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Part 9 of The Billion-Heirs' Club
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Published:
2017-04-01
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2017-04-05
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2/2
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Throw Yourself at the Ground (and Miss)

Summary:

Clint did not deserve this level of harassment. Everyone forgot that he was a professional. It was like once he joined Fury's super-secret boyband everyone immediately assumed he couldn't tie his own shoelaces. It was insulting. He'd been doing this longer than anyone except Natasha. 

Yes, technically, this was the 12th mission in a row where he'd jumped off of a building without confirmed backup.

OR: Clint goes on a brief vacation to Gotham and discovers he and Batman share a hobby.

Chapter 1: Clint Runs Away from Home

Chapter Text

"There is an art, it says, or rather, a knack to flying. The knack lies in learning how to throw yourself at the ground and miss."
- from the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams


Clint did not deserve this level of harassment. Everyone forgot that he was a professional. It was like once he joined Fury's super-secret boyband everyone immediately assumed he couldn't tie his own shoelaces. It was insulting. He'd been doing this longer than anyone except Natasha. 

Yes, technically, this was the 12th mission in a row where he'd jumped off of a building without confirmed backup. Yes, technically, this time he'd landed on Tony as he got out of the suit, breaking his fall and Tony's ankle. Yes, technically, no one had caught him 4 out of 12 times, which, technically, gave him a failure rate of 33.3% - something which, in the world of industry, according to Tony's yelling as he was loaded into an ambulance, would mean scrapping a project entirely.

Clint did not think any of those things required an intervention but his teammates apparently had other ideas. After the debrief, Clint had tried to leave only to find Steve blocking the exit.

"It's not a question of competence-" Steve said, again trying to bring up this thing that Clint did not want to talk about, at all. 

"On that note," said Clint, cutting off the rest of Steve's reprimand, "I'm going out for a few days, won't have cell service, I'm sure you can handle whatever comes up, right? Great."

He maneuvered around Steve and out of the room before Steve could grab him. Clint did not miss the look of surprise on Steve's face, which, seriously, insulting. Clint was a damn secret agent, he could get past a measly little door block.

Back home, he wondered where exactly he would go. He could stay home and mope for a few days but he felt the buzz of trapped energy underneath his skin and knew he needed to work it out. Hopefully with vigilante justice. Where could he go enact vigilante justice where he wouldn't be around Steve's disappointed face or Tony's bitching or -

His phone buzzed in his pocket.

He removed it and unlocked the screen to find a text from Natasha. It contained no words, only a small bat emoji.

Clint grinned. Natasha was his favorite Russian creeper.

--


Gotham, it turned out, was exactly what Clint needed to work out some of his coworker-related anger issues. Bruce Wayne had been surprisingly open to the idea of having an Avenger crash his city for a few days. (Clint suspected he had caught Bruce while he was at Wayne Enterprises. The man had sounded very "Business Bruce".)

There were a few ground rules for visiting vigilantes, apparently.

1. Different costume. Purple was not on the approved list, which Clint thought was unfair, given Dick's bright green and red getup.
2. No going out and drawing attention as your "normal" self
3. Batman's the boss out on patrol

Easy enough.

It felt good to fall into the simple rhythm of patrolling the huge city. Lately, all he'd been doing was helping with the big, world-peace-endangering missions that were the Avengers' usual fare. It was good, hard work, but it left plenty of downtime and, honestly, he often wondered just how much they were helping. In Gotham, it was easy to see how their actions helped, even in small ways.

There was the little old man who kissed Clint on the cheek when Clint dropped on his would-be mugger. The old man insisted on being walked home and chattered all the way, ending the walk with an: "it's so nice to see young people take an interest in public safety these days. Say hello to Robin for me! He usually walks me home but you are not a bad substitute."

Completely thrown by this, Clint mentioned it to Dick, who laughed for a good few minutes at Clint's bafflement.

"Yeah," Dick said, still grinning. "That's Mr. Kravitz. He works a few nights a week at the free clinic. I guess his schedule changed. He's lived here for almost 50 years and insists on taking his usual route, even though it's a bad neighborhood these days. Most people there know him and leave him alone, though."

Most nights he went out with Dick, because Clint was good, but Gotham was an impossible maze to newcomers, and Bruce was not a good tour guide. Dick, however, loved to show off - the city, new moves, his knowledge of mobsters' secret lives.

