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Standing within ten paces of Steve Rogers’ “I’m Not Angry, Just Disappointed” face was enough to make a blind dumpster dog whine. It was official. Steve’s disapproval was an actual superpower.
“It’s not like I put him in the dumpster,” Clint said quickly, his fingers still tangled in the ruff of fur over the dog’s shoulders. It was not fair that someone with Clint’s disaster of a life story could still feel the need to justify himself. Usually he was immune to the urge entirely, but Captain America was a jerk who did not reserve his powers for the bad guys. “I was taking Lucky for a walk, and… yeah. Hell’s Kitchen, I’m more impressed that the little guy’s still in one piece. No tags, no collar. A friend of mine that works in a vet office scanned him for a microchip as a favor, but no dice.”
Natasha frowned at him before glancing approvingly at the dog. “Kate?”
“Katie-Kate is watching Lucky, but she isn’t home enough to take care of this guy. I had him in my apartment for half an hour and he tried to escape four times. He’s pretty destructive toward property but he’s not aggressive.”
“We should be gone less than a week.” Natasha, of course, was immune even to Steve Rogers Is Disappointed In You On A Personal Level because she was a mutant and also because the Red Room was the worst. “I think he’s a Belgian Malinois under the filth. Someone should check for lost dog posters in Hell’s Kitchen.”
Natasha bent down to rest on one knee and offered her hand. The dog sniffed before reluctantly nudging at her hand, because even dogs couldn’t resist her. The animal had barked at Clint for nearly a full minute before subsiding with a piteous whine as if Clint was too stupid to understand the speech of dogs trapped in dumpsters.
“He’s in good condition,” Natasha added, skimming her hand down the dog’s ribs. “Blind, yes, but someone trained him. He’s compensating very well. He might be a police or military animal adopted out after something happened to his eyes.”
Steve sighed, but he bent over to offer his hand. The traitor dog nudged at Steve’s fingers before dropping down to the floor and hiding its head under its paws. “I’ve never looked after a dog before,” he said, but they all knew the answer.
“Dogs? Dogs were not on the lease,” Tony said from the doorway. Natasha’s Do Not Even stare crossing paths with Steve Rogers’ I Expect Better From You sad look left Clint feeling uncomfortable all over again even though Tony was their target. “Buuuuut I suppose we have to do something with Old Yeller while Katniss and Comrade go play tag with Hydra in Somalia, so fine, now there’s a dog,” Tony finished quickly. “FRIDAY, please figure out what Fido needs and how often he needs walkies.”
Clint might intentionally to try to disappoint Steve in combat sometime just to see if that face worked on Loki. Thor was still moping because it turned out that Loki was not dead but remained awful. Thor was kind enough to do his moping with Jane as Clint was still not interested in reminiscing about all of Loki’s previous tricks.
Loki had gone on some reunion whirl through Manhattan and the battle against the Avengers had not been pretty. Worse, Loki had brought along some Asgardian sorceress named Amora who had been throwing magic even more often than Loki. That left two magical Asgardians against Thor Clint, Natasha, and Tony.
As much as Bruce hated working downtown, Clint had really wanted the Hulk for that fight, but Bruce was still missing in action. Vision and Wanda were still upstate trying to come to terms with life as a corporeal being and living in a Stark property with Tony Stark without her brother, respectively. Steve and his new BFF Sam had been out all week to find Bucky, so it had been a smaller group of Avengers and not one of them was great against magic. They might have had more trouble if half of the scorn and sorcery duo hadn’t gotten bored. Amora left after pouting that Loki wasn’t nearly as fun as she remembered, luckily, and apparently Loki decided he didn’t like the odds alone against the smaller group.
Even Clint had to admit that Amora was more nightmarish in that outing. She was throwing spells wildly, picking out a few targets from the panicked mob in front of the courthouse, and Loki had spent at least three in ten spells reversing enchantments she’d cast on civilians. Amora vanished on her own after shrieking something at Loki that left a squeal of feedback in Clint’s hearing aids. (Hearing aids did not deal well with magic, apparently. Clint and Tony both didn’t want to think about it. Fuck magic.)
