Chapter Text
“I never thought I’d see the day.” Laura says, out of nowhere. She is by his side, with a plate in hands and waiting for her hamburger. Jamie is all over her, surrounding her body with his hands up, trying so hard to get the plate out of his mother’s hands so Clint could serve him so he would look older and more responsible for Maria. It was all too cute and Clint tried to tell Laura to let the kid impress his crush, but was quickly silenced by Laura’s cold glare.
“What’re you talking ‘bout?” Clint asks, focusing on both the meat and the kid way too close to the fire. Laura keeps looking at Clint’s face, showing how much she trusts him to protect his nephew, in case anything goes wrong. Laura looks tired, the bags under her eyes showing Nathaniel was nothing like Nat or Pietro, and that he is incredibly loud. Without wanting to, he takes his eyes from both Jamie and the offset smoker to look forward, near the trees, where Pietro is sitting with Helen Cho and Jane Foster, trying his best to be respectful and not look bored. It makes Clint smile a little.
“You and Pietro.” She answers him and Clint looks back at Laura, who is smiling wickedly. He scoffs at her, feeling his cheeks burn, and looks back at the hamburgers he is smoking. “Aw, c’mon Clint. You really thought I wouldn’t know?”
He stays silent for a moment, before he puts the hamburger in Laura’s plate, just to get him more time. It pays off beautifully, because soon Jamie is practically screaming for his mother to give him the plate back and asking if Maria is looking and if she is looking he’ll never talk to his mother ever again. The glare Laura gives Clint is enough to show that, if she ever had powers, he would be the first one she would kill. Still, they wait until Jamie runs off to Maria Hill with her hamburger (she smiles at him and thanks him with a kiss; Rhodey looks so shocked and so sad Clint feels bad for him) before they start talking again.
“Well, no. I just thought it’d take some time for it.”
Laura snorts. Actually snorts and covers her mouth with her hands, a little shocked with her burst out. She hates when she snorts and Clint, well, Clint just laughs. She punches him a little, both of them knowing he won’t feel it at all, and they both fall silent. He knows it’s his turn to talk, but he still waits for a moment, flips some hamburgers and wonders if it would be better to ask to Steve to take his place. Clint looks at Steve, talking with Tony and Thor, and knows that it would be a mistake. Those three together would probably be a bad idea near fire. Instead, he catches Sam’s eyes and motions to the offset smoker with his head and Sam gets up, happy to comply. Darcy screams something close to “Wait, don’t go, your face is too pretty to leave me now and all that smoke will make my hair worse!” but Sam only laughs.
“I see you’ve met Darcy.” Clint says when he approaches.
“She’s insane.” Sam says, face serious, but they both know he is just kidding.
“Thanks, man.”
“It’s nothing. I was getting bored anyway.”
Clint turns to Laura, who has a beer waiting for him, and they both walk, a little away from everyone, where Nat and Selvig are paired up in a game of cards, against Nick and Wanda.
“I didn’t expect it.” Clint says, looking at all that green and wondering how in hell nobody ever found this place. How easy it would be to destroy it, with a bomb or with another part of the Earth. Laura is the best, he concludes for the thousandth time, because the risks she takes just by being his sister are too much. He doesn’t know how she can take it so easily. She always was the strongest of them.
“Well.” Laura starts. “I’m not surprised. Nobody was expecting them. Or that you would fall in love with a fast kid.”
“He’s not a kid.” Clint comments.
“He’s half your age and he should be on college. Yeah, he is a kid. But it’s okay, Clint. I don’t think you’d find someone of your age to date.” Laura says, patting him on the shoulder. “Everyone your age would be smart enough to not sleep with the most human member of the Avengers.”
“You are horrible.” Clint says, but thinks: We’re not dating. He must have thought that pretty loud, because Wanda picks it up and just give him that look that says she is not impressed. Clint shrugs, not knowing what to say. They didn’t define their relationship yet and, well, Wanda doesn’t like him much ever since Pietro caressed Clint’s hand one day during breakfast, before whatever they had even begun. It must be a twin thing. Pietro can’t talk about or with Vision without scolding (Vision, who is now with Sam, flipping the hamburgers while Sam teaches him).
