It is always a surreal moment when you meet in person someone who has read your fanfiction and knows you by your screen name. Given the nature of my job, I do a lot to separate my personal and professional life. I'm also incredibly shy, making it even more gut-wrenching when these moments occur.
In honor of meeting a fan, in public, I realized I'm a bit of a slacker right now. So i stuck this together in honor of all you lovelies out there:)
Chapter One
It didn't matter what her name was. He found her in a bar, 5'10", blond, eyes as deep brown as a mouthful of chocolate hazelnuts. She tasted like lavender and lilac lotion, a bitter sweet combination that rolled over his tongue long after their tryst began, and ended. He didn't say goodbye, didn't say thank you or, perhaps more daringly, you're welcome. He slid out of the rented bed, pulled on his pants, grabbed his leather jacket, and went out the door.
The world kept spinning in his skull. Round and round the little sphere went, throwing him around like a child being tossed from a tilt-o-whirl. Every time he hit ground, he hit bottom. If it wasn't the booze it was the broads, and if neither of those were available, he'd just enthrall himself in some Avengers intrigue of some kind, pretend he was still together, intact, whole, right before he fell apart again. He knew it would be bad. SHIELD told him it would when they banned him from their assignments, kicked his legs out from under him, and turned him loose with a rat pack of disorganized monsters being led by everyone and no one at the same time. The Avengers were a joke, and he was their clown.
He stumbled down the hall of the complex, pulling one boot on at a time, sans socks. He didn't feel like trying to locate them under the pile of her things. Most likely she'd pawn them off. Say she took them off Tony Stark right before she bedded him. Just one of the many notches on Stark's bedpost. Except, she'd be wrong.
Clint Barton wasn't sure why so many women mistook him for the billionaire. He figured they really did know the difference, but simply lacked the proper name to refer to Clint as, and so made their own stories up. He didn't really care. It helped his anonymity in the end and boosted Stark's illustrious reputation.
Everybody wins.
The door to the elevator opened and he slunk inside. He hit the key downward and, in a flash and haze of his hangover, he came back to his senses in the hallway of Stark Tower. What happened in between his speedy exist, the cab ride across town, and the stop for some cheap pocket-sized alcohol, would forever recede into that blur of a life he'd stumbled into.
:(:):(:):
"Agent," Stark announced in a too-cheerful tone, noticing Clint make his way across the center room. Tony wore a metal contraption over his face. Hovering a few feet away from him, a holographic mockup of his body mirrored his movements.
Clint grunted a reply and continued toward the bar. Tony tended to hide snacks there and that was exactly what Barton's headache needed.
"I'm formulating a new—"
"Don't care," Clint announced. He leaned across the bar, found a bag of dried fruit, and removed it. He sniffed the top and tilted the bag into his mouth.
"I think I put that there three months ago," Tony said critically.
"Tower wasn't rebuilt three months ago," Clint pointed out. He gritted his teeth passed the sour taste and swallowed as if to prove a point. His sharp focus zeroed in on the scientist.
"Hard night?"
"Something was hard, all right," Clint left the bag, now that it was mostly empty, on the counter and retreated for the crew quarters. They weren't much, though they were an upgrade from the steel bunk Barton wasn't allowed to return to at his old base. Whatever personal possessions he sometimes pretended to own were buried under twelve tons of rubble and concrete. Loki made sure of that in his inception into this poisoned world he wanted so desperately to rule.
"Fury called," Stark called after him.
Barton paused. His eyebrow arced slightly.
"Something about someone you know. Tried to call you but," Tony picked up a cell phone out of his pocket and held it up. "You know, the point of these things is to be able to call in case of emergency." Tony tossed the phone for Clint to catch, which he did with pure accuracy.
If it was possible, Clint's eyes narrowed even more. "You have a Hulk. Emergencies don't happen."
"I couldn't button my shirt the other day. You know, having someone around with super precise vision might have helped with that."
Clint flipped a finger at him.
Stark, ignoring him, proceeded with his own conversation, "What did Fury want, the agent asks? Well, he wanted to know if we could lend you out for a case but, given you were out instead of in, I unfortunately had to say no."
"Good," Clint shot back. He took a few steps in the direction of his room. It took only a second for him to stop in place again and turn. "Where is everybody?"
