"You got something I can call you by?" Clint asks. "Getting kinda tired of referring to you as 'the vigilante' or just 'the guy'."
Said guy snorts, swinging his legs back and forth as they sit on the side of a building, eating pizza together. No one else has ever joined Clint in sitting like this, and he appreciates the company, even though he doesn't know a single thing about said company. Not that the other guy knows much about Clint, either. "Some people have been calling me the Devil of Hell's Kitchen, or so I've heard." His mouth twitches like this is an inside joke. Well if it is an inside joke, it is an inside of joke of one.
Clint rolls his eyes. "A little over the top, honestly. You're as human as it gets."
The guy turns just a little red, further exemplifying Clint's point. He remembers telling Nat that she doesn't need to have her guard up all the time, that it's human to loosen up sometimes. Hopefully, this guy gets it faster than she did, since he presumably didn't grow up in a Russian ballet cult.
"Mike," he says eventually. "You can call me Mike."
Clint squints at him. "That isn't your real name, is it?"
"Nope," Mike says unrepentantly. "You want me to call you Clinton instead?"
"Oh, hell no. Keep that name away from me."
Mike laughs. It is distinctly less scarier than the laugh Clint had heard once as the Devil.
"Parkour?" Clint asks, standing up after finishing his slice of pizza.
"Parkour," Mike confirms, brushing crumbs off of his hands and standing up too. He promptly leaps off the edge of the building.
"Showoff," Clint grumbles. He follows.
"Have a fun date?" Nat asks when Clint swings by her desk the next morning.
"Fuck off," Clint says, rolling his eyes. Nat laughs, a much more carefree laugh than one she usually allows.
Probably had fun beating up the new SHIELD recruits, then.
"We've got a new mission," Nat says.
"Yessss," Clint says. He's missed working with Nat, though he'd never admit it to her.
She probably knows, anyways.
Probably.
Sometimes, Clint doesn't know the line between communicating too much and respecting what she figures out.
"It's in Budapest," Nat says eventually.
Clint groans, banging his head against her desk. She snorts, patting his back consolingly. "Not again," he moans.
"It'll go better this time."
Clint lifts his head to glare at her. "Don't jinx it."
"You jinxed it!" Clint yells as they run from the group of shooters they had apparently upset.
"Just like last time," Nat says breathlessly. She's smiling from the thrill of the chase, the thrill of the mission. It reminds him of something, though he can't pinpoint it quite yet.
"You and I remember last time very differently!" he shouts as they turn as one to shoot back. He ducks behind a car and hears as it immediately gets hit by a barrage of bullets. The car alarm goes off, and he grimaces. "Very, very differently!"
He turns to look at Nat. She gestures that she's going to sneak up behind them, and then she's gone.
Clint reloads and shoots back every few seconds. Sure enough, about a minute later, there are terrified shouts. Clint and Nat are able to pick them off one by one, only for the two of them to have to run off again, this time from the local police.
"Still have the flash drive?" Clint asks once they've lost them in the crowd. They both slow to a walking pace.
"Of course," Nat says with a cocky smirk. It reminds him of the cocky smirk Mike sends him whenever he surprises him. Clint still hasn't figured him out! And he's long since accepted that parts of Nat will always be an enigma to him.
"So, last part of the mission," Nat starts.
Clint nods. "Frame another local gang for the gun fight." They've been through this song and dance before.
"Most of SHIELD thinks we're discrete."
"We're really not," Clint says, laughing.
"We're really not," Nat agrees with a begrudging smile, "but we're good at cleanup."
"Don't know if it's weird to ask, but you have- things, in your ears? What are they?" Mike asks one night while they're fighting crime together. Yes, Nat, fighting crime, not hanging out.
"Oh, these?" Clint asks, a little surprised. "Hearing aids." He taps the right one with his index finger.
Mike tilts his head and stares at him for a moment. "Oh," is all he says.
