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Clint’s not good at advice. He knows this much about himself. He makes jokes at the worst possible times, and he says excessively abrasive things in vain attempts to lighten the mood, and he usually turns the conversation to himself because he gets uncomfortable when people start talking about their feelings. He’s horrible at it.
But he thinks he’s getting better at it. Maybe because Tash is the first person he’s broken up with and still stayed friends with. Maybe because three-year-olds don’t react too well to sarcasm. Maybe it’s Bruce’s fault. He doesn’t know, but when he walks into the kitchen to find the kitchen table upturned, a fist-sized hole in the microwave door, stools around the island all upturned and scattered, and the kid sitting in the middle of all of it, breathing heavy, he gears up.
“Hey, kid,” he says easily, shoving his hands into his pockets and toeing and a piece of broken ceramic on the floor. He thinks it used to be a specialty mug. Pepper will be upset. “Rough night?”
“Shut up,” the kid shoots back viciously, kicking at the kitchen table leg repeatedly until the wood splinters. His name is Sammy, Clint remembers abruptly. As much as the others mock him for being even more hopeless than Tony when it comes to the whole fatherhood thing, he does remember all the kids’ names. Sammy grabs for a piece of broken glass and starts tearing at the chair cushions. If Clint didn’t know any better, he’d say the kid was related to Bruce.
“You know, Tony may be the richest man this side of Manhattan, but I don’t think even his home insurance policy covers this.”
“I don’t care,” the kid says tersely, tearing at the cushions and ripping the filling out, chucking the whole chair across the room. For someone in the middle of a fit of rage, he’s awfully precise. And thorough. Even the Hulk doesn’t cause this much damage, half the time.
“In my day, when a girl broke your heart, you’d go make out with her friends,” he tries jokingly, leaning against the counter where there’s the least broken glass cluttering it. “Though I suppose if she really loves toast…” he adds, staring at the toaster which looks like someone smashed it with Thor’s hammer.
“Go the fuck away!” the kid screams, turning on his heels and stomping to the cabinet. The debris crunches under his boots. Clint nearly flinches when the kid starts smashing plates to the ground, but he manages to stay mostly still and watch as he sweeps the whole cabinet filled with china to the floor. The sound of shattered glass fills the kitchen. Even through all the noise, Clint can tell the kid’s crying.
“You ever thought about a smashing buddy? ‘Cause we can get Bruce up here, I’m sure he’ll hulk out real quick when he sees you broke his Winnie the Pooh mug.” Another joke, Jesus Christ, Barton, can’t you keep your fucking mouth shut?
“Shut up!” Sammy screams again, grabbing a random glass from one of the shelves and chucking it at Clint’s head. His aim is for shit, though, and it hits about two feet off his mark, shattering against the fridge. Clint doesn’t even blink. The kid goes back to breaking everything in sight, thankfully on the ground and not on Clint. He crosses his arms and waits the kid out.
“Feel better yet?” He asks over the crash of plates. Sammy doesn’t even acknowledge him, just keeps frantically looking for things to break. How old is he, anyway? Fifteen? Maybe sixteen? Prime teenage angst years, Clint would bet. Clint can’t say he ever destroyed an entire kitchen when he was that age, but he once shot a concession stand through with arrows. No one was in it, at the time, but he put the circus back a pretty penny. Not like he could pretend he didn’t do it, either, considering all the arrows.
Clint’s almost getting bored, as ridiculous as that sounds, when there’s another crash and then a yell, and the shattering stops. Clint frowns and shifts his focus back to the kid, who’s cradling his hand against his chest, tears still streaming down his cheeks. Clint sighs and walks over, grabbing a dishtowel and shaking it free of debris before offering it to the kid.
He takes it, shooting Clint a confused glance, and then wraps it tight around his palm. “Come on,” Clint says flatly, walking out the kitchen and toward the bathroom. He’s sure there’s a first aid kit somewhere in there, and while he’s probably going to make Bruce look at this kid before the end of the night in case he needs stitches, he thinks for now, they don’t need company.
Sammy follows somberly, almost tentatively, and hops up on the counter when Clint pats it as he walks by. He digs around in the lower cabinets for awhile until he pulls out a first aid kit and finds some hydrogen peroxide. “Run that under the tap,” Clint instructs without so much as looking in the kid’s direction, but he does as he’s told, hissing when the water hits his hand.
He pulls his hand back and Clint offers him a small bath towel to dry it off. It’s white and the towel will probably be ruined, but he highly doubts anyone will care. Pepper might be a little miffed about the china, but once Clint tells her why it’s all broken, she’ll probably just sigh and order more with Tony’s money.