Loki turned to the nearest Avenger and tried to look peaceful. Unfortunately for everyone, Clint was closest, and Clint was doing his level best to sink an arrow in Loki’s eye with the goal of getting it straight through the pupil. Loki had spat out some parting comment about Hodor before vanishing. The Hodor bit was all kinds of messed up because Loki did not need to be watching Game of Thrones for inspiration. Specifically it had involved Hodor and mistletoe, but Clint had actually just fired an arrow before Loki vanished so he missed the subtleties. His ears were still buzzing from all the magical yelling-things that broke reality and hearing aids.
Right, paying attention to teammates outside of battle situations, that was a thing. The fight had been two days ago, his hearing aids were fine now, he needed to focus on the present so people would stop talking about PTSD like therapy helped with ass-hat Norse god-aliens turning you into your closest friends’ worst enemy. Clint tuned back in to the room at large only to find that Steve had a lot of opinions about dogs, for someone who had never had one, and Tony mostly had opinions about names, which were horrible.
Natasha clicked her tongue at him when Clint opened his mouth.
“You named your dog Pizza Dog,” Natasha said forbiddingly.
“Lucky,” he protested.
“Let them sort out a name. Maybe he’ll have something decent when we get back from Mogadishu.”
- * - * -
Four days later, they were back from Somalia and there was no discussion about moving the dog to Clint’s apartment.
The Avengers liked having a dog around. Clint wasn’t so sure it was mutual. The dog was settling in okay, but he was not happy, no matter what the rest wanted to think. The dog refused to respond to any one name, for instance, which was not ideal. It made Clint think that he was a trained patrol dog someone had to be missing but the only wanted posters he came across on walks with Lucky were for a missing lawyer. He learned the hard way he couldn’t take Dog with him when he was looking through the public bulletin boards. The dog would always snag a poster of the missing lawyer and refuse to give it back. There were also certain streets where Dog had pulled so hard on the leash that Clint would be unwillingly tugged along for several steps. Really, it was better to just not take Dog near Hell’s Kitchen.
Dog been in good shape when they took him in. Scarred, maybe, but nothing that looked too recent. Someone had to be missing the dog. Steve had ran through the basement obstacle course with the dog several times before looking up just how professionals trained police dogs to do parkour. The internet had no answers for blind dogs on obstacle courses and definitely had no answers for a blind dog doing flips. Tony had reluctantly let the dog into his lab, but just once. Somehow the dog had turned on the hologram board and started changing the files Tony had been working on.
Left anywhere near food or clutter, the dog would start nudging things around as if he lived to make messes. They found him spreading kibble across the floor in oddly neat lines, water spread around the kitchen floor, and chew toys left in grids. It got bad enough that Tony and Steve had a quiet talk about the benefits of kennel training just before the dog finally calmed down with the odd behavior.
Steve was out for a late morning run with The Dog Who Would Not Be Named when they had a lawyer show up looking for Iron Man. Usually it was someone bringing a summons regarding a civil suit about property damage. Clint went along out of sheer curiosity to hear out the lawyer and his friend.
Foggy Nelson was hoping that there was some hidden superhero code where Iron Man could get in touch with Daredevil. He’d been out of action for over a week and wasn’t responding to any of the usual calls. Natasha’s voice had been gentle when she asked about any known fights against the Punisher, but that didn’t seem to be the case. The lawyer’s blonde friend was sure. The Punisher was patrolling Hell’s Kitchen and hadn’t been killing anyone. He had deposited a tied-up rapist in an alley near the police station a week before with a note pinned to his collar saying that he was just looking after Daredevil’s city while the guy was busy.
Natasha waited until they had seen Foggy Nelson and his friend the reporter to the elevator, and then until the elevator had successfully deposited them in the lobby. “Clint, the missing lawyer posters. How long has he been gone?”
“Eleven days,” Clint said as he pictured the poster of the smiling man in mirrored sunglasses. “Why?”
“Possibly nothing. I need to go pry Thor away from Jane long enough to answer a few questions,” she said.
- * - * -
Wanda and Vision had been upstate for a while and nobody had thought either of them would require a warning there was a dog in the Tower. Dog was pretty well-behaved, actually, to the extent that he seemed disgusted with basic training. Tony was outright offended that nobody had a social media post talking about the dog, not even as a puppy. Clint and Steve took turns letting Dog go crazy in the obstacle course. It seemed to be one of the few things that Dog actually liked.
