Pre-Avengers.
Clint wonders if he's been in this field too long when his reaction isn't "Aliens are real arrrgh run away!" but "eh, whatever." It makes it a little bit harder to watch Star Wars, but he didn't watch it for the aliens.
After all, Princess Leia was pretty damn hot in that bikini.
So when his assignment in New Mexico babysitting the scientists was over, and Natasha was done helping Stark fix his life, they get food and retreat to Natasha's room on the Helicarrier. Over what was claimed to be a "turkey dinner with all the trimmings," (turkey from a can, the potatoes were once powder, and they don't ever take any of the veggies after that time where a green bean blew up the mess hall) she tells him about working at Stark Industries and how she thinks she maybe shouldn't have taken so much time fighting those men while she was going after Vanko but she was so bored and pissed off at Happy because he wouldn't keep his eyes on the road and kept on watching her change, and that she's thinking about cutting her hair again, since having it long was more trouble than it was worth.
He talks about sitting around the New Mexico desert, and how the weather was completely and totally screwed up, but it was all good because aliens are real, and they decimated a small town. He describes being up in the crane, in a thunderstorm, hoping that even though he's the highest point around, the lightening would hit someplace else. He makes her laugh when he relays his discussion with Coulson about Thor, and how he's decided that if one man could beat up all of his hand-picked security guards that easily, then they all need a lot more training.
He doesn't need to point out that sure, the man was an alien, but one that had all of his powers taken away. It was embarrassing to see how easily his men were taken down. A single tranquilizer gun would have worked, and he heard reports that Dr. Foster's summer intern took the man down with a taser. And not just any taser, but a civilian model. Again, embarrassing.
There's a knock on the door, and then it slides open, revealing Coulson, balancing three plates with chocolate cake on them. Natasha rolls her eyes, Clint shakes his head, and Coulson hands around the plates and folders that he had tucked under his arm. There are a handful of undercover things that need the Black Widow's "personal" touch, especially since they're in Russia or the former USSR, and Clint's been assigned more scientist babysitting duty, this time at some joint SHIELD-NASA base in the middle of yet another desert. At least he's guaranteed running water in this place, and a much lower risk of some random alien showing that SHEILD agents really aren't as well-trained as they think they are, but Clint's getting pretty tired of deserts. The cake was actually pretty good; Coulson says that he made a run into Manhattan to pick it up since the mess hall was serving pie a la mode, and the ice cream had looked like it was about to grow legs. Coulson swore that the pie had blinked at him.
They're gifted with a week of downtime, although that time was mostly spent on land, helping Natasha get ready to go off again, then Clint's tossing his gear into a duffel bag and hopping onto a Quinjet, then a helicopter, to get to this base. On the way, he pulls out a computer and starts doing a bit more research into this scientist. Funny that the two hadn't run into each other in New Mexico, but that was then, and now he needs to figure out a way to do his job and not go crazy from the boredom.
The scientist, some Dr. Selvig, wasn't too happy to see him, that was for sure, and spent almost a whole day following Coulson around complaining about how he didn't need a babysitter or a personal guard, especially when that guard was some muscle-brained idiot who probably only thought about working out, how he looked in the mirror, and girls. He was struck silent rather quickly when Coulson finally pointed out that Hawkeye had been there for three days before letting himself be seen, and that the "muscle-brained idiot" had hacked into Selvig's personal files and e-mail on his way to the research base. It had only taken him a second day to get a fix on Selvig's cell phone. When Selvig appeared to be about to start yelling about privacy and how he had rights, Clint mentioned the forms he'd signed before starting work meant that yes, SHIELD really did have the right – and the expectation – to keep an eye on all correspondence, but he was really going to stay out of Selvig's way; he'd found a few places where he could do his job and not worry about being underfoot, but this was probably going to be a long-term thing, at least a year, if not more, so it might be best to let Agent Coulson keep on doing what he needed to be doing, and get back to work..
Clint was right. Until the Tesseract started throwing off those gamma rays and everything went to hell in a handbasket, it was boring.