Clint doesn't know what to think after Meadville. Agent Sellars, Clint's handler, had called Clint into his office and told Clint that Agent Marker was dead. He'd been found in an alley, his heart ripped out by a serial killer he'd been tracking. Marker had made victim number four, and all the bodies showed signs of what appeared to be animal activity; claw marks that ripped skin open and a series of nasty bites.
They'd assumed the killer was trying to throw off law enforcement with fake claws and teeth, but apparently that had been real. Clint's still trying to wrap his mind around the idea of werewolves, and that's not even getting started on all the other creatures Dean had told him about in the motel. Clint knows what to do with mutants and science experiments gone wrong, but the supernatural? That's something else entirely, and Clint's not sure he's comfortable with it.
He hasn't told Sellars about the werewolf, and he decided it was best not to mention that in the field report either. He mentions the claws and the fangs, because everyone else saw them, but he doesn't offer up any explanations. Someone else can try and make sense of the pieces. Besides, that had been the first time Clint had encountered the supernatural on the job or in life. He doubts he'll see them again
Just to be safe, he keeps Dean's phone number and the notes Dean had written down about supernatural creatures. Clint's been slowly reading through them, emphasis on slowly. Reading has always been hard for him, and usually Sellars helps Clint out, but Clint's afraid he'll get laughed out of SHIELD for believing in werewolves and ghosts.
Two months after Meadville, Clint's on a routine job, getting intel for SHIELD, and he's sneaking through a law office late at night when the lights begin to flicker. He brushes away the curl of fear in his stomach, and Dean's voice in his ear, the presence of supernatural is often heralded by electronic problems—radio static, cell phone cutting out, lights flickering. The most common thing you'll encounter is ghosts. I deal with those things all the time. Some people just don't know when to lie down and rest.
Clint takes a deep breath and tells himself that he's not about to be ambushed by a ghost. He still isn't sure he believes in ghosts. Wouldn't he have seen one before in his life if they were real? Only, he's been doing some research. And by that he means some minor hacking into the FBI database. He poked around the X-Files, and there have definitely been sightings of creatures that resemble the ones Dean's told him about which means Clint's in denial, and he knows better than to think something will go away just because he doesn't want to believe in it.
Clint hears the whisper of wind through paper, and he spins around to see a little boy standing in front of him. Clint takes another deep breath, but it doesn't help to calm down the frantic stuttering if his heart. The boy has a head wound that almost splits his skull, and Clint knows that the boy couldn't have that would and still be living which means this is definitely a ghost. Or at least something creepy crawly.
Damn it, Clint thinks as he fumbles for his phone. After he gets out of this, he's going to put Dean on speed dial.
"Uh hello?" Dean asks, his voice deep, his breathing heavy.
"Did I just interrupt you having sex?" Clint asks forgetting about the ghost for a moment.
"Yes so this better be important."
Clint wants to know why Dean would have his phone on him, let alone answer it while in the middle of sex, but he has bigger problems than that right now. "There's a ghost."
Clint can hear the rustle of sheets and a few murmured words before Dean answers. "You remember what to do with a ghost?"
"Would I be calling you if I did?" Clint's proud of himself for keeping his voice almost level. He is staring down a ghost, and instead of covering his ears and pretending that it doesn't exist, he's trying to deal with it. He can't believe his op is about to be ruined by a ghost. That's going to wreck his success percentages.
"Why the hell haven't you memorized the notes I gave you? Or at least carry them around?"
"Can we do this later?" Clint shouts. Well, there goes his control, but in his defense the little boy's lips have split into a horrifying smile. "I'd rather not die right now."
"You're going to need to find the bones of the ghost and salt and burn them. In the meantime, iron will dissipate the ghost. Firing salt rounds will do the same. Please tell me you have some iron on you."
"Yeah, because that's the kind of thing I carry around in my back pocket," Clint says, backing up from the little kid that's oozing blood and has now started to approach him.
Clint looks around, but the office is full of law books and fancy fountain pens, nothing that'll fight off a ghost. There is, however, a window, and Clint knows from personal experience that he can survive a two story jump.
