Clint hates Alabama with a goddamn passion.
He hates the heat, the humidity, the people, the permeating smell of deep-fried everything. He hates the Crimson fucking Tide. God, he even hates the state flag. And most of all he hates that this is the place he's stuck in, when all he wants is to take off and go far, far away and never look back. He doesn't want to be anywhere right now.
But here he is. Ala-fucking-bama.
The pyramid of overturned shot glasses is getting precariously tall in front of him, but he's nowhere near drunk enough to stop drinking, and if he goes back to the motel room they're shacked up in until they're flying back to D.C. in the morning, there's a more than good chance he'll put Kline's head through the drywall, and he doesn't think Coulson was lying when he told Clint a few weeks ago to rein it in or pack his stuff. The guy doesn't say things like that without meaning them.
Clint props his chin on his hand and watches the colorless liquid slosh up the sides of the shot glass as he twirls it around. The glass doesn't look too clean. Then again, nothing in this place looks clean. The floor is cracked and gritty with dirt, the tables are worn, pockmarked with cigarette burns and scratches that look like knife marks. The dingy bathroom had smelled like piss and rancid sewers, and Clint is pretty sure the guy in the single stall had been banging one of the aging hookers who have been trolling the bar all night long. Jesus fuck. Clint shakes his head. He has done some pretty questionable things in his days, but even he wouldn't go with someone who looks like she's been shooting meth for decades and seen more traffic that the I-95. He gives the glass another twirl, but manages to tilt it a little too much. Shit. He sits up abruptly as the liquor spills over the bar counter and down the front of his pants.
Clint glares at the glass, then flips it over and places it at the top of his skewed glass pyramid. It's getting late, almost closing time, but business doesn't show any signs of slowing down in the bar. The clientele is a varied assortment of losers, most of them firmly belonging to the underbelly of society. Wannabe 1-percenters, white trash, truckers looking for a blowjob and a ten-buck fuck, all of them mixing with a fine selection of the terminally stupid.
Something breaks behind him, and his eyes flick to the full-length mirror hiding behind the liquor bottles at the bar, but no one in the room seems to be gearing up to a fight, and the rowdy laughter tells him someone probably passed out and fell over over. He turns his attention back to his glass tower and carefully disassembles it, lines the glasses up in a circle on the counter before starting to re-stack them in a different configuration. He's almost done when he manages to knock it over and has to start again.
He usually drinks with Natasha, but she left a few hours ago. She had been packing up when he got back from his food run. Another job. Europe. Solo. Dont do anything stupid, had been her parting words. Clint had stood in the small room with the white Styrofoam containers in hand and watched the door close behind her. He wonders if the hint of relief in her eyes had been born from the prospect of getting out of this place, or if it had been relief over not having to deal with him in this mood. It's probably both.
He knows Natasha doesn't process things like he does, after almost a year he's learned that much about his partner, and he doesn't really want her to change, not really, but every now and again he wishes she was someone who understood and shared nights like these with him, nights when the memory of failure presses down on him, when it's easier to stop breathing than to stop second-guessing every move he did during the op. It's not that he wants to talk about it, he doesn't, not with Natasha, not with Coulson, not with the appointed shrinks they sometimes send him to, it's just that… every now and again he would like someone to suffer together with. Misery loves company and all that. He's a very selfish man.
He knows she's not uncaring as such, not indifferent to the kind of collateral damage they try their best to avoid, but that inevitably follows in their footsteps, she's just better at compartmentalizing than he is. She wraps it up faster and more securely than he can. That doesn't mean she doesn't have ghosts, but where he collects new ones as months and years pass by, hers are static and well-known, old and pale with age. Coulson has his fair share of ghosts, no doubt, because a person is bound to collect some baggage on the field, and Clint knows that most rumors about Coulson's time as an operative carries at least a kernel of truth. He might look like an accountant in an expensive suit, but there is steel underneath, hardened over the years as an Army Ranger and an operative for Shield. But Coulson isn't like any of the men Clint has known who call themselves leaders. What Clint at first had mistaken for meekness is anything but, and what had seemed like mediocrity in thought and ambition had proven to hide a strategic mind so sharp it makes Clint want to swoon sometimes. There's patience there, too. Not for sloppiness and stupidity, but for mistakes and for learning curves, and if Coulson had been here, he would probably have cut Clint off long ago, he would have taken him to the motel and told Klein to get another room. He would have stayed to make sure Clint got into bed, and probably placed the waste basket on the floor next to the bed along with a glass of water on the bed table.
Clint gives himself a mental cuff over the head. No. Coulson wouldn't do that. It's what Clint wishes Coulson would do for him. It's Coulson's own fault for putting those kinds of ideas in Clint's head, for taking care of him that time in Berlin when he'd been hellbent on drinking himself into unconsciousness. Clint knows better than to expect it to happen again. It was a one-time thing. The guy is his handler, not his mother, not his friend. His handler. He manages to knock over his glass tower again, and one of the shot glasses rolls off the counter. It disappears behind the bar and Clint leans over the bar as far as he can, but can't see it among the bottles and ice and other glasses back there. He catches the bartender's eye and gestures for another one.
The bartender comes over. "I think you've had enough," he tells Clint and starts collecting the empty glasses.
"I've had nowhere near enough."
"Go home. Get some sleep. Whatever it is will look a lot brighter in the morning."
No it won't.
"Listen," the bartender says and leans against the counter. "I know things can—"
"You don't know shit," Clint snarls, because he's suddenly angry at this man who has never seen the side of someone's head blown away, never seen a hand sticking out from under tons of jagged rubble, never seen the wedding ring on her finger painted red with blood. Never known that she had been leading a little boy by the hand.
The bartender straightens up, but he doesn't look all that offended. "Want me to call a cab for you?"
No. Clint wants him to fuck off and tells him as much. He tries to remember how many shots he's had, then gives up and tosses the guy all the cash he has in his wallet. It's probably close to sixty bucks, but fuck it, he's out of here, he'll go find some other place with a less conscientious do-gooder behind the bar. He stumbles over the barstool as he gets to his feet, and has to grab the bar counter to keep from falling. Then someone bumps into him and the bar counter isn't enough. He ends up on his hands and knees on the floor just as someone leans away from the bar counter and throws up right in front of him. It splatters on his hands and up his arms, and god, warm and gross, and Clint's head spins too much to get to his feet.
The guy laughs drunkenly at the mess he made, laughs at Clint, and his asshole friends join in. Clint makes it to his knees, then his feet. He gets a very intentional shoulder shove as he makes his way past them, and he sees the desire for a fight in their eyes as he knocks into one of them.
Clint hates Alabama.