Chapter Text
P ä rnu, Estonia, 2002
The mission was officially FUBAR.
He was calling it.
Agent Phil Coulson felt the slice of a bullet cut close enough that he could feel the heat of it on his cheek. Instinctively, he ducked down behind a nearby parked car and resisted the urge curse creatively in Estonian as he fired back at the thugs chasing him. “Simple recon mission, my ass,” he muttered to himself as he hunkered down behind the car and calmly checked how many bullets he had left in his clip.
This was not how he’d anticipated his first mission as operational control to have gone; Phil would have liked to believe his organizational skills were better than unmitigated failure. At least Director Fury couldn’t take his recent promotion to level six away from him. Probably. If he tried, Phil could always threaten to quit again and stick Fury with all the paperwork. Fury hated paperwork. Who knew, it might be nice to actually live a life where no one shot at him on a regular basis and FUBAR missions didn’t require him to pull a miraculous solution out of his ass when his only resources were his 9mm, a malfunctioning earpiece and the power of his frustration.
“This is Agent Coulson,” he said calmly into his comm again and resisted the urge to curse aloud because he was a professional, damn it. “Does anyone copy?”
The comm in his ear gave an irritated hiss, but Phil couldn’t hear any voices in between the bursts of static. He refused to let his mind dwell on what that probably meant and instead risked a glance over the boot of the car to check on the location of the two thugs chasing him. He bit back another litany of Estonian curses as he caught movement out of the corner of his eye and picked up the faint sound of a scuffed footstep as one of the thugs tried to sneak up on his position. When Phil was done with this mission, he was going to find out who was responsible for the shitty Intel and smack their heads together. Screw Fury’s rules about not terrorizing the analysts.
When Phil heard a second scuffed footstep, this one a lot closer, he dropped to his stomach and ignored the new dirt on his already ruined suit. He grinned a little when he peered underneath the car and saw the legs of one of the thugs on the other side. Ruthlessly, Phil shot out the thug’s ankle, before following it a shot to the head when the thug dropped with a shout of pain. Rolling fluidly to his feet, Phil pivoted and shot the second thug sneaking up on his left. His heart pounding with the flood of adrenaline, he scanned the late night shadows around him in case any other thugs were going to leap out and attempt to shoot him in the ass, but he appeared to be safe for now. With a last glance around him, Phil tried to recall the street maps he’d studied as part of the mission briefing and started heading west.
Phil doubted there was anything salvageable from the operations center after the smugglers they’d been sent to watch had attacked. The smugglers had known exactly where SHIELD was and why they’d been there, which Phil would be cursing about if he hadn’t been so busy trying to find the rest of his team. At least from the remains of their surveillance post, Phil would be able to track where the smugglers had taken Agent Jasper Sitwell and hopefully make contact with their undercover asset and Phil’s former field partner, Agent Maria Hill. Phil carefully ignored the churning in his stomach at not being the one watching Maria’s back this time and hoped Maria hadn’t met with anything she couldn’t deal with.
As he’d predicted, the corner of the abandoned building they’d been using as a surveillance point was trashed when Phil reached it, but was thankfully not being watched. It had only been a stroke of luck that Phil hadn’t been grabbed along with Jasper when the place had been raided; after spending almost the last twenty years in the thick of the action, first as a US Army Ranger and then a SHIELD field agent, Phil had found spending sixteen hours confined to watching surveillance feeds and monitoring comm chatter more than a little claustrophobic and he’d stepped out for a breath of air.
Hearing a noise behind him, Phil pivoted sharply, gun-first. He almost smiled in relief when he recognized the figure coming up behind him. Agent Maria Hill was still dressed for her undercover mission in a little black dress, but she’d kicked off her heels somewhere and was armed with a gun. “Comms are down,” she said in greeting, her sharp, pale blue eyes scanning Phil quickly for injuries.
Phil nodded in confirmation, grateful Maria wasn’t asking for an explanation of the obvious. It was one of the reasons he liked her so much. “Where’s Agent Kilpatrick?” he asked, wondering what the hell had happened to the junior agent who was supposed to be Maria’s backup.
Maria snorted. “Agent Kilpatrick is an idiot,” she said. “Also, he’s not you.” She blinked for a moment. “Where’s Jasper?”
Phil felt his jaw clench against the now familiar urge to curse in Estonian and possibly several other languages. “Our location was compromised. They knew we were here,” he said and when he found out who was responsible, they’d pay for that. “The smugglers snatched Jasper when they raided the op center.”
