We're trying to get back into writing while my hand is someway ok lads. Hopefully if this little story brings back my muse then I can finish everything else I have to finish!
Had this in Natasha's view for the longest time in my story folder, but need to write and not just edit so here we are.
I disclaim all.
Coffee could surely be lived off, right? Maybe it has enough nutritional value, he hoped it did at least. The past couple of months it has basically been his breakfast with maybe a bit of toast if he could manage it.
Clint isn't dead just yet, so he'll keep going this way. The sun was just peeking through the curtains of the small apartment he was currently in, casting a soft glow across the room as he watched the world beneath the block pass by.
Even for just after 6am, Chicago was coming to life nicely. Cars and pedestrians passed by without another thought his way, yet he found himself wondering just where they were all going. Which taxi's held the important business men going to make the world a better place, and which held the cleaners that made the business man's world a better place? Had the taxi drivers been to sleep yet? It was early, and he was bone tired, he wondered if they felt the same way.
A stirring in the other room - the bedroom he had come out of in search of coffee ten minutes ago - had him looking that direction.
Annie? Angie? It was one of those names. It gets difficult to hear as the night goes on in bars. After his set she was over in an instant, begging for one more tune for her and her girlfriends to dance along to.
He got the request every night, and every night he politely declined. His ears would be ringing - aids complaining and begging to be taken out. He would have clean up and lock up to do, and really another song would just keep going on and on until he was shut down. So when he was done, he was done.
Didn't mean him saying no stopped her from getting a little handsy though. Didn't mean he didn't stop her getting that little handsy. Definitely didn't mean it stopped them climbing into a cab and finding their way into her room just over an hour ago.
It had been a while since he had any kind of attention like that. Humans have needs, and Annie-Angie could satisfy those for the night. But the girl was drunk. He couldn't and wouldn't do that. So he put her to bed, he made sure she didn't throw up, and caught a half hour of sleep himself.
He could never say no to red heads, but when that red head was drunk then that was a different story.
She didn't surface though. Still fast asleep, how he left her.
Clint downed the last of the coffee and lit up a cigarette as he made his way back into the bedroom. The taste of the whiskey the women bought him was still fresh in his mouth. He never usually drank, but it's rude to refuse.
He didn't find it rude to leave though. He needed to get out of here.
Though Clint doubted she'd remember, Annie-Angie did make him make some promises he knew he'd never be able to keep. Promises of staying until she woke, of going for breakfast, of spending the day with her and maybe making this a regular thing. Promises of playing for her, of staying with her, of being more than just a nameless spotlight mike stand in the corner of a bar every weekend.
He'd never be able for that. So he dressed. He found his shirt and jeans that were thrown across the room, slipped into his shoes, got his hoodie as he passed through the small living space, and vanished from this woman's life with one last drag of his cigarette.
It wasn't glamorous, wasn't the life he would have chosen he was sure, but it was his life.
His life now, anyway.
Any attempt at a hit on an Avengers life as careless and blatant as the ones on Clint's had to be taken seriously. It had to look successful, had to look like whoever it was that undertook the hit completed it. There was an explosion, there was a body found burned beyond recognition. Dental records showed it was one Clinton Francis Barton. There was a funeral, there was mourning, then there was nothing. The world went on spinning and Clint went on with his new life with some added scars and some added loneliness.
They set him up nicely, as SHIELD would. Clint had to be out of the way, but when he refused out right to leave America they settled on Chicago. They gave him a bar to run, they gave him the apartment above the bar, they gave him a substantial cheque each month for living (doesn't include buying shots for everyone or buying pizza each evening, Barton!), then told him not to contact unless there's an emergency.
He didn't know what constituted an emergency. To Clint missing his friends was an emergency, feeling so lonely that it crushed his soul was an emergency, watching on the tv to see what the lives of the people closest to him were like instead of being able to speak to them was an emergency.
Seeing her face and knowing for the foreseeable future he wouldn't be able to see it in person was an emergency.
But he couldn't contact, and it killed him.
A block from his apartment his stomach rumbled. The cool winter air drifted by his hunched figure, the scent from a bakery hitting his nose and going straight to his stomach. It shocked Clint from his thoughts before they went deeper.
He reached in his jeans and pulled out the little pile. Last night was a good night, some crumpled up ones and even some tens in between. Weekends were always good for him. Drunk people tipped happy, and the days he does a music set are the best. He sometimes felt like a stripper the way money would just appear by him.
Means he might be able to have one of those pastries he's smelling without breaking his budget for the week.
It wasn't glamorous, wasn't the life he would have chosen. It wasn't the life he had chosen. The hurt that filled him when he thought of that life was like nothing he's ever felt before.
So he put it behind him for now, put the money back in his pocket, put a smile on his face for the people who have to work this early in the morning, and went to get something nice for breakfast.
Clint put his old life behind him once more to get through another day in his new life.