Now that they both know each other's perceived greatest weakness, Clint finds that Mike's a lot more open about his abilities and his last-minute plans.
Not that he never leaves Clint blindsided (ha) sometimes, but he's used to it from having Nat as a regular mission partner. It doesn't really faze him, as long as they're both in one piece at the end of the day.
Of course, that's not always the case.
Clint gets knocked hard into a wall by a couple of local gang members one night. He's maybe got bruised ribs at most, but it fucking hurts. He's definitely had worse, though. So much worse. It's not something worth bringing up.
But Mike immediately clocks onto him after they've tied up all the bad guys. He tilts his head in that eerie way of his (to anyone who doesn't know what he's doing) and says, "Three of your ribs are cracked."
Clint immediately glances around the abandoned alleyway, though the effect is probably lost on its sole audience. "Who, me?" he says.
He's pretty sure Mike rolls his eyes under the mask. "Yeah," he says, like Clint's an idiot (probably true). "Sound like creaking ships."
"That's a new one."
"Come on, let's go over to my place so we can get you patched up."
That gives Clint pause. "You sure?" he says eventually.
Mike doesn't answer, instead moving to scale up the side of the building next to them.
"This place is depressing," Clint observes, wincing as he shrugs off his shirt.
"Thank you," Mike says. After a few moments of awkwardly standing around, he slowly reaches up to pull off his poor excuse for a mask and throw it onto the table next to a messy pile of Braille papers. If he'd been expecting a huge reaction from Clint, he'd better think again.
It probably helps that Clint still has no idea who he is, even without the mask.
"Thanks, man," Clint mutters as Mike helps him wrap his ribs. Mike even starts to stitch up a tiny cut on Clint's left bicep that he'd missed. He wants to show the same care in return, but he can't find anything physically wrong with Mike at the moment. Not that he'd wish that, but physical injuries would be easier to fix.
"How do you even afford this place?" Clint asks eventually. It's the top apartment of a building Clint has passed probably a hundred times on his way to fight crime in Hell's Kitchen.
"I've been told the billboard outside has bright neon colors," Mike says with a smirk. Yep. Clint can confirm. "Got a discount on it because of that."
"Hear me out. Have people ever heard of...curtains?"
"Shh...don't tell them that," Mike says with an outright grin now. Clint finds that his smiles are nicer when his whole face can be seen and his teeth aren't coated in blood. He always gets back up from a fight, even when he's beat and bloody. Nat would like this guy, Clint thinks, not for the first time.
"Your secret's safe with me, Mike. Scout's honor."
Mike frowns as he begins to pack away the first aid kit. "Matt," he says after a moment. "It's Matt."
Clint squints at him. "...You couldn't have picked a better fake name?"
Mike—no, Matt—sighs and throws up his hands dramatically. "Not all of us have designated people to create fake identities for us."
"I'm getting the sense you know way too much about SHIELD, like way, way more than the average person."
Matt grins. He's got warm brown eyes, Clint notices for the first time. "I would've found out anyways," he says cockily.
"Not everyone has super-hearing like you do," Clint says.
Matt laughs. "Well, if you and your super normal hearing ever need legal services..." He hands Clint a business card.
Nelson & Murdock, Clint reads, and below that: Matthew Murdock, Attorney at Law. Clint runs his fingers over the raised dots on the card and flips the card over and over in his hand.
Maybe it's a reciprocal information exchange. Clint's certainly learning more about this guy than he thought he would before.
"I'll keep this in mind," he says, shoving the card into his pocket and moving to gingerly shrug his shirt back on. "You sure you don't want me to call you Matthew?"
"Sure thing, Clinton, sure thing," Matt says. He walks over to the fridge and comes back over with a beer for Clint. They've somehow gone from vigilante parkour buddies to drinking buddies in one night. Clint takes the beer with a shrug.
They sit on the couch side by side. "A lawyer vigilante," he says slowly.
"It works," Matt insists.
"Well duh, you exist. I don't get it but I'm sure you do." Nat probably would too, now that he thinks about it. She's always been good with contradictions.
Matt shakes his head. "Sometimes even I don't get it."
"That's not reassuring. Also, this place is not reassuring." Clint gestures at the room around them, bare of anything personal. If it weren't for the obvious, Clint would not be able to pinpoint who lives here, and he observes people for a living.
"It works," Matt insists again.
Clint glances at him. "Man, just because something works doesn't mean it's the best thing to do."
Nat used to be afraid of settling down, of calling something her own, of making a place home. Actually, she might still be afraid. Clint's aware of three of her safehouses, and he's pretty sure she has five more. At least.
"How many people know about your extracurricular activities?" Clint asks, when Matt stays silent.
"A nurse who found me unconscious in a dumpster recently, and you," Matt answers promptly.
Clint blinks. "Now, I ain't good at math, but I'm pretty sure that's only two people. Even I have more people in my support system, and I'm supposed to be a secret agent."
Matt huffs out a laugh. "It is what it is." Who the hell is responsible for this guy's depressing, self-deprecating thinking?
"What about the Nelson guy, your law firm partner?" Clint asks, nudging Matt lightly in the shoulder. "Why isn't he in the know?"
Matt slumps. "He's the person I'm scared of telling the most," he whispers, like it's a dirty secret.
While Clint has had practice with Nat's thinking, he is in no way equipped to deal with whatever this is. He finishes up his beer, throws it into the trash without moving from his sitting position on the couch, and then stands up and stretches as much as possible with damaged ribs. "Well," he says, "thanks for bringing me here and patching me up."