Spotting something in the wreckage of the computers, Phil crouched down to pull out a small PDA designed to help track SHIELD assets and targets dosed with SHIELD-designed trackers. “However, I think I have a way to find him,” he said.
“Then let’s go get him back,” Maria said.
*~*
Another crappy mission, another crappy rooftop.
Clint Barton, better known as Hawkeye, let out a long breath as he stared down the scope of his snipers rifle. Whoever had said the life of a mercenary was glamorous had been lying through their teeth. Clint was cold, aching and pissed off, which was never a good combination, but added to the fact that he hadn’t been able to bring his bow on this job and Clint just wanted to shoot this asshole and get out of the country. He’d already got what he’d come for, anyway. The assassination of a low-level smuggler was just a cover; with any luck, the resulting chaos would make sure no one figure out what Clint had stolen.
The fact that Clint was exhausted, hungry and still bruised from his last job wasn’t helping his patience either. Trying to ignore his discomfort, Clint raised his eye from the scope and the warehouse beyond to blink. Movement caught the corner of his gaze as he did and Clint immediately turned his head to look. If it wasn’t for the fact he was sneaking around a run-down warehouse in the early hours of the morning, Clint would have described the guy lurking in the shadows as average; average height, average build and dressed in a moderately expensive, but well-tailored suit. Yet even if his simple presence hadn’t rung Clint’s warning bells, the way the man’s gaze never stopped scanning his immediate environment and the gun in his hand said he was more than he seemed.
A second later, Clint sucked in a sharp breath as the man turned and looked directly up at the roof as if he’d spotted Clint, but Clint knew he’d done nothing to give his position away. For a long moment he felt caught by sharp, blue eyes, before the man turned his gaze back to the warehouse. Sucking in a rather shaky breath, Clint resettled in his perch and turned his attention back to covering his target. He needed to make his shot and get out of here before anything else happened. Slowly, he let out his breath and resisted the instinctual twitch of his finger on the trigger until the man was dead center in his crosshairs. Clint’s body was sluggish from hours of the cold stone beneath him leaching body heat, but Clint was up and moving before the retort of his gunshot stopped echoing.
One shot, one kill. He didn’t need to look to see that his target was dead. Life, Clint knew with a terrifying finality, was painfully easy to end.
He ignored the familiar agony that flooded his body as blood flowed back into numb limbs with the practice that came from long experience. If he didn’t move, he was dead – it was as simple as that. Leaving his perch, Clint slung his snipers rifle over his shoulder and headed for the stairs to get off the now vulnerable rooftop, wincing as something hit the old injury on his arm. Below him on the ground, the other smugglers were shouting as they milled around the warehouse in confusion. Even though the warehouse itself stood on a mostly deserted lot, surrounded by a half-falling down fence, Clint still needed to get clear before the thugs or anyone else found him. Sliding down the rooftop ladder, Clint felt his boots hit the ground and immediately started running.
Naturally, that was the moment the thugs spotted him.
Running out of options and escape routes, Clint ignored the shouts of the thugs behind him and hit the brick wall of one of the warehouse’s out-buildings at a dead sprint. Using his momentum, Clint hauled himself up the wall by the drainage pipe and ignored the spike of pain in his arm. He rolled his body over the edge of the roof just as bullets thudded into the brick wall below him. Forcing his aching body to keep moving, Clint pushed himself to his feet and sprinted across the flat rooftop and leapt the gap between the out-building and the roof of the main warehouse. He landed heavily with a grunt, before rolling back to his feet.
Clint cursed when he saw most of the warehouse roof was made up of glass skylights, but he had no choice but to keep going. He heard renewed shouts behind him and had about a second to realize there was no way this side of Hell he was going to make it, before he heard the sound of bullets shattering glass at the same time he felt everything cracking underneath his boots.
Then he was falling.
Cursing loudly, Clint reached out for one of the rusted metal rafters as he fell, managing to grab it with one gloved hand. His plummeting descent stopped with a jolt that wrenched Clint’s already aching shoulder and dragged a ragged shout of pain from his throat. The sudden jolt also caused the strap of his rifle to slip off his other shoulder and distracted by the pain, Clint couldn’t grab it in time to stop it from crashing to the floor below. Clint cursed loudly again before he looked up in alarm as his grip on the rafter began to slip. Five seconds later, Clint slammed into the unforgiving floor of the warehouse himself among the shattered glass from the skylight.
