Chapter Text
It was too damn cold outside for this shit.
Clint Barton had been back home in Bed-Stuy for all of three hours, and his patience had already been tried. The blankets he’d left on his couch before he’d gone on his last mission were musty, covered in dog fur, and some even had dirt on them. He had gathered them up with full intention to throw them in the wash and have it done before Lucky was back home. Except he’d been brought home early, and he needed a bath. Badly. Kate had let him romp through the snow on her way over with him, and he had tracked mud straight up the stairs of his apartment building. With Kate upstairs to keep Lucky corralled to the bathroom, Clint was on borrowed time downstairs to move his wash into the dryer.
Which brought him to the side of the building. Out in the snow, arms full of wet laundry, he dumped it into a pile unceremoniously with a wet smack. None of his tenants were so inconsiderate as to stop someone else's laundry in the middle of a wash cycle - at least, not without leaving a note - which had to mean someone else had gotten into his building and thought they could do their laundry for free in his basement. Well, joke was on them. He penned a quick note to let the asshole know just where to find their clothes, and impulsively added just where to find him, too. Clint taped the note to the wall above the washer with some Lisa Frank print washi tape and stuck his blankets back in. He'd have to start from square one, but at least they'd be clean.
Back upstairs, he returned the roll of washi tape to Kate's backpack. She'd watched his irritated back and forth silently until now, or at least had pretended to. If she'd complained to Lucky about it at all, he hadn't heard it.
"Done?" Kate asked him from the bathroom doorway.
She leaned back against the doorframe, arms crossed and eyebrows raised. Behind her, Lucky woofed excitedly at him. He wiped his hands on his sweatpants and then rubbed them together to try and warm them up a bit.
"More or less, yeah." He said with a half-shrug of his shoulder. "Asshole won't do that again."
Kate just looked at him, and raised her leg to block Lucky's excited charge.
"What, someone slip their clothes in to get some extra dog hair off your blankets?"
"No, they took my futzin' laundry out so they could use the washer." Clint snorted.
"Oh. Asshole."
"Language, Katie-Kate!"
He mock scolded her as he peeled his shirt off, and flung it at the couch on his way up the stairs. Once he was face to face with Kate, he used his legs to herd Lucky further back into the bathroom towards the shower. Her exaggerated scoff behind his back made him grin.
"Alright, well, I'm off."
"Aw, Katie," he whined. "How'm I supposed to get him dry?"
"Uh, however you do it without me?" Kate shot back in disbelief. "Bathing Lucky is not a two-person job, Clint."
Clint bodily blocked Lucky into his shower before he scowled over his shoulder at her.
"Neither is covering him in mud."
"I told you, he saw a crow!"
Unable to help himself, Clint rolled his eyes.
"Teenagers," he muttered as he turned back to the muddy dog in question.
"I heard that!"
Lucky woofed - whether it was in agreement with him or Kate, Clint couldn't say - and stood up on his hind legs. He placed his paws onto his shoulder, as though he'd only have a good look at Kate if he could see over Clint. Clint 'oof'ed and hugged his dog around his middle. From the hallway, Kate laughed.
"Good luck, Hawkeye!"
"Don't catch a cold, Hawkeye!" He hollered back.
There was no way he could stop her now. Arms full of damp, muddy dog, his hands were tied. Clint could bathe Lucky on his own; it was just messier than when he got Kate to help him do it. Lucky behaved better for her, gentledog that he was. He felt more than heard the door to his apartment close, and wished belatedly that she had closed the bathroom door behind her, too. Lucky’s tail thumped against his leg in warning.
“Alright, let’s get you cleaned up,” he sighed with a smile.
As though he was in agreement with the plan, Lucky slid his front paws down the side of Clint’s arm as he dropped back down to the ground. Clint utilized the shift in position to reach over and grab the handheld showerhead from the wall and draped the tubing over his arm so he could switch on the water itself. About to get soaked just from turning on the water, he braced himself for the jet that was pointed at his face.
Everything was just wet after that.
Clint fell easiest after each mission into being a dog owner. The rest of the world took the back burner with Lucky in his care. He could count on his rescue to help him be in a safe space, even if said space was cold and wet right now. He’d gone through three towels now in an attempt to soak up all of the water in Lucky’s winter coat. They lay discarded on the bathroom floor and into the hallway, where Clint had given up and let his dog hurtle himself down the stairs to the couch. He wiped up what he could to prevent a slip and fall, gave the towels a forlorn look, and went back downstairs to his living room.
“Alright Lucky, I’ve got laundry to do, which means you need to stay up here.” Clint told him in what Kate had called his ‘dad’ voice. “No funny business.”
“Woof!” Lucky agreed quickly, his tail a steady beat against the couch cushions.
“I’ll even put on Hawks, how about it?”