Wanda, however, was staring at Dog as if he were possessed.
“How long has he been here?” she asked. She sank down to her knees and held out her hand. Wanda didn’t budge when Steve tried to explain that Dog was blind. “A week and half a week, I see. Come here, please,” she coaxed, gently touching the side of the dog’s head when he sat in front of her. “If it is acceptable to you, I can try to read your mind.”
The dog nodded. Clint realized that he had maybe missed something important.
Steve, Sam, Clint, and Tony mutely made space for Vision to join them in the group of very confused people. Wanda was still communing with the dog when Natasha and Thor walked into the common area. Thor had brought his hammer. Natasha had brought a small white paper bag with a pink leaf emblem.
Natasha tilted her head thoughtfully at the sight of Wanda leaning close to the dog. “That works. I thought you and Wanda would be up north a while longer, Vision. Welcome back.”
Vision nodded gravely. “Thank you, Natasha. I hadn’t known that Wanda’s abilities worked with animals.”
“I’m pretty sure that he’s not actually a dog,” Natasha replied with a half-shrug. “Thor and I went over the recording about what Loki said.”
Thor nodded. “He cast an enchantment on someone Amora had cursed. Most of her spells were pure trickery, an easy matter for Loki to undo, but she put far more magic into a curse placed on one man in particular. Loki formed his counter-spell as a tale to give it more strength, I imagine, and also because he is Loki.”
Clint was rather touched that Thor didn’t mention the part about why Loki had been rushed in his counter-spell. It figured that Loki had actually been trying to do something helpful while Clint tried to put an arrow in his face.
“He said the mistletoe which caused so much trouble for Höðr would be another blinded man’s cure,” Thor continued. “When we were children, a lady of the court boasted that she had protected her son Baldr against all things that might harm him. It was a great sport to watch people throwing spears and firing arrows with no effect and won her no end of honor. Loki coaxed the blind Höðr into throwing a sprig of mistletoe, guessing that the lady wouldn’t have remembered such a harmless thing in her protections, and poor Baldr was weeks in recovery.”
Sometimes Clint forgot that a while ago a whole lot of people were convinced that Thor and his asshole brother were gods, then there was yet another story about Loki being awful. On the plus side, that might mean that Loki didn’t watch Game of Thrones and wouldn’t find some way to write spoilers in the sky.
The still-blind dog was paying a whole lot of attention to them now.
“I imagine Amora had planned to take you,” Thor said directly to the dog. “You dodged away from her so quickly that she left without finding you. I do not know her motives.”
Dog-that-was-not-a-dog yipped. It should have sounded funny, maybe, but now Clint could imagine just how much he must have missed.
“That is unsurprising,” Thor replied kindly. “Such change-of-shape spells often befuddle your senses but also the senses of those unaware of the trick. I do not have seiðr so I cannot say for certain.”
Clint actually felt a little better that magic might have left him thinking Dog was just a smart dog. He’d still apologize to Dog later for missing all the signs of Dog definitely not being a normal dog. At least he could be a little virtuous in knowing that he had convinced Steve about the benefits of a raw diet and fed Dog as dogs should eat- medium-rare steak cubes and pizza.
“His clothes were not found on the street after the transformation, so I believe they may still be present?” Wanda looked to Thor and smiled when he nodded. “This is a small help, then, after the time that he has had.”
The dog made a low almost-growl in agreement. Whatever he’d said, Thor looked amused and Wanda smiled. “Of course,” she said gently. “Please do tell me if you would prefer to have less of a crowd for your restoration.”
Everyone understood the dog’s stink-eye at that one. The dog was blind and still had a glare that could make Captain America sheepish. Clint was as always the only guy in the room with zero superpowers.
Natasha reached into the paper bag and drew out a sprig of mistletoe. She handed it to Clint because of course she did. Nat was a menace. Clint weighted the weird little plant in his hand for a moment before lobbing it right at the dumpster not-dog.
In the moment that the mistletoe rebounded off of the dog’s forehead, it wasn’t a dog’s forehead any longer. There was a man in mirrored sunglasses and a grey suit sitting on the floor looking ready to punch somebody’s face in.
