I deleted this chapter, rewrote it, and I'm still not happy with it. But it's probably better than another week with no update. Hope you still enjoy it!
2: The Vulnerable Menswear Incident
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"This is kind of fun." Pepper Potts giggled, as she shifted to find a more comfortable spot leaning against the headboard of Clint Barton's bed.
Natasha gave a more conservative smile in return, and took a sip of the fruity cocktail Pepper had fixed for her. "I know. We should make a sport of Clint-watching more often."
The man in question was standing in an awkward position with his arms stretched out to the sides and various pins and threads sticking out of his suit jacket at different angles. A specialized tailor was busy adjusting the darts at the waistline of his pants.
Clint groaned, and tried to look over his shoulder at the two women perched on his bed. The result was a sharp pain in the butt.
"Ouch!"
The SHIELD-provided tailor crouching behind the archer looked up with a scowl. "If you'd stop moving it wouldn't hurt so much."
"Really, моя хищная птица? I've seen you take a bullet with more grace," Natasha drawled.
Clint made a noise in the back of his throat that sounded suspiciously like a whine. "I signed up for bullets. I did not sign up to play bait."
"You shouldn't take it personally," his partner responded, with very little attempt at sounding sincere. She leaned a little to the side, to admire a different angle. "They asked Borja and Spaa before you."
"Borja's from Accounting, and Rupert Spaa is the SHIELD Child-care Liason. Both of them are paid to look non-threatening!"
Pepper interrupted him. "I've known some very threatening accountants."
"Not my point, Ma'am."
"Pepper," she insisted.
"Pepper. My point is, I hate undercover work, and I'll complain about it if I want to."
Natasha just shrugged. Complaining about annoyances like paper-cuts and bad weather was one of Clint's favourite past-times. The healthier and happier he was, the more he complained.
"Alright. The adjustments are done." Snipping off an extra thread, the tailor placed two hands on Clint's shoulders and forced him to turn like a music box dancer. "As you can see, the grey makes a more subtle statement than a black suit. It's a softer colour and the lines aren't as sharp and dominant."
Pepper and Natasha both nodded and smiled.
"The dress pants and waist of the jacket are meant to showcase his slim hips and draw the eye down the pant leg, to the shoes. We chose a European style shoe with cap toed wingtips. It emphasises the length instead of the width of the foot. I minimized bulk around the pockets and the seams of the suit, so the result is a very narrow look."
"He's so cute!" Pepper squealed, perhaps having drunk a few too many cocktails already.
Clint flushed a bright red, and stared at the ceiling while the tailor made him do another turn.
"Thankfully Mr. Barton does not possess extremely broad shoulders, so I kept the straight lines in the shoulders of the suit, and tailored the arms as tight as possible to hide his musculature without restricting movement."
Natasha gave the jacket an appreciative stare while the tailor tugged at the sleeves. "You may note that the sleeves are a couple inches longer than necessary. This is a little trick to suggest to the observer that the suit is too big. It creates an unconscious aura of vulnerability in the wearer, while the rest of the suit fits perfectly.
"To finish off the look we have a less traditional skinny tie. It moves the eye away from his shoulders and down his chest to the slender cut of the suit. Mr. Barton is wearing a very subtle brown eyeliner. As you can see...," he pointed out the effect to the women, "His eyes are already showcased very nicely, but the liner makes them appear even larger than usual. Humans naturally associate large eyes with children, the sick, and the helpless."
"What about his hair?" Pepper asked.
The tailor stepped back to observe his creation. "Just a small amount of gel, and a few natural highlights. It's supposed to look styled, but slightly ruffled and unattended. Perhaps someone has already run their hands through it a few times."
Natasha licked her lips.
"I feel like a Ken doll." Clint complained.
There was a knock on the door, and Steve Rogers could be heard on the other side. "Wheels up in ten, Clint. Jarvis is doing a com check."
The archer reached up to switch his hearing aids over to sync with the team's ear pieces.
It was a fairly simple mission, this time. Clint had to attend a fund-raising gala and somehow lure a group of international kidnappers into taking home a lethal field agent, instead of their usual victims of choice, intelligence analysts, PAs or computer technicians. So far these kidnappers had been targeting the government's smallest, most defenseless looking employees who still had access to classified information.
Clint wasn't particularly enamoured with the mission, or really any type of situations that involved crowds, ground level, and interacting with other human beings, but so far this group had only kidnapped men, so Natasha wasn't option, and when it came to other field agents that Fury trusted to go into unknown situations without backup, Clint was the only one who came close to looking like potential kidnapping fodder.
"Ready to go?" Natasha smirked, sliding off the bed and strutting over to her partner. She reached out to brush a speck of dust off his shoulder.
"There are going to be hundreds of people there."
"Yes there are," she nodded.
"I hate people."
"Deal with it."
Clint turned plaintive eyes to the other woman in the room.
Pepper looked suitably affected, but didn't respond the way he wanted her to.
"You do look very kidnapable." She gestured earnestly with one hand, spilling some of her drink on his bedsheets. "I would definitely stuff you in my purse and bring you home if I could."