“How did that happen exactly?”
“It’s been happing from a while.” Clint confesses. Everyone else knew about that, sure, but Clint has been denying it from a long time. “We just stopped running in circles and decided to go forward together.”
(it begins with an arrow that does not reach its target, a confused look from a man so used at getting it right in one shot that he is taken aback. It begins with Clint being thrown on the ground by a cocky kid with an accent and hair that becomes whiter and whiter as time passes. It almost ends before it actually happens, with a lost kid in a floating island that would soon become a meteor, the Quinjet in the hands of another machine and Pietro Maximoff willing to give up his life for Clint and for someone of his village.
It happens again after days circling a hospital bed, Clint’s guilt and sadness mixed with Wanda’s anger and fear, until the kid wakes up out of nowhere and says the only thing that he has been saying to Clint from the very beginning: “You didn’t see that coming?”. It finally happens after a mission with the new team, in which nothing goes wrong, nothing bad happens, nobody gets hurt. Pietro is smiling and sitting next to Clint on the Quinjet and it makes so much sense to just lean in and steal a kiss that Clint does exactly that. But between the beginning, the almost ending, the second chance and the final first act, there were so many touches and comments and pranks and teasing. Flirting. Bed eyes. Innuendos and one memorable moment of Pietro and whipped cream)
They reach the house and sit on the porch. From there, they see the Vision and Thor talking by the off-set smoker; Tony stealing a kiss from Pepper while he talks to Maria and Rhodey; Sam and Steve sitting on the table, talking about something everyone already knows what it is; Nat throwing grass at Wanda, who is laughing and whooping, Nick Fury looking at them, smug, what means that they just won of a Russian spy and one of the greatest minds of their times. Selvig, who passes by the kids and sits with Darcy, who is too busy cooing Nate and making funny faces at the kid. Pietro, Helen and Jane are still sitting on the same place, but there is more food around them, which means Pietro probably asked for some time to run (and probably didn’t just run to get more food, by the way he is eating so fast).
“God, you are such a sap.” Laura says, laughing. “Now I know why Nat didn’t want to date you.”
“We dated, okay? I got the girl, in the end.” Clint says, annoyed. “Sure, I didn’t get the girl forever, but the girl was there!”
“Sure, sure. Whatever it makes you feel better at night.” Laura says, hands in the air in surrender. Her eyes turn soft, however, the same way they did many years ago, when Jamie came to this world; the same way they did when they landed on Natasha Romanoff, PTSD and scared eyes at meeting a normal person living in a farm, her belly big with her second child; the same way they did when Clint told her he was going to accept Phil Coulson’s invitation to join S.H.I.E.L.D. and actually be someone (that would make her proud, in ways her husband never did. In ways Barney failed, but that part he never needed to say). “But I really hope this keeps happening.”
Clint wants to say that he too hopes that, but only looks at Pietro, answering questions, eating home-made hamburger and being nice to the lady who saved his life and Thor’s girlfriend. Clint looks at Pietro until their eyes meet. It doesn’t take long, because the kid is paranoid enough to do a quick recon every thirty seconds and see where everyone is, just in case he needs to evacuate the farm. Clint would like to tell him nothing bad will ever happen here, but sometimes Clint wakes up in the middle of the night and walks around the perimeter of the farm looking for enemies, bow and arrow in hands. One can never know, not in their line of work.
Thirty seconds pass and Pietro looks up. He is so fast it is almost imperceptible, but Clint is used with this habit of Pietro, just like he is used to the way all his teammates and he are also ready for a fight. Pietro looks from left to right, until he reaches Clint, and when their eyes meet, Clint just winks, making Pietro blush a little and look down for a moment. He looks back at Jane and Helen, answers a question and when they take notes based on his answer, Pietro winks back at Clint.
“Oh my God, you two are so gross.”
“Shut up.”