Suddenly a large amount of odd details made much more sense. Of all of the confusing details, though, there was one that Clint couldn’t not ask about. “How did you even know those posters were about you you are blind.”
“I heard people talking about them. After that, it was easy enough to scent out the posters, they always smelled like the same people,” the man explained with remarkable patience for someone who had been a dog for a week and a half. “If someone would please get me a cane or a taxi, I would like to go home now.”
The guy was just sitting on the floor, but Clint’s internal sense of ‘that person is possibly dangerous’ was not going to be convinced that the blind lawyer was harmless. Mostly it was the guy’s posture. Sitting on the floor usually looked like sitting, when civilians did it, but when it was someone with combat training? Their center of mass was poised differently, like the blind guy’s, and there was that sense of imminent motion. He didn’t look like a guy just sitting there because he had been a dog and his life kind of sucked. He looked like someone ready to spring up to his feet and kick Captain America in the face.
“I am unsure how to offer my hand, or if such an offer would be welcome, but I will be pleased to assist you.” Wanda’s words were as blunt as they were gentle.
“Y-yeah. That’d be…” The lawyer reached out and closed his hand around Wanda’s forearm. Wanda stood up with him and gingerly led him to take a seat at the table.
Sam cleared his throat as he approached with a glass of cold water. “I’ve got some water. Six inches ahead of your right hand okay?” he asked.
The man tilted his head slightly before nodding. “That’s fine, yes.”
“Sam Wilson,” Sam said, setting the water down just where he’d mentioned. “I did a lot of work with veterans, some of them are blind. I managed to be out of town for most of the shape-changing spells nonsense.”
“Matt Murdock,” he replied. His hand wasn’t shaking when he picked up the glass of water. Clint for one was impressed. “The next time there are shape-changing spells I’m going to be tempted to leave the state. Is there any kind of excuse form for… whatever that was? I missed a court date.”
“I’m Natasha Romanov,” Nat said crisply. “I imagine Dr. Cho would be willing to write you a note. A medical excuse would suffice, I think, and she could verify truthfully that you were under our care in the Tower. I apologize we didn’t put the hints together sooner.”
“No, it’s… fine,” Murdock said.
Clint recognized that expression. It was the same one that Steve made when someone thought that he wanted to talk all about the Great Depression or how many people he’d killed during the war. That expression meant that it wasn’t fine but the wearer wasn’t ready to tell people that they were wrong.
“It’s really not,” Clint said. “My skill-set doesn’t have much to do with legal things, but seriously. I owe you one for everything I brushed off. Like the time I am now sure that you were barking in Morse code.”
Murdock shrugged but turned toward him. “It was hard to concentrate. When you found me? I’d just overheard a few people talking about getting new blood for their fighting ring. They were already arguing about whether or not it was worth the trouble of grabbing a more noticeable dog.”
Clint winced. Maybe he could convince Lucky to put up with Stark Tower long enough to have Wanda double-check that he was just an awesome dog. He did not need to find out later that there was a reason he hadn’t heard much from Fury lately. “Yeah. We could not figure out why there weren’t any lost dog ads. Tons of lost lawyer ads, though, which you know.”
“I should call them.”
Murdock looked impressively unhappy with the idea. Clint glanced Natasha’s way, just to be sure, but she didn’t look any more dangerous than usual. Maybe Murdock was a sad person in general or it sucked as much as Clint thought to be stuck as a dog. “We can make Steve call them,” Clint offered, half-smirking at Steve’s reflexive protest. “Enough people saw that fight outside the courthouse that having Steve say you’re better now should get you a little peace.”
“I’ll call,” Murdock said, patting his suit pocket before frowning. “Well, if I can borrow a phone and have someone dial. Touchscreens are a bit of a problem.” He gestured vaguely toward his eyes.
“Which somebody should fix. Sharpish,” Tony said with a polite nod that Murdock wouldn’t see. “Let me know if you need meatsuit-me or Iron Man-Me, but I’m suddenly thinking that accessibility features should get better. Vision?”
Vision glanced toward Wanda before nodding. “I do miss the lab. Please call if you need anything else.”