For a moment, Clint lay sprawled on the concrete, the world around him lurching sickeningly. He heard shouts somewhere to his left, the sounds fading in and out with his grasp on consciousness. He gave a pathetic moan as he blinked away his blurred vision and suddenly throbbing head, before he realized he was looking at the wrong end of about four guns. One of the men stepped forward with a cold smile that sent a shiver down Clint’s spine. “It looks like we’ve caught a little bird, boys,” he said.
Mentally, Clint winced. According to his contact, the psychotic head of this particular smuggling ring, Alexander Dumont, wasn’t supposed to be in Estonia until the day after tomorrow, which was why Clint had taken the risk to steal the smuggling ring’s contact and supplier list and assassinate Dumont’s second-in-command. Clearly his contact had been lying. “Oh, crap,” Clint muttered.
Dumont gave a humorless chuckle. “Help our little bird to his feet,” he said.
Hands reached down and roughly dragged Clint to his feet by the collar of his jacket, which made his vision blur dangerously. The thugs also stripped him of the gun holstered on his thigh and the knife at the small of his back. “Do you mind?” he said archly at their rough treatment. “It’s been a hell of a day.”
Blinking again, it was only then that Clint realized he’d crashed a party – and not the kind he usually liked judging by the bleeding guy in a suit bound and gagged in a nearby chair.
“You know, I really should thank you, Hawkeye,” Dumont said. “Olesk was getting to be a little too troublesome for his worth. You’ve saved me the effort of killing him myself.”
Clint pasted a cocky smirk on his face and ignored the way it hurt. “I’m always happy to be helpful,” he quipped. “For a price, of course.”
“Careful, little bird,” Dumont said. “My generosity only extends so far and you’ve already stolen from me once this evening.”
Keeping his smirk on his face as his mind whirled, Clint tried to ignore the sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach. Getting out of this one wasn’t going to be easy. Clint had always known that one day, one of his jobs would go bad enough that he wouldn’t be able to talk his way out of trouble – he just hadn’t expected it to be this soon. Dumont leveled another cold look at him. “Give me back what you stole and I’ll consider only breaking both your legs before I let you leave,” he said.
Hiding a wince, Clint opened his mouth to reply with something flippant, because yeah, no thanks. “Hesitate too long, Hawkeye,” Dumont added in warning, “and I’ll just shoot you.”
It wasn’t the first time Clint had heard that threat. He was beginning to think he needed to re-evaluate his life choices.
Thankfully, Clint was saved from having to come up with an answer for Dumont by a small explosion at the warehouse’s side door. Pain spiked through Clint’s head at the noise and the way the thugs around him immediately started yelling, but he forced himself to ignore it. Keep it together, he urged himself.
Taking advantage of the thugs’ distraction, Clint scanned the room around him for his nearest weapon and his eyes landed on the man in the suit tied to the chair. Even with the gag, the man in the suit had been remarkably quiet through everything and as Clint blinked at him, he found a pair of intelligent brown eyes staring back. Clint realized the man was far more alert than he had first appeared. From the movements of his shoulders, Clint would also bet the man was attempting to get out of the ropes binding him. Huh. Clint realized that whoever had caused the explosion was obviously coming for him. Clint could work with that.
Two figures moved silently out of the shadows a second later and Clint suddenly found himself in the middle of a very tense stand-off. Clint eyed one of the thugs as he shifted, turning so that Clint could see where the thug had stashed the gun he’d taken from Clint in the waistband of his pants. Then he turned his attention to the newcomers and blinked. They certainly didn’t look like an elite rescue team. The woman was tall and lean, with a pair of sharp, pale blue eyes and a fierce expression. She was dressed rather incongruously in a short black dress and what looked like a pair of combat boots that were a size too big, but it was her partner who caught Clint’s attention, because he was the same man Clint had seen before. Those blue eyes that had seemed to spot Clint so easily on the roof were fixed on Dumont and the thugs, his gun steady in front of him. Despite the situation, Clint felt his eyes linger on the way the suit flatteringly hugged the man’s shoulders and lean waist, because hey, it might be Clint’s last chance.
“Ah, it looks like SHIELD has finally found us,” Dumont said, breaking the tense silence, his tone coldly mocking. “You’re a little late to the party, agents.”