Clint gingerly draws the towel away from the kid’s hand and brings it toward him to inspect the cut. It’s right across his palm, still bleeding openly, but it’s not too deep. “Hold it over the sink,” he says curtly, and goes to grab the peroxide. He uncaps it and steadies the kid’s hand, and without warning, pours a small stream right over the cut.
Sammy winces and draws his hand back, but Clint just rolls his eyes and says “Hold still, damn it.” He drips a bit more peroxide over the cut, and then grabs a wad of toilet paper and shoves it into the kid’s palm. He squeezes his fingers around it and watching Clint openly as he digs through the mess of a first aid kit for gauze, or a really fucking big bandaid.
“Why’re you helping me?” The kid asks suddenly, almost defensively, and Clint grabs his hand again and starts to wrap it. He looks up to meet the kid’s eyes and raises one eyebrow.
“You see anyone else up at this hour?” He asks pointedly, and bites down on a smile when the kid flushes and mumbles out a negative. He finishes wrapping up the gauze and rips a piece of tape to keep the end tucked, then pats the kid’s hand and starts shoving everything unceremoniously into the kit.
Sammy hops down off the counter and stares at Clint some more. Someone should teach him that staring is rude, because Clint sure as hell isn’t going to do it.
He packs up, shoving the whole kit back under the sink, and then tells the kid “Come on,” as he walks out of the bathroom, headed towards the bar. Sammy probably only follows him because he’s curious, but he doesn’t care so long as the kid doesn’t run off or start breaking something else. He ducks down behind the bar and grabs the first bottle of liquor he can find, hoping Stark never planned on drinking it for some kind of special occasion, and twists off the cap. He takes a swig from the bottle and then puts the cap back on, bringing it with him as he swings over the counter and nods his head toward the stairs.
“Where are we going?” Sammy asks, still following behind him, and at least he sounds calmer now. He’s stopped crying, and screaming, which has gotta be a point in Clint’s favor, right?
“Roof,” Clint grunts, reaching the last step and striding right through the door. The living area comprises the top three or so floors of the tower, with the labs just below and the business offices below those. The roof isn’t exactly designed to be used, but Clint makes a point of seeking out the highest places in any area he lives in, and this one’s almost unparalleled in his experience.
He leads then both to a small inlet near the edge, where they can dangle their feet and look out over the city. He throws himself down and moves until he’s right at the edge, his arms resting over the railing, one hand still gripped around the liquor. It tastes kind of like tequila, but he’s never sure, with Stark.
When Clint turns around, the kid is standing a few yards back, arms wrapped around himself, staring at Clint with wide eyes. “You’re gonna fall,” he says simply, darting his eyes back and forth between Clint and the city below.
“Nah,” Clint says easily with a wolfish grin. “Stark’s got some sort of sensor thing, deploys nets or whatever.” It’s true, not that Clint’s ever taken a dive off the tower. Intentionally, anyway. But once Thor used the tower’s roof as a sort of launch-pad, and he let himself free-fall before he started flying, and he got all tangled up in the net things that came out of nowhere. Clint laughed about it for weeks.
He hesitates a moment, but then darts forward before he can chicken out, settling himself next to Clint and gazing out over New York at night. Clint uncaps the bottle and takes another swig, wincing at the burn but figuring it’ll do him a world of good right now.
“I don’t think we’re supposed to be up here,” Sammy says cautiously, not looking at Clint but not avoiding his eyes, either.
Clint shrugs. “Our tower. Our rules.” Technically, Stark owns the place, but since he willingly opened it up for them all to live in, Clint figures he expected them to take these sort of liberties. Besides, they’re not hurting anyone.
They lapse into silence again, Clint occasionally taking a swig from the bottle, screwing up his face less and less each time. He’s not trying to get drunk, just mildly buzzed. It’s been a damn hard night, and that started before he walked into the kitchen to see the kid having some sort of fit.
After a moment, he offers the bottle to the kid, watching for his reaction. The kid looks at him, kind of shocked, and says “I’m fourteen.”
Huh. Clint would’ve guessed older. He shrugs. “I’ve been drinking since I was five, kid.” True, actually. “A sip or two won’t kill you.” Again, mostly true, barring extenuating circumstances.
The kid makes an unpleasant face, eyes the bottle, and then seems to come to a decision and takes it from Clint, throwing it back with the kind of reckless attitude that Clint likes to see in youth these days. In seconds, the kid is leaning forward, coughing and spitting, exclaiming “Shit! Why would you drink that?”
Clint bursts out laughing and takes the bottle back from him before he drops it, sipping again just to prove that he can. “Kid, you get to be my age, and it starts to taste good. Trust me.”