Clint handed over his very battered old Nokia. He liked the way that it sounded, it was reassuring to have actual buttons to press, and it could handle falling off of an apartment complex. As if that wasn’t enough reason to keep his phone, it distracted Tony out of nearly any rant to start talking about offensive barbarian technology in his house. “How’s this? Standard touchpad.” He slid the phone across the table at Murdock’s nod.
All of them would have left if Murdock said that he wanted privacy. Clint imagined that Steve or Wanda or Natasha would have offered to vanish by now if they thought that was what the man wanted, and Thor was periodically insightful enough Clint remembered that the guy had been around for a long time. If anything, Murdock looked like he’d rather not be calling his friend.
“It can be difficult to explain magic to one who has not seen it before,” Thor said kindly when Murdock had hesitated over the phone for several moments. After dialing the number, Murdock’s index finger had been hovering over the ‘send’ button. “I would expect that you are still disoriented. A forced transformation is always more difficult to process, and after so long in another form, it can be difficult to trust your own senses again.”
Clint winced at the thought. It would suck enough to be a dog for a while. Being a dog without hearing aids… Yeah. He might want to take a swing at anybody that was in reach.
“Everything still feels wrong,” Murdock said slowly. The concession sounded as if it was being forced out of him. “If someone wouldn’t mind?”
“Perhaps a conference call?” Natasha suggested. “That way you could hear everything and we still can make Steve handle it.” She smiled when Steve rolled his eyes. “Sorry, Steve, but every excuse sounds better when given by Captain America.”
Murdock nodded once. He didn’t look any happier, to Clint’s eye, but not getting more tense was maybe progress. FRIDAY dialed the number for them a moment later. Clint reminded himself that it wasn’t the AI’s fault that Tony was overbearing and had enough cameras that the intelligence responded to nonverbal cues and dial numbers tapped into Clint’s battered phone from her personal line.
The phone rang twice. “Foggy Nelson.” The man was definitely trying to sound calm and unruffled. It probably would be more impressive if Clint didn’t spend too much time listening to Natasha critique Clint’s attempts at the same.
Despite his prior disinterest in using the shield for everything, Steve was already sitting as if he were wearing the uniform. “Mr. Nelson? This is Steve Rogers. I’m calling to let you know that your friend Mr. Murdock is with us at Avengers Tower.”
‘Foggy’ was a weird name, Clint decided. What kind of person actually went by ‘Foggy’? Hawkeye didn’t count, that had been his circus name before it was his call sign, and his call sign was cool enough that Katie-Kate demanded partial custody.
“Matt?” Foggy’s composure shattered. “He’s okay, right? Matt.”
“I’m fine,” Matt said. He was tracing the rim of his empty glass with both hands in fast, nervous gestures. “There was… I got caught in that fight outside the courthouse.”
“Of course you did,” Foggy muttered. “You have the worst luck in the… wait a minute. Steve Rogers at Avengers Tower.”
For the first time, Clint saw Matt Murdock smile for real.
“Yeah. So they tell me, anyway,” Matt said. He pushed the glass aside and sat back in his chair. Smiling, Murdock finally looked like the man that Hell’s Kitchen kept searching for. “The lady sorceress turned me into a dog and I ended up with the Avengers.”
After a shocked few seconds, Foggy laughed. “Your luck. Matt, your luck. You’re at the Tower now, right? I- um- still have a key to your place. I can pick up a cane, change of clothes, whatever you want and meet you there. If that’s okay.”
“I’d like that,” Matt said quietly. “Thanks, Foggy. Could you do me one more favor?”
“Sure,” Foggy agreed.
“Tell Karen what happened? I’ll tell her myself, too, but I don’t want her to have to wait.”
Foggy was definitely smiling. Nobody could fake a tone that warm otherwise, not even Natasha. “Definitely, buddy. I’ll see you at the Tower.”
“Sure, see you soon,” Matt replied with a smirk. He paused when he remembered the audience of unnecessary people. “Sorry,” he said, facing Steve. “I didn’t… the last time we talked, it didn’t go so well. It’s been a rough year.”