"Natasha is gone, with Steve. Bruce has traversed to ye olde arc reactor on the other side of town. Pepper has insisted on business in California, and . . ." Tony paused, he counted off on his fingers, wondering who he was missing. "Oh! And Thor is still wading through an interdimensional portal somewhere in a realm that apparently exists beyond our own. So, there's that."
"It's just you, then?"
Tony smiled. "Wanna blow some crap up?"
"No," Clint replied, dead pan. He was gone before Tony's sardonic smile took hold.
:(:):(:):
He felt the air change, like a sudden wisp over his skin that didn't quite match. His hair stood on end. Skin prickled, muscles tensed. Barton spun out of bed and hit the floor on his knees hard enough to make his teeth rattle. His gun was in his hand. The HK P30 trained expertly at the doorway he remembered distinctly closing behind him. The door swung inward, slow and creaking, on its fresh ungreased hinges. He waited for Tony to appear, poking his head in like Denice the Menace.
No one came.
Clint blinked the sleep out of his eyes. His fingers untensed and he let the gun hang slack in his grip. One hand reached up to rub his face, hitting the night stand on its way, which upset the three shot bottles he'd left uncapped and empty. Clint switched on the safety of his weapon and put it back under his pillow.
Sighing, Clint crossed the room to the door and took the knob in his hand. He reflexively glanced into the hallway, checked both ways, and was about to retreat to his bed when something caught his eye. It wasn't much but a stray sparkle of glass.
Tony probably broke something and that's what woke him up. A yawn stretched Clint's mouth open wide. He was better off just going to sleep. Then again, he did have the munchies and sour blueberries hadn't exactly cut that down for him. Giving in, Clint left the confines of his bedroom to head back into the hall.
Whatever daylight he came home in had already vanished. Blackness attempted to drown out the cityscape, but the gaudy illumination of the neon signs and spotlights turned New York's nightlife into its busiest time. Men and women hoofed down the pavement for the sordid entertainment of shows on Broadway, people watching, and sheer boredom. The young life would paint their faces in the latest color fads, throwing on more cakes of eyeshadow than a clown would need, and beat themselves across the dance floors of the exclusive city clubs. Prostitutes and drug dealers would crawl out of their daytime hideaways to stalk their turf for the always ready victims and johns.
Clint paused for a minute staring out the front window scape of the city thrumming below the tower. He wondered what excuse he'd give for disappearing into that world again. He was like a stray cat in need of a home and an electric fence. He wasn't sure what, short of electric shock, could stop the spiral to the bottom he'd inevitably quest for tonight.
In his search for the kitchen, Clint parted glances with the reflection of himself in the wall of windows to follow the trail of shattered glass. Apparently one of the panes that framed the staircase leading to Stark's lab had broken. Large jagged shards littered the floor in every direction. Clint hadn't realized it until he looked down and noticed he was surrounded. His bare feet vulnerable.
He was about to call out Tony's name when the overhead lights suddenly flickered. Clint looked up, as if willing the sky to give him an answer why when the lights cut out entirely. Nothing but the ambient glow of the city remained. An arc reactor the size of an entire first floor powered Stark Tower. It had been that way even before Loki decided to drop aliens on the city. Technically speaking, lights in the tower did not flicker, neither did they go out. Ever.
A sharp inhalation cut through the quiet Clint didn't realize surrounded him. The hairs on the back of his neck rose again as his eyes worked to adjust to the change in light. A few feet away, Tony laid on the ground. His hands were covering the light inside his chest. His mouth gaped open like a fish caught on a hook. He gasped. Tears rolled from the corners of his eyes.
Forgetting the sea of tempered glass, Clint rushed over to him. He skidded to his knees at Tony's side and pressed his hands against the billionaire's chest.
Tony screamed. One hand drew away from the arc reactor to indicate his leg. The tears continued. He gasped, pounded his balled fist into the floor, and screamed again.
"Here," Tony gasped out, struggling to breathe. "Here. Here."
Clint cursed under his breath, then he cursed louder and louder until that was all he could hear. Tony was laying almost underneath the stairs. The trail of shattered remains seeming to tell that he'd gone over, or through, one of the railings and hit the floor on his back. His fingers brushed a slice of window pane bisecting the inside of his right leg. Blood seeped around it. Clint balled up his hand and pressed down around the shard, only receiving a look of wide-eyed anger from the billionaire. Stark grabbed Clint's arm and gouged his nails into it.
