Clint settles into the sticky vinyl booth with a groan. He knows he smells like a pile of dirty laundry (and looks like one, too - these jeans haven't been washed since 2014, he's pretty sure) but he talked Matt into these plans days ago and he feels obligated to show up.
"Hey," Matt says cautiously. "You okay?"
(Is obligated the right word? he wonders. No, it's the wrong word. Something implying respect and, like, bro-ship would be the right word, probably, but he isn't sure which word fits the bill and his head is too fuzzy and sore to try and track it down in his junkheap of a brain.)
"Everything is shit," he says, before amending: "That was overdramatic. Everything is not shit. Some things are shit, though." He points at the untouched glass of brown liquor sitting on the table between them: "Is that for me?"
"Bourbon," Matt nods, as Clint knocks back half. "I had a hunch you were having one of those days."
"How could you tell?"
He clears his throat and finishes his beer. "You were twenty minutes late, so I kind of just assumed."
"Thanks for assuming I was twenty minutes late because I'm having A Day and not because I'm an asshole." Clint means it. He sure feels like an asshole, anyway. He waves over a waitress (he has no idea if she's their waitress, but she is a booze gatekeeper and therefore she will do) and orders two more beers and two more bourbons. "That wasn't all for me, in case you were wondering," he tells her. She rolls her eyes and walks away.
"Wanna talk about it? I mean, I don't want to overstep or anything."
Clint would really rather wiggle out of this conversation and spend the evening drinking his face off in a silence of mutual dude-understanding, but he shakes his head and says, "You're not. It's cool."
But he has a hard time working past 'it's cool' to tell Matt what's eating him, and so they sit together in silence until the waitress comes back and sets down their drinks. She smiles at Matt and tucks her hair behind her ear, before glancing down at the cane folded beside him in the booth and walking away. Clint slides Matt's beer towards him and clinks the bottle, twice, with his fingernail so Matt can zero in on it.
"Cheers." Matt takes a sip of his beer, and, for a second, gets a faraway look on his face. Clint can see his eyes, unfocused and dull, shift towards whatever he's listening to across the room and his forehead crinkles as he concentrates.
He glances, casually, around the bar and tries to guess which group is having the most interesting conversation. He eliminates the dudes in Mets jerseys, who, from their body language, are probably just re-enacting sports highlights, as well as the couple who (based on the fact that both are leaned in, enraptured by the conversation and ignoring their drinks, and neither are staring at their phones) are on their first date and trying to act interested in the minutiae of what the other one has to say.
You liar, Clint thinks in her direction, watching the girl rub her foot playfully against the guy's under the table, you probably don't give a fuck what his favourite movie is. And it's probably something terrible, like Scarface or Varsity Blues or something. On second thought, don't let him take you home. He has bad taste in movies. You deserve better.
He looks away from the couple and turns back towards Matt, who's still distracted, frozen like a statue with his beer halfway to his mouth. "Who're you spying on? Are those pretty girls over there talking about how handsome I am?"
"I'm not spying," Matt murmurs, faux-scandalized, before his distraction wanes and he returns to their bubble of conversation. "So, what's up?"
Clint groans and wipes a hand over his face. "Okay," he begins, wincing. "So, the other day was kind of a fuck-up. My fingers slipped and I missed a shot and Nat ended up with a giant, bleeding hole in her thigh - God, that makes it sound like I shot her. I didn't shoot her. The other guy, the guy we were trying to take down, did. She's okay and everything, already back on her feet and giving me a hard time, like it never even happened. But it did happen, and it was so stupid and avoidable and it was my fault, you know?"
"I'd argue it was the fault of the, I don't know, space alien or cryogenically preserved Nazi or whatever that attacked her," Matt points out.
"It was some low-level terrorist pawn with a gun he barely knew how to use."
"Oh. That sucks," Matt agrees, frowning. He drums his fingers against the side of his beer for a moment, before clearing his throat and adding, "But, you know, to be fair?"
"Yeah?"
"Please correct me if I'm wrong," he says, carefully, "but I'm sure she's just glad it was her and not you."
Clint groans. "Those were her exact words, actually."
"And what's wrong with that?" Matt asks earnestly.
What's wrong with that, Clint mouths to himself, wrinkling his nose and taking a gulp of whiskey. He's pretty sure there's a lot wrong with that, but he can't think of a half-decent comeback. All he can think of is how many people he'd take a bullet for without a second thought. Or a first thought, at that. There are more than he can count on one hand, he realizes, maybe even two, and the knot of guilt wrapped tight around his internal organs, squishing them into a dense ball of anxiety, loosens a little.
He slumps in his seat, suddenly exhausted, and plants his elbows on the table, chin in his hands. "Can we drink a lot tonight? Please?"
"I've got nowhere to be," Matt nods. He reaches forward to find his glass of bourbon, then holds it out so Clint can clink it with his own.