Clint finally remembered the media coverage of the Punisher case just when he realized just why ‘Foggy’ was a bizarre name. There was no way there were two lawyers in Hell’s Kitchen named Foggy Nelson looking for someone that had been missing for a week and a half.
Clint turned to face Natasha. She was laughing at him. After so much time in the field, the laughter only showed in just tiny changes around her eyes, but she had probably known since she decided to involve Thor. Clint held up both hands because he was not getting involved in that, all he’d done was try to help a dog in a dumpster and ignore every sign that there was something bigger at play.
Steve looked suspicious. He’d been out for a run and hadn’t met Foggy and Karen, but Steve had a fantastic memory for names and a very high index of suspicion lately. Sam was looking Murdock over again. Wanda had already read the guy’s mind, so she probably knew everything, and it was hard to tell just what Thor was thinking.
Matt frowned. “Is something wrong?”
Steve and Natasha had some kind of silent communication involving minute gestures before they both looked to Sam. Sam shrugged.
Natasha turned to Matt as if the other two had named her spokesperson. “We’ll have to ask if Karen and Foggy had any luck with their friend,” she said in her friendliest voice. It was the one that Natasha used when she wanted to charm people she thought were clever enough to not believe her for a second.
To his credit, Matt looked suspicious and he couldn’t even see Natasha suddenly looking harmless and five years younger. “Oh?”
Natasha clearly liked Murdock; she dropped the act. “Foggy Nelson and Karen Page stopped by the Tower this morning to ask if Daredevil had been working with the Avengers,” she said evenly. “It seems he’s also been missing for ten or eleven days and has very protective friends.”
Matt pressed two fingers to his temple. “That was kind of them,” he said.
“I think I see what your friend meant about your luck,” Sam replied. “At this point, Murdock, it seemed more polite to let you know what we know. This could, of course, be an odd sort of coincidence nobody needs to talk about again.”
“Well. If you can’t tell the Avengers…” Matt shrugged and slipped his sunglasses into his suit pocket. Clint had known he was blind, of course, but there was something different in seeing the direct evidence of eyes that didn’t focus. “I’m Matt Murdock and I’m also Daredevil. I usually prefer to work alone but it would make Foggy happy if I occasionally asked for help.”
“Amora would have found herself quite outmatched,” Thor said. “She enchanted you with intent of taking you to her stronghold as she found you comely and canny. The people of Asgard say my father gave an eye for wisdom. I imagine she thought that loss of all sight would leave you wiser still.”
Matt blinked. “That’s a new one.”
Clint smiled. He had an idea what Murdock was thinking. “We’ve seen footage of your fights. It’s like blurry ninja movies scattered across youtube. We aren’t going to assume that you don’t know what you’re doing.”
“We’ll have a contact number for you when we tell Stark to set it up,” Natasha said. “Tony has a few relays set up for emergencies. If you call in, you’ll get to one of us.”
“It’s a really good idea to call in your friends for big jobs,” Clint agreed with a nod. “Especially if you’re about to go topple SHIELD with one friend and one jogging buddy.”
Sam laughed. “Hey, don’t blame me. Captain America and Black Widow wanted me to break out my old wings and save the world, I was not going to say no.”
Thor hadn’t heard the story start to finish and Matt seemed relieved to not be the center of attention. Clint texted Tony to ask about ordering pizza while Steve, Natasha, and Sam alternated telling the story and interrupting each other. FRIDAY texted back that pizza would arrive with Murdock’s friends.
One of Tony’s regular drivers and two Tower security staff brought in the stacks of pizza boxes. Foggy and Karen were right behind them. Clint worried for a moment, wondering just what kind of treatment Murdock was expecting, but the relief on their faces was clear.
“There is no escaping the hug unless you actually admit that you want space or are injured,” Foggy warned as he crossed the room. Murdock’s only response was to stand up and open his arms. Foggy rocketed into him, duffel bag still dangling from his shoulder, and a moment later Karen joined the effort to hug the sad out of Murdock.
When the three of them drew apart, Foggy and Karen were fine until they caught sight of Clint and Natasha.
“It’s fine,” Matt said. “They would have figured it out anyway, I think.”
“Normal dogs do not do backflips,” Sam quipped. “That probably goes double for blind dogs. I’m Sam Wilson, I’ll be the well-mannered person here and try to handle introductions.”