“Please put your guns on the ground and release Agent Sitwell,” the newcomer in the suit said, his voice perfectly polite and calm, but his tone completely unyielding. Clint had to give him credit; whoever he was, he had balls. Hopefully, he also had the skills to back it up, although judging by the way he and his partner moved together knowingly, fluid and precise, Clint would bet both of them had to be military trained at the very least. They’d probably need those skills to deal with what Clint was planning.
For a moment, Clint paused to think about the insanity he was contemplating, but then, he’d done stupider things in his life. Surging into action, he ignored the pounding in his head as he dived for the thug who had his gun. It felt good in his hand as he yanked it out of the thug’s belt. He brought the gun up and tightened his finger on the trigger as his vision started to blur. Not now, he grimaced. Blinking a few times in a futile attempt to clear his vision, Clint took the shot from memory anyway. He wasn’t called Hawkeye for nothing. His lips curled into a satisfied smirk when Dumont dropped.
Turning towards the nearest thug, Clint grabbed his wrist and shoved upwards, throwing off the thug’s aim, before Clint simply brought up his own gun and shot the thug twice in the chest. The sound of the gunshots was loud enough to echo painfully in Clint’s head, although that could also have been the sounds of the rest of the fight around him. He turned to focus on the thug to his right just in time to see him go down, jerking with two bullets to the chest. Blinking, Clint realized that whoever the man in the suit was, he’d just saved Clint’s life.
*~*
Phil stood in the middle of the warehouse and tried to ignore the sensation of eyes staring at him. He’d changed a lot since his days in the Rangers, learning how to hide behind suits and forgettable blandness, no matter how much he still swore like a soldier in his head. It was part of who he was now; the ability to look like an accountant and still capable of killing half the room with a pencil. What it didn’t do – and never had done – was make it easier when half the room was staring at him like he was an alien at the sudden discovery he wasn’t as boring as he looked. Or even just a kid with sharp, blue eyes.
To say that Phil hadn’t expected to come face to face with a punk ass kid while trying to rescue Agent Sitwell would have been an understatement. Yet Phil was looking at one. The kid’s hair was long and shaggy and dyed with streaks of blond. The fringe was long enough to almost obscure his eyes, but Phil didn’t miss the way that sharp gaze assessed him. Nor did Phil miss the way his fingers came away red with blood when the kid gently touched the back of his head and. Phil supposed he probably shouldn’t be calling the mercenary a kid, but considering he looked like he was more than ten years younger than Phil himself, Phil didn’t really care.
“Sooo…” the kid drawled, his voice pleasantly rough. “You guys aren’t CIA, are you?”
Phil snorted before he could stop himself. “Do I look like one of those thumb sucking assholes to you?” he said. “No, don’t answer that.”
The kid just smirked. The black-on-black outfit he wore emphasized a body hard with muscle and he wore the gun now holstered on his thigh with a casual familiarity. It shouldn’t have been as appealing as it was, particularly since the hair and the smirk conspired with the glint of an earring in his right ear to make the kid look barely legal.
“Who are you?” Maria demanded of him.
“He’s Hawkeye,” Jasper said with the sort of breathless excitement that always made Phil brace for a shit-storm. Phil also absently noticed Jasper had managed to free himself from the ropes and gag. “The World’s Greatest Marksman.”
Phil just turned to look at Jasper, who sounded like he was close to gushing. Considering that level of enthusiasm was usually reserved for some sort of scientific breakthrough, Phil figured the kid had to be something special. That, however, didn’t change the fact Phil still had no idea who he was. Jasper must have noticed, because he looked like he almost rolled his eyes. “Coulson, he never misses,” he said.
“It’s always nice to be appreciated,” the kid drawled.
Biting back an irritated sigh, Phil shared a look with Maria, knowing she would understand his frustration. Not that any of her feelings would show on her face; like Phil, Maria was a professional. “Well, that would be an advantage considering the ease of which he gets captured,” Phil said, skepticism and sarcasm bleeding into his tone because he was exhausted and just wanted the mission to be over so he could have a shower and sleep.
“Hey, fuck you, man,” the kid said, his eyes bright and fierce with anger. “I fell through the fucking ceiling.”
Phil blinked, before he flicked his gaze towards the remains of glass on the floor and then up at the ceiling. That was… actually, that was pretty impressive. A fall like that, particularly onto concrete, should have resulted in broken bones at the very least, but the kid was still standing. Combined with the unerring aim he’d shot the smugglers with even though he had a head injury, Phil was beginning to understand the potential Jasper had hinted at. “My apologies,” he said dryly. “I can see how falling through the ceiling would change things.”
