Chapter Text
This was potentially one of the worst times ever to be starting something, Clint realised, even as he said the words to confirm that they were indeed, well… starting something. His time wasn’t really his own from the moment this plane landed until after his last event was done – the Games didn’t even start for nearly another week but he had the dreaded ‘media and sponsor commitments’ on top of his normal training for most of that.
And yet even with all of that, he didn’t want to stop. Phil had asked to take things a bit slowly, and he could absolutely do that – it worked out pretty well with his schedule, really. Even knowing barely anything about him, he didn’t want to give up on Phil before they had a chance to find out if this could be something special.
He’d been a little bit interested even when Phil was just ‘cute guy sleeping in the window seat’ – now that he knew just a little of his personality too, he was sold.
He became conscious of the fact that they’d pretty much just been sitting smiling giddily at each other for at least thirty seconds; if any of their fellow passengers had happened to glance over at that moment, who knows what they’d have thought.
“So,” he said, clearing his throat and taking a deep, calming breath.
“So,” Phil echoed.
Clint wasn’t sure how to restart the conversation from there; years of struggling with sub-par hearing aids and frequently half-dead-or-worse batteries hadn’t really imbued him with the greatest of conversational skills. Especially when it came to that sort of chatter that straddled the gap between deep, intense discussion and small talk. Luckily for him, Phil didn’t seem to mind picking up the slack.
“I think I might have asked about this in that little hysterical word barrage I threw at you there,” Phil started, “but I don’t actually know anything about how Olympics archery works. I mean, I can guess that it involves shooting at things…” He paused to huff a laugh. “…but beyond that I’m clueless.”
Clint wondered briefly how Phil would react if he knew that just two years ago, Clint had been just as ignorant of the competition format. Then he realised he probably wouldn’t have to wonder for long; how he made it onto the team in the first place was bound to come up.
“To be honest,” he admitted. “’Shooting at stuff’ covers most of it. Big round target, you get points based on how close to the middle you can get. They jazz it up a bit with team competitions and splitting matches into little chunks instead of just adding up every shot, but if you can hit the centre of the target every single time, you’re still gonna win.”
Phil nodded. “Makes sense. Maybe I’ll even try to watch some of it this year.” He grinned. “Seeing as I have someone to cheer on. I read online that the BBC are pretty much broadcasting everything live, so I’m sure I’ll find a way to watch it.”
Clint was pretty sure that he could actually get him a ticket, if he tried. He’d tuned out that part of the briefing US Archery had given them after team selections, but the fact that it was even part of the briefing at all meant there was probably a way.
Whether he could cope with knowing that there was someone in the stands cheering specifically for him, cheering personally for him he didn’t know. Whether that person was Phil or not. Crowds had never been a problem. Friends? Loved ones? A whole different matter.
“I’d like that,” he said, resolving to take some time alone to think on the issue of having Phil there in person to watch him compete.
“Hopefully it doesn’t clash with the synchronised swimming. As much as my sister loves me, I don’t think she’d forgive me for that.”
Clint had almost forgotten he wasn’t the only competitor of interest to Phil. “Is she excited?”
Phil’s raised eyebrows told a story all on their own. “I think that’s an understatement. She flew over with the rest of her team yesterday and I pity everyone else on that plane. I doubt they stopped squealing at each other the whole time.”
Clint couldn’t really imagine it. Most of the girls and women he’d known in his life hadn’t really been the ‘excited squealing’ type. And he definitely couldn’t imagine keeping up animated conversation with his own teammates for that many hours in a row. “Luckily for you and the rest of the passengers on this flight, even if I was sitting with my teammates I don’t think there would be any squealing.”
Phil’s face dropped into a frown. “Wait. Your teammates are on this flight too and yet you’re not sitting with them? I mean, don’t get me wrong, I’m glad you ended up next to me, but…”
Yeah. If he thought about it, Clint could see why that would seem strange to anyone not in the know. “It’s… complicated,” he said after a moment. “It’s not that we don’t get along, they’re both decent guys, really talented. I’m just… still kind of an outsider.”
“Why would…?”
The puzzlement on Phil’s face told Clint that, for anything in his life to make the slightest bit of sense to Phil, he was going to have to tell him the whole story. Or at least the highlights.
“Most of the guys who were up for selection have known each other for years,” he started. “They took it up at scouts, or private school… I think a couple even used to shoot at their parents’ country clubs. They’ve been competing against each other almost as long as they’ve been able to even hold a bow.”
“And I’m guessing you haven’t.” Phil had settled against his seat a little more, getting comfortable, clearly ready to hear Clint’s story, however long or short it happened to be.