Which instantly gets Clint on the defensive. Maybe this guy's an asshole after all? "Hey, I can still do the things that you do. I can shoot better than you do." He'd had Mike try out his bow once. Instant regret. He'll never recover from the secondhand embarrassment. "Just because a guy's deaf doesn't mean—"
"No, I didn't mean—"
"Didn't mean what?" Clint shoots back. He's maybe enjoying seeing Mike stumble over his words. He's usually so smooth with them.
"I don't doubt your abilities," Mike says slowly. "I was just surprised, is all. I didn't know." He pauses. "Not that you needed to tell me."
Clint's maybe feeling like an asshole himself for jumping to conclusions so quickly. Isn't that what he hates? People jumping to conclusions so quickly about his deafness? "Maybe I should've let you know. It's a liability."
"It is not," Mike says with firm conviction. "And you didn't need to tell me. I get not wanting people to know about a...potential area of weakness, especially when it's maybe not as...visible as others."
Clint has the sense that he's choosing his words very, very carefully.
"Yeah," he agrees. "Exactly." All of a sudden, he misses Laura, misses his kids. Cooper and Lila think his hearing aids are 'super cool' and definitely a superpower. Laura is one of the most understanding people he has ever met, even if she can't mentally dissect him like Nat does on a daily basis.
He hasn't been back home in a while, too busy with the fucking aliens who showed up with Dr. Foster and the Einstein-Rosen Bridge. Clint sincerely hopes they won't be back, even though he has held it over Nat that he shot an alien before she ever met one. ("That you know of," she had said.)
Speaking of holding things over people: "I can definitely still kick your ass, Mike."
"Try it."
Mike has been distant during their last few meetings. Clint had been reassured, and now he's not.
"How do I know if someone's ableist or not when I have a good feeling about them, but they have bad vibes?" he asks randomly one day. He's laying on the ground of Fury's office, throwing pencils at the ceiling. He's attempting to have the pencils form an impression of Fury's face, but he's really not the greatest artist.
Nat stands over him, unimpressed. She'd found him not 30 seconds after he'd started attempting to make art. "Who's the maybe ableist asshole? I'll go and talk to them," she says with a frown.
"Nope, no need," Clint says. Nat and Mike meeting would be a disaster. They'd always have one over him, and half the bad guys in New York would be incapacitated in a day because they'd be that effective together.
"Clint," Nat says disapprovingly.
"I can handle it. Believe me when I say I can handle it," Clint says, still looking up at the ceiling.
"You don't deserve this," Nat says promptly, her protective streak going strong, because she doesn't have much that is her own.
You don't deserve this either, Clint thinks. The pain, he means, and the memories. They both had shit childhoods, but nothing compares to the Red Room.
He doesn't think it would go over well if he mentioned it right now, though.
"Yeah," Clint mutters. "I've definitely adjusted, but some people never do."
He sees Nat stiffen out of the corner of his eye, and they immediately scramble to the air vent in the corner of Fury's office. Clint shoves Nat away so he can get in first, and she snickers. Clint snickers back because he knows she let him shove her, and then they make their grand escape before their boss comes in and makes them scrub the toilets or something mundane like that.
Boring, if you ask Clint. But better than whatever killer cat Fury has that Nat has speculated about before.
Maybe Fury won't even notice his half-finished pencil art.
Clint really isn't in Hell's Kitchen often enough to worry about Mike and whether or not he's ableist, but he does drop by every so often to keep the guy company. Honest to god, he seems pretty lonely.
The thing with Hell's Kitchen is that Clint doesn't normally associate it with bombs.
Of course, there's an exception to everything.
The bomb is extremely explosive. What do you think bombs do? Nat would ask sarcastically. It shakes the ground, knocks Clint off his feet. By the time he recovers, there are people screaming, and saving people has always been his first priority.
Saving himself had been his first priority as a teen with a knack for shooting in the circus.