“Seriously, man. Fuck you,” the kid replied, but he must have seen Phil’s somewhat reluctant admiration on his face, because the kid’s words had lost their edge of anger and a faint smirk was curling at the corner of his mouth.
“We should go,” Maria said, pulling Phil’s attention away from the kid. “We need to get to the extraction point.”
Her words had the kid tensing again, his gaze immediately shuttered and wary. “Are you sure you guys aren’t CIA?” he said.
Absently, Phil wondered what the kid’s history with the CIA was to prompt that reaction, but knowing the CIA it was nothing good. “Yes, I’m sure. We try not to recruit idiots,” Phil said, although judging by the Intel for this mission he might have to revise that statement. “We work for the Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement and Logistics Division. Most people call us SHIELD.”
The kid snorted. “That’s a mouthful,” he said with a smirk, before his eyes turned challenging. “Is this the part where you give me the hard sell and try to recruit me?”
“No,” Phil said truthfully. While he couldn’t deny that the kid’s skills might be useful to SHIELD, he wasn’t sure this was the time to go into SHIELD’s strict recruitment standards and how they didn’t include falling through ceilings. “This is where we thank you for your cooperation and leave.”
Phil caught the flash of surprise and hurt that went through the kid’s eyes before his expression shuttered again. Phil found himself softening in response. “I do mean that,” he said. “I would like to think we would have been able to rescue Agent Sitwell without any of us getting killed, but your help did make it significantly easier.”
The kid blinked, clearly rendered speechless by the genuine praise. Going on instinct, Phil dug out a small white card from his pocket. It was completely blank and on one side Phil wrote down the address of SHIELD headquarters in New York. “If you ever change your mind about recruitment, give us a call,” he said, holding out the card.
He nodded once when the kid took it, before turning his focus to Maria and Jasper. It was time to go. The three of them moved to leave, but the kid’s voice made Phil pause in the remains of the doorway. “Hey, Agent?” he said. “You got a name?”
“Coulson,” Phil said. “Phil Coulson.”
The kid smirked again. “Well then Coulson, Phil Coulson, maybe I’ll see you around.”
“I’ll believe that when I see it, kid,” Phil replied dryly, ducking out of the warehouse as the kid’s laughter echoed after him.
“It’s cute,” Maria said, falling into step beside Phil as they left the warehouse. “You like him.”
Phil sent her a look that suggested he thought she was losing touch with reality. “And how did you come to that conclusion?” he asked.
“You actually cracked an expression back there,” Maria said with a grin.
“Don’t worry, Boss,” Jasper added. “He’ll call. Promise.”
*~*
SHIELD Headquarters, New York, 2002
Clint Barton squinted against the sunlight as the taxi pulled up in front of a tall building in downtown New York. The building didn’t look special, but the address was the one Agent Phil Coulson had given him three weeks ago in a half-destroyed warehouse in Estonia. The taxi driver’s gravelly voice mad Clint bite back a grimace as it snatched his focus and sent echoes of pain through his skull. Grabbing his wallet, Clint shoved a few notes at the man, grateful he managed to pick the right currency and levered his battered body out of the backseat, only barely managing to hold back another low groan at the movement. The black and blue bruises and cuts covering his skin were evidence of the injuries inflicted by the car bomb that had almost killed him a week ago, although he’d thankfully managed to cover most of them with jeans and a long sleeved shirt. Sunglasses hid his right eye which was still swollen and black, but nothing hid the stitches decorating his forehead and jaw. Luckily, he hadn’t broken any bones – only cracked a couple – but it still hurt.
Limping forward, Clint tried not to let the bag holding his few meager belongings jostle his cracked ribs as the taxi pulled out to the bustling New York traffic behind him. Clint still didn’t think this was a good idea, but for better or worse, he was here now. “Here’s hoping they don’t toss my ass in a cell,” he muttered to himself.
All Clint really wanted was a place he could rest, a few painkillers and maybe a shot of something alcoholic. Instead, he found himself staring up at the New York headquarters of SHIELD and contemplating signing away his soul. Finally giving in and letting himself get recruited by a shady intelligence organization was probably bat-shit insane, but Clint had run out of options. The last of his so-called friends had betrayed him, leaving him at the mercy of a gang of Ukrainian mercenaries in the dirty backstreets of Kiev. The car bomb had just been the icing on the cake, proving that if Clint wanted to keep on breathing, he was going to need someone to watch his back. SHIELD and Coulson seemed like his best choice for that.