("It's like every soap opera you've ever seen," he told Clint, pointing out the separated-at-birth twins in different gangs who were sleeping with the same woman. "One night I came by when it was really quiet in the city. I thought they were setting up for something big, but, it turns out that one of the bosses had been spending too much time with a mistress and his wife was pissed, so he was at home and everyone was slacking off since the boss wasn't around.")

He jumped off random roofs every single night and never got bitched out for it once. He and Dick even managed to goad Bruce into a parkour roof race one quiet night, just as the sun was sneaking over the horizon. They thought their lighter armor would give them at least some advantage. Bruce beat them by such an embarassing margin that they refused to speak of it ever again.

--


Five days after he technically went AWOL, Clint returned to New York. He was feeling so magnanimous that he stopped in at a florist and bought the biggest, most ridiculous Iron Man Bouquet they had for sale. Tony was still on crutches and Clint figured he owed the man an apology.

Tony agreed that Clint owed him an apology and disagreed about the method he chose to deliver it with. Who knew Iron Man would be so jumpy? It was just a bouquet of flowers lowered from the ceiling in his workshop at 2:30am. It could've come crashing through a window attached to an arrow. Some people were so ungrateful.

Once Tony's heartrate had returned to normal, he yelled up at the ceiling, "You might as well just come in, Barton."

Clint, already poised to drag himself away, dropped instead, executing an abrupt twist in midair to keep from squishing the flowers. Tony snorted.

"Still throwing yourself off random objects, I see. How was Gotham?"

Clint sat and spun in one of Tony's ridiculously comfortable office chairs. "Man," he said, once he was properly dizzy, "I don't know why you were complaining about me jumping off buildings with no back up, have you ever gone out with Batman? That dude-"

Tony looked up, focusing on Clint. "Gone out with? Clint, do we need to have the shovel talk?"

"No, I already got it from Alfred, despite the fact - "

"Damn, he always gets to give the shovel talks."

Tony returned to what he was doing and ignored Clint. Clint resisted the urge to back out of the room going "you'll see! you'll ALL see!" like a humorously thwarted villain. But it was a pretty close thing.

~*~


Not long after Iron Man was back on his feet Batman joined them in New York. Poison Ivy had decided to try out the Avengers and Tony had insisted on calling Batman in for his expertise. Clint figured it was mostly an excuse to get Bruce to come visit.

They had all been relegated to the rooftops because the streets were impassibly full of plants that didn't seem to stop growing. Batman hadn't been much help, honestly. He seemed to find the whole thing pretty funny, and along with disappearing for an hour, spent most of his time calling out advice over the comms from his perch at the very top of Avengers Tower.

"I saw a coupon for weed killer, maybe I should go pick some up?"

Clint grinned, thinking of Steve and Bruce, who were somewhere trying to mix up some weed killer strong enough to work on the damn plants.

"Oh, I've also heard talking to plants is good for them," Batman said. "Maybe if Iron Man reads them poetry they'll decide to like him?"

One of the long, trailing vines took that as a cue to snatch Iron Man out of the air and fling him against a building. He crashed through the wall and disappeared from sight. They could still hear swearing on the comms so Clint wasn't too worried.

"Obviously not fans of poetry," Natasha said, from wherever she was. Clint hadn't had eyes on her for the last ten minutes. If she was snarking, though, she was fine. "I vote we either get Cap to sing them 'Star-Spangled Man with a Plan' or Thor to regale them with an epic tale from his youth."

"Indeed," Thor said, obviously amused, "I have just such a tale to hand as would inspire such magnificent beings to grant us their allegiance. For its proper telling I require three nights, a feast of boar hunted by my shieldbrothers and sisters, at least one barrel of mead aged a thousand years amongst the stars, a bonfire taller than a Jotunn kept burning through all three nights, and, of course, three maidens with hair as dark as night for the demonstrations."

Thor knocked the head off a plant that looked to Clint like a Piranha Plant from Mario Bros. It flew in an elegant arc and landed near Clint. He kicked it off the roof, automatically, still processing Thor's speech. It was the longest he could remember them being quiet over the comms since this whole Avenging business started.