"No problem," Matt says sullenly, still slumped into the couch.
Ah, shit. Clint can't leave him like this.
"Hey," he says, leaning in close. Matt moves his head up towards him, blank eyes resting around Clint's chest. "I don't know your people like you do. But if they are your people, then they must care about you, all parts of you. You should tell them the truth before the lie unravels on its own, or you die."
Dying would be preferable, Matt seems to be thinking. Clint refuses to view that in anything other than a humorous light.
"I'm already lying to them," Matt says.
"Well, better late than never," Clint tells him seriously. He knows how dangerous this line of work is, and while Matt isn't paid for being a vigilante, with the amount of work he puts in, it's practically his second job.
After a few moments, Matt says, "I'll consider it." Probably as much of an admission as Clint is ever going to get from him, because, as he's just learned, lawyer.
"Fucking lawyers," he mutters for effect as he swings to a neighboring building, definitely still in hearing range.
Clint gets one step into the gym for their weekly sparring session (when they're not on missions) before he's caught by Nat.
Honestly, he's surprised he made it that far.
"You're hurt," she says, crossing her arms in front of her chest and glaring at him. "I thought we agreed to no sparring when injured."
"Just some cracked ribs," Clint says. Man, Matt's a whole lie detector and X-ray machine and ass-kicker all in one. Clint still doesn't know what to do with the creaking ships comment, though.
Nat continues to glare at Clint. Clint feels himself slowly succumbing to her power.
"Ice cream?" he asks eventually.
Nat nods. "Acceptable," she says with a satisfied smirk. "Got vanilla?"
"Of course, why wouldn't I have a carton of the most boring flavor on the pla- ow!" Clint rubs his arm where Nat had gone and punched him. "I thought I was injured!"
"A tiiiny bit more injury can't hurt," Nat says with a shrug.
"Hate you," Clint mutters.
"Lie," Nat says with a happy skip in her step. "Ice cream?"
"Yeah yeah," Clint says. "Gotta go with Neapolitan, though."
Nat stumbles a little. It's so subtle—wouldn't be noticeable to anyone else—but Clint notices it.
Nat gets like that sometimes. Something about what he'd just said reminded her of something bad, something from the past, but she never tells him what, or how Clint can avoid it in the future, and then Clint has to try to figure it out himself, because he's never going to ask.
Yeah, he'd helped Nat defect from the Red Room, had brought her to SHIELD, had believed in her when no one else did. But he doesn't know how to talk to her about some things, doesn't know how to talk to Matt about some things, either. Maybe they can help each other, maybe not, but he doesn't think self-destruction is a good look on either of them.
"Never mind, think I ran outta that," Clint says, his mouth on autopilot but his brain thinking too many thoughts at once. "Gonna go with mint chocolate chip instead."
Nat relaxes her shoulders at Clint's words. Clint wonders if it's conscious or not.
Clint gets arrested in Hell's Kitchen. Not for aiding a vigilante, but for being caught with hazardous substances.
Clint isn't entirely sure what the substances are, only that they are Extremely Not Good for Consumption, which is a level higher than Very Not Good for Consumption, which is, in turn, a level higher than Not Good for Consumption. He should have been back at SHIELD headquarters by now with said hazardous substances for proper disposal, but the local police had found him instead, and he hadn't wanted to fight or parkour away with poisonous substances in his arms.
So here he is, in handcuffs at a dingy police station. He could definitely break out if he wanted, but Phil's probably gonna be here soon anyways to flash his So Above Your Pay Grade badge and bail Clint out. He's unfortunately done it before, and every time he does, he tells Clint that Clint owes him one.
By now, Clint owes him about 25, and Phil still hasn't cashed in.
Clint is maybe a little intimidated by that.
Anyways, he's expecting to wait a few more hours for Phil to sort things out, but after only 30 minutes, a pissed off police officer comes by to unlock his cuffs. "You're free to go," she says sharply.
Well, Clint's not one to question sudden fortune, so he gets out of there as fast as possible without looking insane.
He actually runs straight into Phil, who looks just as surprised to see Clint as Clint is to see him. "You're out already?" Phil asks, narrowing his eyes at Clint after they both steady each other after the collision.
"You didn't bail me out?" Clint asks in return.
Before either of them can react, someone taps Clint on the shoulder. Clint whirls around to see...Matt, sporting red sunglasses, a shoulder bag, a white and red cane, as well as Clint's contraband in a flimsy plastic bag. Phil winces and pinches the bridge of his nose, probably because the sight of dangerous substances being held in a plastic Thank You bag is distinctly not good.
"Please keep your science experimenting away from Hell's Kitchen," Matt says with a bright but pained smile, handing the plastic bag to him. Clint takes it gingerly and hands it quickly and just as gingerly off to Phil, who grimaces but has no one else to hand it off to.
"Thanks man," Clint says sincerely, patting Matt on the shoulder. "See you around, yeah?"
"Oh, I'll be hearing you, alright," Matt says with a serious nod.
Clint and Phil are both out the door before Clint succumbs with a snicker. He doubts Matt is doing any better inside the police station.
"Who's that?" Phil asks with a raised eyebrow. He holds the container of hazardous substances with two firm hands, seeming to have accepted his fate.
"A friend," Clint answers honestly, refusing to elaborate further.
Sue him. Nat likes secrets, but Clint can have his own if he wants.
Clint subconsciously comparing Matt and Nat and realizing how similar they are was me when I first discovered their ship.