"Ghosts are tied to places, right?" Clint asks, keeping his eyes on the ghost as he backs up towards the window. "If I leave the building, he won't follow?"
"That's the usual case. Why?" There's a pause. "You're not about to do something stupid, are you?"
"Hold that thought," Clint says and runs at the window. He really hopes he can outrun a ghost.
Turns out, he can. He crashes through the window and lands on shards of glass None of them pierce his uniform or the thick gloves he's wearing to hide his fingerprints, but hitting the cement sidewalk still hurt plenty.
"Ow, damn it."
"You jumped out a window didn't you?" Dean asks.
Clint has no idea how his phone survived that. He's going to have to thank Stark Industries and that's something he really hates doing. Maybe he'll thank the nice PA and not Tony Stark himself.
"Desperate times," Clint says. "I think this just blew my op. Maybe I'll leave the guys a ghost as good riddance." Clint can almost feel the waves of disapproval coming through the phone.
"You're going to gank it," Dean says. "Ghosts are evil. You get rid of them when you see them. It doesn't matter who they're targeting."
"Right, right," Clint says. "So help me through this. Where do I start? Wait, let me call a clean-up crew in. I can't leave any trace of myself behind, and I think I'm good, but I don't want to take any risks. Then we'll figure this out."
"We?" Dean asks. "I'm in bed with a hot chick!"
"And she's okay with you having a late night chat with a dude? Some chick."
"Okay, so she left. Let's talk you through this, but first you're going to tell me why the hell you didn't memorize that shit. You didn't believe me before? Was seeing a werewolf not enough proof for you?"
"Calm yourself," Clint snaps. "I'm working my way through your notes. Your handwriting sucks." That's partially true at least. Clint is working through Dean's notes, but he hasn't gotten to the 'g's yet, because he doesn't have a lot of down time, and he has a tough time reading, not that he's going to tell Dean that.
"I thought you were a government agent. Shouldn't you have a photographic memory or something?"
Clint's running away from what should've been a successful op but is now going to be a crime scene and what is also apparently the home to a ghost. He's angry and being yelled at by some stupid idiot who hunts monsters for a living. It's probably why he says something he'd never admit under normal circumstances.
"I don't have a photographic memory, I have a learning disability!"
There's silence as Dean contemplates what Clint's just said, and Clint wishes he had better anger management.
"Oh. Okay. So where was this building and what does this ghost look like? It's time to do some research. Find a computer, buddy, we're hitting the internet."
Two weeks after the ghost incident, Clint is still on desk duty for almost blowing the mission, and he's making paper airplanes out of requisition forms when he gets a text from Dean.
Dean: wat's ur email?
Clint: I don't want your porn.
Dean: not porn, tho good idea.
Dean: srsly. I got something for u.
Clint: Please try to use English. I have enough trouble reading texts as it is.
Dean: Sorry. Email?
Clint:
Dean: Seriously?
Clint: Shut up. I'm not giving you my work email
Dean: Whatever, dude
A few minutes later, Clint gets several emails from Dean, all with attachments. If this is porn or a virus, Clint will use all the power at SHIELD's disposal to track Dean down and beat him up.
He opens the first email. All it says is 'School was hard for me. –Dean'. Clint looks to see the attachment. It's labeled 'John's Journal Part 1'. Clint opens it, and Dean's voice starts coming through the speakers. He's narrating the journal. His voice is shaky and a little quiet at first, and he clears his throat too much, but as he keeps reading he gets surer of himself.
Clint smiles and downloads the files so he can load them onto his iPod. He has a lot of learning to do.
Clint: Thanks for these. It means a lot.
Dean: Stop being a sap.
Clint: Whatever, dude
Dean taps his fingers on the steering wheel as he heads toward Stanford. He knows this is a bad idea. He knows that Sammy wants nothing to do with this life, and as much as he wants his family to be together, he wants Sammy to be happy even more, because that's always what's been important. Ever since Dean can remember, it's been 'make sure Sammy stays safe,' and the best way to keep Sammy safe is to keep him away from hunting.
