Rachel & Clint | Friday Afternoon

[x-hawkeye.livejournal.com]

Clint runs into Rachel while attempting to get to the roof. Conversation ensues.


Rachel had set up shop in the attic, making a small table for herself near one of the few windows there with a high-powered desk lamp. Scattered across the surface in front of her were bits and pieces of metal, various metal working tools, and a copious amount of metal shavings. She was bent over a thumb-sized piece of dark metal that had been filed to a dangerous point, carving intently at its surface with a triangular shaped etching tool, a telekinetic shield over her nose and mouth to prevent her from inhaling any of the shavings.

Everything else was out of control, out of her hands, and she had no way of getting any of it back -- nothing from her life was hers anymore. She'd found herself in the middle of a patched-together world, thrown into painfully familiar unfamiliar surroundings again. And this time, there was no explaining it away or asking for help. There was Jim, but the man had his own problems to deal with now.

And then there were the ghosts.

She was hearing things, feeling things and knowing things she could not explain. Fuck, she couldn't even explain how she knew how to do what she was doing right then - making projectiles. But it felt right and comfortable and actually helped to settle the ghosts and block them out. Almost.

A presence approached and she stiffened, almost fearful as she waited for the whispers to overcome her senses again, sure that she was really going insane this time around.

Clint walked up the stairs to the attic, his forearm guards in place and his bow strapped to his back with his quiver despite the fact that there was no one in the mansion to shoot. Not that he wanted to shoot anyone. Well, no - there were a few people he wouldn't mind shooting. But with everything else in his life turned on its side by his own decisions and actions, it was nice to have something comfortable and familiar with him even if he didn't intend to use it.

There was a platform up top that he could use to get to the peaks and eaves of the old mansion. From there, he could look out over a good part of the gardens and the rest of the property, clear his head a little. He wasn't sure why but he kept getting weird looks from certain people here and, while he couldn't get a straight answer, he'd seen enough in his time with SHIELD and SWORD to recognize cagey activity. Wouldn't do any good to poke at it, though. With his luck, a demigod would open some kind of temporal portal and pop in for a visit to tell him to cease and desist. That was all he needed, Thor would never let him live it down.

Rolling his eyes, the archer pushed open the door and stepped into the attic. It was dusty and dry up here, full of old boxes and crates, half mannequins and the odd rack of hanging clothes covered in plastic, protective covers. Then there was the furniture, some of it heavy and obviously antique, some of it newer and school-related. He still hadn't really gotten a handle on this place with its luxury apartments and adjacent school, of all things. Not that the school part was being used. But the labs were amazing.

As he turned toward the exit to the flyer's platform, Clint heard the tell-tale skritch of an etching tool on metal and stopped, cocking his head to the side. He didn't have super hearing, but it didn't take a feral to follow the sounds. "Hey," he said raising his eyebrows as he caught sight of a very familiar set-up. "What're you working on?"

Verdant eyes snapped to his, pupils blown wide in fear for a whole three seconds before she blinked and glanced back down at the weapon in her hands, visibly reigning her emotions in. Not one of her ghosts then. Just another unfamiliar familiar face. Preferable, but not ideal. Rachel ran a callused thumb down the sharp edge of the projectile, slightly surprised to find that it was beginning to take the shape of an arrowhead.

The shield around the lower portion of her face changed from blue to a clear barrier and her voice came out unmuffled, a deliberate tinge of cheerful politeness to her distinctly British accent. "First of all, you scared me. Second of all, who are you?"

She knew who he was. Hawkeye. The soldier who had taught her how to build explosives and shoot a bow and arrow in the middle of a war during their downtime. He was the slightly awkward teenager whom she had secretly taught how to mix explosives without asking his teachers for permission, and whose parents she had met at a Christmas party in their home. But this man that stood before her, eyes not quite as dead as the soldier's, but wiser and darker than the teenager's… This man she did not know.

So she tilted her head at him, strands of fire falling across her eyes as she quirked an inquisitive brow at him.

