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It wasn’t that Clint tried to be an asshole, it was just that he ended up that way on a regular basis despite his best efforts. He did the wrong things, he said the wrong things. He really had stopped trying to avoid that outcome a long time ago. Embracing the wrongness was the best route. Go with the flow, and all that. Instead, he adopted a policy of making up for his transgressions.
Which is how Kate usually ended up at his place just about every weekend. Clint bought her Apology Pizza, and watched Apology Movies starring Ryan Gosling with her, and it usually worked out. Kate forgave easily, and even better, repeatedly, which made her a unique presence in Clint’s life. It also made her just about damn near the best friend he’d ever had.
He was just waiting until the day she realized what a screw-up he was.
***
”Boom.” Kablooey goes the bad guy.
Kate had picked that up from him. Or maybe he had from her. He couldn’t keep track anymore.
He loved best those times when they were in the middle of the bad guys, surrounded, their backs to each other as they swung around, arrows flying. Clint always called her Katie, then. Who knows why. It was more syllables, so it wasn’t quicker in the heat of the fight to shout Katie as opposed to Kate. A term of endearment, he guessed.
Her back to his, he felt her muscles tense as she drew back to fire, mirroring his own. They worked in tandem.
She was Katie, then.
***
Clint knew she dug him, just a little. He dug her too. Or, he would have, if she wasn’t half his age and with about a million better options on the table than Clint freakin’ Barton. But that didn’t really stop him feeling the way he did.
Kate was young, but smarter than him; better than him. She was an actual good person, whereas Clint just tried really hard to be one. He admired her, and he wanted to be better for her sake. All the things best friends should feel.
They would sit on his stupid couch, watching a stupid movie, their stupid shoulders stupidly brushing against each other and the stupid heat of Kate’s stupid body would seep through her stupid hoodie and his stupid t-shirt and she stupidly smelled so stupid good and stupid stupid Clint stupid.
He’d always visit the bathroom about two-thirds of the way through the movie and Kate mocked him for his small bladder.
***
Clint thought he should talk to someone. That’s what people did, right? They talked to a therapist or a friend and got it off their chest and figured it all out.
The only person he could think to trust enough was Natasha. He called her - and got her machine, of course, she was busy with spy stuff or whatever she was up to for SHIELD these days - and left a rambly message about needing to speak to her, preferably sooner rather than later, before he went crazy. He was sure he used the word important, or maybe imperative, but in no way did he say it was an emergency, because it wasn’t. Wanting your young, vivacious, perfect friend to be more than your friend was not an emergency, it was just stupid.
And then there Natasha was, 6 hours later, at his front door asking ”So what’s the big emergency?” Oops.
Everyone was right, it did feel better to spill it to someone. He told the whole sordid affair to Nat, about his feelings and urges and how wrong it was and how he didn’t want to screw everything up (again). Once it was out, the weight on his back felt as if it had been cleaved in half, the rest having floated off into space on the coattails of his spoken words.
She looked equal parts confused and amused. “I’m sorry... what is the problem?”
“I could be her dad.”
“Only if you had her when you were fourteen. Older brother, maybe.”
Clint decided she wasn’t really helping, and told her as such. Nat just laughed.
“You’re both adults, Clint. There’s nothing morally wrong, here.” She shrugged. “Doesn’t mean it’s a good idea, though.”
“Well, I’m the king of bad ideas.”
“Yeah, probably. But I’ve seen worse. I’ve been a part of worse.”
Clint grimaced at that. He wished they could all just be normal people.
***
An embarrassingly significant portion of Clint’s time was spent coming up with nicknames for Kate.
He sat in the passenger seat of her purple bug, scratching idly at his chin and trying to think up a good one while she was inside the Chinese place picking up their moo goo gai pan. When she came back and tossed the bag in his lap, he regaled her with it.
“Remember the fortune cookies, Katemyprofessor.com?” Clint laid it out there, like a roast with the trimmings, ready to be devoured.
The interior of the car went silent. Kate paused, her hand hovering over the key in the ignition. She slowly turned towards Clint, and lifted up her sunglasses.
“What?” Clint asked defensively.
“Katemyprofessor.com? Oh, boss,” she replied, amused.
Her use of the word boss made his chest twinge. He refused to let his eyes linger on the curve of her lips when she smiled at his stupidity.
***
Kate smelled like flowers all the damn time.
***
One time Kate lost to the bad guys.
Okay, she didn’t really lose - in fact, it was the opposite - but it seemed that way. They were up to the usual, fighting some neighborhood bros, and they had one cornered behind a dumpster. He had lost his gun but wouldn’t give up. He kept throwing bottles and rocks and whatever else he could find whenever they got close to him. One of them hit Kate on the head, and he saw her go down out of the corner of his eye. She fell to the ground like a ton of bricks, and didn’t get up again.
Clint forgot about the bro and ran to her, he thought he shouted her name maybe, shouted Katie!, and he found himself kneeling on the ground next to her. The bro came up behind him, a brick in his hand, ready to crash it down on Clint’s head. He didn’t see, didn’t realize, until Kate’s eyes snapped open and she raised her bow and arrow, firing at the guy standing behind him, brick raised. The arrow flew past Clint’s ear with a sharp fwipt and he knew it hit paydirt, because there was a grunt and a thump, and the bro was down.
“Thanks for the assist,” she said. “That was the only way to draw that guy out.”