Dean's tried to give Sammy the space he's wants, but Dean needs him now. A few days of his time isn't too much to ask. Can't be too much to ask. Maybe it is. Dean eases up on the gas and the odometer needle drops to 75. He pulls out his cell phone and goes to speed dial #3.
The phone rings and rings, but Clint doesn't pick up. He must be on a mission, Dean thinks. Dean's not sure what he was going to say anyway if Clint picked up. Was he really going to ask Clint for advice on how to handle his own brother? That's embarrassing.
Dean rolls his shoulders and presses down on the gas again. He wants to make it to Stanford at a decent time. Sam will spare a few days if it means helping their father. Dean will make sure of that.
Clint doesn't call back until the hunt is over. Dean is sitting on the edge of his motel bed, staring at his hands as Sammy—Sam, now—tosses and turns caught up in what is probably a nightmare about Jessica when his phone rings.
He flips it open before the noise can wake up Sam.
"Hello?" he whispers.
"Let me guess," Clint says, "another woman?"
Dean can't help his relief at hearing Clint's voice. There aren't many people he talks to on a regular basis, because hunting isn't exactly a social job and the occasional 'I'm not dead, son, now go hunt this thing' phone calls don't count as human interaction, and Dean's found himself missing the sound of another person's voice. Even more than that, he's missed the sound of someone who somewhat knows him and at least pretends to care.
When Dean gets really low, he'll pick up a girl at a bar, but if he's being truthful with himself—something he tries to avoid—he'd take a conversation with someone who knows him over a roll in the sack with someone he's just met. It's a relief to get to be himself, Dean the Hunter instead of Dean the Talent Scout or whatever he's pretending to be that night.
"Brother, actually. He's sleeping. Don't want to wake him up."
"Brother?" Clint asks, surprised. "I thought you two weren't on speaking terms."
"We aren't. Weren't? Probably never will be? It's been a long weekend."
"No kidding," Clint says, blowing out a heavy sigh. "You found your brother though, that has to be good, right?"
"If by found him you mean I got his girlfriend killed and I got him sucked back into the world he's been trying to escape for the past four years then yes, I found him."
Dean flops back down on his bed and drags a tired hand down his face. When he'd found out dad was missing, he hadn't hesitated before going to find Sam. Families fight, but they're also there when you need them, and Sam had actually stepped up to the plate. And then Jessica died, and Dean knows Sam feels guilty about it. Hell, Dean feels guilty about it. And to make it all worse, they didn't even find John.
"That sounds like a summary," Clint says, no judgment or accusation in his voice. "I want the play by play."
Dean runs a hand through his hair and tells Clint about sneaking into Sam's apartment and startling Sam and his girlfriend and the woman in white and breaking out of the police station with only a paperclip (Clint is suitably impressed).
"We didn't find my—we didn't find John," Dean says, "which had been the whole point of this little exercise, but Sam insisted we go back to Stanford, because he had a law school interview. We had a fight about it, I forgot how badly the two of us could fight, and then we got there, and that's when it happened."
Dean takes a deep breath and shuts his eyes. "She was on the ceiling. On fire. Just like our mom. Jessica started burning, and Sam started screaming, and I grabbed him and had to drag him out of the house, just like when we were little, only he was a lot easier to carry as a sixth month old baby. He fought me this time. He thought he could save her or maybe he just wanted to die with her, and I had to pull him out of there."
Dean tries to shake off the smell of burning flesh and sulfur, the sight of a blond woman pinned to the ceiling as she died. He tries to shake off the memories, both recent and long past, and he can't.
"He shouldn't have had to see that," Dean says, his voice close to breaking. "That was the one thing I've always been grateful for about my mom's death. Sammy never had to see it. And now he knows. He knows exactly what happened, and I'm going to find the son of a bitch responsible for this, and I'm going to kill him."