"... can we do that? Please?" Iron Man was back in the air, flying circles around the vines still reaching for him. "I can definitely get most of those things in the next hour."

"Perhaps for expediency, we should get the captain to sing," Batman suggested. He'd disappeared from his perch.  

"Oh no," said Steve, from whatever rooftop he and Bruce were mixing up their magic weed killer, "if Thor gets a three-night feast for his tale, I get a 20 woman chorus, fireworks, a motorcycle, and-" he spoke quickly to cut off Tony's immediate offer of all those things, "- a time machine to get us all back to the 40s so we can really get the full experience."

Clint thought it still sounded mostly doable and was about to tell Steve this when he noticed the Piranha Plant's head had come back and was cutting off all avenues of escape except for... damn. Tony was gonna bitch about this.

"This is Hawkeye. I've got incoming, need evac from the east side of this building in 30 seconds or a body bag in 45!"

"Drama queen, I'm getting there, I'm getting there."

Tony caught him by the ankle, which he probably thought was funny. Clint took advantage of his new vantage point to fire exploding arrows into the Piranha Plant's mouth. 

"There, was it so hard to give decent warning?"

Tony dropped him off on a new rooftop where he found Nat on a beach chair, sunglasses on like she was tanning or taking a nap. She peeked at him over the glasses, raised an eyebrow. Clint glared at her. She reached behind her and pulled out a new quiver, passing it over once he nodded. He was almost out of arrows. It was surprisingly difficult to get plants to return the ones he'd fired at them. Besides, Natasha didn't like the missions where they were basically doing damage control until someone else solved the bigger problem.

The "bigger problem" in this instance was that no one could find Poison Ivy. Not that they had the resources to send someone looking. They were barely containing the plants to a five-block radius. Clint left Nat to her sunbathing and relocated himself to a sniper-friendly roof. Clint reached it just in time to see the set up to what was about to become his favorite Avenging moment ever.

Batman was running along a nearby roof, clearly aiming for a corner he could use as a springboard to get him to the next building over. Clint had seen him do the same thing in Gotham many times. Iron Man was flying below roof level, heading for the gap Batman was about to leap across. For one very short moment, Clint considered warning Tony. He decided against it just as Batman leaped and Iron Man cleared the corner. Tony screamed when Batman swooshed past, an inch from his faceplate. Tony had to execute a flailing midair twist to avoid hitting Bruce which crashed him through another building.

"Iron Man, report!" Steve barked, immediately in captain-mode. "Does anyone have eyes on Iron Man?"

Clint was laughing too hard to answer.


("I take it all back, Hawkeye, please continue jumping off buildings like a sane person. I think I had a couple of heart attacks."

This was not surprising, considering that Batman had spent the rest of the day either using Iron Man as an extra landing place or leaping so that they barely missed each other. Bruce apparently had a bigger troll streak than Captain America - but only where pranking Tony was involved.

"I had no idea you were so sensitive, Tony," Bruce said, calmly. He was leaning against the wall, arms crossed over his chest, and Clint couldn't look at him or Tony without bursting into laughter again. He sat, head resting on the table, shoulders shaking as he tried, unsuccessfully, to stop laughing.

"My favorite was definitely when you used Tony as a stepping stone to leap between buildings," Natasha said, raising her mug of coffee in a toast. Her mug said "World's Okayest Detective". Bruce grinned.

They find out during the debrief that Batman's mysterious disappearance for about an hour during the fight had been him and Natasha going and catching Poison Ivy. After they'd locked her up, all they had to do was keep the plants contained until the sun set, at which point the plants had simply reverted to seed form. No one had noticed Natasha's absence. She was, unsuprisingly, smug about this.

They'd decided not to inform the team of Poison Ivy's capture. When asked to explain, Bruce had said, deadpan, "It was funnier this way."

Clint, because he's a professional, does not completely lose it at this. But it's a close thing.)

Chapter 2: Gotham Snapshots

Summary:

Clint discovers there's only one thing scarier than Batman - and it's Batman's butler.

(General Gotham Shenanigans)

Notes:

disclaimer: uhh, I'm not actually going to write anyone getting into a relationship, probably. I'm not removing the possibility entirely, but mostly I write these for the silliness.