Squaring his shoulders as much as he could with his injuries, Clint moved forward and headed towards the large front door to the building. He tried hard to mask his limp even though the pain was making it difficult. The wound from a jagged piece of shrapnel he’d had to dig out of his leg would take a while to heal, but Clint had been taught early in life not to show exploitable weakness. The foyer inside the building looked like it should belong to a rich lawyers office or a fancy-ass hotel, or maybe the entrance to CIA headquarters in Langley that they always put in movies; Clint had no idea if that compared to reality, because he’d never actually been to Langley. Set back from the large front windows and what looked like a waiting area of couches and plants was a large, black reception desk. Clint walked up to the cool-eyed blonde behind it and attempted to paste on his most charming smile, even though he left his sunglasses on. The receptionist didn’t look too impressed when she looked over and Clint saw the faint bulge if a holstered gun beneath the woman's suit jacket. At least Clint knew he probably had the right place.
“May I help you?” the woman asked with a polite smile as cool as her gaze.
“I hope so,” Clint said, still smiling charmingly. “I’m here to see Agent Coulson.”
The receptionist blinked once at that, but Clint wasn’t sure if her mild surprise was because of the name of the fact he’d said ‘agent’. “Can I have your name, sir?” she asked.
“Tell him Hawkeye is here to see him,” Clint said.
The receptionist did the surprised blink thing again. “One moment,” she said, before turning away slightly to use the phone. “Sir, I have Hawkeye in the lobby wanting to see Agent Coulson.”
There was a short pause as whoever was on the other end of the phone spoke, before the receptionist nodded. “Yes, sir,” she said and hung up. Then she turned back to Clint with a polite smile. “Someone will be down to see you in just a moment.”
Clint nodded back, internally debating whether or not that meant a crack team of agents was about to burst out of somewhere and arrest him. He also wondered why the receptionist hadn’t said Agent Coulson was coming down to see him. Instead of being arrested, about three minutes later one of the nearby elevators dinged and a lone man stepped out. Clint had to blink because the man was nowhere near the kind of man he’d expected to be working for SHIELD; not that Clint had ever expected to meet a six foot three African-American man in a black leather trench coat and a fucking eye patch in his life.
The man gave Clint a sharp look as he jammed the elevator’s ‘keep open’ button with his finger. “Barton, get in,” he said.
Clint didn’t bother asking how the man knew his name, but he did hesitate to walk into a confined space with a man he didn't know. That was a good way to get a knife in the back. The man shot him a look that was either irritated or amused. “You can hold that gun you’re hiding under your shirt on me if it’ll make you feel better,” he said dryly. “Just get in.”
Reluctantly, Clint stepped into the elevator, careful to keep at least an arm’s length between them the whole time. If that bothered the man, he didn’t show it. Wordlessly, the man hit the button to close the doors, before pushing a button for the fifth floor. “Where are you taking me?” Clint asked after a moment.
“The junior agents’ break room,” the man answered. “I don’t know about you, but I need coffee.”
“Isn’t that a security breach or something?” Clint asked curiously, because in his experience the guys in suits always cared about shit like that.
The man snorted. “The junior agents’ break room is hardly where we keep all our secrets. What are you going to do, Barton?” he said. “Tell HYDRA I prefer my afternoon coffee black with two sugars? I’m sure that will bring down the free world as we know it.”
Clint smirked. He couldn’t help it. Whoever this guy was, Clint liked him. “Oh, I would,” Clint replied, “but it would probably help if I knew who you were first.”
The elevator doors opened on the fifth floor and the man strode out, before turning back to face Clint. “Nick Fury,” he said. “Director of SHIELD.”
That was not at all what Clint had been expecting and it was only years of acrobatic training that stopped him actually tripping over his own feet in surprise. Fury grinned evilly as if he knew anyway. “Come on,” he said. “I wasn’t kidding about that coffee.”
Blinking away his surprise, Clint headed after Fury and had to smirk at the way the other agents seemed to jump out of the way as Fury strode down the corridor. He winced a little at the way his leg protested when he sped up his pace a little as Fury stopped and held open a door for him impatiently. Clint covered it with a smirk as he slid past the other man. “You really like fucking with the newbies, don’t you?” he quipped.