Dean's free hand is curled into a fist, and his knuckles press painfully into his thigh. "Do you want to know the worst part of all of this? This whole trip, I'd thought about how great it was to be hunting with Sam again, how much I missed it, what I'd give up to have him hunting with me again. And now he is. We're hunting together, and I didn't have to give anything up. He did. His girlfriend, law school, a chance at a normal life. He's miserable. It's only been a couple hours, and he's miserable. I wish I could unwish this, you know?"
"You didn't make this happen," Clint says. "If wishes actually did come true, your life would look a lot different right now."
"No kidding. I'm sorry. I can't believe I've been droning on about this when you had a mission. Blow any shit up?"
"Oh, it was awesome," Clint says, understanding that Dean wants him to switch topics. "Homemade bombs. We had to improvise."
"Those are always the best. I personally am a big fan of tossing flaming bottles of alcohol."
"I'm surprised you would waste the alcohol."
"The explosions are totally worth it." Dean smiles and lets himself get pulled into a conversation about explosives.
"Phone, Sam," Dean wheezes holding out a hand.
Dean hates hospitals. He hates the way they smell like sterilization and the expectation of death. He hates how the walls are white and way too bright. He hates the stupid gowns that make him feel like a priss. Why does there have to be little flowers on his gown? And why does it have to be a gown?
He tries to ignore the pain in his chest and the tingling in his arms that suggest that the doctors are telling the truth. Supposedly, he's dying. He has a time stamp. A few weeks. He wonders what kind of trouble he can get into in a few weeks.
"You're not worried about this?" Sam asks. "You're dying."
"Which is why I want my phone," Dean says, snatching it from his brother. "Time to call everyone I care about. Tell them I love them the whole nine yards."
"You're calling dad?" Sam asks.
Dean snorts. "Don't be ridiculous." He flips his phone up.
Dean: Turns out I'm dying. Whoops.
Clint: That's not funny.
Dean: Got myself electrocuted. Doc says my heart's going to give out.
Clint: You decided to text me this?
Dean: I didn't realize there was a protocol on this sort of thing.
Clint: I'm calling
Dean: Don't you dare. I have enough emotional whining from my brother. I don't need it from you.
Clint: I wasn't going to whine.
Clint: And I wasn't going to be emotional.
Dean: That wasn't a proper sentence. You're not supposed to start them with conjunctions.
Clint: Helluva time to care about sentence structure.
Dean: Better late than never? I wonder how many times I'll get to use that phrase in the next few days.
Clint: I'm betting that your brother kills you before your heart gives out.
Dean: I'll take that bet, because if I lose I won't be alive for you to collect.
Clint: I have a new handler. His name is Phil Coulson. He's kind of a douche bag.
Dean: What'd he do? Tell you to put sleeves on your uniform?
Clint: Chicks dig the vest. And no. He's a stickler for paperwork. I hate paperwork.
Dean: Wah, wah, your life. Oh, damn it.
Clint: What?
Dean: Sam's dragging me on some mystical trip. Thinks he's going to get me out of dying. He's an idiot.
Clint: He's your brother
Dean: If this involves faith healers then he won't be
Dean: It involves faith healers. I'm excommunicating him
Clint: Wrong verb. You're looking for disowning.
Dean: Whatever
Dean stares at his phone for a long time. He knows that he should pick it up and dial, because he might be enough of a dick to tell someone he's dying via text message, but he probably shouldn't tell them surprise I'm alive via text message.
He doesn't want to make this call. He likes talking to Clint. The guy knows his way around a gun and knows fun facts about fighting. Hell, Dean wouldn't mind hunting with the guy sometime, but Dean also ends up talking to him more than he should. They've only been talking for a couple months, and Dean's already spilled about the demon that killed his mother and Jessica, about how John's a shitty father, and how Sam's a dumb ass little brother.
He tells Clint things so personal that there's no one outside of family who knows them. It makes Dean uncomfortable, and he's scared at what he might say if Clint gets him talking. Because Clint listens. He stays quiet on the other end of the line and lets Dean talk. He doesn't try to start any fights or tell him how to think. He just waits and Dean always fills the silence.