Clint smiled. "Clint Barton, formerly of SHIELD, now of SWORD." His eyes drifted back to the arrowhead in her hand and he quirked a brow right back at her. "Sorry I scared you. I definitely didn't mean to." He had visions of Jettison Arrows with their high pressure CO2 release valves and super durable polymer release cables dancing through his head as he glanced back toward her. "You know, I've got blueprints for some micro mechanics that'd attach to the shaft where it connects to the base of the arrowhead. They release tiny prongs at stupidly high speed - hook into pretty much anything. Attach a polymer cable to the end just after the fletching and you've got a pretty epic zip line."

Her second brow rose to join the other as she absentmindedly tested the sharp tip of the arrowhead (it wasn't an arrowhead by her standards yet but now it couldn't possibly become anything else) against the callus at the base of her thumb. It took a moment to process his words (and to push away her confusion at her own comprehensive understanding of what he was saying). But she did realise something. This Clint… was a... nerd.

Rachel could not help it - she dropped the carving tool onto the table, flipped the metal onto the back of her hand and laughed, quiet chuckles bubbling past her lips in the face of his baby-blues and charming smile. (Maybe she was slightly schizophrenic. Probably.)

"Is this how you always ask for forgiveness, Arms?" She asked, once she had regained control of herself and was able to return his smile with a cheerful (more sane) one of her own. "Because I'm fairly sure I won't need your blueprints to make your zip line for you." (Even if she wasn't sure how she was sure.)

"I mean, if it works," Clint said, smile widening as he propped a shoulder against an intricately carved armoire. "Am I forgiven?"

"I don't know," she returned, a glint in her eyes as she idly flipped the metal piece back into the palm of her hand and rolled it around. "My heart's still racing and I haven't actually seen the blueprints."

Reaching down, Clint pulled a thumb drive out of his pocket and wiggled it at her. "They're available whenever you want to see 'em," he said, calculating the air circulation within the attic given the closed windows and the open door at the other end, the average weight of metal shavings from the type of etching tool she was using. "But I don't share my blueprints with just anybody. I gotta at least have a name to go with the smile."

She eyed the thumb drive, mind jumping to calculate the 13 immediate ways she could obtain it without his consent. In the end, Rachel settled for matching him, smile for smile and sticking out a hand that was cloaked in a thin layer of telekinetic energy. "Rachel-- Oh, sorry." She pulled back her hand and stared at it belatedly (when had that happened?) before dropping her TK gloves and standing to shake the metal shavings off into the bin by her side. "You should probably also stay where you are because inhaling this gunk would definitely hurt."

"Oh, I know well the dangers of inhaling metal shavings," Clint said, pulling an arrow from his quiver to show her some of the custom work he'd done on it. "Make my own. I think better when I've got something to occupy my hands with. It's nice to meet you, Rachel. Are you one of the new arrivals here, like myself, or did I just miss you on the initial tour and my subsequent trips back and forth from the city?"

"I was away for a while," she shrugged dismissively, making insistent grabby hands at the arrow he was waving about. She had priorities (strange ones). And he really needed to stop teasing her like this, and she told him so. If he wanted to show off, he should do it properly -- otherwise, she wasn't going to show him webbed netting the size of two grown men but so fine it could fit into an arrow shaft.

When Rachel mentioned the webbed nets, Clint might have actually said, "Marry me." But he was looking at the bits and pieces of metal and the tools strewn across the work surface when he said it, an absentminded smile still on his face as he pulled a mini tablet from a pocket on the outside of his quiver and inserted the thumb drive so she could see the blueprints he was talking about. "I did a bit of R&D with SHIELD before I transferred to SWORD. Worked pretty exclusively on the Bifrost Bridge with Doc Foster. Met Thor. He's pretty awesome. Gave me some ideas for weapons schematics, how to execute things I hadn't quite been able to figure out yet."

The lad had just pulled a mini tablet out of his fucking quiver. Rachel would have gaped and said "Fuck yes" if the pictures on the screen weren't so distracting (Such pretty ideas, Ray-ray). She stepped back again for a moment and decontaminated herself by dropping the rest of her body armour (except the face mask) and its accompanying shavings to the bin. Not going to lie, she did pause and stare at him for a moment, assessing (familiar unfamiliar, not a threat. Dangerous.), only to step away from her desk and towards the window with a jerk of her head when the whispers of her ghosts started to mutter again. "C'mere where you won't shred your windpipe and I can touch."