Fury grinned, the expression faintly terrifying. “My therapist said I needed a hobby,” he deadpanned. He paused, looking Clint over critically. “Sit down before you fall over, Barton,” he said.
Figuring a man who was Director of an organization like SHIELD had probably seen worse than his face, Clint slid off his sunglasses as he sat down at a table, making sure to keep both Fury and the door in a direct line of sight. Fury let out a snort as he placed a paper cut filled with thick, black coffee in front of Clint. “I’m guessing your face doesn’t usually look like that?” he said.
“Car bomb,” Clint said in explanation, before he pasted on a smirk he didn’t quite feel as Fury sat down opposite him. “I thought you would know that already. Don’t you guys have a file around here with my name on it?”
Fury leant back in his chair and took a drink of coffee. “Believe it or not, we don’t keep track of every mercenary in the word, no matter how good their aim,” he said, watching Clint with a gaze that missed nothing. “Which brings us to the real question: what is it that you want from SHIELD? Revenge?”
Clint had to look away from the weight of that gaze. He looked down at the untouched coffee in front of him, before he lifted his eyes to scan the room for threats. Then, with a deep breath, he looked back at Fury. “All I want is to not have to constantly watch my back for a knife aimed at my kidneys,” he said.
Fury grinned. “Well then, welcome to SHIELD, Agent Barton.”
*~*
“Did you hear the news? Fury recruited Hawkeye to SHIELD.”
Stepping out of the elevator into SHIELD’s New York offices, Phil turned and raised an eyebrow at Maria over the rim of his coffee cup. Being ambushed with gossip by his former partner was sadly neither new nor strange to Phil, so he simply gave her a flat look and turned in the direction of his office. “Oh, cheer up,” Maria said. “Your morning is probably only going to get worse.”
When Maria fell into step beside him, Phil bit back the urge to sigh. She was dressed in a designer suit and heels today, which was strange enough that Phil knew she was up to something. He took another sip of his coffee to hide his irritated frown. “Don’t say that,” he told her. “I’ll end up getting shot by lunch time.”
“Well, someone’s grumpy this morning,” Maria said with a smirk. “Bad flight?”
Phil suppressed a grimace at the reminder of the excruciating flight back after his latest mission to Europe. They’d had to fly out of Kyrgyzstan on an old military cargo plane and the loud droning of the engines had almost made Phil’s head explode. The crowded commercial flight back to New York had almost been bliss in comparison. The mission itself had gone as well as to be expected, but Maria’s skills hadn’t been needed for this particular mission, so she’d been spared the horror of flying in a plane held together by duct tape and a prayer. “Yes,” Phil said. “Not to mention that this coffee tastes like crap.”
“Yet, you still keep drinking it,” Maria pointed out with amusement.
“Who’s drinking what and is it alcoholic?” Jasper asked from where he had been waiting for them outside Phil’s office door, obviously having overheard Phil and Maria as they’d rounded the corner; Jasper looked as bad as Phil felt.
With a roll of his eyes and the hint of a smile he just couldn’t stop, Phil opened his office door and stepped inside, ignoring the way Jasper and Maria had immediately started bickering as they followed. Some things never changed and Phil was still trying to work out if that was a good thing or a bad one. Phil set down his briefcase, hung up his coat and waited for a pause between insults. “Is someone dead who shouldn’t be?” he asked mildly.
Maria blinked once in surprise. “I don’t think so,” she said.
“It’s worse, actually,” Jasper added, his dark eyes glittering with humor behind his glasses. “We’re dragging you out to brunch.”
Phil opened his mouth to protest vehemently, but Maria cut him off with a roll of her eyes and a firm tug on his arm. “Yes, I know,” she said. “It’s cruel and unusual torture. However, the new crop of junior agents is also undergoing their training in the gym today and we know how you love watching them get smacked to the mat.”
“I think you’re confusing me with yourself,” Phil replied, but let himself get dragged along all the same.
Between the two of them, Jasper and Maria manhandled him all the way down to the gym on the lower levels underneath the building. Seeing Phil enter the viewing room above the wide, open space of the training gym, several agents moved aside to offer Phil, Jasper and Maria a good position up front. Maria smirked when she saw Phil’s look of confusion at the behavior. “You’re a senior agent now, Phil,” she teased in soft voice. “Half of SHIELD is still trying to work out if they’d get a promotion if they slept with you.”
“They are not,” Phil replied.
“They really are, Boss,” Jasper agreed. “And for the record, I would, if I didn’t know how much of an asshole you actually were.”