Dean goes to #3 in his speed dial and makes the call. At least this talking thing isn't one-sided. Dean's learned a few tricks, and he's managed to tease out some of Clint's secrets. Clint's parents are dead so he was raised in the circus. He had a great mentor until it turned out he was scamming the circus. Apparently he'd dragged Clint into it for a spell before Clint accidently shot his brother and when Clint quit, his brother joined the mentor out of spite. Or maybe for the hell of it. Either way, Clint's now working for the government and tracking down his older brother and his father figure.
Families. What a bunch of shit.
"Hello?"
Clint sounds worried, and Dean doesn't know why that makes him smile. Maybe he's a sadistic son of a bitch. Or maybe, he likes the idea that someone is finally worried about him for once.
"Hey," Dean says. "So, I'm alive."
"I figured that when you called. That faith healer work out then?"
"Not a faith healer, but it worked." Dean sinks down into the motel chair. The cushion is worn through, and he's sitting on unforgiving wood. They need to start staying at places that aren't complete dives.
"You don't seem as thrilled about being alive as I expected you to be."
This is the moment, Dean thinks. He can put on a smile and blow past the moment or he can say something. He knows Sam wants him to talk about it. Hell, Sam wants to talk about everything. He wants to have deep soul baring conversations that end in hugs and tears and fuck that. Dean is Sam's older brother. That means no weakness. He has to be tough for him. But for Clint? Some guy he met on a hunt a couple months back? That's different.
"Turns out the wife of the healer had a reaper on call."
"Like a grim reaper?"
"Very grim. She used some dark mojo to pick out people who deserved to die and sacrificed them so other people could live. Some guy has a busted heart and when it gets fixed turns out that means some poor guy has to drop dead of a heart attack."
Clint is silent.
Dean presses the heel of his palm into his eyes. "Someone had to die to save me."
"You didn't know it was going to happen like that," Clint says.
"Doesn't matter." Dean doesn't understand why Clint doesn't get it. Why Sam doesn't get it. Why no one but him seems to get it. "I'm supposed to be saving these people, and instead I'm getting them killed."
"You can't save everyone," Clint says.
If Sam had even dared to think something like that, Dean would've strangled him, but it's different coming from Clint, because Clint isn't trying to pacify him. Clint's speaking from experience. He knows what it's like to be out in the field, fighting for the right side, and losing men, because that's what happens. Not everyone can be saved, some people get caught in the crossfire, and Dean hates it. He hates that what he does will never be enough. He hates that people will die on his watch. And he hates even more that someone had to die to save him.
"I should be able to."
"I led a rescue team into the US Embassy in Libya this past week," Clint says.
"Isn't this top secret information?"
"This phone's not tapped, and you're feeling guilty that one person died to save your life. I don't think you're going to compromise your country by selling secrets to terrorists."
Dean smiles because that's Clint speak for 'I trust you'. He leans back in the chair, shifting until he's at least somewhat comfortable and listens to Clint's daring rescue and how much he hates the team they're having him work with.
While Dean's making private phone calls in the bathroom, Sam makes one of his own. He steps outside in case Dean comes out from whoever he's being all secretive about—probably phone sex—and walks around the corner of the motel.
His phone call goes straight to voicemail, not that he'd expected any less. If John hadn't shown up when Dean was dying, Sam doesn't know why he'd bother picking his phone up now.
The phone beeps and Sam leaves his message. "Thanks for the help, you son of a bitch. He's alive but don't come say hi. We don't want to see you."
Clint rubs at his arm. He'd overdone it at the archery range the other day, and now he's sore. He hates being sore. It makes him feel weak. He'd gotten the word from Coulson that they had a lead on Trick Shot, that they were closing in on him. Clint knows he's going to be called in when they get close. There's no one with the accuracy that Clint has. He can make impossible shots, and he knows that if he lets the string go, he'll hit Trick. He's just not sure if he'll pull the string back.
He needs to stop this line of thought. This is the line of thought that got him a sore arm in the first place. He'd gone down to the archery range to prove to himself that he could hit this shot, that he could pull the string back even when his arm was sore and aching, and he wanted to do nothing but shower and stuff his face and go to sleep.
