Summary: Tony being Tony calls in a meeting with the Avengers and the extended family to tell the amazing idea he had: create Steve a playlist of their favorite songs to help with his adaptation.
or
… the time when Natasha goes on a mission and Clint disagrees with her interrogation methods.
Characters: Clint Barton, Steve Rogers, Tony Stark, Darcy Lewis, Bucky Barnes, Wanda Maximoff.
Relationships: Darcy Lewis/James "Bucky" Barnes, Wanda Maximoff/Clint Barton.
Tags of the chapter: Steve Rogers is a good bro, Bucky Barnes is a good bro, spyssassins dynamics, Jarvis' organizational skills.
A/N: Playlist available on Spotify with the songs of the chapters posted. Check it out and tune each song with your reading! Link available on my profile.
Something to Hold Onto
Chapter Ten, Neglekted, 1998
"Where is Clint?" Tony entered the kitchen and left a bunch of arrows on the table and moved to kiss Darcy on the cheek as she handled him a cup with fresh steaming coffee. "I finished working on the upgrades he asked me."
Steve frowned at the weapons. "Tony, really? How many times do I have to tell you not to put the weapons on the table?"¹
Tony rolled his eyes but moved the arrows to a nearby counter. "Happy now, honey?"
Bucky arrived at the kitchen just as Steve was telling Tony to shut up, as it was too early for that. He pecked Darcy on the lips and grabbed a piece of bacon from her plate. "Why are Mom and Dad fighting?"
Wanda chuckled and Darcy answered playfully. "Same old domestic shit."
"Language." Both Steve and Tony spoke at the same time and Darcy could not help but laugh aloud.
"We need to separate you two." Wanda smiled fondly at them. "Answering your previous question, I think Clint had a fight yesterday with Natasha. He said something about not liking the way that Nat had handled a mark that knew something about Senator Stern. I think he's at the shooting range."
"Well," Steve began after a short pause. "That certainly explains why Nat was at the gym already.
"What happened?" Tony refilled his already empty cup with coffee.
"Shouldn't you be slowing down on those?" He ignored when Tony showed him the finger. "I received an update from Nat around 2 A.M., but she only told me she got a name of a person related to him and wanted to confirm it before calling an assemble, which makes me already assume we're not going to like what she'll tell us."
They all nodded grimly as they began to prepare themselves mentally for the days to come.
"Well, I'll be better off; otherwise Jane will start to freak out over something not worth it." She balanced two mugs of coffee and some candy in her arms as she prepared for another day at the labs. "Somebody should check on Clint and Nat."
They often joked that Steve and Tony were Superhusbands and the parents of the group, but Darcy was definitely a mother hen.
Buck finished chewing an energy bar – as if he needed it – and got up from the table. "I'll go spar with Nat." So, maybe the energy bar had been a good decision after all.
"Right, do that, I'll go talk to Clint."
Steve left the kitchen with the arrows and proceeded on the way to the shooting range. The door was locked, as was standard when someone was using the room. He put his password and an alarm sounded inside the room, letting Clint know there was a newcomer.
"Hey, Cap." The archer spoke without turning around and once again, Steve was impressed with his spy skills.
"Hey. Tony finished working on your new arrows." He offered them to Clint and noticed his excited expression at the prospect of having new toys to play with.
"Awesome! I have been dying to try these ever since he updated my quiver and bow for them." Steve went to the other side and quietly waited as Clint tinkered with the control of his bow and put the new arrows in the quiver.
"Uh, what's so special about them?" Steve cocked his head to the side, intrigued by the archer-and-engineer's collaboration.
He tapped a pattern on his bow and sent the first arrow flying and they watched it explode just as it touched the target. Clint tapped a different pattern and the second arrow sent out an electrical shock upon contact. The third pattern made the following arrow divide into shrapnel, which hit the targets next to the one it hit first.
"Watch this." He smiled knowingly and adjusted his grip, tapping a sequence at a part of the bow slightly below the part he usually used.
The fourth arrow also divided into shrapnel but after it was done, it let out an electrical current, effective on not only the first target but also everywhere the shrapnel touched.
Steve was already staring mouth-open but before he could speak, Clint tapped a last pattern and let the fifth arrow fly. They watched in fascination, seeing how the arrow divided and how the shrapnel exploded upon contact.
Clint rested his bow and quiver at a nearby table and turned to the stunned Captain.
"Tony was a little bit reticent about letting the arrow turn into shrapnel, for obvious reasons, so we discussed about the range and limited it to eleven square feet², so I could use it with a group of enemies and not having to fear hitting another Avenger in battle."
Steve nodded as he watched Dum-E roll into the shooting range and extinguishing the flames. Clint affectionately petted the bot on the head as it rolled away, having finished his job.
"The shock is also less powerful right now, so that I can test it." Clint watched as Steve nodded once again and thought about the new weapon.
"That's good. I mean, this is still on hold for emergency mission or battle use but I'm going to allow it for testing on a smaller mission." Steve concluded, very serious, just like he always was when he was talking about Avengers business.
"Awesome, Cap, thanks."
Steve was quiet for a couple seconds, thinking on how he should proceed to approach the inevitable conversation on why Clint and Natasha had been arguing. Luckily for Steve, Clint caught on his mood and gathered his bow and quiver and started moving out of the room.