In an attempt to distract his team mates, Phil gestured at the junior agents waiting below in their SHIELD-issued sweats. “Do we have anyone interesting in the new group?” he asked.
“That depends on your definition of interesting,” Maria said with a huff.
“There are a few oddballs this time,” Jasper said, since he was usually the one who ferreted out the best gossip. “The tall blond on the left there is Lieutenant Jackson Murphy whose notable achievement mainly seems to be his ability to land aircraft while large parts of them are actually on fire. Then we have Elizabeth Darcy, the woman with the scary expression and red hair. According to rumor, she once beat up an entire grab team with a chair leg and half a computer keyboard. And of course, there’s Hawkeye, the sniper who never misses. I told you he’d call, Boss.”
Maria smirked. “Jasper has a fan boy crush on Hawkeye that almost rivals your love of Captain America, Phil.”
Phil rolled his eyes but didn’t reply, his attention caught by movement in the gym below. He couldn’t hear what was being said, but from the smirk on his face and the way the trainer was looking less than impressed, it appeared Agent Clint Barton was being the smartass he was rumored to be. Phil had missed it because he’d been on a mission for the last two weeks, but apparently Hawkeye had been recruited by Fury himself after he’d turned up SHIELD’s doorstep. The impressive bruises and black eye he’d turned up with were starting to fade and he seemed to be thriving in SHIELD training, but unlike Jasper, Phil hadn’t been stalking his progress like a creeper. However, that didn’t mean he wasn’t interested to see what Barton would do as he sauntered out into the middle of the practice ring to face down his hand-to-hand instructor. Phil was betting it would be good.
Barton turned to show his smirking expression to the gathered junior agents, clearly playing to the crowd. However, Agent Stoyanov was a bastard of a trainer and as soon as Barton had turned his back, he lashed out with a kick that had sent many cocky junior agents crashing to the mat. Phil had to hold back his own smirk at the thought, because Barton was definitely not your average junior agent. Using his clearly sharp instincts, Barton spun and dodged the kick designed to take him out at the knees. He blocked Stoyanov’s vicious follow up kick to his stomach, all signs of his playful smirk gone from his face. For the first time, Phil could see why the name Hawkeye had stuck. Barton’s eyes were hard and alert, trained on every twitch from his opponent. He held his own body loose and fluid and like this, with the sarcastic and defiant part of his mask stripped away, Barton was pure predator.
He slammed a fist towards Agent Stoyanov’s face, but Stoyanov blocked it. Barton retaliated with a sharp jab, before pivoting under Stoyanov’s arm and driving another punch towards the instructor’s face. The strike forced Stoyanov back as the punch glanced off his jaw. Shaking his head slightly, Stoyanov said something to Barton and Phil didn’t need to see Barton’s expression to know it spelled trouble. This time when Stoyanov sent a punch towards Barton’s face, Barton turned as he blocked. His other arm rolled over Stoyanov’s as Barton snapped out a ruthless elbow towards the instructor’s face. Stoyanov blocked the elbow, but Barton was already moving. He kicked Stoyanov low in the stomach with enough force to make the other man grimace and taking his opportunity, Barton surged forward with the hint of a vicious smile curving his lips and caught Stoyanov around the back of his neck, before slamming his knee into the instructor’s nose. Then, for good measure, Barton kicked Stoyanov’s legs out from under him.
Around Phil, the other agents broke into gasps and cheers at Barton’s victory and down below in the gym, the man himself was smirking again. Phil ignored the other agents and Jasper’s probing stare as he hummed thoughtfully. A second later, Barton glanced up at the viewing room, his blue eyes bright with challenge as they looked almost directly into Phil’s. Usually, Phil wouldn’t believe that a junior agent would be able to see well enough to distinguish individual observers from the gym below, but Phil wasn’t going to make the same assumption with a man known as Hawkeye. Phil had been a SHIELD agent for long enough to know that Barton’s reputation was about to gain a sense of legend – and if the determination in Barton’s eyes was anything to go by, this would only be the first feat of many.
“Well?” Jasper almost demanded after another moment.
“You’re right. Barton is an impressive asset,” Phil admitted, which felt like an understatement, but he wasn’t about to let Jasper know that. “However, he would be a lot more impressive if he didn’t make his instructors bleed during training.”
Jasper was silent for a moment as Maria grinned. “You know,” Jasper said. “I’m going to tell Barton you said that.”