Clint didn't inhale as he walked through the area where she'd been working, holding the touch screen tablet out to her once they were closer to the window. He then opened the window, glad to see the sill was big enough for him to sit on sideways, one leg bent at the knee so his foot could rest flat and the spring air could blow whatever metal shavings might linger around them in the opposite direction. "Most of my schematics are on there, so feel free to check them out. There's this lab downstairs I could hook it into so you can see them in 3D through one of the projector models - I seriously love the labs here."

"Oh, oh," Rachel blinked, fingers moving over the tablet which she had promptly taken without a single word of thanks as she flipped the page and enlarged the schematics. The psion would admit that she wasn't exactly paying the best of her attention to him. The whispers at the back of her head grew louder and she let the ghosts wash over her with a barely-there shudder and a tightening of her fingers around the mini tablet. It was uncomfortable and creepy as fuck but there was a growing excitement (and a zing of happiness) that even the soldier in her couldn't quite suppress (so much fun!).


"I can do this. No," she backtracked, glancing up from the screen and down at Clint with a strange mix of surprise (at herself and her ghosts) and glee. "I bet I can make it better. Not that these aren't good." (Of course they are. Thor had helped.) "They're amazing. But see, if you decrease the angle for these hooks by about 3.5 degrees, you reduce wind-drag without compromising the ouch factor if it catches flesh. And microbead poisons--" She paused abruptly, cocking her head to the side to blink at him again, her TK mask dissipating between one breath and another. "Uhm. Labs are good. Especially if they come with vacuums."

"Yeah, the ventilation in the one I found downstairs was top of the line - and that's saying something, considering some of the labs I've worked in," Clint said, taking the tablet back and entering the change she'd suggested. "I've used a pressure injection for taking out targets - hit them in the shoulder, sedative kicks in, you just have to wait for them to fall over. Tell me about these microbead poisons."

"I can't give out all my secrets at one go!" She protested, looking appropriately scandalised, hand over her heart and everything. "How do I know that you're not going to use it for some kind of nefarious purposes?" (Background checks, confirmation of identities. Bad people were good in the new world. Maybe in this newer world good people became bad?) (She doubted it, though)

"That's a valid question," Clint said, nodding seriously. "I'm not sure how to prove to you that I won't use the poisonous microbeads for nefarious things. In fact, I'm not 100% sure I can tell you I won't since there's always the off chance someone will assume my actions are nefarious just because they're on the other side of them or whatever. But it's not like I'm going to shoot anyone we know here with an arrowhead coated in poison... or capable of injecting them with poisonous microbeads." He handed the tablet back to her, having tweaked a few other specifications based off her suggestion. "What d'you think?"

"Looks fine by me," she said (just fine?), tilting the tablet slightly as she tried to visualize it in 3D. "But as with most weapons it depends on the user. The bow you're using right now? Collapsible? Your strength and preferred tensile strength, etcetera."

Rachel looked up again, eyes twinkling beneath the curtain of her fringe. "I'm just gonna assume strength isn't actually a problem for you." Because arms - she was going insane; she wasn't going blind.

Laughing, Clint shook his head. "Nah, I've got a good draw. This bow's a composite - horn, bamboo, and sinew. I've got quite a few other bows, though, so I know what you're talking about. I wouldn't mind doing some test runs if you've got time and the inclination to actually help me make the prototype."

"That depends on how you're going to pay me for my services, sir," she said cheerfully, moving on to the next group of schematics. "And whether you trust me enough to have free reign."

"I said 'help' make it, not 'take over the entire project like a miniature despot,'" Clint grinned. "But I could pay you with a burger and fries, if you want."

"Why, I never. I could 'help' you make the entire thing like a miniature despot," she replied with a wrinkle of her nose. She worked best that way (no interfering, grubby hands). Rachel shook her head decisively. "At least throw in a strawberry milkshake. And dessert."

