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It’s three am. Jessica’s ‘work phone’ (that Trish insisted she fucking needed) starts ringing. Thank god Dani is at Lukes. Jess slumps out of bed, and almost cracks the phone as she picks it up.
“Jessica Jones, what do you want?” It better be important. Fuck, was her apartment always so cold at night?
“I, uh, heeey…Jess.” Clint Bartons voice leaks out from the other end.
“You better be dying.”
“Uh, no?” She can hear cars in the background.
“Did someone throw you in a dumpster again?” Jessica leans up against the window frame, peeking through the blinds. She doesn’t even know why she does that anymore.
“No...Metaphorically?”
“What are you talking about, Barton?”
“I’m gonna…uh…”
“Are you drunk? Because I really can’t help you with that.” She had a hundred something chips piled up in spots around the house where she used to keep liquor bottles. (Also on Trish’s advice. She had another forty or so shoved in drawers from failed attempts that she couldn’t bring herself to throw out.)
“No, I wish.” Clint lets out an awkward laugh, before getting quiet real fast, like Jessica was about to run out the door half-naked to grab a bottle from the corner store. She let him to stew in his awkward silence as retribution for calling her in the middle of the night for no goddamn reason.
“I’m gonna be a dad, Jess.” Clint finally lets out. Jessica pulls the phone away from her ear to stare at it, as Clint continues making weird passive-aggressive remarks about himself. She’s really not sure she’s actually awake right now. She puts the phone back to her ear anyway.
“With J Drew?”
“- I, what, no.” Thank god. “That would be so…something. Scary? Weird? She wouldn’t even want it.”
“Don’t say it to her like that.”
“That sounded bad? I didn’t mean it bad. Just, I wouldn’t be freaking out if it was her - ”
“Yeah. That sounded bad.”
“Ok.”
Jessica waited for him to continue. Clint being Clint, he decided the best option was clearly more awkward silences. “Well? Who is it?”
“Laura?”
“FBI Laura, who used you for your brother.”
“Yeah. It sounds bad when you say it like that.”
“I thought she wasn’t into you? And was really into her job?”
“A really creepy thing happened the other day. Or not the other day now, but a couple of months ago. An Avengers thing. I guess, I saw into an alternate universe, and it was me and her, and we had like a farm and a bunch of kids.”
“That does sound fucked up.” Fucking Avengers.
“Yeah.”
“So, what? That was why she came back to see you? She got alternate universe pregnant?” Fucking Avengers.
“No, no. Just she didn’t like how she left things with me – “
“Obviously.” She hadn’t meant to say that out loud. She should be in bed; she had to pick up Dani tomorrow afternoon.
“And she, I guess, saw the same thing, because it was about both of us?”
“I thought you said this was a couple months ago? She only been in town a couple of weeks.” Damn, Clint worked fast. Jessica still never understood what people saw in him. He wasn’t the biggest douche, but he was a mess - even she could see that. Was it cute that he was a mess? Why wasn’t she a cute mess?
“Yeah, she blew out her knee. Really blew out her knee. So, she took it as a sign? All of it?”
“That what, you were meant to be together? ” Jessica walked over to the fridge and pulled out the bottle of ginger ale. She took a swig out of the bottle, as she waited for him to answer.
“I guess?” More silence.
“So, why are you calling me? Shouldn’t you be freaking out with her? Or Kate?”
“She doesn’t know I know.”
“The shit? Then how do you know?”
“I dropped my razor in the bathroom garbage. While I was fishing it out I found the test.”
“I’ve seen your bathroom, that’s gross.” Not that she was one to talk. She took another swig from the bottle. “How do you know it’s not Kate?” Shit. Jessica would have to be there for Kate if she was pregnant. She wouldn’t even know how, but Trish didn’t know Kate like that, and Clint wouldn’t know what to do. Someone had to.
“I think she’s, uh, dating America. Chavez.”
“You think?”
“She told me.” Jessica cursed under her breath. She just lost twenty dollars to Danny motherfucking Rand.
“So, why are you calling me?”
“You had a kid? I don’t have that long a list of contacts? I already told Nat and she pretty much patted me on the back and told me to get my shit together?”
“She’s not wrong.”
“I don’t want to fuck up, Jess. I don’t want to fuck this kid up.” Clints voice does this gaspy, little hitch at the end. Jessica wants to punch him. Not hard, but still.
“Don’t you dare cry on me, Clint.” Jessica switched the phone to her other ear, pulling her hair out of her face. “I get it. I get it. You have to take it day by day. Just - fuck, I can’t believe you called me to cry on the phone - find the shittiest person in your life, and try not to do what they do.” A pause. Then there was a noise of the other line, like he kept moving to speak and then cutting himself off.
“You can’t be the shittiest person in your life, Clint.”
“I can’t?” Clint sounded incredulous, which hurt a little. (Not that she wasn’t trying to bury it under being completely done with him and this phone call.)
“Someone had to fuck you up this bad.” Shit, that was really not the right thing to say. She hoped it was better then lying.
“Yeah. Yeah, that makes sense. Thanks.”
Just like that Jessica was listening to dial tone.
“Fucking Clint Barton.” She threw the soda back in the fridge (she could hear it fucking pop. That would suck in the morning), and threw herself back in bed. She was going to spend the rest of the fucking night waiting for a text from Kate that her partner did something stupid.
Jessica fucking knew it.