Clint sighed. "Thank you, ma'am."
"Pepper."
"Pepper," he replied. "I guess I'll just take myself off to be victimised, then."
Natasha had the nerve to wave as he left the room. "Have a good time!"
Clint timed his entrance perfectly. He swept into the gala during a lull in the music, pausing in the entranceway at the top of the stairs with Kashish from SHIELD's Aviation Division on his arm. He owed her for an incident involving a quinjet and a Moroccan camel, and she stood an inch and a half taller than him in heels.
Almost immediately afterwards, Thor and Steve Rogers loomed up behind him, a wall of solid black tux. Steve was sporting a subtle false nose, and Thor was having great fun with an Earth style 'man-bun'. Jane had also helped him dye his hair brown for the occasion.
Since Clint was actually looking to get himself into trouble this time, his teammates were only there to help with the visuals.
Their entrance didn't exactly cause a Cinderella Moment, but most people at least glanced over, and Clint decided he'd scored his first recognition points for the evening. He noticed a number of young women giving him a second look, and catalogued them as a good place to start schmoozing for the evening.
The music started up again and Kashish reached out to straighten his tie. "You owe me a dance before you go get yourself kidnapped."
"Fine," Clint grumbled good-naturedly. "But only because you asked."
The archer was impressively light on his feet, a fact that had been accidentally discovered at the first and only SHIELD Annual Valentine's Day Dance. The dance was eventually revealed to be the result of a typo on the SHIELD calendar, and since it ended in thousands of dollars of property damage and the temporary marooning of the Hellicarrier on a sandbar off the west coast of Canada, it was officially discontinued. But the damage had already been done, and Clint Barton's reputation had gone from wise-ass-ninja-archer-with-a-terrifying-habit-of-materializing-where-you-didn't-expect-him, to best-possible-option-to-replace-a-date, take-to-a-wedding, make-an-ex-jealous, or just-generally-have-a-good-time-on-the-dance-floor.
Clint offered a hand to his date, and they made their way down to the dance floor.
"Alright, Hawkeye. Make me look good," Kashish demanded with a grin.
Clint started bobbing his head to the music, finding the beat. "It's Head Analyst Lance Dawson tonight, and I believe you already have looking-good covered tonight."
"Why thank you, Mr. Dawson."
"You're quite welcome, my dear."
Kashish snickered.
"Shall we?" Clint deftly wove them into the stream of dancing couples. "Does this mean my slate's clean again?"
"Hmm." The SHIELD Aviation Engineer considered this while Clint spun her in a circle. "One more waltz, and you convince Fury to let me keep the dress. Deal?"
"Deal."
Steve and Thor had each found a dance partner by now, and Clint maneuvered around the floor until he was dancing behind the two Avengers. It set off his height to a better advantage.
They waltzed past one of the giant amps at the front of the room. A small band was performing on a raised platform. Clint didn't think the crooner onstage was particularly good, and even a deaf man could tell the second violin was out of tune.
A few songs later, the band took a break, Kashish set off in search of another dance partner, and Clint began the work of making sure everyone at the gala knew who Lance Dawson was, and what interesting information his job gave him access to.
For two hours the archer made the rounds of the ballroom, slipping in and out of conversations, positioning himself beside the tallest socialites he could find, dropping names and dropping his wine glass when he was jostled. The physical ineptitude was even harder to fake than the how-interesting tell-me-more smile he was maintaining by iron will alone. He had more than a few offers of female company by the time he was satisfied with his work (if he never heard the word 'cute' again, it would be too soon), but he made a better target on his own, so he had to feign obliviousness and retreat to the bar.
Clint was halfway through the press of the crowd when a waiter drifted into his path.
"Would you like a drink, sir?"
"Ah. Yes, thank you." Clint eyed the waiter, who seemed to be standing very close to him. He accepted the glass.
The waiter didn't leave.
Clint gave the man another once over. The guy was over a head taller than him, with a neck that was about as thick around as Clint's thighs. His current stance was probably supposed to be an amateur's attempt at menacing.
Ohhhh.
Clint looked down at his drink. But they seriously expected him to drink this? How much of an idiot was he supposed to be?
The waiter stared at him expectantly.
Quite an idiot, apparently.
With a world weary sigh, he picked up the drink and drained it in one go.
If he was going down, he might as well go down hard.
"Has anyone seen Hawkeye in a while?" Steve said, looking up from his plate of hors d'oeuvres.
"Mmf," Thor answered around a full mouth.
A scan of the crowded hall didn't reveal any sign of their smaller friend.
Kashish was busy dancing with a particularly charismatic MI6 agent, but when they got her attention she added that she hadn't seen him either.
Steve stood to the side of the swirling mass, hands on his hips. "I guess the mission was a success, then."
Thor nodded. He took another look in the direction of the buffet line.
"Does this mean it is necessary for us to leave the merrymaking?"
Steve shrugged. "I don't see why."
They headed back to the food.
It was a sad fact that Clint Barton been drugged so many times, with so many different substances, that his body wasn't nearly as well affected as it probably should have been. Consequently, the tampered drink began to wear off way before his captors were ready for him.