"Get. Me. Up. Lab. Now."
"You're bleeding, I'm not getting you anywhere!"
"LAB."
A flicker of light caught Clint's attention. Tony's personal reactor, the swathe of blue light ever present beneath his shirt, was dark. The overhead lights flickered again but didn't come on.
"EMP," Clint whispered, more to himself.
Tony gasped.
"If I jumpstart you, will this start back up?" Clint demanded, tapping the reactor.
Tony swallowed thickly. The veins of his neck were distended and pulsing beneath his skin. He gave the slightest of nods.
"Don't move," Clint told him, but wasn't exactly sure why. He shot to his feet and vanished down the hall, ignoring Tony's exclamations for him to come back and help, not abandon him to a stone cold death on the tile floor.
Clint ran into his room and grabbed his bow case out of the closet. A tumble of arrows spilled across the floor. He grabbed a handful and only seconds after he left Stark's side, he returned with the arrows in hand.
Tony's eyes widened. "Wha—"
"Shut up and don't move," Clint snapped at him. He took one of the arrows and slammed it point first down in the center of Tony's arc reactor. A three-pronged claw shot from the arrow tip and magnetically attached to the metal rim of Tony's chest. Clint triggered the arrow and hurriedly pulled back, covered his head, and waited. Tony's body jolted. He shot upright and suddenly he was on his feet, gasping and holding the shaft of the arrow still sticking out of his chest. The glass in his leg was all but forgotten.
"WHAT THE HELL WERE YOU THINKING?!" Tony screamed. He let out a single hacking cough as his feet went unsteady beneath him. He fell backwards, landing on one of the stair steps.
"My arrows work independently," Clint pointed out. "EMP's don't affect them. You needed a jump."
"You could have killed me!"
Clint shrugged. "You were dying. I can only kill you so much. You're not dead. A thank you would suffice."
Tony continued to rub the flat of his palm over his chest. Apparently, he was insulted.
Barton stood. "Sit still and stop moving. You aren't out of the woods yet." He approached cautiously and leaned down. He clamped both of his hands around Tony's thigh again. "I don't know how deep this goes, so stop fussing with it. What did you do?"
"I didn't do anything. I just happen to fall off the stairs when I was having a heart attack. It's my place. I'll break whatever I want. Did one of your arrows set all of this off too?"
Barton stared at him. "Yeah, you got me. I was thinking how great it would be to rule the world with an iron fist and decided, huh, I think I'll kill Tony Stark tonight and expect the rest of the team to be cool with that. I think you've thwarted all my plans."
"Are you joking? Because sometimes in the grand scheme of your resting mean face, I just can't tell."
Clint flicked the glass hanging out of Stark's leg, sending a jolt of agony through the billionaire. "You know, I could leave you like this."
Tony swallowed and nodded. "Ok, point taken."
"What did you do?"
"If you were listening, you might have caught the part where I said, this wasn't my fault. I don't intentionally try to kill myself so you're guess is as good as mine. Are you going to pull that out, or just grope me for the rest of the night?"
Clint flicked a smile at him. "Aw, hell, Stark, I thought you were liking this."
"I'm just thinking of sparing JARVIS our lovers trist," Tony shifted uncomfortably to a less ideal position. He grimaced. "Hospital?"
"You've earned it, yeah," Clint replied. He looked around as if to find something to lay Stark down on. The couch was half way across the room. Clint indicated it with a flick of his head. "You make it over there?"
"Elevator's closer."
"The power went out, I'm not putting you in an elevator."
"The power will snap back on. I should know, I created the grid myself. I have two backup systems and the city itself we can connect to. I'd walk there myself but someone pointed out that I have something sharp and not-so-debonair sticking out of me." Tony reached down and yanked the arrow out of his reactor. He let it hit the floor and roll down the last few stairs. "Make that two things."
"I'll just call an ambulance and have them meet us up here," Clint said. He grabbed Tony's hands in his and directed them to either side of the glass. "Hold that. Don't move."
"I can make it easier than that," Tony said. Raising his voice, he called out into the room, "JARVIS?"
Clint waited.
Tony waited.
No one responded.