Clint snorted. “Yeah, not so much. My first proper competition was in 2010.”
He could see Phil’s eyes widen at that.
“Yes, 2010, as in two years ago,” he confirmed. “Until then I barely even knew serious archery competitions existed. It’s all been kind of a whirlwind for me, and that hasn’t really left time for making nice with the guys I’m up against.” He was pretty sure he could probably be pretty good friends with some of them if they just had the chance to try, but he didn’t really know how to engineer that chance.
“So if you weren’t doing it competitively before, how did you get into archery? And how did you end up on the US team?” Phil prompted.
And this was it. “Well, that’s a bit of a weird story. I was actually… in the circus.”
He paused to see how Phil took that, but he just nodded slightly and waited, an expectant expression on his face. Which was a far calmer reaction than Clint had expected; a far calmer reaction than he’d had from anyone else he’d told about his past since becoming an ‘athlete’.
“Yeah, my brother and I basically ran away to the circus when I was… eleven or twelve, I think. There was a guy there who’d been doing a trick archery act for years but he was getting on a bit and was looking to settle down and retire somewhere, so he took me on as a sort of apprentice. I took over the act when he left and… that was pretty much my life for the next decade or so until a guy from US Archery happened to bring his kids to a show and… turned my life upside-down. And voilà!” He finished with a flourish of his hand.
“They used to call me ‘Hawkeye: Greatest Marksman in the World’,” he added, before he could let himself dwell on all the things he was leaving out of the story; the endless money worries, the fights, the cold, cold winters. Barney.
If Phil could tell there were things he was holding back, he didn’t push him on it. “So the rest of it I can pretty much get, but… you literally ran away to the circus? Really? I thought that was just something little kids said they wanted to do when their parents wouldn’t let them eat ice cream for dinner.”
Clint shrugged. “Well, by that point my parents were long dead – not that they’d been great to start with from what little I remember – and, well. There aren’t a whole lot of foster homes out there willing to put up with both an uncontrollable teen and a deaf pre-teen. And the state wasn’t quite so picky about what went on in their orphanages. When the circus came to town, we figured it was worth a shot.”
Or, well, Barney had. And back then Barney had been pretty much the only constant in Clint’s life. If Barney thought something was a good idea, Clint wasn’t going to argue.
“And was it?” Phil asked softly, his eyes warm.
Clint had to stop and think. It wasn’t a question anyone had asked him before; it wasn’t a question he’d ever asked himself before. Would his life have been different if he’d stayed at the orphanage – with or without Barney? Definitely. But would it have been better? Would it have been worse? He knew objectively that there was no way of knowing, but it gave him pause.
“I’m happy with my life,” he said eventually, nodding. “Maybe in some ways might life might have been better if I’d made a different decision that day, but I wouldn’t be who I am now, where I am now, any other way. And today, I’m happy with my life. I wouldn’t change it.”
He realised the truth of the words as he said them; he’d dealt with a lot of crap in his time, but right now, right this moment, his life was pretty damn good.
Phil yawned and then immediately looked horrified with himself. “God, I’m sorry. I promise it’s not you. It’s…”
“It’s okay, Phil,” Clint interrupted. “Really.”
Phil cut himself off in the middle of another yawn. “I’m still sorry though. I’ve only been out of the hospital for a month, and I guess I still tire easily. Heh.”
“Phil.” Clint looked at his watch, actually surprised by what he found. “It’s well past 1am back in Denver. Even if you weren’t just out of hospital….” Personally Clint thought Phil was doing really well if he’d only been out for weeks after something that required a hospital stay that long. “… you’d be perfectly normal to want some sleep right now.”
Phil took a deep breath and melted into his seat. “Well I just want to say that if it was up to me? I’d talk to you all night.” His eyes were already drifting closed by the time he finished the sentence.
Clint nudged him back properly into his seat and grabbed the little airline blanket from where it had been scrunched up between them, tossing it haphazardly over Phil’s sleeping form.
“And if it was up to me,” he murmured. “We’d have all the time in the world.”
**
Clint had been antsy ever since re-uniting with his teammates and the head coach at the luggage carousel at Heathrow. Fidgeted all the way through their escorted journey to the athletes’ village and the outline of the next few days’ itinerary their coach had given them upon arrival.
The moment they’d been dismissed, he’d pulled his phone from his pocket and fired up the wifi. There was still a brief gap in his schedule the following afternoon, and he had an important message to send.
He busied himself with checking over his equipment after that – he hadn’t yet brought himself to trust anyone else with it, and besides, it gave him something to do other than wait.
Half an hour later, his phone buzzed on the table.
Phil Coulson
I can’t wait.