(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)

Chapter Text

To be honest, Clint had kind of expected Alfred to be 20 feet tall and breathing fire at him. Instead, the door was opened by a thin, balding British man in a suit. He was tall, but more in the 6ft than 20ft range. Everything about him was understated. Clint's first thought was "British Coulson", so he smiled politely.

"Mr. Pennyworth, I presume."

"Mr. Barton, please, come in."

Alfred led Clint to the kitchen and poured him a cup of coffee. Clint had a bad feeling about this. Butlers did not normally do this for a newly arrived guest, right? This was his first meeting with an actual butler so Clint couldn't be sure, but his impressions from all the regency era movies Thor liked to watch was that butlers did not take aside new guests for a casual chat.

He drank the coffee anyway. It was some of the best coffee he'd ever had and he planned to enjoy it even if it did end up being poisoned. Nat would find his body and give him a proper burial if it came to that. Alfred watched him for a few seconds before speaking.

"I must inform you, Mr. Barton, that I am the only member of this household who goes armed at all times. I am never far from a shotgun and, much like yourself, I never miss."

Clint choked on his coffee.

"Right, totally understood, got it," he said, coughing. Clint was all too easily able to imagine Alfred with a shotgun. He wasn't sure what exactly he'd done to merit a shovel talk from the butler... wait, shovel talk. He knew what those were for. He just hadn't been aware he'd done anything to deserve one. "But, just so we're clear, you know I'm not dating Bruce? That's 100% never happened, I'd definitely remember. Besides, don't he and Tony have some kind of weird-"

Clint wiggled his fingers, unsure how to convey his meaning. Alfred raised an eyebrow and did not answer which was probably purposefully unhelpful.

"If that will be all, Mr. Barton. I understand you have visited Wayne Manor previously, so I shall trust you to find your own way to your rooms. Will you be requiring anything else?"

"No?"

Alfred nodded and left. Now that he was paying attention and not blinded by the bland English-ness, Clint saw the faint lines of a shoulder holster.

Clint finished his coffee because the threat of violent death hadn't made the coffee any less amazing and he had priorities.

~*~

Bruce found him later. Clint was finished taking a very long shower (waterfall shower: awesome. He'd have to ask why the Tower didn't have them) and was contemplating trying to find the ropes course again, when Bruce knocked and let himself in. He was wearing what looked like a very comfortable silk robe.

"Welcome back," Bruce said, reaching out a hand to shake Clint's. "Alfred told me you arrived, thought I'd give you a little time to settle in. Everything alright in New York?"

Clint couldn't help his grin at Bruce's very-respectable-business-man-handshake and eye contact. Tony did the exact same thing.

"New York is mostly still standing. Just had some team tension - distance helps, at least for me," Clint said. "Thanks again for letting me hide out. Let me know if I can help with, uh, anything."

"Don't worry, we're going to put you to work."

~*~

"I knew it!"

Bruce looked over his shoulder and raised an eyebrow. Clint grinned and gestured at the Batcave.

"Secret lair. Ask Dick, I totally called it."

"We call it the Batcave."

"... of course you do. Is your car the Batcar? No, not cool enough - Batmobile?"

Bruce's eyebrows drew together slightly. Clint burst out laughing.

"IT IS. Please tell me Alfred is the Batbutler - BATLER."

"Butler is usually sufficient, Mr. Barton."

Clint squeaked and tripped down the last two stairs. Alfred had arrived behind them without making a sound.

"Dinner will be served in an hour. I took the liberty of laying out some, mm, older models of the suit that should fit Mr. Barton, should he choose to join you and Master Dick this evening."

Alfred floated up the stairs, making no noise at his departure.

"That man is terrifying," Clint said, once the Batdoor to the Batcave was closed. "I want to say I won't mention the Batcave and Batmobile and probably the Batsuit if you don't mention the fact that I squeaked like a mouse when your Batler snuck up on us, but, honestly, it's too good. Batfloor! Batcomputer! Bat-monster-truck! Aw, that's cute."

Bruce had a hand over his eyes, laughing helplessly as Clint chased Penny around the Batcave, yelling things like "Batpipe! Batcape! Batboy! I mean, hi Dick! Bat-giant-penny! Batbike! Batbat!"

~*~

Alfred's stern look was better than Steve's.

"I'm really good at it?"

The stern look intensified.

"I mean, I'm sorry I jumped off a building and scared Dick."