Furrowing his brows, Tony called a second time. At the third he looked over at Clint and said, "I don't get it."
"Could the system shut down have taken him out?" Clint asked.
"Yeah, but he always pops back in after his reboot. That takes maybe two minutes, at the absolute tops, because I installed all his processers to work off—"
Clint waved his hand in the air as if to swat away the technical terms Tony was about to rain down on him. "Yeah, yeah, I get it. JARVIS is out. I'll just get my cell phone. Hold that leg and don't move." Clint stood. He shook his head as he receded back to his room, dodging glass along the way. Already he could feel to slivers pressing against his left heel. Having two guys off their feet was a recipe for disaster that Clint didn't want to deal with.
He searched around his sparse bunk, yanked out a drawer, and found his cell phone there. He hit the front screen to fire it up and was greeted by nothing. He turned the phone over in his hands, hit the home screen again, and still it wouldn't light. He tried the power switch without success. EMP, he thought curiously. Slipping it into his pocket, he headed back out into the main room. This time, he took his gun and boots along with him.
"No luck," Clint said, tossing the phone into Stark's hands. He knelt down and assessed Tony's leg. It was still bleeding steadily.
"You forget to charge the battery?" Tony asked.
"You tell me, you're the one who had it."
Tony set it aside. His breath hitched as Clint's hands brushed the piece of glass. The leg jerked back out of reflex, causing Clint's hands to clamp down on it harder than he would have liked. A warning glare shot up at Tony.
"I said, stop moving. There are plenty of important things in this leg that might stop working if you keep shaking it around. Or you could die. That's also an option. Since we can't call out, and you aren't going anywhere, I'm going to go down to the security floor and get someone here to med flight you."
Tony opened his mouth producing an instant groan from Clint.
"What?! What now?!"
"You should probably know as an added security measure that during a crisis, this wing is a safe house. You can only go down, no one can come up." Tony said it with such smiling innocence that for a moment, Clint was inclined to think that Stark wasn't a sociopath. But given their interaction since the start of their acquaintance, Clint instantly disagreed with himself.
"So, you're telling me you are pretty much trapped up here and I have no choice except putting you in that elevator."
Tony smiled. "It was my suggestion to start with."
He sighed. There was little chance of getting out of this one. "Fine. Elevator. As long as it doesn't cut out and kill us all, I'm ok with it."
"I could calculate a percentage of that."
"I'd rather you didn't." Clint shifted back on the balls of his feet. "Can you walk, or should I drag you over there?"
"I think someone keeps telling me I shouldn't move."
Clint stood. He went over to the couch and grabbed a throw blanket down from the back of it. he dragged it over and kicked glass away from the staircase as he went. He laid it out, leaned down, and took Tony's ankles together in his hands. Tony was only three steps up from the bottom of the stairs and without missing a beat, Clint dragged him down all three. Tony scraped and clawed his way along, but it wasn't much use. By the time it started, it was over. Clint had him stretched out on the blanket.
"Was that necessary?!" Tony growled.
"In this case, yes. Maybe it was a little payback too. Hold on tight." Clint dragged the edges of the blanket toward the elevator door, pressed It with his elbow, and waited for the door to spring open. It didn't. He fired a glare at Stark.
"Manual override," Tony told him. "Hit the button three times. Wait, then press it once."
Clint could sense his eyeball twitching but despite that, he did as Stark instructed. A few moments later he was pleasantly surprised to find the door spring open just as Tony explained. Ignoring Stark's smugness, Clint dragged Tony inside, hit the ground floor, and let it slide closed. Tony lifted up on his hands, scooted back, and set himself upright against the elevator wall. He winced, adjusting his feet. A sharp pain shot across him, pulling him up short.
"It's going to hurt like a beast when they take that out," Clint told him.
"It hurts now," Tony shot back, "More after you decided to drag me across the floor like a dead fish."
"Better than a dead person," Clint replied.
The elevator shifted. The lights flickered again, cut out, and the lift came to a screeching halt. Clint's head turned to stare at the ceiling. He growled in the back of his throat, waiting for it to start back up again. This time, it didn't. Clint reached for the door and tried to grab the edges with his fingers. It remained stuck fast.
Clint shot a glare at Tony.
you will be happy to know that I've already finished writing this book, so I PROMISE no dead ends this time!