Work Text:
Conversation aboard standard patrol cruiser:
"We're talking about a computer."
"No, sir, a ship, one of the old style ones that required a human meld AI."
"But this one's throwing off multiple signals? Fighting for it, eh? Ensign, let it alone. They'll override the circuits and it's not worth much anyway. If they want to scavenge it, they can have it."
The girl, Kate Bishop, cursed expressively aboard the small, sleek craft with its oxygen-unnecessary weaponry and full complement of outriding equipment. The ship had been a find, if a bit of a fixer-upper, and it would do to grant her some actual freedom from her father's stifling heavy cruiser.
That was her initial assessment. Ports were clean. She tested for viruses and turned up nada before jacking in her mind to take over the ship and make it a part of herself.
What kind of a mind could sleep through all that, she didn't want to know, but she was about to because the ship had already melded to somebody else and before she could abort, she found herself thrust into contact with a masculine sense of surprise and the sensation of a cold wrench falling on his foot.
His swearing was more colorful and fluent than hers, and immediately, Kate wanted to know what languages it was in.
Bad move. His memories peeled open in layers of concepts of where he'd learned the words, and she slammed herself out with a migraine-inducing backlash to both of them.
Kate cursed.
Clint cursed.
The ship Hawkeye serenely echoed with both.
"So we've gotten to the name stage of this, huh?" he commented dryly.
Kate growled under her breath and shoved her consciousness forward through the ship, running through the stale computer systems he'd clearly cleaned up quite a bit as recently as... A year?!
"How in the universe did you not notice me climbing aboard this space ship?" she demanded.
That was definitely eyes rolling and... thrusters turning over in sync with it, whoa, don't do that, and "I'm not shipside. I was minding my own business picking up supplies on Beta 2 when you barged in here."
She swore.
"Quit cussing," he added in mild alarm. "You're too young to swear like a sailor."
"I am a sailor now since you hadn't noticed, thank you very much." She crossed her arms in annoyance and felt a twitch of antimatter colliding inside the drive.
This was irrevocable. It suddenly hit Kate for real and her mouth dropped open as she realized she was permanently attached at the brain cells to another human being in a supposedly impossible meld unless they blew up the ship.
"Hey now! Don't you even," he growled low and threatening. "We're both Hawkeye now, so protect the ship. You destroy it, you're destroying a part of us, remember?"
Kate winced, but he was right. They'd both integrated and could damage the structural integrity of both memory and knowledge if they hurt the ship or fought each other through its interface.
"Fine," she said, miffed, arms still crossed, and shaking the hull free of debris in irritation.
"I'm bringing groceries. And while you're there, feed the dog." His wavelength faded as his attention to turned back to physical activity lightyears and a planetary atmosphere away.
Kate fishgaped her mouth for a moment. The nerve!
By the time Kate finished stomping her way through the ship and locating the dog, she was already starting to feel the freaky mesh of a guy's thoughts integrating with hers.
She pushed back.
He grunted in pain.
This was going to get weird really fast.
"I'm seeing someone I'll have you know," she informed him curtly, lest he get any ideas about their complementary genders and a mindmeld meaning anything relationally.
"We're practically each other now," he pointed out in a flurry of mental images she had to reel back from. "Besides, I'm seeing a woman too. She has her own ship."
"Whoa." Said woman bristled with the power of a military precision fighter ship. "I was going to share."
They both paused, shuddered. Neither of them really wanted to know anything firsthand about each other's lovelife. Sharing minds was bad enough.
"Let's not," Clint suggested and Kate agreed.
The dog was the cutest thing, Lucky, according to his owner who had finally put in an appearance, bearing the promised groceries and bringing them in from the one working pod.
"Spaghetti or pizza?"
Kate snagged a slice out of the box and stared up from the floor beside Lucky at her new mindmate.
The ship knew him all right and their mental space was all comfortable and well-meshed with all the odd bits hanging out belonging to her. He was old enough to be her dad, if he'd started as a teenager, but he was also built in the way that ship scavengers and mercenaries were: rough hands, strong shoulders, a bit on the lean side from low G environments.
"Hm."
He was kind of nice too, a sucker for a pretty girl, which apparently she was, if young for his tastes, nevertheless she seemed competent and maybe a little bratty but he'd always liked the ones who gave him grief, all else being pleasant...
"Hey!" She harumphed at him and petted Lucky. He whined and licked her.
"No stealing my dog's affections," Clint told her, dropping beside her and feeding Lucky his own slice of pizza. "You already got the ship."
"We're practically the same person," she reminded him smugly.
They sat next to each other, dog between them, and felt out carefully along Hawkeye until they'd checked all systems and settled comfortably into each other in a way that should have been impossible, but it was hard not to with the mesh doing its work of making memory and thought a community property state.
"You know how to shoot?" he asked offhand.
"You mean guns or arrows?" Kate grinned. Hawkeye's primary weapons complement was oxygen-not-required: blades, arrows, nano bombs, and such.
Clint grinned back. "Girl after my own heart."
"Let's try it."
They got up and headed for the gunslinger bubbles to play.
"You know," Kate said aloud. "I think this just might work out."