an over large bed, wallowing in the natural perfume of the desert roses and cactus flowers, the windows boldly left open so the warm air rushing through the canyon was welcome to slip in and swirl through the room, warming skin that had paled and weakened in cold, then slipped back out again.
They were warm and at peace, for the first time in a long time.
Until six the next morning when they were rudely jolted awake by the sound of hired tour guides shouting in the style of boot camp drill sergents to their packs of early morning hikers and joggers out in the street and on the front lawn of the small safe house.
Steve could only laugh and gently restrain Clint while the archer threatened to turn the hose on the tour groups and swore to buy a painball gun in town later that morning.
A/N: Hopefully a few of you caught the reference right there at the end about an interview Jeremy Renner did on Jimmy Kimmel a few months ago. It was HILARIOUS and when I had the chance to slip it in I had to.
"LETS STRETCH, BITCHES!"