When he's finished evacuating everyone he can, he runs to find Mike, and really doesn't expect to literally stumble over the guy lying lifelessly on the ground. "Mike?" he says. He leans in closer and sees blood dripping from his ears. "Shit! Please don't be deaf. I know I thought you were ableist, but I don't exactly wish this on anyone else."
Mike's hand flails around and lands on Clint's shoulder. "Clint?" he rasps out, weaker than Clint has ever heard.
Clint gives Mike a thumbs up, but he doesn't look anywhere near Clint's hand. "Yup," he answers.
"I...I can't hear, I can't hear."
"Fuck."
He manages to grapple with Mike and drag him a few blocks away. They end up on top of their usual building that may or may not be near Mike's apartment. It's a lot harder to do this kind of stuff when one person is practically unresponsive. Not just disoriented, but full on stumbling around like he can't see anything. Definitely uncharacteristic of the Devil.
Clint gets out a handkerchief—normally for cleaning his guns, but it'll do this time—and a bottle of water, pouring some onto the cloth and using it to wipe away the blood that has dripped down to the sides of Mike's neck.
He sees his rabbiting pulse and is surprised to find himself worried about the guy, like super worried, like Nat- or Laura-level worried, but not quite up to the constant worry he feels for Lila and Cooper.
Clint doesn't know what to do.
It's not like you can just drag a vigilante to the hospital. They've established that.
Mike reaches out and clumsily presses a hand to Clint's chest, right above his heart. After a while, he says, "Can sorta hear now."
"Oh thank god," Clint says, falling back to lay on the ground.
Mike is still sat up, sort of curled into himself. Clint recognizes it as a defensive position. "I- I didn't freak out as much as I thought I would?"
Um. That's not a normal thing to say, except if you're one of the few more messed up people in their line of work.
Clint is aware that Mike has a day job, but whatever. Semantics.
"Losing a sense is definitely something to freak out about," Clint says, suddenly feeling exhausted. He doesn't remember what it was like the moment he lost his hearing, only knows that it was bad, super bad. It's not something he likes to revisit.
"Losing two is worse," Mike mutters.
Clint hums. "Can't argue with me there." And then he blinks. He sits up so quickly that he gets dizzy and Mike has to steady him with a hand on his shoulder. "What?" he says.
"I rely on my sense of hearing a lot," Mike says slowly, haltingly. "I feel helpless without it, because..."
"Because you already lost your sense of sight," Clint says, connecting the dots. "Holy shit, I feel like such an idiot." Mike's not an ableist! "No one would be able to see through that poor excuse for a mask."
Mike laughs hesitantly. Ah, shit. Clint's never mentally described him as hesitant before.
"This is so fucking cool," he says, trying to reassure Mike.
"Ya think?" Mike says, bringing his shoulders up unconsciously. He's not good with praise, Clint has found out. Neither was Nat, for a while; actually, she still isn't completely okay with it.
"So fucking cool," Clint breathes out. "We're like...the deaf leading the blind, or whatever."
Mike snorts, which had definitely been Clint's intention. He's relieved, even for this guy he doesn't know much about (yet).
"Echolocation?" he asks curiously.
Mike nods. "I've got really enhanced senses, other than the vision, obviously."
Clint gapes at him.
Mike frowns. "I can feel you staring at me. The government's not gonna arrest me, are they?"
"The betrayal!" Clint says dramatically, pressing a hand to his chest and falling back to the ground. "I thought you were just a super normal human like me! Not some Captain America-like shit."
After a moment, Mike laughs. He shoves at Clint's shoulder. "I'm nowhere near Captain America levels of cool," he says. "And you really think I could do what I do if I weren't enhanced in some kind of way?"
Clint frowns up at him. "I'm frowning at you," he narrates. "Don't sell yourself short. You aren't just the superpowers, you're also made of a lotta practice and training. I'm not the type to underestimate blind people."
Mike nods seriously. "I see what you mean," he says.
Clint blinks. "Oh, you fucker!" He sits up abruptly. "How many of those have you slipped past me?"
"Almost as many as the ones you've dropped on me."