Foggy and Karen didn’t move more than two feet away from Matt even as they shook hands with everyone, including Tony and Vision when the pair abandoned the lab in favor of pizza. Clint wasn’t quite sure who made the first comment about alcohol, and definitely wasn’t sure when Thor brought out a flask of Asgardian liquor, but playing designated sober person kept him entertained. Clint had an early morning flight to get back home and needed to be sober to wrestle Lucky away from Kate.
It turned out that lawyers (and whatever it was Karen did for a living) could drink. Murdock started out quiet but a couple glasses in he started telling stories about life as a dog in Avengers Tower that were unfairly hilarious considering how many times Clint was the butt of the joke. Whatever it was Thor was pouring out of his flask, it left Matt relaxed and Karen’s smiling and Foggy laughing so hard that he fell off the couch. Thor had politely ignored Tony’s glass of seltzer, as everyone else did, and at the end of the night a very happy group of drunks meandered back to their rooms. Even Vision looked a little unsteady on his feet.
Clint shooed the trio into a guest suite after strongly encouraging a large glass of water. Asgardian liquor or not, there had been vodka and whiskey and he wasn’t sure what else poured into glasses all night, and the sober Avenger was always on water duty. Matt and his friends drank water with not one complaint that they were Russian and vodka was water to them. There were at least three bedrooms in the nonsense that Tony considered a guest area, but Clint wasn’t surprised that the group decided they’d share a king-size bed. The decision looked more like three extremely drunk people curling on top of the sheets without taking their shoes off but Clint wasn’t going to judge. He set a few bottles of water on the nightstand as well as a bottle of ibuprofen.
FRIDAY knew the Tower inside and out. Clint most appreciated that at two in the morning when he didn’t need to risk waking someone up to get a question or two answered. Before Clint left the Tower to grab Lucky and see if Kate wanted to come meet his family, he left three notes in the kitchen. The first was printed instructions in plain English about how to work Tony’s preferred coffee machine. The second was coffee maker instructions printed in Braille spelling Clint’s best attempt at describing the machine for a blind guy.
The third was much shorter. Magic sucks. If you want to talk to any of us about it, show up sometime or e-mail or whatever you feel like. If you want a professional, I can personally recommend a couple therapists that aren’t just talking out of their ass. If you want to free-run on rooftops sometime, call me. –Clint
Clint had spent half an hour trying to convince Lucky that the tractor wasn’t going to eat him when his new phone vibrated with a text notification. He had maybe accepted Tony’s perpetual offer to beta-test something that wouldn’t lose all signal out in the boondocks. He’d also cleared eighty-nine levels of Angry Birds on the jet.
The cool kids call it parkour.
I’m not picky. I’ll call it parkour if you have time when I get back to New York in a couple weeks, Clint replied after saving the number to his phone.
Wouldn’t mind trying the obstacle course in the Tower on two legs.
You should come over for movie night sometime. The fights about which movie to put in are legendary.
As he hit send, Clint realized that he was an idiot. I am an idiot, he sent as quickly as he could manage. It was harder to text around a lapful of dog. But come on over to Avengers Tower anytime. Bring Foggy and Karen if you want to verify presence of non-idiots.
I have a high bar for ‘idiot,’ that doesn’t clear it. I will bring Foggy and Karen anyway because making up for past idiocy is easier over breakfast Captain America made.
Ah, Steve. Clint had actually skipped the Real Life Captain America phase of meeting Steve Rogers In The Flesh but he’d seen it play out several times. Clint had been too busy wanting to shoot things to geek out that Captain America wanted him to shoot things. Matt respected Steve, sure, but even when drunk on Asgardian liquor he never showed signs of hero-worship. Magic. Magic was the only way to avoid the Captain America mystique, didn’t it just figure.
Clint glanced down at the dog in his lap. Lucky was looking up at him with his one good eye, tongue lolling out, and didn’t seem like he was trying to communicate humanity. “You’re not Fury or Bruce,” he said, just to check, but Lucky didn’t so much as twitch.
Magic sucks, but the company's good, Clint texted before looking back down at his dog. Maybe Wanda and Thor could both do their thing when they were back in New York.