Clint woke up with his body tightly pressed on both sides into an awkward sitting position.
His first thought was that he'd fallen out of bed again, and was wedged between the wall and the mattress. But after blinking a few times he realised it was much too dark to be his room, even with the lights out, and the air was still and stale. His hands were cuffed behind him, and he could feel them pressed against hard plastic. By shifting as much as he could, Clint soon realised he was enclosed in a box not more than an inch higher than his head, with only enough room between his back and his feet for him to fit with his legs tucked tight against his chest. Good thing he was so flexible, or he'd probably be experiencing horrible cramps by now.
He was pressed too tight to maneuver his hands down and around in front of him.
Ugh.
Experimentally, he pushed his head against the ceiling, then kicked against the wall in front of him. No give. He tried throwing himself to either side next.
There was a bit of give on his right side, so he continued to rock his weight against that wall until it gave way, and he tumbled out onto the open floor. Then he jumped to his feet, tucking his legs up to smoothly jump through the loop of his arms, ending up standing with his cuffed hands in front.
Then he saw the rest of the room.
"Fantastic… Just fantastic."
Tony was never going to let him live this down. Natasha would never let him live this down.
There were no people in the relatively small room. What did fill the room was sound equipment. All the instruments, microphone stands, piles of xlr cords, and amps that had been used to host the band at the gala dinner.
And the box that Clint had been shoved into?
One of the giant amps.
They'd packed him inside a hollow speaker to sneak him out of the gala.
It had been a tight fit for sure, but even Clint was embarrassed that he'd fit inside one of the speakers.
Shaking his head, Clint slipped a lock pick from his collar, undid his cuffs and continued to poke around the room. He pocketed a second set of handcuffs which were lying around, since they made excellent knuckledusters, and three sets of drum sticks, which were good for both throwing, and annoying Stark at the dinner table. There weren't any actual weapons available, but Hawkeye was already deadlier on his own than your average machine-gun, so he wasn't concerned.
The door, it turned out, was unlocked. Just to be on the safe side (at least that was his justification for it this time), Clint decided to climb up into the drop ceiling instead. The white ceiling tiles were barely sturdy enough to support the weight of a large rodent, so Clint had to hang from the pipes on the inner ceiling instead, making his way forward hand over hand like a sloth.
He needn't have bothered. When he dropped into the next room, the three thick-necked thugs were completely unprepared, cards and coffee cups scattering all over the table, and guns leaning uselessly in a pile in the corner. Clint had two of them laid out unconscious before they even managed to stand, and the other man just got the chance to turn and vainly reach towards his weapon.
Clint flipped over the table and round-house kicked him in the back of the head. "Sorry, man. Too slow."
Ten minutes later, he'd made it up three floors from the sub-basement to the ground floor, picked up one more set of drum sticks (score!), encountered absolutely no-one ready to take on a victim who fought back, fought them anyways, and finally found a telephone near the front door.
"Hey, Stark? It's Hawkeye."
The billionaire on the other end sounded surprised to hear him. "Barton? Are you done already? Do you need back up?"
Clint looked over his shoulder at the man groaning on the floor behind him. He had two broken arms. "Well, I suppose I could use some clean-up. All the hostiles are down, though."
"All of them? How many is that?"
"Twenty-one," Clint said automatically. "Half the wait-staff were involved, and the whole band and sound crew."
"So that's how they were doing it. Somebody sure messed up if they didn't notice the staff were the same at all these events."
"Yeah," Clint said, surprised that they had exchanged this many words without Tony ruining it. "So are you sending some muscle my way?"
There was a pause on the other end.
"Well…"
"Stark?"
"I've got your location now. Looks like you're not far away, and I can try and drum up Romanoff for you, but I think she's gone out."
"And?"
"And Thor and Cap haven't come back yet."
"What? From the gala?" He looked over at the clock on the wall. "All the staff are here. It must be over by now."
"Well, yeah. But they stayed till the end and now they're at an after party."
"An after party? Steve and Thor?"
"That's what I said. Can you hear me? Is this a bad connection? Just a minute. I can boost it for you."
Clint sighed. "Never mind. I can wait for SHIELD to show up. Just send the message along to Fury for me."
"Sure thing, Cupid." He could hear some scuffling on the other end of the line. "Uh. They're on their way. Estimated time of arrival is two hours."
"Figures."
"Soooo did the suit work out?" Tony somehow managed to inject an audible leer into the words. "Pepper said, and I quote, you looked 'cute as a button.'"
Clint glanced down and smoothed a hand over the grey fabric. He was actually kind of impressed he hadn't split a single seam. "The suit was functional. But sorry if I don't place too much stock in Ms. Pott's taste in men."
"Wait. Are you dissing yourself, or me?"
"You have to ask?"
The billionaire laughed. "I like you, smart ass."
Clint rolled his eyes. "I'm hanging up now."
"Then how are you going to occupy yourself for two hours? Just going to talk to yourself? We could play word an association game. You start."
Click.
"Are you going to take your turn? Legolas? Barton? Hello?"
Silence.
"Does this mean you're not playing?"