His phone is ringing before he even realizes he'd dialed.
"Yo," Dean says.
"Talk to me."
Dean recognizes that tone. It's the serious shit is happening in my life, and I don't know how to deal with it tone.
"I own a 1967 Chevy Impala and man is she gorgeous. The longest relationship I've ever had. She's sleek and full of curves and she responds to my every touch."
"Car porn," Clint says. "Classy."
Dean grins. "I'm a classy guy, what can I say?"
Clint listens to Dean talk about his car for over twenty minutes, prattling on about where he's taken her, her worst accidents, all the work he's done on her. Clint catalogues all the details, but mostly he lets the words wash over him. Dean's voice is a little rough but there's a softness to it now that he's talking about his car. It's the same softness that slips in when he's recalling a childhood memory or wishing Sam could have his old life back. It's a rare glimpse of the guy hiding behind the cursing and the tough act and Clint doesn't know what he'd done to deserve this kind of trust but he's glad for it.
Clint doesn't have very many friends. The circus kept him moving around too much to put down roots, and the people he had considered friends, Barney and Trick Shot had ended up betraying him and really they were more of family than friends.
After the circus, Clint moved around, because he wasn't good at forming attachments—still isn't—and he never really settled until he joined SHIELD, and that's only a technicality. He has an apartment and a steady job, but this job takes him all over the place. He'll spend a night there, a couple weeks here, get lost in a desert somewhere, and it makes his apartment just another place where sometimes he rests his head.
He doesn't mind not having a permanent home or a couple buddies that he can call up if something happens. He has himself, and more and more lately, he has Dean. They're not the kind of friends that show up uninvited to shoot the breeze with each other over a couple beers. They're the kind that call each other up to say 'hey my life sucks' or 'hey wanna hear what I blew up today' and that works for Clint.
"Hawkeye!" someone shouts—Michaels, Clint thinks—and Clint hopes Dean didn't hear that.
There's a moment of silence. "Hawkeye?" Dean asks and Clint can hear his smirk through the phone. "Please tell me they're talking to you."
"This isn't funny," Clint says even though it won't do any good.
"Are you kidding?" Dean laughs. "It's freakin' hilarious. You have a code name. I knew you were government, but still. Please tell me you sleep in a nest. Eat raw meat? Fly?"
"I hate you," Clint says and hangs up.
Dean: I hate amateurs
Clint: I'm guessing this has a point. Ever want to get around to it?
Dean: You're snippy. No one's fondled your bow lately?
Clint: Are you ever going to stop with the lame jokes? I've heard them all before
Dean: You want to pierce me with your arrowhead?
Dean: Can I stroke your shaft?
Dean: Want to pierce me with a blunt one?
Clint: Blunt tips are for small game only. Have something you need to tell me?
Dean: You're a dick. Our hunt is getting screwed up by freakin' amateurs. I hate amateurs
Clint: What are you whining about?
Dean: These guys run a blog about the supernatural. Fancy themselves ghost hunters. They're idiots
Clint: Maybe they just need some guidance from a big bad hunter like you
Dean: You're a dick
Clint: You need better insults. Your vocabulary is lacking
Dean: Go screw yourself
Dean snaps his phone shut and looks over at Sam. "Any ideas on how to kill a ghost that isn't actually a ghost?"
Sam frowns and continues scrolling through a webpage. "Obviously it's not a ghost."
"Any ideas, genius?"
Sam grins. "Of course. I'm looking into tulpas right now."
Dean: Damn amateurs
Clint: I'll call you as soon as I'm out of this meeting. Don't get yourself killed in the meantime
Dean: Texting during a meeting. Look at you, you rebel. I'm getting all hot and bothered over here
Clint: You're unbelievable
Dean: I just torched a house. I'm allowed to be hot. And I almost got killed because of those stupid kids. Hence bothered. Aw, did you think I was talking about you?
Clint: Meeting
Dean smirks as he climbs into the Impala. It's so easy getting under Clint's skin.