The kid coughs a little more, Clint’s guessing mostly for theatrics, and then looks at Clint with narrowed eyes for a moment. “Why do you call me kid?” He asks suddenly, but he doesn’t sound insulted, so Clint counts that as a win. He must be getting fairly good at this whole advice thing, because this is the longest anyone’s gone without still crying, or screaming, or hitting him, or running away.
Clint thinks about it a second. He knows the kid’s name, but for whatever reason, his brain just keeps referring to him as “the kid” even though he calls mostly all the other kids by their names. He hums a little and then says “‘Cause you’re a kid.”
The kid—see? ‘Sammy’ just doesn’t sound quite right—looks at him like that’s an entirely useless answer, and then seems to give up fighting it and gazes back out over the city. Clint caps the liquor bottle and puts it to the side of him, wrapping his arms around the railing and leaning forward to rest his chin on his arms.
“I bet it’s ‘cause you don’t know my name,” he says suddenly, almost amused, and Clint huffs out a quick laugh.
“Sammy,” Clint answers immediately with a wry little grin.
“Pfft,” is Sammy’s reply, and then he seems to sober a bit, chewing on his lip like he’s unsure of something. He shakes his head minutely then, in some sort of decision. “Sammy Shay Coulson.”
Clint’s chest caves in, right then, and he can’t quite breathe. It’s the one thing the kids keep refusing to state outright, who they belonged to in their universe, even though sometimes it’s obvious. Claire is Pepper’s, Bruce and him have the twins, and Tony’s got Kennedy, who’s practically the girl-clone of Tony, only quieter. Mac apparently missed the Midgardian memo that he’s not supposed to tell anyone who his parents are, and he and his brother Mo have basically moved in with Thor and Jane. That scrawny Nari boy hangs around with them a lot, but he gets all wide-eyed whenever Loki pops by for mischief.
But Peter still primly refuses to admit who adopted him, and Claire won’t talk about who her father was, and so far, Sammy hasn’t said a word about his parentage. Clint always just assumed it was one of them, or he was adopted like Peter. He didn’t even think—
Christ, what’s he been going through this whole time? All the other kids, splitting up to go spend time with the clones of their parents, bonding and playing house and remaking their families. And Sammy’s been sitting on the sidelines, silently grieving, unable to pretend.
And Phil. Their Phil. Clint can just see it now, the vague family resemblance. In the kid’s nose, and his ears, especially. Now that he sees it, he can’t see anything else. He has no idea how he managed to miss that, this whole time. If Phil were here, he’d have probably picked it out right away and—
God, if Phil were here. If he could see this kid, see exactly what kind of father he’d be.
“Fuck,” Clint states, tilting his head down and pressing his forehead against the cool metal of the railing. He doesn’t know how to handle this. Sometimes he thinks Bruce and him got it the easiest, with the twins. They’re too young to know the difference, or to really understand what happened to their parents. They were only two when they lost their parents. They’re not grieving.
But the older kids? Claire, Peter, Sammy? The scary Fury-clone that up and disappeared as soon as Fury came around? They’re old enough to understand loss. They’re all grieving, in their own way, trying to reconcile their parents and the clones walking around in this universe, trying to accept an entirely new family. And this kid—
“Fuck,” he says again, because he doesn’t know how to handle this. He thought he was over Coulson’s death, thought he was done with the grieving thing. He figured if he just kept refusing to think about it that it would stop hurting. And now this kid comes along and just rips old wounds back open, forcing his grief down on him, the shit he’s been ignoring for the better part of a year.
He hears gasping next to him, like the kid is crying but isn’t, head ducked and eyes shut tight, and Clint really wishes he were anyone but himself right now. That he knew how to fix this.
“Christ, kid,” he breathes, pulling back and turning. “C’mere.” He opens his arms, tugging at the kid’s shoulder, and repeats “C’mere,” until he’s got an armful of grieving teenager. He holds on, listening to Sammy’s shuddering breaths, trying to figure out how the hell everything got so fucked up that a bunch of kids wind up in an alternate universe with the ghosts of their dead parents parading around in their faces while they’re trying to grieve.
“I’m sorry,” Clint says, and his voice sounds raw and gritty. He doesn’t know what else to say. “I’m so fucking sorry.”
Sammy just keeps shaking, gulping in air, clutching at his back, and Clint keeps repeating himself helplessly, thinking if this goes on much longer, he’s gonna have his own breakdown. Which is the last thing either of them need. Fuck, where’d he put the liquor?
Sammy seems to calm soon, though, and he pulls back and immediately looks away, embarrassed. Clint hovers for a moment, unsure of what to do, but then he twists back toward the railing and the cityscape, reaching blindly for the bottle of what-the-fuck-ever and forcing down two mouthfuls. He’s starting to think it might be apple juice, for all it’s affecting him. He wouldn’t put it past Tony to quit drinking now that he’s got that kid hanging around all the time.