Alfred watched him for another second, then nodded. Clint scuttled away as fast as he could.

~*~

"You did not adequately warn me about Alfred," Clint complained to Dick. They were taking turns using a 2x4 as a balance beam between rooftops while they waited for Batman's signal. Dick grinned.

"Tattle-tale," Clint muttered.

~*~

"Seriously ninjas?"

Bruce leaned back, raising his glass to his lips to cover a smile. They were, in theory, running recon on an honest-to-god whiskey bar. Their targets weren't due for another hour so they'd devolved into trading stories. Bruce had just one-upped Clint by telling the story of being trained by literal ninjas in the wilderness.

Clint looked down at his own glass, thinking. He took a large sip, enjoying the bartender's wince at his treatment of the most expensive scotch in the place.

"Alright," Clint said, setting his glass down. "Stop me if you've heard this one. Hulk and Captain America walk into a bar."

~*~

"No, I'm not keeping him captive," Bruce said, after being silent on the phone for five minutes, which meant Tony had finally stopped talking long enough for him to get a word in. "And no, I'm not sending him back... That's provably false. No, it is. I will prove it right now - BARTON!"

Clint poked his head over the balcony railing where he'd been eavesdropping.

"Wayne?"

"Am I holding you captive against your will when secretly your greatest desire is to return to the arms of your bosom friends? Shut up, Tony, that's exactly how you said it."

"Are you kidding? I'm staying here until you kick me out, this place is awesome."

"There, see. Don't tell me you didn't hear him. I don't have an AI that can fake voices - dammit, Tony, do not. No. I will tell Alfred on you, oh, here he is."

Alfred took the phone from Bruce's hand and walked into the kitchen with it. Before he closed the door, they heard, "Do not hang up on me, Anthony. What's this nonsense-"

Clint looked down and met Bruce's eyes.

"That was cold, man. Stone cold."

Bruce smiled, a mischievous twinkle in his eyes.

"He'll probably survive. Come down here and help me with something."

~*~

They all had dinner in the kitchen on Clint's last night. Alfred made an excellent lasagna and apparently brewed his own beer. They let Dick have a very small glass of it. He seemed suspicious of it but drank it all anyway.

They toasted Alfred, the lasagna, the work crews who rebuilt Wayne Manor, Penny, the Batcave (Clint kept trying to toast "to the Batmobile!" but kept cracking up), and to Nighthawk, the name the press had given Clint. He'd made sure to use a different bow and shoot left handed. There were plenty of Hawkeye imitators out there so none of them were too worried about him being discovered.


("You can have the name," Clint said, two beers in, throwing a friendly arm around Dick's shoulders, "I've got Hawkeye and you probably don't wanna be Robin your whole life. Nighthawk's cool. You could be a Nighthawk."

"I'm not sure I want to stick with the bird theme."

"Nightwing!"

"That doesn't even mean anything!"

"Yeah, but it sounds cool.")


Clint was reluctant to go but Tony was getting better and Nat had sent him a picture of a rubber duck this morning, so it was probably time to be getting home. Feeling the moment was right, Clint poured himself another beer and stood on his chair, raising his glass.

"To the Wayne-Pennyworth-Grayson household, you're wonderful hosts and terrifying people, and I'm glad to know you. Come by New York any time and I'll let Tony host you."

They cheered and drank. Then Bruce dragged him out of the chair before he could fall off of it.

Notes:

- Feel free to imagine the Hulk and Captain America story as you wish. I think they probably started a protest march and accidentally became a movement ("THE HULK WANTS YOU TO BELIEVE IN CLIMATE CHANGE"), but it's also possible that they accidentally end up Vegas married and Tony thinks it's too funny to help them fix it.

- Clint is totally a professional. Definitely. 100%. He does the same thing to Tony. "StarkPhone! StarkPad! Starkfloor! Starkcoffee! Ohh, Starkbucks, nice." He gives himself a high-five before continuing, "Starkglasses! Starkcar! Stark Tower - ohh waaaiiit." He turns and grins at Tony, who is glaring. Pepper is in the background, laughing.

- Fun facts: https://www.archery360.com/2016/06/01/why-hawkeye-chose-a-recurve-bow-for-captain-america-civil-war/

- also, apparently the name Nightwing was originally from Superman!

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