Lucky’s ears perked up when Clint reached for his iPod and scrolled through to find their favorite artist. Some pop idol from overseas, Kate had gotten him hooked last year when she’d been on another pop binge. She had since switched to dubstep, but Clint didn’t have the same short attention span she had when it came to music. He set the iPod back into its iHome dock, silently thanked Kate again for the gifts, and hit play on the remote. Lucky barked again from where he had propped himself atop the back of the couch. Clint bumped up the volume level a little, considerate of his dog’s much better hearing, and put the remote back on the dock as well.
“Be right back!”
He double-checked that his keys were in his pocket and opened the door to the hall. Right outside his apartment, an aggrieved looking younger man stood poised and ready to knock. Clint quickly assessed that he wasn’t a threat, and shifted his weight to block his apartment from view when the man tried to peek around him and see inside.
“Can I-”
“Where’s your shirt?” He asked, eyes on Clint’s bare chest and arms for a few moments too long before he tore his gaze away.
“Uh, couch? Maybe?” Clint answered without thought.
He crossed his arms and made sure to flex them a little as he did so. Again, the man’s eyes fell on his bare torso, but he looked away quicker this time. Rather than look him in the eye, Clint was amused to realize that he was looking at a spot behind him between his neck and shoulder. He couldn’t help it - he smirked a little at that.
“So, can I help you with something?”
“Uh, no,” he fumbled with a paper in his hand before it was shoved into his pocket. “Just came to introduce myself.”
“Oh,” Clint responded smartly. “Oh! The new tenant!”
He relaxed his stance and put out his hand to shake.
“Clint Barton. Sorry, Simone runs the place when I’m out.”
For just a moment, he looked like he had swallowed a lemon. His expression smoothed out quickly, though, and he returned Clint’s grip. The man grinned in a way that made his heart skip a beat.
“Keigo Takami.”
Clint didn’t ease his grip right away, appreciative of how soft and warm Keigo’s hand was. When he didn’t pull away, either, Clint forced himself to relax his grip and slowly pull back. He put his hands in his pants pockets, more aware of the chill in the building now that he had been stationary. Keigo still looked a bit stunned, and he wondered if he should say something.
“Buwoof?” Lucky spoke up behind him.
He turned to see how close Lucky was to shoving his way out of the apartment, and realized that the music had stopped.
“Aw futz, sorry,” he apologized and placed a hand between Lucky’s ears. “I’ll fix it.”
Sure now that the man at the door wasn’t a threat, Clint turned his back to him after he had given Lucky his apology scratches. His dog kept on his heel all the way back over to the iHome, and Clint fiddled with the iPod’s wheel. One of the buttons had stuck again. Kate swore it was from how often he’d dropped it, and honestly? She was probably right. He placed it firmly back into its dock and hit play, pleased when Hawks’s smooth voice came out of the speakers again.
“You listen to that?” Keigo asked incredulously from the doorway where he hovered.
“Our favorite right now!” Clint confirmed. Beside him, Lucky echoed his agreement.
Keigo shook his head - in disappointment or disbelief, Clint couldn’t say - and took a step back.
“That music’s a load of garbage.”
Before Clint could form a response, Keigo had already disappeared back down the hall. He scratched Lucky between the ears again and led him back to the couch, where he picked his shirt up off the arm and put it on. It was predictably damp and furry.
“Be good,” he reminded Lucky with a loud kiss to his forehead.
Lucky returned the kiss with his own, wet and all along one side of Clint’s jaw. He laughed and gave him one more round of ear scritches. After the blankets were done, he’d see about the towels.
Down in the basement, Clint was surprised to find that the note he’d left was missing. It was a pleasant surprise that his wash was undisturbed this time to boot. He checked the line of dryers against the other wall, and let out a soft cheer when he found one empty. Clint moved his blankets into the dryer, checked one more time that his note hadn’t simply fallen off the wall, and shrugged to himself.
Oh well.
He hummed the tune of Hawks’s last single softly on his way back upstairs. Keigo passed him with a laundry basket, disgruntled, and he wondered if the man was just a secret fan of Hawks. Experimentally, he paused in the stairwell and stopped humming. Below him, Keigo’s shoulders relaxed almost immediately. Clint swallowed a laugh and cleared his throat. He continued his trip upstairs without humming again. The new resident of apartment T was cute, so he wouldn’t give him too hard of a time. They were neighbors, after all.
“Lucky, I’m home!” Clint greeted from his doorway.
His voice carried over Hawks singing about a date on a ferris wheel with a crush. Lucky perked up as Clint approached the kitchen bar and grabbed the remote. He had plenty of time before he had to go back downstairs to check the dryer, which meant he could relax for a bit. Clint took his hearing aids out and laid them down next to his iHome. Although he could no longer make out the verses clearly anymore, the tops of his ears already felt monumentally better. He flopped back onto the couch beside his dog and bumped up the volume with the remote in his hand.
Life was good sometimes.