“How?” The kid asks, his voice a complete mess, and Clint tries not to wince. Seeing this kid’s pain so openly makes him want to shoot something. Repeatedly.
“What?” He asks, for clarification.
“How’d he die?” Sammy repeats, with a bit more confidence. “In my world he—with the rest. During the siege.”
Clint nods, figuring that’s what happened. He’s still sketchy on the details of what, exactly, went down in this alternate universe, but he knows that there were some damn scary monsters, and that they were good enough to beat the Avengers. He doesn’t like thinking about it too much.
Clint takes a deep breath and steels himself. He hasn’t talked about it before—didn’t need to, since everyone he knows was there for it. Or at least, for the aftermath. Fury’s voice, deep and hollow. Bloodstained cards splayed out on the table in front of them. The way their breath caught, all at the same time, while the fear and rage and grief took over, bringing them together in a way nothing else could’ve.
He only figured out the details second-hand, with Stark hacking the Helicarrier feed to get the audio, and with Fury explaining in clipped tones exactly what happened. Even then, it still feels surreal. He wouldn’t put it past SHIELD to pull some horrible shit and use it to manipulate them, but somehow this just…feels too real.
When he starts speaking, his voice sounds empty. “We were fighting an alien race,” he states, choosing to leave Loki out of it because the last thing they need is someone hurting Nari because his not-quite-father is an evil bastard. “It was our first mission together, and we weren’t working together well, and things were just…a mess.
“We had the leader detained, or we thought we did, but things…went wrong. Phil—” his voice cuts out on the name, but he swallows past it. “Phil went down fighting. Blew the SOB right out of the sky,” he laughs bitterly, clenching his jaw against the rush of emotion. “He—In the end, he brought us together. We stopped fighting over petty shit, pulled it together and saved the world. He saved the world.”
The kid looks close to tears again, but he doesn’t move his gaze from the city, so Clint pretends not to notice, just like Sammy pretends not to notice how choked Clint’s voice sounds.
They sit there, breathing in the city air, teetering on the edge of “okay”. Eventually, their breath comes a little easier, and the weight on his chest is a little less.
“Look, kid,” he starts abruptly, surprising even himself by his voice. “We’re not your parents. None of us are under any illusions on that. This is one really fucked-up case of ‘looks like a duck, quacks like a duck, but is not a fucking duck’.” The kid bursts out laughing, and Clint has to smile.
“But,” he pauses, unsure if he’s crossing a line here. His three-year-olds can barely even draw a line, let alone recognize a proverbial one and know when it’s being crossed. “–we’re here,” he finishes, with a half-shrug. “We’re here and you might as well make use of it, ‘cause we’re not good for much else, except saving the world every now and then.”
The kid cracks a smile at that, and Clint thinks this might not be so hard, after all, if he’s making the kid smile. Kids need to smile more. Even teenagers. Maybe especially teenagers.
“Look,” he starts again, thinking he probably sounds old, using that word again and again. “I’m shit with words, but what I’m trying to say is— I guess I just meant that— If you ever needed—”
“Thanks,” the kid says with a knowing grin, cutting him off before he ends up shoving his foot into his mouth.
Clint nods, thinking it’s better he avoids speaking for a bit, and they lapse into easy silence again. The city hums and rumbles below, even at this hour, whatever this hour is. But there’s one thing Clint can’t quite wrap his head around, and maybe it’s because he’s biased, but he doesn’t think it’s just that…
“So…” he starts lamely, drawing out the word, trying to stop himself but failing beautifully. “Phil with a woman? No offense, but he seemed like the type to avoid marriage. Too much paperwork, if you know what I mean.”
Luckily, the kid takes it all in good humor, grinning and shaking his head a little. “He’s not—” he starts, then redirects. “I’m not exactly his kid. He just took me in after my mom died when I was born. I’m technically his nephew.” He doesn’t say anything about his biological father, and Clint doesn’t ask.
“Huh,” Clint says simply.
“Though I think a kid is a lot more paperwork than a wife would be,” he says suddenly, some of the brightness back in his voice, and Clint laughs.
“Good point,” Clint says, smiling. But, as he’s very recently learned, kids are rarely choices. At least not in the way marriages are. Marriages don’t ‘just happen’, unless you’re in Vegas. Kids… Well, sometimes kids fall right out of the goddamned sky and land in your lap (or your tower), and there isn’t a damn thing you can do about it, except give them a home and love them.
He’s starting to think that’s a pretty good deal.