He helped her up. He wasn’t sure which was the more troubling fact: that he’d turn his back on a bad guy when she got hurt, or that Kate could correctly predict what he’d do in that situation.
***
She showered at his place, and it was never weird before, but suddenly it was. All Clint could do was envision her in there while he sat as his kitchen table and bit his lip and stared into his mug of coffee.
Kate flopped down onto his couch when she got out, wearing a pair of pj pants she kept there, and one of his old hoodies, zipped up to just above her breasts. His eyes zeroed in on the exposed skin, following the curve of her chest up to her throat, and he wanted to touch her there, wanted to kiss her.
Instead he mumbled something about being out of avocados and ran out of the apartment. He ignored her when she called after him.
***
Kate knew something was up. She kept looking at him weird, but she didn’t say anything about it.
Clint threw himself into training. Went for more runs. Lifted some weights. He bought about a million practice arrows and went out into the woods with them. He set up targets, and once he shot those out, he just started shooting at everything. Tree trunks, rocks, branches.
One of his arrows plunged into a bush and he heard a loud skreek. He pushed aside the leaves, and lying on the ground was a dead pheasant. They were just practice arrows, and the tips were blunted, but it didn’t matter. The pheasant was small and vulnerable, and with the power of his bow behind it, the arrow easily pierced its flesh.
Stupid Hawkeye. Couldn’t even train with his bow right.
He pulled the arrow out of the pheasant’s corpse. Blood leaked from the puncture wound and onto the dirt below it.
Asshole.
Stupid asshole.
***
“Let me in, boss.” It was a demand, not a request, and Kate’s hands on her hips emphasized this point.
Clint sat slouched on the couch, remote in his hand and something brainless on the tv. He kept his eyes glued there, where it was safer. Kate grabbed the remote from him and clicked it off. Oh well. He wasn’t paying it close attention anyway.
“I wish you wouldn’t call me that,” Clint practically growled. He hated how angry his voice sounded. Kate didn’t deserve it, but he only seemed to be able to feel extremes around her anymore.
“Sorry. Clint.” She put as much emphasis on the name as she could.
“Clint,” she said again, softer, when he didn’t reply. He looked at her. Pretty blue eyes... he looked away again. “I just don’t get you. One of these days you’re gonna piss me off so bad I’ll leave, and I won’t come back.”
He knew it was true. “Just another page in the life story of Clint Barton,” he said without emotion.
Kate turned the tv back on and tossed the remote back at him.
***
Kate was pissed at him, fucking pissed, and he found he liked that better. It was easier to ignore what he felt, what every nerve ending was screaming at him to do whenever he got within fifteen feet of her. Her eyes raked over him like knives, and her words landed on him like baseball bats, and they even managed to work together like that for a while.
They took out their respective issues on every bro in a ten mile radius.
***
They’d stopped talking entirely.
Clint hated that. He knew Kate did too. She kept coming over anyway, and they’d sit around in silence, and eat Silent Angry Pizza and watch Silent Angry Movies, and he’d sense Kate open her mouth as if to say something, then shut it again. There was more space between them on the couch, however.
This had to end.
“This has to end,” Kate said, seconds after he thought it. For a wild moment, he thought she was psychic.
“What can we do?” Clint asked.
“Just tell me. Tell me what’s wrong.”
Her bangs were swept slightly sideways across her forehead, and he always thought she looked cute when her hair was askew like that, and - fuck. Damn internal monologues.
“Alright, jesus. You know what’s wrong? What’s wrong is how amazing you are, Kate. You’re wonderful and I’m not, and I don’t even know why you spend any time with me at all, really, because I don’t deserve it. I don’t deserve your partnership or your friendship, let alone what I really want.”
Kate blinked. “What -”
“What do I really want? What I really want is to kiss you. I want to kiss you until you can’t breathe. I want to rip your clothes off and fuck you, right there on the kitchen table.”
Kate stared at him. And then.. then Kate burst out laughing. A deep belly laugh that had her doubled over. Of all the reactions Clint had expected, that one didn’t even rate. He just sat there and stared at her, confused.
Eventually, she sat up, and wiped the tears from her eyes. “Oh my god, Clint! That’s what - that’s why you’ve been such a crabby jerk?” A fresh bout of laughter gripped her.
“Hey!” Clint finally said. “I just bared my soul to you here. What’s so funny?”
“I’m just relieved,” Kate said. She grinned at him. “I thought something was seriously wrong. This? Is easy to deal with.”
“Easy? How -”
But Clint couldn’t finish his thought. Suddenly there was a pair of lips on his; soft lips. Kate’s lips. And whatever his thought had been flew out of his brain. He reached his hands up into her hair, running on instinct, pulling her mouth harder into his. Clint closed his eyes and lost himself in the kiss. Kate’s smell, her touch, everything filled his senses. After a moment they pulled back, both slightly out of breath.
“You know, I’ve wanted to do this for a while,” Kate said. “But I was afraid of scaring you off.”
“Scaring me off?”
“I know how sensitive you are about this stuff.” She grinned. The sight of it made a ball of warmth uncoil in Clint’s chest.
Clint caressed her cheek with the back of his fingers. Maybe he was too sensitive. Or, maybe that was an excuse to make him feel better for the poor decision he was about to make.
The king of bad ideas.
“Katie,” he whispered. She shushed him, and kissed him again.
They decided against the kitchen table, that was just a bit too rickety and the risk of splinters was too high. The bed served their purpose just fine.