"You got it," Clint said, still grinning. "And you can tell me about the poisonous microbeads. The strawberry milkshake's worth that alone."

She made a loud dismissive noise and flapped one hand at him, fingers continuing to dance over his device. "Microbeads. Tip of the iceberg. You may not be able to afford it."

"I figured," Clint said, smile turning just ever so slightly smug. "I can afford a lot of burgers and fries."

There was another wrinkle of her nose. "What about variety?"

"Lasagna and meatballs? Salad and onion rings? Chocolate milkshake? Pie?"

"Oh, honey. You'll learn." (Not to survive on diner food alone.) (Not that she actually minded.) (She just got bored easily). Rachel grinned, batted the ghosts away with a firm shake of her head, before finally handing Clint his tablet back and patting him encouragingly on the shoulder. There were another dozen-odd modifications and notes made to a collapsible bow made from a metal alloy (No! Keep the tablet, idiot!). "What were you doing up here anyway?"

"Heading up to the roof," Clint answered, sliding his fingertip across the screen to flick through the modifications she'd suggested, his eyes moving back and forth as he did the math in his head. They weren't mods he wouldn't have thought of eventually, but finding someone to bounce ideas off of like this was surprising - and refreshing. "Everything's kind of gotten turned on its ear for me and I think best when I'm up high. There's a 'clearing the air' metaphor in there somewhere, but y'know." He shrugged without actually looking up from the tablet. Then he remembered normal people liked things like eye contact and more than verbal acknowledgement that they were having a conversation so he smiled again and tipped his head to the side as he looked at her. "I'd be willing to get sidetracked, though. Wanna get dinner?"

She paused -- well, froze, really. There was a cacophony of voices as her ghosts perked up and started yammering at her, the pressure in her brain increasing to a point where she felt like slamming it against the wall. Instead she turned her head towards her makeshift work station while she recovered, fighting to fit her flimsy telepathic shields back into place and slow her rapid heartbeat to a slightly more normal pace. It would be all kinds of stupid to succumb to her crazy now. In the attic with a familiar unfamiliar stranger.

"I don't know," she said finally (after 3 seconds). Rachel's gaze found its way back to the man -- legs still straddling the window sill with his distracting smiles and huge nerd brain -- and found it easy enough to curve her lips into another mischievous smile. "I mean, I hardly know you and I have that mess to clean up before I can even get around to running a background check." (Call Wade.)

The deer in the headlights look gave her away. Clint made sure the schematic variations were saved to the tablet, downloaded them to a separate folder on his thumb drive, disconnected it, pulled up a word doc, typed in his phone number, shut the device down, and offered her the tablet again. "Here, you keep this and fiddle around with the blueprints on it. Call me after you've run that background check. Pretty sure you won't find anything unexpected except for maybe the four years I was in the circus. And now you won't be surprised about that, either."

"Bills will be rendered for any work done," she said, the sass coming almost (definitely) subconsciously. But Rachel's smile (aren't your cheeks sore?) had morphed into a more genuine one and she was able to accept the tablet (fuck yeah!) with something akin to appreciation. The redhead resisted the urge to turn the device back on, turning it around in her hands and smoothing a palm down its backing instead. Solider Hawkeye had been a circus boy too. Probably for longer than 4 years. He had had the best trick shots. "I'll have my best man look into it."

It was the strangest conversation, to be sure. Like they hadn't jumped from rapid-fire bonding over building and modding dangerous weapons and weren't talking about invasions of privacy and a level of paranoia not many people were accustomed to. But if he had worked for SHIELD (and SWORD) (Special agent, definitely), this Clint would be no stranger to it.

A telekinetic shield snapped up around her in a perfect sphere before shrinking to fit her like a second skin. "In the meantime, don't let me keep you from your thoughts, Arms."

Clint gave her a small salute. "Yes, ma'am," before sliding out the window and onto the narrow ledge beneath it. From there, he jumped and caught the eave above to pull himself up. No sense not showing off some of his moves if she was impressed with his arms, anyway.