"Come on, I need a drink for this." He cracked a smile but it did not quite reach his eyes. They went to the lounging room and Clint made a bee-line to the bar after connecting his phone on the dock and putting some background music.
"It's five P.M. somewhere?" Steve raised an eyebrow as he sat on a bar stool, watching Clint pour himself a healthy dose of bourbon, half-listening to the grunge band playing.
"Well, technically I haven't slept yet, so it doesn't count." Clint snapped right back at him and this time really laughed.
He sat down on another stool and started nursing his drink. He let out a sigh and took a sip before he started talking.
"Nat sometimes has some unorthodox ways to get information from her marks. And we always end up disagreeing when she uses them."
"What happened last night?" Steve kept his poker face on, going for a nonchalant attitude.
"She went to her informant, to get information about how Stern got out of prison and I insisted on going as her back-up. I got the chills when she described the guy and I've learned to trust my instincts when it comes to Nat and her solo missions.
"It started out well enough; we went to a private party with very rich people and well-known politicians. I had eyes from the roof on the other building and Nat was at the comms with me." He took a long sip from his bourbon and for a moment, Steve was unsure if he was grimacing from the alcohol or the memories.
"Nat convinced her mark to go with her to another room and I lost visual contact of them. I could hear that she was trying to seduce the information out of him – she's got the skills for that, but it didn't ease my nerves, it actually freaked me out more.
"I told her that and specifically told her to go back to where I could see them, otherwise I would move in and crash the party but she told me to shut up – as discreetly as ever, might I add – and removed her comm. I was about to go inside when she came out of the building and said that we should come back to the Tower."
"She removed her comm? That's extremely risky, even for Nat!" Steve was obviously freaking out about the wrong part of the story, but Clint suspected he would catch on pretty fast. "Wait, what do you mean by 'seduce the information out of him'?"
"It's a left over trick from the Red Room, I guess. Some habits are hard to shake off and all that." Clint raised an eyebrow and jerked his head to the side, knowing the Captain would be fast. He took another sip and leaned back against the bar top.
They were silent for another few moments, with both men lost with their thoughts, until the song changed and Clint stiffened almost unperceptively.
"You know what happened when I met Nat, right?" Clint looked straight ahead at the bottle-lined wall on the back of the bar. Steve nodded slowly, knowing he did not know all of the details.
"I knew a girl, extraordinary, suggested something, unsanitary. As I asked her for a moment to consider her kind offer, she blew a kiss and said to me 'I know, you want it so, I want it too, so see it through. Because when I do what I'm gonna do to you, make sure you remember my name'."
"You were sent to kill her but you made a different call."
"After a very peculiar fight where it came very close to one of us actually managing to kill the other, Nat realized that I was offering her a chance to leave the Red Room behind." Clint grimaced and took another long sip. "Of course, later she came to me, to 'show her gratitude' as she put it and offered herself to me."
Steve looked at Clint's face and could not help but feel for the man in front of him. He looked haunted by the memory, his face contorted in a mixture of sadness and rage, and he immediately understood why Clint was so upset about what had happened.
"It could have gone very differently if another agent was sent to do that mission, Clint." Steve grimaced thinking about the possibilities. "If it had been another agent, the chances were that he would either complete the mission by killing Nat or take on her offer."
"You know it's true, I want it too. I know you know, so make it so. Because when I do what I'm gonna do to you, you'll never ever, ever… Intoxicated by your aggression, I offer you my one possession. You can fuck my body, baby, but please, don't fuck my mind."
Clint nodded a little but was still unconvinced.
"You know Natasha better than I do, and we both know that she always considers her moves carefully when she is on a mission." That statement made the archer roughly turn his head to the side to look at Steve, who quickly shot his hands up in the air. "I am not saying that I liked to hear that."
They were quiet for a few seconds and all the while Clint was considering if it would be a good idea to get another bourbon or not.
"Believe me when I say that I don't like the idea that she had to use her body in that way for the Red Room. And I like it even less that she would consider using it as an interrogation technique even today, but as much as I don't like those things, I trust Nat's judgement."
"Yeah, I know you are right." Clint sighed once again, but he still looked dejected.
"Now, what I really don't like is the fact that she turned off the comms on you. We already have attitude from Tony, we don't need it rubbing off on another person from the team as well."
Clint out right laughed at Steve's comment, apparently finding it very amusing.
"Don't worry too much about it. It's a thing we do when we have missions together." He shrugged as he got up from his stool. "Why do you think Budapest went south for a moment?"
He laughed quizzically as Steve furrowed his brow.
"You do realized that we still have no idea about what happened in that mission, right?"
"Get you high, girl, come with me… take a ride in search of ecstasy. I wanna roll, I wanna roll… I feel you now, I never knew you were so sad, I'll make it up to you, because I feel you now."
"Thanks for the talk, Cap." Clint nodded slowly, going back to a much quieter demeanor. "I'm going to catch some shut-eye. I don't want to attract bad juju, but I think the next days will be chaotic."
Clint got his phone from the dock just as the last beats of the song played. Steve watched as he left the room, remaining on the stool for a while longer.
"Yeah, me too." He whispered to himself.
A/N: Song: Neglekted, by The Afghan Whigs – 1998.
¹ Disney's Brave reference.
² Eleven square feet is roughly one square meter, in other words: a very, very small area... but can you honestly blame Tony for being cautious about shrapnel?